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Mixed Outcome of Texas Textbook Vote
The Texas Board of Education — as discussed here last week — has voted on the guidelines for textbooks in that state, which represents a large enough market to have influence nationwide. The good news is that the board dropped a 20-year-old requirement that both "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories be taught; score one for the teaching of evolution. The not-so-good news is that in a "compromise," the board also voted to require that students "in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations ... including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student." Score one for the Discovery Institute. A Republican board member explained that the words "strengths and weaknesses" have become "code for creationism and [the similar theory of] intelligent design. So by being more clear in the language and using words that aren't seen as code words, we were able to get all of the 15 board members to agree that this is how we'll teach all sides of scientific explanation, using scientific evidence." Reporting on the Texas vote is all over the map, as a US Today blog summarizes. Some reports claim that an amendment was passed that preserves a
requirement that students study the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of common ancestry and natural selection. Other reports claim that the board also adopted language that would have students study the "different views on the existence of global warming."
BING BING BING -- we have a winner. The wording was changed just enough to stop argument and allow further plundering of science education by those who 'claim' to meet the criteria for course material via 'scientific evidence'....
I live in Texas and I have to tell you that the news that makes national and world headlines from this state is never good... outside that one press release on the invention of breast augmentation. When it comes to science and the law, most people here are not really in the slot of sharp knives in the flatware drawer.
Think about it clearly: the simple fact that this is an ongoing news-making argument means that they just don't get it and will have left a back door for ID and creationism to creep it's way into school curriculum, either directly or through the school's 'emphasis' on what is said in class.
I can tell you that I'm fully frustrated that this is even being discussed. Religion belongs in some other class, not science class. The bible is not evidence. If it was then clips like this would be banned, and not as funny as this really is.
The whole argument about creation in the science class is disgusting. Disgusting as anything I can think of. Fscking morons.
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Yes!!! We should not blindly accept gravity as a fact. Serious scientists now believe our understanding of what gravity may be either incomplete, or simply wrong.
http://www.physorg.com/news85310822.html
Cute, but nonsensical. The person you were responding to was right- fundamentalists are trying hard to convince everyone that evolutionary science and creationism are on the same level. They've invented talking points like "intelligent design" and "strengths and weaknesses" to confuse the general public into agreeing with your statement.
But they're wrong. Evolution is falsifiable science, and has nothing to do with theology. For example, many Christians accept the theory of evolution. In 1996, Pope John Paul II said "Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis."
Evolution is theologically neutral. Anyone who feels that their faith is threatened by evolution either doesn't understand evolution, or doesn't understand that science is about verifying falsifiable, naturalistic models of reality. Science doesn't attempt to reveal "truth" in a religious sense, it's simply trying to describe the most phenomena with the fewest postulates.
It'd be great if a curriculum genuinely taught critical thinking and the scientific method, along with the reality check that real scientists have disputes, personal ambitions, and moments of stupidity. Unfortunately, this school decision and ones like it seem to be meant to single out evolution as "a theory in crisis." In reality, even "proven" "laws" like gravity are the subject of ongoing study and debate.
If you're looking at science only long enough to hear about evolution, you might get the mistaken impression that evolution is the only area where there's still any uncertainty. It does kids little good to imply that there's Solid Science and that evolution is on some lower tier of reliability. And even less good to write curriculum language like this, and then use it as an excuse to pick on the one theory that most directly contradicts your specific religious beliefs. Note from the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document" that those guys are gunning for evolution specifically because it's so central to the scientific, rational understanding of reality. Eliminate evolution as an accepted theory, and reality looks more like an incomprehensible chaos where reason is helpless and only mystical insight is trustworthy. Put out the brightest light, and there's more darkness to sneak around in.
Revive the Constitution.
[[ How can arguably the world's number 1 science and technology leader simultaneously be so utterly backwards when it comes to teaching science compared to much of the rest of the world? ]]
Well, the US is also a very religious country so this part is quite easy to understand..
One area where the US "leads" the way also is the belief in 'little green men', I've read that 50% of the US population believe in those..
Now, each country has its 'stupidity': as you're English I would point out that having a Queen/King is a *very* stupid system!
I'm French and among our many stupidities, there are:
- we treat our elected president like a King (still much better than having a monarchy but hardly ideal)
- many believe in 'graphologie': in many case you have to take a graphologie test before being hired!!
I am happy for schools to teach creationism. But I want equal time given to the wiccan beliefs. And I want witches to oversee the wiccan corriculum.
