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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."'"
Science classes in Louisiana? You seriously thought we'd buy that?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Enough said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Prm_vQQcM
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Creationism should not be taught in a SCIENCE class because it is not science. There is no way to falsify any of its claims.
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.
One of these things is not like the other ones, one of these things is not the same.
... at Sunday School.
If you want to teach Creationism in school, then place the curriculum in a philosophy class, or Religion class if so desired. Keep it far, far away from Biology class.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Leela: It's amazing. It's like a textbook on evolution.
Fry: Except in Louisiana.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.
Would secession really be such a bad option? Just because we started out united doesn't mean we have to stay that way, does it?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"you don't have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution."
Please do. I'd like to hear them. We're waiting... all ears... go ahead... hello?
What your tax dollars (if your from Louisianna) will be spent on is the inevitable court case brought on by the ACLU, the inevitable defeat, and the inevitable payout of taxpayer's money to settle.
As Mark Twain famously said "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...then it's God's Plan to kill everything in the Gulf, not BP.
If I don't believe in math, why should my kids learn that two plus two equals four? That's just science brainwashing them against my belief!
It's also nonscience because it leads nowhere. It merely says at some point "there's no point looking for why here" and that ends science.
Science is the eternal curious ape asking "why's that, then?". As soon as you put in "irreducible complexity" you've closed off science.
Because this is actually an attempt to end science for all. Religion has been cut back further and further, from being the reason why lions eat people, lightning strikes and illness happens. Now we know that lions are independent creatures that eat meat, lightning strikes are caused by electrical buildup in the clouds and that illnesses are caused by little organisms.
Every time science answers a question "why's that, then?" god gets a little slimmer.
And this is an attempt to kill science once and for all.
I went to a catholic school many years ago. They taught evolution with "enhancements". One was the de'Chardin theory that evolution was teleological, that is, goal-directed toward perfection. Is was their attempt to reconcile evolution and religion. This is not the precise very of evolution, which is non-teleogical, i.e. goal-less. Otherwise they pretty accepted most of regular tenants like long-time and natural selection.
As long as they also include every other creation story. There should be text from scientology, islam, hinduism, buddhism, and thousands of other creation myths from all over the world, in a separate book called "Creationism". Leave evolution in the science textbook with the theories on gravity, germ theory, and all of the other accepted, testable hypotheses.
Similarly I'm okay with religion classes, as long as the world's eight major religions are all given equal time. For some reason I think equal access to alternative theories isn't what they are really after...
Mark Twain also felt that instead of sending missionaries to Africa that we should be sending them to the South.
A science class is well... a science class. It's ultimately about science. What is science? How does it work? How is it applied? How has it been applied?
These fundies are like people who see a comparative religions course and object that people are being taught what Muslims believe.
It's not a bible study class. That's not what their studying. Your personal views aren't relevant.
Do Jungians disrupt classes taught about Freud?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Nope. I mean that there is no way to set up an experiment to show that its claims are false.
And you're going to have to define "vertical evolution" if you want to start making claims about it.
'You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved? You ever noticed that? Eyes real close together, eyebrow ridges, big furry hands and feet. "I believe God created me in one day" Yeah, looks like He rushed it.'
Damn shame he's not around today, the material he would have come up with regarding significant events in the past 16 years would have been most welcome.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
just as countless archaeological digs have found in favor of evolution
I challenge you to find one. ITYM paleological.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You know maybe that's the tact reality based people ought to be taking.
"Dear School board,
I don't want my tax money going to the ACLU and I know you definitely don't want tax money going to the ACLU, therefore, for the sake of fiscal conservatism and the love of all that's good and holy, don't push creationism. We all believe in the his noodley-ness here, but we'd rather take care of teaching our kids in Sunday school than getting slapped down for the hundredth time by those damned liberal activist judges. Let's make a deal. After Sarah Palin appoints Scalia Jr. as justice Breyer's replacement then we'll try again, but in the meantime, but we're just wasting our time and money while the Court is made up of godless commies."
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?
The first amendment? Free speech? ????
Also a few other things, such as freedom of religion.
(But cue discussion about the viability of stapling amendments to people as a constitutionally protected form of speech anyway, because it's funny.)
I only hope you are still in school and as such have not taken the appropriate History or Government classes that cover the first amendment. Let me give you a head start, it reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Let me give you a hint here: the FIRST TEN WORDS might be of interest to you.
Brought to you from the same state with two-digit addition on their GED test.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
I demand that alchemy be taught side by side with chemistry, so the students can make up their own mind.
Oh and astrology too.
As we seemingly can't stop the spread of idiocity, can we at least get transparency? Please mark clearly on the record sheet whether this student learned evolution or creationism, uh, sorry, they rebranded it to "intelligent design".
Please mark it, so I know, so I can hire only the people who learnt actual science.
If you teach both, please give seperate marks. So I know to hire specifically the people who scored A or B in evolution and F-- in creationism because they ridiculed it all year. That's the kind of people I want to have working for me. If you scored any acceptable score in creationism at all, then find a burger-flipping job somewhere. It means you at least pretended to take it seriously, or you did take it seriously, in which case you're either a liar or an idiot.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Creation answers "tell me a made-up story, daddy."
