Slashdot Mirror
Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
they are almost always at the bottom of the list when it comes education in this country or are the butt of jokes about being backwoods hicks.
If they like being laughingstocks, that's no skin off my nose. They have no one to blame but themselves.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Such extremes such as celibacy have forced even priests into the arms of pederasty.
That's an interesting perspective. I've always thought that the opposite was true: that the priesthood attracted homosexual pedophiles because of the lifestyle and ready access to children under the guise of a trusted authority. I wonder if this is something that can be reliably studied?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Wonder if I'll be reading about this in 20 years from the prospective that this is what allowed religious fanatics to create generations of religiously indoctrinated Christianized children that jail and execute intellectuals.
"Christians"
Whoops, painting with too broad a brush here! You're assigning the blame of a small group of individuals in the Roman Catholic sect to Christians as a whole.
I know it's cool to hate Christianity right now, but at least get your facts right.
"Such extremes such as celibacy have forced even priests into the arms of pederasty."
Nobody "forced" them to do anything.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I remember when I was in school (non-US), we had an "alternative creationist theories" lessons, but I remember our teacher saying: "The problem is, there is not much to tell about other theories, because they are ... well, not theories in scientific sense of the word." So we had like half of the single lesson (~ 20 min) dedicated to all other theories (I don't even remember them now :) )
May Peace Prevail On Earth
also of interest may be the recent news of E. Coli evolving to metabolise citrate
clickity
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I'd just start protesting about how "Gravity is only a theory" and demand that we teach "intelligent falling" until they realize how stupid their argument is, but I'm a cynical asshole.
Actually, I remember being taught Evolution as a kid... in Catholic School. They also described Darwin as the man, right down to his own religious convictions, and his assertions that Evolution was never meant to supplant religious belief (which makes the whole proposition of Evolution as an anti-religious proof to be silly at best). IOW, we got the full scientific curricula, as well as the historical and personal context.
Meanwhile, the public schools (by comparison) still teach the lowest-common-denominator version of it.
This brings up something bigger than Evolution though, IMHO. While Catholic schools still teach classes in Logic, Critical Thinking, and Rhetoric (the latter esp. in Jesuit-run schools), the public schools don't even bother. I think that lacking to be a far greater scientific travesty than whatever gets taught during a Biology class.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why can't people recognize that "God" is a metaphorical reference to the universe which science is dedicated to studying?
When a scientist brings forth an equation that describes the manner in which mutation and natural selection come together to create higher order life out of lower order life, which was created out of chemical soup, they are "contemplating the nature of God".
It's such a stupid thing to fight about. If you took a perspective where you were using scientific tools to examine God in which we all live, and you subjected your conclusions to rigorous processes with peer examination, and you created a model based on verifiable facts that described the "Personality" of God, it wouldn't be any different from modern science.
The equations of a scientist are an abstract representation of the Personality of God, and the stories of religion are personified representations of the equations of a scientist. Everyone is talking about the same damned thing, and arguing about which metaphor they like the best.
It's like watching two parents fighting over whether their daughter is a beautiful little flower or a cute little button. The religious communities and the scientific communities are just as bad as each other in this regard.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You are the one that isn't thinking critically. All these religions say in their texts that God is the Universe and the Universe is God. Jesus was always going on about how God was everyone, and under every rock, and in the sky, etc. Allah isn't permitted to be depicted as a person because people are meant to remember that Allah isn't a person. And on, and on, and on.
Thing about it is, religion has a lot to tell us about man and his societies that isn't really scientifically verifiable. You can't do an experiment where you take a few human cultures, give them rules to live by, let them sit in the dish for 5 generations, then see what the results are. You'll be dead before there is any data.
Take a look at Evolutionary Psychology. They try to break it all down, from the smallest granularity, the individual, right on up to cultural systems. If you're going to try to find predictive patterns in cultural systems and agree on rules for a society that elevates certain values (personal freedom perhaps?) without destroying itself in x number of generations, you need to look at the religious/cultural values of history, study their interactions both external and internal, and attempt to make deductions.
As our world fills up and mankind grows increasingly powerful, these are going to become increasingly important questions to answer if we don't want our cultural systems to knock us back down a notch. And there is ample room for contributions to the discussion from both the scientific and religious communities, if they can ever stop bickering about terminology.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Christianity really shouldn't even teach from the Old Testament, the only purpose that it serves is to provide all the prophecies that pointed to the coming of Christ. Christianity should be taught from the New Testament, and specifically the Gospels.
Insightful? It would seem to me that Jesus himself was pretty clear in Matthew 5:17-19.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
If you lie you will go to hell and burn for an eternity!!!!
How about, "If you lie, you will have to maintain multiple subjective realities within your mind to avoid being caught, and you will still get caught anyways. Extended along the timespan of a lifetime, you will become a creature without an identity of your own, spawning new partial identities for yourself constantly in response to external stimulus, unable to say with any degree of confidence who you are or what you believe. You will be powerless to hold your form when you meet a man with integrity. When you enter this subjective state of being, you will already be in Hell, and you will stay there for the remainder of your life."
Stop taking things so literally. This is no different from high school science, where they explain reality to you one year, and you take it on faith that they're not lying to you, then the next year, they explain how things that were presented as conclusive facts last year are actually a good deal more complex than was presented to you, and the things they taught you last year were really an oversimplified fairy tale to get you headed in the right direction.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Buddhism has an interesting viewpoint on issues like this.
You'll notice all kinds of gods in Buddhist iconography and mythology. If you're a Buddhist, you're not expected to believe in any of them. You can if you want, but belief isn't an end in itself. Belief is something that on its own is hard to maintain. You can't be expected to believe in something all the time. You may believe in the non-existence of ghosts, you might find it difficult to maintain that belief if you are alone in a creepy house.
Since a belief is something you put mental energy into, it ought to pull its weight. Therefore, a Buddhist might ask, not whether a belief is true, but whether a belief is useful. Etymologically, the English world "belief" carries this sense of investment, being related to "beloved".
In the case of Last Tuesdayism, you can't prove its factuality one way or the other, so it's pointless to have an opinion on that. But a Buddhist might ask, "Well, suppose everything was created last Tuesday. What would be different?" Well, one thing that might be different is that you might choose to forgo revenge against somebody who "injured" you on Monday. The utility of Last Tuedayism, then, is this: it raises the question of whether your past pain is a better guide to choosing your behavior than your future happiness.
The Buddha himself once referred to beliefs as being like rafts. Once you have crossed the river, you leave them behind. Christianity, unfortunately, filtered down to us through Greek thought, with its bitter rivalry between philosophical schools. Therefore, much more emphasis is put on orthodoxy (right teaching) over orthopraxy (right action). Whereas the Jews produced Talmudic commentaries from almost every conceivable position, Christians produced diatribes against each other for heresy (which comes from the Greek word meaning to "choose" -- that is to choose for oneself).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.