I'd like to see a question like this on a religious studies exam:
"Compare the attitudes towards the creation of the universe and the origin of life from the point of view of followers of two major religions."
I remember my religion teacher doing this when I was 15/16, and IMO it made a complete mockery of any "facts" religions claimed. Great, Judeo-Christians believe the world was made by their god etc, but I have a whole book of creation stories and some of them are much cooler.
I can't remember if there were questions like that on my exam. The sample exams I can find online don't seem to have questions like that, they're a lot easier, like "Pick one from 'Describe Christian attitudes to war', 'Describe Jewish attitudes to war'" etc.
So, where do you suppose the "Earth as a solid surfaced planet covered with water" came from?
There is no scientific explanation for the origin of matter.
Notice that the field of science you are fundamentally attacking there is chemistry, not biology.
Most people accept God and science.
This anti-evolution nonsense is fundamentally anti-science. It's impossible to "just" deny evolution and/or the age of the earth. Virtually every field of science from geology to chemistry to radioactivity to physics to genetics and on and on, it all ties in and they all confirm that the earth is billions of years old and that evolution is accurate. They "just" want to deny evolution, and oh by the way they have to deny carbon dating, and deny all radioactive dating, and oh by the way ALL of geology is completely wrong, and oh gee erosion is all wrong, and oh yeah lets toss chemistry on the trash heap too because chemical weathering and other slow chemistry doesn't work either, and the global record of billions of years of meteor impacts, and the geomagnetic record, and hell all of astronomy is wrong too because there's all sorts of 10,000+ year and 100,000+ year astronomical cycles recorded in the earth, just throw out Relativity and Quantum Mechanics when they too show a billions-year old earth and they confirm the sequence and timeline of biological evolution.
It's really simple. The activists on one side is deceiving people with misinformation.
The National Academy of Science for virtually every major nation on earth has a public position statement affirming evolution and that there is indeed overwhelming evidence conclusively supporting it. Every national or international science body with a public statement on evolution says the same thing. Out of about a half million degreed biologists, 100% agree evolution is established by the evidence. If you want to go to decimal points, it's 99.9%. Out of a half million biologists, there are about 700 denialists. 99.9% vs 0.1%. In absolutely any field, you can find at least 0.1% who are just plain crackpots.
Most people accept God and accept science.
This whole thing is just a replay of the Church-vs-Galileo fiasco. Some people decided they knew how God did things, and they had the dogmatic hubris to tell God how He was and was not permitted to run His universe. Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, 1 Chronicles 16:30, and more all say "He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved" and more, and in their presumption of self-perfection in religion and in their understanding of the Bible and their knowledge of God, they forbid God to have made a moving earth. They declared Galileo equal to atheism. They declared Darwin equal to atheism.
Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
The heavens and the earth uttereth speech and sheweth knowledge. All the earth is writ old, and all the evidence testifies to evolution. Galileo was right, the earth moves. Darwin was right, life evolved.
A spinning moving earth is the "how" for creating day and night and the seasons. The science of optics is the "how" for creating rainbows. And evolution is the how" for the diversity of life. God does not need to manually insert rainbows, He does not need to hand-craft each snowflake.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Fine by me. I mean, it's only been in the last few years that the age of the universe has had a decimal point (I remember being absolutely amazed when WMAP returned a figure of 13.7 billion, when previous estimates had been of the '12 to 15 billion, ish' character). We still don't know what most of the dark matter is, we haven't a clue what the dark energy is. There's no reason that we shouldn't at least explain about the three different Friedmann models, the history of the cosmological constant (from Einstein's greatest mistake, to its current central importance in the accelerating universe), and the history of Big Bang versus Steady State. As for the age of the earth, one could mention the late nineteenth-century quarrel between astronomers and geologists, between those who said the Sun could be no older than a few tens of millions of years and those who said life on Earth had existed for orders of magnitude longer than that.
Similarly there's no reason why the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives to Darwinian evolution should not be discussed. There's Lamarckianism, for instance. And Lysenkoism, and a cautionary tale of its dire practical consequences for the Soviet Union.
Even the fundamental Newtonian physics could be handled in this way. Newton's theories contradict our instinctive ideas of how things work, which are closer to Aristotelian mechanics - or physics according to Wile E. Coyote. The point of it all is to develop an understanding of how science is actually done, how theories compete and how we judge between them, and why we now think this to be true, when once many people reasonably thought this instead: an understanding of science as a process by which we improve our understanding of the universe, not a list of facts that must be memorised.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.