At the title of the thread:
Teach evolution in public schools?
Short story: Yes.
Long story: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Teaching evolution is awesome. It's the converse that's worrisome. If you want your kid to learn whatever claptrap your church wants them to, homeschool them or pay for it. Public education should always be secular.
Well, now that we've got that cleared up, I feel like nitpicking. Well, not nitpicking. More like calling out the general idiocy I see here.
Everything MattEmAngel said.
It's funny, really. Actually, it's pretty hilarious. You aren't even trying to defend your own views; you're instead trying to knock science down to the same level as your own views by claiming they're basically the same thing. This would ordinarily come off as smug, silly, and objectionable, if not for that it might as well say that you value your views negatively if you think putting science with them is an adequate dig.
Almost every "
oint" you made is laughable if you know the first thing about any of the subjects you rambled off.
First of all, dictionary editors are NOT the supreme arbiters of word usage; they merely catalogue what words mean. Language is a fluid construct.
Secondly, learn to logic. This is reminding me of that time my professor made me prove .9 continuous = 1 using tools we hadn't even covered in class when he learned I was a math major for the short amount of time I was to spend in university before I left, just to see what I already knew. And THEN asked me to illustrate a proof of Löb's Theorem, which I had to pull out of my arse because I'd never heard of it before. But I was able to within the frantic time-frame I had (thankfully, it was a week) because I understood basic logic. This may seem entirely unrelated, and it almost is, if not for how you can find an answer to the question, convoluted as it is. It was a horrible waste of class time.
The important part is this.
P can prove that a proof of X implies X if and only if P can prove X. Basically, if we can find a proof within P that P proves X, it's correct.
Science has a hell of a track record and it's always getting better. More complete. It's continuously satisfied the ancillary conditions, and the theory currently being fielded are constructed of the totum of scientific knowledge we have. That's not to say that they're perfect, though. After all, one of the beautiful things about science is that it doesn't stop improving on itself and readily tosses out explanations that are no longer satisfactory (which is a hell of a lot more than religion can say.)
Anyway. Just because empirical evidence is the foundation of science (take that, Greek philosophers!), that doesn't mean it's entirely necessary. To put it simply
A implies B.
A
Then probably B.
Could it be something other than B? Of course. Is it? Depends. Say B had a probability of .49, the other results being .51 in total. It's the most likely candidate, though the converse is more likely, because .51 > .49. It's still the most trustworthy color to put your money on, though, if you only had a choice of one.
The Universe isn't losing energy. It's losing useful free energy. You can't do much with an ever-expanding puddle of warmth, after all. Well, other than run a very inefficient Stirling engine. Or something.
Oh, and it's called the Big Bang because the term was originally made up by proponents of the Steady State hypothesis as a mockery. But nobody knew that, and it stuck. It's like how people thing Erwin Schrödinger was being serious when he came up with the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, and not depicting a problem with the Copenhagen Interpretation.
And the lady doth protest too much, methinks. Protesting your own side. In the original meaning of the word. Although the current one makes perfect sense too, by direct corollary. In a binary choice system, given between A and B, if not A, then B.
Science is still growing. For all its advances it can't explain whatever meaningless gobbledegook you want it to at the moment. So what? That doesn't mean it'll never be able to. I frankly don't see how that's unscientific at all. It's more against the general scientific modus of thought to think what you're thinking, which is a textbook example of what bars progress.
