A man in West Virginia is suing the state to get evolution removed from the public schools because learning about evolution hurts his daughter’s chances of getting into college and preparing for a career in veterinary medicine.
I don’t even…
Look, here’s reality for you. If you don’t learn evolution in high school, you will definitely get it in college, especially if you’re a biology major. And if you plan on being a vet, you pretty much definitely will be a biology major.
If you didn’t learn it in high school, you will be behind all the other students. And getting into veterinary school is tough — it is more competitive than getting into med school. Seriously, you need to give your kid every advantage to help them get in, and coaching them in ignorance won’t help.
If you think you can avoid exposing them to evolution at the college level by enrolling them in your local know-nothing Bible college…well, what did I just say about vet schools being competitive? No one is going to be impressed, even if she gets straight “A”s in a substandard school, or worse, a school that isn’t even accredited.
So you bite the bullet and send your daughter to a real school, and you tell her to pray a lot and not listen when the professors explain how the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, or perhaps you tell her to listen and parrot it back on the tests, but don’t believe it. It won’t work. It’s not like evolution represents a small collection of facts she can regurgitate on an exam — it’s a whole body of concepts that reinforce each other and make biology comprehensible. Higher ed is not an exercise in memorization! You can’t pretend her brain is a Chinese room and that she can just shuffle out answers reflexively without thinking about them.
I can’t even imagine going into a field that requires in-depth knowledge about diverse animals, that requires comparative anatomy and physiology, without understanding the relationships between those organisms.
One last thing: sending your daughter off to learn biology while telling her that evolution “has no math to back it” is self-defeating. The first upper level biology course she takes, she will learn that Daddy lied about evolution — it’s a truckload of math. And if Daddy lied about biology, what else has he lied about? Daddy is the kind of Christian atheists love: he raises smart young women and burdens them with faith-based rubbish that is easily demolished, discrediting her religion in the process.
Thanks, Dad. But really, for your daughter’s sake, we’d rather you raised her with a better understanding of how science works, and if you really need to, a religion that is more tolerant and open-minded and slightly more difficult to reduce to a shambolic hateful smear.
By the way, Kenneth Smith has a book, The True Origin of Man, which is largely a heavily fictionalized retelling of the book of Genesis that is obsessively focused on race. A substantial part of it is readable for free (I wasn’t going to pay to read the whole thing), and it was notable for its discussion of Cain sating his lust with an ape, to produce a dark-skinned line of humans. And surprise, when Noah built his ark and the animals came marching two by two to board, he includes two black-skinned people, distinct from Noah’s white family, the children of Cain.
In subsequent generations, Smith’s idea of math is to go on and on about pure white-skinned humans breeding with black-skinned people to produce 50% black/white hybrids, and how if they bred with 100% white-skinned people they make 25% black people, etc., etc., etc. There is also something Smith has invented but never explained, called “kendihuchrodnamixgenesis” (say it ten times real fast, I double dog dare you!), although he does say it is less effective the closer you are to the pure white race genetically in composition
. He also goes on to explain that primate genetic races to lay its cell building block pattern faster than the human genetic building block pattern that constructs people’s bodies in cellular arrangement
, whatever the hell that means.
I don’t think Mr Smith’s influence is going to be especially helpful in getting his daughter into a scientific field.
…I can’t even say it once! Is the ‘ken’ at the beginning his way of naming whateveritis after himself?
That poor kid…
Dad, you ever stop to think that you are spewing religious idiotology? You have no evidence for your deity, or that your babble is anything other than a book of mythology/fiction. You accept it all without any trace of evidence. It is nothing but fiction due to the lack of support.
Evolution has a million or so interlocking papers in many fields of science backing it up. It is logical evidence based scientific conclusion.
I’m a living, breathing anecdote for that one. My home pastor had anti-evolution as his personal hobby-horse; he went to an ICR summer institute and did multipart sermon series about dinosaurs on the ark and everything. (he was only the pastor there for a few years, but it was at the end of my high school and into early college time) I was a bio major, and hadn’t really thought about it all together, but decided to take the evolution class elective because “I want to know what it is they’re teaching so I know better how to argue against it” (I KNOW). Talk about backfiring – it was beautiful, and elegant, and made so much sense, and entranced me so much that I decided that whatever kind of biology I did with my life, evolutionary theory had to be a big part of it.
Exactly, except substitute pastor for daddy, put “was wrong” for “lied”, and put that big revelation into a time bomb that goes off a decade later. That’s the thing with fundamentalism – it’s a huge brick wall, but it’s a wall that crumbles once you let the tiniest crack in.
(and seriously, that auto “read more at (ftb link)” addition in blockquotes is getting REALLY ANNOYING.)
This guy has a point. I studied evolution in school and I’m not a veterinarian.
So, what lawyer would take this case? The defense could just parade a large number of professor of veterinary medicines, admissions boards, and pre-vet advisers who would say ‘no, actually, you’ll learn evolution as a part of your pre-vet education about animal biology, so learning it now probably helps’. Client might gain persecution points, but I thought lawyers actually like to brag about cases they’ve won.
I suppose the plaintiff could represent himself, but one knows what they say about the person who represents themselves.
I heard Liberty U just opened a veterinary school.
This is a sample from one of their textbooks.
So he’s even more racist than the bible? Wow, that takes an effort.
