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Louisiana, Intelligent Design, and Science Classes
rollcall writes "The Livingston, Louisiana public school district is considering introducing intelligent design into its science curriculum. During the board's meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism. 'Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed "critical thinking and creationism" in science classes. Board Member David Tate quickly responded: "We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can't we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?" Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, "I agree...you don't have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom."'"
I still can't get over that he said "We let them teach evolution to our children..." as though this is some sort of compromise with liberals or something...
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Mark Twain also felt that instead of sending missionaries to Africa that we should be sending them to the South.
The premise of intelligent design is that God wasn't able to create a universe in which everything happened automatically. instead, it argues that He created the universe, and then had to constantly meddle because He couldn't get the animals He wanted by following the physical laws that He, Himself, made. This is utterly against my religion's conception of God, in which He does not make such mistakes.
My religion is, I think, a fairly popular one called 'Christianity', and I fail to see why whatever minority religious group is pushing 'intelligent design' should be able to teach Christian children that God is fallible and makes mistakes that He then has to correct.
Surely a better compromise between our two religions would be to simply not talk about what God did or didn't do at all in public schools.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Other western nations have more government involvement in schools and don't see any of this nonsense. This is, if anything, the result of too little government involvement, especially at a high level: education, instead of being handled by professionals at a high level, is administered by local curtain twitchers with an agenda and little else.
This is what happens when you let populism stomp all over everything, and it's going to get worse as opportunistic politicians try to wield populist ignorance for their own end.
--srj/mmv
I went to a high school in Germany that was funded and run by the catholic church. But for a school (and their diploma) to be officially recognised, the curriculum has to be accepted by a expert board in the ministry of education.
So there was no teaching or mentioning of Creationism and the likes in biology. And even in religion classes, this was not a topic at all. No teacher and no parent would even entertain that notion. I was born in Poland and my parents are deeply religious and they would not think about that. The push to creationism in the US leaves me astonished and in disbelieve. It is mental.
Aside: Although the catholic religion classes were mostly just that, you were not grated on your faith or being able to cite the bible at all. It was about interpretation, comparison of the books of the new testament etc. We even had a fairly objective study about other religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism), their history, their believes and customs. And even as it is a catholic school, we had about 40% evangelical christians, who had their own religion classes, and a few muslims, whose parents choose the school for its education quality and good standing.
This may sound weird coming from someone who believes in Creationism, but I agree. Creationism is not a science but a belief, and should not be taught in Science Class.
Teaching it in school, though, is a whole different issue, which is what I am for. My local district teaches religous courses as electives, and covers religions other than just Christianity. Its basically the best way that I know of to please everyone, Evolution is taught in science, Creationism is taught in religion, and offering the religion class says, "We understand that there are different viewpoints, and we are presenting them, in their proper light".
In summery, offer religion based classes to students, but don't mistake beliefs as science. Shoot, you can go as far as to require religion based classes IF you cover different religions, and call it diversity sensitivity training (some people on Slashdot could probably benefit from diversity training). Then let kids make up their own minds. Teachers should not pressure a kid at any time by saying the other one is wrong, or by presenting their personal views.
So keep creationism out of science, but do offer religious beliefs as a class outside of science.
It's a commonly-held belief among the religious that children would behave if only they got religion. And for what it's worth, if every one were truly practicing Christians, we wouldn't need much in the way of law enforcement. But when even the preachers in the pulpits can't keep their own vices in check, I think the notion that pushing religion on students will fix discipline problems is totally misguided.
As for creationism in the classroom, I want two things:
1) A solid scientific critique of evolution. I have absolutely no problem with them calling it into question, but they MUST do so scientifically. If evolution is so wrong, it shouldn't be hard to provide evidence.
2) Some sort of argument for creationism beyond "God did it" and the creation story of any given religious text.
For the record, I'm a Southern Baptist.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
It is very nice of them to have gone to the step of saying explicitly "creationism" not even "creation science" or "intelligent design." The history here is interesting. First the Supreme Court said no creationism in science classes, so then the creationists made up "creation science" which was claimed to be scientific. The whole "Earth created 6000 years ago, and a global flood 5000 years or so ago" made the courts not look kindly on that. See Epperson v. Arkansas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epperson_v._Arkansas and then later Edwards v. Aguilard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_v._Aguillard. By sheer coincidence, right after the Edwards decision, intelligence design showed up on the scene as a totally new, totally scientific idea. They claimed that this had nothing to do with creationism or creation science, even though the first textbook on the subject, Pandas and People, had a search and replace of "creation science" for "intelligent design" from an earlier draft. Some of these, didn't go so well, like the infamous "cdesign proponentsists" in one draft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandas_And_People Not too surprisingly, a federal court didn't buy into this claim and ruled that intelligent design was creation science which was creationism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District. These Louisiana creationists seem to have the standard problem of being not quite bright enough to pull off the attempted deception and so just use all the terms as synonyms for creationism. That means that if this just gets to a low level court, they will get hammered quickly.
Unfortunately, given the current right-wing makeup of the Supreme Court, it isn't implausible that an appeal to the Supreme Court will get everything overturned and will end up with creationism in public schools again. The original Edwards case was a 7-2 decision (Scalia's dissent is deeply wrong but worth reading). The current court might very well rule differently. And Obama's appointments don't help matters much. Sotomayor doesn't have much of a good record on First Amendment issues with almost no record at all on Establishment issues, and we've got close to nothing on Kagan.
It's funny, but my first realization that there was a serious conflict between science and the Biblical literalism came in Sunday School. I was listening to my Sunday School teacher talk about Adam and Eve and suddenly it hit me. I asked her "What about the dinosaurs?" and she nervously answered something like "Well, if it's not in the Bible, it didn't happen." That was the day I realized that religion was a crock. Even a little kid can smell bullshit when it's piled *that* high.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ironically, in the area of Louisiana I lived in the parochial schools were the best schools in the area. They also only taught actual science in science class. They kept religious things in classes about religion.
I had non-christian friends who sent their children to the private parochial schools in the area because the education there was so much better. I'm not sure if their children were forced to stomach the classes on loving Geebus though.
I think they should be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" after they explain where their hypothesized Intelligent Designer was intelligently designed --their entire point, after all, is the claim that the complexity of life and intelligence is beyond the abilities of evolution to accomplish. Therefore, since their proposed Intelligent Designer is by-definition intelligent and complex....
I know this post is anonymous but it's pretty much spot on ... ...
if I had some mod points I'd mod it in the morning, I'd mod it in the evening, all over this land. I'd mod it about danger, I'd mod it about a warning, but it being about Louisiana I doubt they need the modding about the love between the brothers and sisters
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
As an atheist who attended a religiously affiliated school that taught creationism K-12 and on weekends I have a much better solution.
Mandate teaching those little bastards every religious idea they will probably come across and give Christianity no preferential or differential treatment. "Evolution might be wrong. Here are some alternate popular theories: There was this ice giant and he.... or there was a divine being who came down and sculpted men out of mud and then breathed on them. Or they are the manifestation of a divine being's dream. Or..."
Do that for about a day and wait for the outrage as parents demand that the school stop teaching their impressionable little children that the world was created from a yak.