Comments

"It is ILLEGAL to teach creationism in US schools." You are correct, it is illegal to teach evolution in the classroom, and it has been for quite awhile: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" Once you establish that we are only going to teach Christian ideals in the state-supported classroom, you have, in fact, established a state-supported religion, and have injured the ability for others to practice their own religions, which may have entirely different creation stories. "EVOLUTTION is the only acceptable theory." Your right. Creationism is not a theory and certainly not an "acceptable" one, as it fails on the first count: falsifiability, which is the requirement of any scientific theory. "This was reinforced by the courts a few years back. Sounds like the first chirch of evolution to me" Scientists of many different faiths (including Christians) believe in evolution. Scientists of only one faith, Christianity, believe in Christian creationism - and heck, that only accounts for a small subset of the Christian faith. This is because evolution is a scientific statement, whereas creationism is a religious belief.

"then used prophecy to show that insight of future events was somehow granted to individuals at differnt points in time, thus validating the bible." Please state what you are referring to here. You seem to be a poor Biblical scholar, yet try and speak as though you are an authority on the subject. "Would it be fair to disallow the research of Creation science? Isn't science an arena for thought, debate, and even at times skepticism?" There is a difference between skepticism and academic dishonesty. Loads of creationist thought and research has been allowed to occur, and it has been fruitless thus far - the creationist movement doesn't even have a single "theory" to speak of - the only thing they seem to agree on is that they don't like evolution, for completely non-scientific reasons. Teaching creation has been brought to the Supreme Court many times, and has been shot down repeatedly largely due to the fact that creationists don't even know what they want to teach! "Just as in any other subject, BOTH sides of the argument should be explained to the students" So should we also teach medical students about the excellent research being performed in magnetic therapy, homeopathy, and exorcisms? Should we teach children about the "opposing viewpoint" of the Holocaust (ie that it never happened - and yes, people do believe this)? Should we teach children about Bigfoot as well? All of these topics have equivalent evidence to creationism. The opinion of a large group of laypeople and a few scientists does not outweigh copious amounts of scientific evidence or the general opinion of the greater scientific community. Simply having an opinion doesn't mean that it belongs in a classroom; if it did nothing could ever get caught, because there are thousands of opposing "viewpoints" on every scientific topic, however the vast majority of them are wrong and have been repeatedly discredited but credible sources who have spent their lives dedicated to scientific research. I also love the fact that creationists are using flat earth belief and people like Copernicus to try and justify your viewpoints. You're right: they were free thinkers. The problem is, you have the chronology wrong: Scientists proposed that the earth was not flat, but was round; the church opposed it, and it was later accepted when everybody finally realized the church was being irrational. Scientists then proposed that the sun was not a perfect, unblemished sphere, but that it had sunspots and other asymmetric phenomena - the church opposed it, and it was later accepted when everybody finally realized the church was being irrational. Scientists then proposed that we are not in the center of our solar system - the church opposed it, and it was later accepted when everybody finally realized the church was being irrational. Scientists then proposed that we were not even in the center of our galaxy - the church opposed it, and it was later accepted when everybody finally realized the church was being irrational. Scientists then proposed the theory of evolution - the church opposed it and.... do you see a trend here? The church has been the one opposing science, skepticism, and change, not the other way around. Really, it's fine if you want to believe in creationism. Just don't hold this air of "oooh I'm a free thinking skeptic who's being oppressed, and other people just can't accept my radical ideas" : no, you're just someone who's stuck believing the same theory that has existed for thousands of years. Creationism isn't a new idea, it is an old idea, and no model of creationism can even come close to explaining the fossil record, the age of the universe (of course, creationists can't even agree on this), or how we can recreate the generation of new species through the mating of flies (and other species, for that matter) in laboratories - yet somehow this very probable process which we can recreate didn't occur in the creationist world. Is it that hard to see why scientists have moved to a model that provides many solid answers to these legitimate scientific questions? And I'll just add in that I am a Christian, but I am also a scientist; and I don't think that lying by telling people that creationism is a solid theory or even a scientific theory is a good way to attract people to the faith.

You seem to imply that gas pressure is the main force that keeps a star from imploding. It is actually radiative pressure that accounts for most of this.

Well, the court has ordered Facebook to hand over the information yet. They probably just want to make sure the potential evidence isn't destroyed in case this goes to trial. I'd be pretty shocked if the school actually did win the rights to that information. Furthermore, doesn't the school administration have something better to do than waste all of this time/resources over a stupid, off-campus prank?

I was thinking the same thing. Underwater cameras are already plagued with low light conditions, this has to make it 100x worse. I'd really like to see what photos popsci was able to take with this. Methinks this video is the result of someone losing a bet.