[youtube width="500" height="394"]http://youtube.com/watch?v=jXf8COiHMuM[/youtube]

William Ludwig ~ WWJV4.com

Shared misconceptions:

• Everything is an adaptation produced by natural selection
• Natural selection is the only means of evolution
• Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity
• Evolution produces creatures perfectly adapted to their environment
• Evolution always promotes the survival of species
• It doesn’t matter if people do not understand evolution
• “Survival of the fittest” justifies “everyone for themselves”
• Evolution is limitlessly creative
• Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality
• Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution

Creationist myths

• Evolution must be wrong because the Bible is inerrant
• Accepting evolution undermines morality
• Evolutionary theory leads to racism and genocide
• Religion and evolution are incompatible
• Half a wing is no use to anyone
• Evolutionary science is not predictive
• Evolution cannot be disproved so is not science
• Evolution is just so unlikely to produce complex life forms
• Evolution is an entirely random process
• Mutations can only destroy information, not create it
• Darwin is the ultimate authority on evolution
• The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex
• Yet more creationist misconceptions
• Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics

Although FSM isn’t taken seriously by the majority of people, he has proven to be a great way to raise awareness about the insidiousness of religion squeezing its way into our school curriculum. Because I have the privilege of calling Kansas my home, this battle between science and craziness was in my own back yard, so to speak.

In fact the Flying Spaghetti Monster was introduced in 2005 by Bobby Henderson in an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education. The conservative majority was seeking to rewrite the state science standards to include Intelligent Design, the idea that the universe is too complex to not have an intelligent creator. Of course, Intelligent Design has no scientific basis so teaching it as science is asinine, nonetheless, the Board succeeded in changing the standards to include questioning the theory of evolution, for a short time.

What FSM pointed out was that if we give credence in our science classes to a theory that is really just disguised religious theology, with no scientific basis, we must then give equal time to anyone’s nut job ideas. This would, of course, ruin science and not make any sense, leaving the only viable option of actually teaching the best scientific data in our classrooms.

As FSM “creator” Bobby Henderson stated in the letter, “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence,”

So here’s to free thinker and boundary pusher Bobby Henderson and to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, may his noodly presence be felt in all of our lives.