Florida gonna Florida.
We joke about Florida Man, but it’s a genuinely weird state. It’s such a tourist haven that most people only see Orlando, Miami, St. Pete, Tampa, or cruise ship ports. But five minutes outside of the big cities and you’re in deep backwoods Republican redneck territory with swamps and marshes. Plus you have the biggest gated community in the world, strictly inhabited only by retirees who drive around their deeply-Republican stronghold in souped-up golf carts.
Let’s hope we can hope for hope…
nah fuck it that’s just a secular “thoughts and prayers” 
I was recently (quite literally) cornered by an anti-vaxx Doctor at a meeting. Point by point he completely ignored my appeals for evidence supporting his ideas and retorted with anecdotal bullshit. After exhausting every reasonable talking point I told him he should be ashamed to be such an ignoramus since his entire career was based on scientific fact.
Fortunately the rest of the committee are reasonable people and shot down his idiotic proposal, even though they pretty much all have careers in the arts.
Also, Ben Carson is a celebrated neurosurgeon.
No, because every professional historian of my acquaintance heatedly declares “No, they were not dark” whenever they hear the phrase “The Dark Ages”.
Way back when Kansas State Board of Education had this same anti-evolution idea for schools in Kansas, there was this schoolteacher who went on to found the Church of… of… why, yes it’s…
The “Flying Spaghetti Monster” was first described in a satirical open letter written by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes.[9] In the letter, Henderson demanded equal time in science classrooms for “Flying Spaghetti Monsterism”, alongside intelligent design and evolution.[10] After Henderson published the letter on his website, the Flying Spaghetti Monster rapidly became an Internet phenomenon and a symbol of opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.[11]
So you can imagine by now that I am just waiting for the next step in Florida’s ahem evolving situation.
#NotAllFloridians are going to be going along with this. Cape Canaveral is in Florida ferchristsakes and a few big universities. It’s not all [meth-]gators and FloridaMan jokes and Miami underwater.
Dollar to doughnuts someone is reaching out right now to ol’ Bobby Henderson and his bunch, ready to culture-jam (in the education realm) this opportunity.
Huh. Culture-jam-doughnuts. Sounding pretty good with a cup of
some
maybe sit down with a pen and the back of an envelope, make a few phone calls to wholesome pals with a flair for creativity and fun-loving hijinx.
You’d think.
It proves to them that intelligent selection works.
Fruit trees are grafted from trees that are hybridized breeds. You err.
Not so sure.
If the Rapture happened, I’m pretty certain a great deal of them would be be on earth looking around afterward and asking “I loudly declared myself a Christian. What else could God want?”
Where did they find this dinosaur?
No, but seriously, you think I am passionate about other issues, you should see me argue for evolution.
Honestly, I think that arguments about whether things are a law or a theory or whatever are not particularly helpful or relevant. The basic meaning of theory is the same in common and scientific nuance: a hypothesis to explain an observation. The difference is that the scientific method is then to look for evidence about the correctness of a hypothesis.
What we end up calling the result isn’t really the issue - it is the weight of evidence behind the hypothesis. The theory of evolution by natural selection is supported by a vast amount of scientific data and forms the bedrock of modern biological theory and practice. Arguing about the name and the ‘just a theory’ is smoke and mirrors: what really matters is that there is currently no credible evidence to suggest either that evolution by natural selection is incorrect or that the proposed alternatives have any value.
That cuts through the terminological argument - where I agree that precise usage can be confusing - to the scientific arguments against evolution, which are most certainly disingenuous.
Are you trying to convince people who know the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific hypothesis that they should just mush the distinct terms together?
That also sounds like a quixotic errand. It doesn’t sound like it would clear up any confusion.
Well done, you just proved the point.
Johnny, tell them what they’ve won!
If God could take the Dominionists and their Seven Mountains, that’d be great!
I’m trying to avoid arguing about terminology. I’m saying that arguing about what we call evolution, and what that signifies, is time spent missing the point that there is essentially no credible scientific disagreement about its mode of action and importance and equally no credible alternative.
You are a kind soul putting the most generous spin possible on the situation.
It is the fact of the general ignorance about technical scientific terms that enables the manipulators to convince people that “it’s only a theory”. So yes, fundamental ignorance is widespread, but it’s being used to create more ignorance.
The worst of it is that he’ll have bipartisan support.
Ignorance isn’t proprietary to any one party 
It’s a thing:
Last Thursdayism (alternately Last Tuesdayism! or Last Wednesdayism ) is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. It’s also a counter to the creationism theory. Under Last Thursdayism, books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and literally everything (including your memories of the time before last Thursday) were all formed at the time of creation (last Thursday) in a state such that they appear much older.
Last Thursdayism functions both as philosophical point on how our observations may not match with “reality” and a reductio ad absurdum of the young-Earth creationist idea of omphalism: if the world was created 6000 years ago with the appearance of being made billions of years ago, what is there to stop us from claiming it was made Last Thursday?
The debate on whether Last Thursdayism is true has raged on ever since the creation of the universe last Thursday its inception.
What about Jacksonville?
