Creationists and Public Schools

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You are probably completely ignorant of the progress of HIV research, so your failure to understand the connection here is unsurprising.

Certainly people would still be doing anatomy and biochemistry and immunology. But they would not be doing them nearly as well, they would be wasting a lot of time on dead ends, and they would be missing a lot of important insights that enable greater advances.

Orwell Lives!! !!

When I saw the movie 2001 it was based on evolution but it had a lot of ideas from the book of Genesis. When the apemen gathered around the monolith that would eventually give them the knowledge to harness nuclear power for space travel it reminded me of the tree of knowledge. And when one apeman killed another it reminded Arthur C. Clarke of Cain and Abel.

The segue-way cut from the fly bone to the flying space ship was cinematic genius. In one brief scene it told the story of Man's technological progress. You don't movie scenes better than this very often.

ruveyn

Actually the movie 2001 was a very heavily censored movie. The original Arthur C. Clarke version of the movie would have featured a launch from Earth of a rocket powered by thousands of atomic bomb explosions. This would have been very symbolic as it would have covered the technological evolution of the first weapon that killed a man to a weapon capable of destroying all of mankind.

Clarke was one of the dullest sci fi writers going [stories well written but total stasis]. The film was - since it must still be available I ought to say is deadly.

It is near my bed time and I will not speak to most of your points - it is fruitless any how.

You are of course correct in saying that I have not been involved with HIV research anymore than uou - I suspect - are up on the relationships betwen Chadic and Berber on the one hand and Cushitic on the other. It is a compartmentalized business.

That being so:

A few words please on how Evolutionary Theory [and which recension] is essential to HIV research?

This is not an idle question - if the polemic were sole or prime interest I would hardly bother..

The original 2001 a Space Odyssey would have been a lot like Dr. Strangelove. Stanley Kubrick wanting to avoid the stigma of showcasing a rocket propelled by explosions of a thousand atomic bombs decided to kill the concept.

Clarke did his best to have accurate physics though. Writers like Asimov had more interesting stories, in terms of literary nature, but when it came to interstellar travel he'd just use a technobabble term like "hyperwarp" (at least in Foundation). The space stations of Clarke are actually physically possible according to what we know now, whereas the knowledge to make non-centrifugal artificial gravity is not known and perhaps may never be known. (Aside from the actual minuscule amounts of gravity exerted by all masses between each other, which aboard any spacecraft ever made it would be humanly imperceptible. Until we hollow out asteroids to make spacecraft such spacecraft with appreciable gravity wont exist, and even then on the inside the net accelerations would work in opposition such that at the center of mass the net acceleration would be zero.)

We need to understand how viruses and prions mutate. Mutation is one of the engines of variation (along with cross linking and breakage of chromosomes) and that is one half of evolution. The other half is the way nature interactions with the variations in such a way as to make one kind of variation more viable than another. This is called Natural Selection, which is somewhat of a misnomer since there is no intelligent being doing the selecting. The processes of nature are blind and without purpose.

ruveyn

THAT is an assumption, something that can neither be proven nor disproven given our current state of knowledge.

Such terminology dates from the 19th century. Haeckel spoke of the blind force of nature. Freud spoke of the libido as driven by blind lust. It is my opinion that these are opinions and not necessarily true.

And there is NO WAY a human being could possibly study mutation without The Origin of Species?

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Guys, guys, think. Please. Okay - Orwell tells us "Certainly people would still be doing anatomy and biochemistry and immunology. But they would not be doing them nearly as well, they would be wasting a lot of time on dead ends, and they would be missing a lot of important insights that enable greater advances."

So - what about the great theoretical breakthroughs that DIDN'T happen? We are wasting time on dead ends exploring simply because Suffodiation Theory will not be conceived until 2137. We have over a century to go before we understand that DNA is nothing but an organic Suffodiant - if Darwin had only worked on Suffodiation instead of evolution we might be sailing the planet toward Beta Cygni by now, using the moon as a radation source.

Science has always wasted timde on dead ends and always will. Ask Edison - it is not valueless to recognize something doesn'tg work. Every minute and dollar spent on ProtoCushitic or extracting DNA from trilobites [very cute little things, but I bet some were nasty and there was not that much usable meat in them] is taken away from something else.

Oh for Pete's sake. Agree to disagree. Educate your children as you see fit, and don't worry about these strangers' postings. I have been exposed to scientific and religious theories, and I have drawn conclusions for my own personal beliefs. I would imagine most students will have the ability to do the same.

Welcome to the wrong planet.

Darwin's book was the first to propose descent with modification by natural selection. It was formulated before a mechanism for inheritance was completely understood. Since 1930 the theory of genetics has been merged with the theory of evolution and it turns out that Darwin was remarkably close. -Origins- is the founding work of a field that has grown greatly in scope and strength. It is now backed by molecular chemistry and biology. In all the years the theory has been out there (since 1859) it has not been falsified empirically.

The evidence backing the theory of evolution is stronger than ever.

ruveyn

Teaching Creationism in school is entireley absurd. First there is absoluteley NO SCIENCE to back it up and by teaching it we are saying christianity is more worthy to be taught in schools than other religions. If we are to teach creationism in schools than we should also have to teach every religions creation myth in schools (and that would be a huge waste of time)to summarize we should teache evolution in a SCIENCE class and save creationism for sunday school