{"id":1508,"date":"2008-02-20T10:41:05","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T10:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/02\/20\/florida-evolution-will-not-be\/"},"modified":"2008-02-20T10:41:05","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T10:41:05","slug":"florida-evolution-will-not-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/florida-evolution-will-not-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida: Evolution Will Not be Watered Down. Sort of."},"content":{"rendered":"

A good trick in child psychology is to come to a “compromise” in which the child, not knowing any better, gets what they think they wanted but it really turns out to be cod liver oil after all. Florida creationists got their cod liver oil when the Florida School Board voted, with a worrisome 4-3 count, to accept the proposed science standards that actually use the word “evolution.”The word “evolution,” however, is qualified as a “scientific theory.” That’s the compromise part. Creationists, like young children, can get certain concepts very wrong, and this is one of them. We often hear the phrase “… only a theory…” in reference to evolution. This belies the ignorance of most creationists, who use the word “theory” in a vernacular sense to mean “something we don’t really believe.” Like this:”John will be attending church this Sunday. In theory…”means”John says he’s going to church this Sunday, but I know he won’t be there.”In science, of course, “theory” is a much more elevated concept, elevated in the sense of acceptance, or to use (improperly) a vernacular term, elevated in the degree to which we “believe” it. The science of gravity; of radio-isotopic decay (radioactive materials, power plants, bombs, etc.); of hydrodynamics and thermodynamics; and so on are all based on theory. Strong, powerful, predictive theory. Much of this theory is essentially dogma … for good reason. Because it is as close to “correct” as we can get, with no real prospect on the horizon of it changing. This lack of prospect of change is not because of strength of belief, but rather, because of decades of hard work to dethrone a particular theory, or it’s attendant hypotheses and implications.So the creationist think they have achieved a compromise, but really, it is simply the case that proper language was used in the Florida science standards.And, Florida has dodged the legal bullet. For now.[details here]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good trick in child psychology is to come to a “compromise” in which the child, not knowing any better, gets what they think they wanted but it really turns out to be cod liver oil after all. Florida creationists got their cod liver oil when the Florida School Board voted, with a worrisome 4-3 … Continue reading Florida: Evolution Will Not be Watered Down. Sort of.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[207,55,151,162,156],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-ok","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}