Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Evolution "Academic Freedom" Bill Passed In Louisiana
Ars Technica is running a story about recently enacted legislation in Louisiana which will allow school board officials to "approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories" such as evolution and global warming. The full text of the Act (PDF) is also available. Quoting:
"The text of the [Louisiana Science Education Act] suggests that it's intended to foster critical thinking, calling on the state Board of Education to 'assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories.' Unfortunately, it's remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects 'including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.'"
You can say that all you want, but there's always modus ponens, and (the related) modus tollens.
Don't dispute that. But that's bordering on philosophy.
your unenlightened (but surely popular) rant.
So I'm unenlightened, in spite of being a former catholic Christian via indoctrination, having read the entire Bible (at which point I became a sceptic), before going on to read Kant, Descartes, Simon Blackburn and John Gray, having the audacity and rationally derived confidence to risk the possibility of going to hell for denying the holy spirit (I DENY THE HOLY SPIRIT, fuck you God. hah, did it. wasn't hard), then having the enlightenment to question what I'd always "known" because I was brought up that way? Pull the other one. The definition of the enlightenment era was funnily enough when scientific reason finally got to trump religious solipsism.
So let's assume that the Bible is utterly false
No, don't do that - amongst its camp-fire mutated whimsical musings, it does describe actual historical events. It's the job of archaelogists to determine which ones are true and which aren't, and it's the job of philosophers and critics to find poetic wisdom within it which we can all appreciate.
knowing the Bible was false would imply that "science" was true.
The whole POINT of science is the persuit of truth. If someone proves someone else's scientific theory wrong, it's welcomed. Go and disprove evolution - you'll be famous.
I find it VERY scary when charlatans with no sound knowledge of logic try to defend science.
No sound knowlege of logic. I refer to the introspection of Descartes above, which took a huge amount of logic to derive "cogito ergo sum".
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Here's the problem with global warming. . . It's not so much the science as it is the agenda. To justify a radical agenda of emissions control, you have to build a house of cards:
1. the earth is warming
2. man-made CO2 emissions are causing it
3. the global effects will be extraordinarily severe
4. a reduction of CO2 emissions can mitigate those effects, in a manner causing substantially less harm than that which it averts
And it seems to me at as we move down this list we are getting onto more and more shaky ground with each step.
The most sensible analysis that I've read so far was Lomborg's "Cool It" book. He points out that everything has a cost, and you have to weigh those costs and set your priorities.
Too many environmentalists have failed to grasp that idea. In their philosophy, the Earth is teetering on the bring of destruction. Every possible scheme to try and avert this fate, no matter how extreme (and they are dreaming up more extreme ones all the time) must be pursued, and anybody who objects is labelled: denier, shill for the oil companies, ignorant, evil, creationist, etc.
From where I sit, it's the promoters of global warming hysteria who should be lumped into the same category with creationists. I have about equal contempt for both groups.
So you're from Houston too, eh? Remember the Katrina incident and how the crime rate skyrocketed in Houston shortly thereafter? :D
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Yeah, lovely.
But if funds are appropriated for materials criticising the theory of evolution, and knowing the common critiques and how plausible they sound to the uneducated despite being completely and utterly wrong (or even damned lies), I don't think science will be given fair treatment.
However, I don't really care. As far as I'm concerned, any school system may teach whatever the hell they want to, and parents may or may not enrol their children in such schools. If they are taught crap, they will remain uneducated. Or the quality of universities will drop to accomodate them. Natural selection works in mysterious ways, and in the long run, this kind of crap will prove to be either irrelevant, or so detrimental to your schools that you will eventually be bought out by the Chinese and kept as cheap, uneducated labour force.
So yeah, go ahead, teach your kids crap. Teach them that critique without any foundation in reality is good. Teach them empty rhetoric. Hell, teach them religion, while you're at it. People who care about education will put their kids in private schools. Or move away. Or both. The rest will get approximately what they pay for.
And yes, I'm bitter about public schools (not in the British sense, mind you), and I intend to start a private school in my country. Someday.
I take it you weren't exactly a straight A student, then?
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.