There is no answer for "Why?" in the context of all reality, nor is there any practical need for such an answer.
The misconception that there needs to be such an answer is the foundation of a great deal of stupidity.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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
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.
Don't call it a theory. "Irreducible complexity" is a demonstrably false hypothesis, not a theory. At any rate, his argument is basically "I can't see how this could evolve in steps, and as I am omniscient and omnipotent, that is proof of its impossibility, QED." At any rate, his implicit assumption that he's all knowing and all seeing is also easily refuted. He claims that there is a spider that shows irreducible complexity. However, it's easy to show steps how this spider could have evolved from a similar spider without ever being at a disadvantage, even though according to Behe, every single component is useless alone, and the spider is useless without all of them. Just utterly false. Irreducible complexity can also be shot down via Reducto Ad Absurdum. An arch is made of arch stones, and a keystone. Without the keystone, the entire arch collapses. Without the rest of the arch in place, the keystone cannot be placed. Therefore, one cannot build an arch, as it requires both parts to exist, and neither part can be placed without the other already in place.
He also likes the mousetrap example. (Even though the mousetrap is designed). He says the current spring loaded wire mousetrap is irreducibly complex because without any of its components, it doesn't function. This is trivial to show as wrong: Start with a basic cartoon mousetrap. A box with a piece of cheese in it, and a stick on the cheese holding the box up. Flaws? The mouse can shift the box and perhaps escape. Solution: Hinge one edge so it is harder to shift the box. Next Flaw: It takes a lot of eating for the stick to fall, closing the trap. Solution: connect the stick to a latch, and place the bait on a pressure plate that will release the latch at a very light touch. Next Flaw: You can't move the trap because its bolted to the floor. Solution: Create a baseboard and hinge the lid to the base, not the floor. Next Flaw: It's still somewhat possible for the mouse to lift the box and escape underneath. Solution: Spring load the hinge so it closes with more force, and remains closed. Next Flaw: The mouse, being a rodent, can chew its way through the wooden box. Solution: Make the box out of metal. Next Flaw: When releasing mice into your field, they tend to head right back into your house for all the free grain. Solution: Remove the edges of the metal box except the hinged edge. This will strike the mouse with the force of the spring. Next Flaw: The sheet of metal distributes the force evenly over the mouse. A fair number survive, maimed and possibly trapped. You need to put them down yourself, and sometimes they escape and die in the wall. Solution: Replace the metal sheet with a metal wire so the force is focused on one point of their neck. And there you have it. You went from a primitive trap to a modern trap. Each step improved the efficiency of the design. Saying "A mousetrap needs the plate, the latch, the spring, the base, and the wire, and without any it is not functional" is true, but beside the point.
With no exceptions, "irreducibly complex" bullshit that Behe has come up with can be shown to be reducible. And besides which, by asserting that all changes need to be beneficial, he's showing he knows nothing at all about evolution. Changes need only be not-highly-disadvantageous. They not only don't even need to be helpful, they can even be slightly harmful if it doesn't impact the creature TOO much.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Agree, freedom of religion is also freedom from religion.
Creationism has no place in a science class.
If it is to be taught anywhere, it should be in a comparative religion class where they also teach the Greek myths, Norse Legends, Hindu epics, Aboriginal dream-time, and Quetzalcoatl.
What is this, civics class on /.? Refer to the fourteenth amendment and Everson V. Board of Education.
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 believe what I am saying is that anyone who claims to be a "biologist" but doesn't understand that evolution is an irrefutable fact isn't really studying biology. the more appropriate analogy would be someone claiming to be a physicist who doesn't believe in the laws of thermodynamics.
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What I'm saying is that by making a special term for biologists who accept evolution the ID people are implying that there is a legitimate scientific debate over the issue which there is not.
The term creationists should use is "biologist". That is what I am saying. There are not two branches of biologists with equal ground and argument over the issue. There are creationists and there are biologists. One side's argument requires the rejection of the findings of modern biology the other is the study of it.
"Evolutionist" implies a special subset of biology that does not exist. They should call them "biologist" and drop the pretense that they have a valid scientific claim.
I have a legitimate problem with them creating a term to indicate a divide which does not meaningfully exist. The people who study evolution are called "biologists". I am fine with them using "evolutionary biologists" if they are discussing the specific subset of biology specifically devoted to the study of biology but to use "evolutionist" implies that modern biological science and evolution are not intrinsically intertwined which is fallacious. What you don't seem to be getting about my point is that I am saying that they SHOULD NOT be using a using a special term to define those who disagree with them.
It is disingenuous and akin to the XKCD comic where there's the cereal on the shelf that says "arsenic free". The point being that while it's technically true, the implication of stating it by it's very nature brings up unsaid assumptions about the topic which are inherently UNtrue. (that the other cereal contains arsenic or that the study of evolution has equal ground to the study of creationism)