Stardrake #2 is right, I feel for the girl.
Kendi, hu, chrod, namix, genesis. Easy – I can even remember the “word”. The only actual question is how to pronounce hu, but I’d go for “hue”.
The Bible doesn’t mention skin color. Add that, and you’ve made it even more racist than before.
…the strange thing is, the author is black. A self-loathing one, apparently:
The chances that an American whose family has been in the country since before the big immigrations of the 1880s and after has some African-American genes hanging around in their DNA is pretty high. Remember that guy who tried to start a “white’s only” town who had his heritage checked out? Turned out that he was something like 16% Negro? On a televised show? The look on his face was priceless.
As for the poor daughter, I wish her well. She needs to get away from Daddy as fast as she can. He is clearly living in a very different world than the rest of us. Aside from the racist creationism, he also apparently thinks that his suit is going to achieve something other than laughter.
My thoughts exactly. And she has a good chance now that she’s getting into college. God luck and good speed.
I’m not sure this guy knows much about apes either. Aren’t they unpigmented under their fur? I know chimpanzees come in a variety of colors as far as the exposed parts of their skin are concerned.
So… he made a word that “translates’ out to “Ken’s two hue color dna mix creation. ” Lovely individual.
As a vet tech, I would like to now proceed to laugh myself insensate over the idea that evolution will *hurt* his daughter’s chances of being a vet. If evolution is that terrible, then she’s never going to take pharmacology or anatomy and physiology or… well, basically any of the classes she needs to take. Poor kid. Her dad is crushing her dream.
Oh. Ken-di-hu-chro-dna-mix-genesis.
…Yeah, no. *headshake*
David M @9:
I think it’s great that you can pronounce it.
The condescension, however, is less than great.
What!? Regurgitating memorised shit is not enough in American colleges?
Dude, this is awesome.
In my Italian school we had to do pretty much that for every scientific subject.
In this case, I think that’s already been established.
Poor girl. I hope she’s able to fulfill her aspiration despite dad.
F.O. @17:
I hate that so much of the schooling I received growing up in the US took the memorize & regurgitate information route. I’m sure that works fine for many people, but I’m not one of them, and I doubt I’m far from alone.
Because @ 6: “I suppose the plaintiff could represent himself, but one knows what they say about the person who represents themselves.”
He filed pro se, so, there you go.
Not believing in evolution doesn’t disqualify one from being a neurosurgeon.
But the maths! It just doesn’t back it up!
I often wonder about this, because of my older brother. He’s a veterinarian, and a damn good one by all accounts (both biased and unbiased). He’s also a YEC, who, after some arguments with me over evolution, gifted me with a subscription to “Creation” magazine for Christmas. Mercifully they are only issued quarterly, and skimming though the two that I have received so far, there is nothing new – it’s always the same old tropes re-hashed in sciency language.
How does someone like my brother get fooled by this stuff? He’s an intelligent guy. We live on the other side of the world from each other, so don’t talk that much – most of our interaction is on facebook. We met up last year and didn’t discuss religion much, other than he did ask me what had made me lose my faith, a process that began 8 years ago and is now pretty much complete. Face to face of on the phone we almost never talk about faith matters. But every so often he goes full-blown fundie over something, and it’s almost like it’s out of character.
Long ago I wanted to be a vet, and so I took all the classes necessary for pre-vet as a biology major. You definitely get evolution, some genetics, ecology and the necessary statistics.
Orac linked this article about doctors and evolution recently. It seems appropriate.
Stultus@21:
Your link does not seem to work. But I suspect that it connects to something about the monumentally idiotic Dr. Egnor.
My advice. Egnor him, he’s an Egnoranimous.
;-)
Somebody recently claimed that skintone is a cultural phenomenon, and that if white people moved to Africa they’d eventually end up black.
I’m hardly an expert, and dropped biology from my curriculum the moment I could, but even I think it doesn’t quite work that way.
Zimmerle @ 10
I once heard a black preacher tell some of his colleagues that African Americans can blame their misfortunes upon the “Curse of Ham,” and how because of Ham’s sin blacks owe whites their eternal respect.
I shit you not. With ministers like this, the African American community does need the Klan.
Akira @ 27
I can unfortunately believe just about anything about religious nutbags. That one is particularly depressing.
longship @25 RE: Stultus@21:
Could also have been referring to Ben Carson, neurosurgeon and USA Presidential candidate (snicker)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson#Evolution
Google found me this:
Amusingly, the page is titled after the next entry,
@erikschepers #26:
So how’s that working out for all those voortrekkers?
Akira MacKenzie @27
Really? That’s really what you’re putting out as a solution here? How about not.
Religious bestiality slash-fic with white supremacist themes? That’s a new one to me.
Knabb @32:
Having read many comments by Akira MacKenzie over the years, I’m inclined to think they meant to say this instead:
Basically, with friends like this, who needs enemies.
Where is the math! lol. “Sir, where is your math?”.
When will fundies learn that “true” doe not mean “Something I firmly believe in”?
@ Carlie #4
Oh, hell yes it is. Can we please get rid of that?
…Sorry for the misunderstanding. I’m not trying to say “you can’t do it, LOL”. I’m trying to say “it’s easy, you can do it, too”!
Somehow it doesn’t happen to me. I have no idea why; it does happen on several other websites in the same browser.