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New Mexico Bill To Protect Anti-Science Education
An anonymous reader writes "From the Wired article: 'If educators in New Mexico want to teach evolution or climate change as a "controversial scientific topic," a new bill seeks to protect them from punishment. House Bill 302, as it's called, states that public school teachers who want to teach "scientific weaknesses" about "controversial scientific topics" including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — "other scientific topics" may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson. Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.'"
...don't believe in the theory of evolution at least in principle? I know there are actual scientists who are skeptical of climate change but evolution?
Luckily for them The Bible isn't scientific so they won't have to teach the weaknesses in that.
No sig today...
How is it anti-science to teach the weaknesses of a theory? Shouldn't we already be doing that? Seems to me that is exactly what we should do. Put all the facts on the table , describe the theories and teach the children to think through the problems that exist with all of theories instead of being mindless robots that simply regurgitate the flavor of the month.
I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind? Here in my country school curricula are rigid, limited and biased government mandated crap. As long as the teacher doesn't lie/make things up, teaching the kids to question everything and see both sides of an issue will only do them good. The intelligent ones will eventually make their own decision about who's right or wrong, and the stupid ones will believe what they'll believe anyway...
From TFA:
Rosenau said House Bill 302 will probably never see the light of day...
However, the fact that it's even being considered is worrying. It's another signpost on a road that seems to be heading for a generation of credulous morons. I don't see any significant barricades.
At least this means that teachers can't be threatened for completely slamming Intelligent Design.
This is just the outcome of public provided services and a government increasingly directed by the whims of the majority. I thought that was what everybody here was clamoring for? Freeing the people... ...if the people just happen to be dumb-shits or irrational? Well that's the bed you've made for yourself, why are you disappointed or put out?
Bill O'Reilly of course has his own views on science: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2011/02/bill-oreillys-latest-faux-science-lesson-the-other-planets-dont-really-have-any-moons.html
insight through the mind
The people who try to promote intelligent design do not point out any weaknesses in the theory of evolution. They present a series of rhetorical, non-scientific arguments (some would say lame excuses) not to believe in evolution because some people find it uncomfortable to believe. ID is junk science and has no place in a science classroom.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This means a teacher can discuss examples of creationism from other religions (like from Islam) without fear of reprimand. With, of course, supporting text from the Koran.
Fuck! When did Neo go into politics?
Does anyone still actually believe that science coursework below graduate-level material has anything beyond peripheral involvement with the proper growth of scientists? I mean, sure, nearly every scientist goes through it (read on for one notable exception), but let's be honest - high school science classes fail students in the same way that every other high school class fails students:
- There is no experimentation whatsoever. Any "lab" work is done in a rigged environment where students go through the motions laid out by an instructor instead of designing and performing their own experiment from scratch.
- There is a one-size-must-fit-all emphasis on abstraction, bookwork, and lecture. This is not how everyone learns best, or even at all.
- There is no free association. You see your science teacher (who acts as though he knows everything, when really he just knows everything in the curriculum) and your (clueless) classmates, and that's it. You never interact with people who have conducted / are conducting real research.
We wouldn't be worrying about ideas like Intelligent Design being discussed in school if we had actual science classes. Since science is more of a process than a product, proper science instruction would allow each student to determine for himself that Intelligent Design, healing crystals, etc. are pseudoscience. When you're just telling people that Evolution=FACT; Anthropogenic-Global-Warming=FACT; Creationism=LIE, there's no real intellectual development taking place. A science curriculum whose core is "these are the facts that our expert scientists agree on" is a great way to politicize science by training young minds to rely on entrenched "experts" to tell them the meaning of things.
Fun fact: Francis Collins (THE Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project) is a born-again evangelical christian. He thinks religion is the most important thing in his life. He rejects intelligent design. He was homeschooled by middle-of-the-road christian parents.
Maybe when we talk about science, religion, Intelligent Design, etc. on Slashdot, we could frame our discussion around inspiring people like Collins who manage to find a good balance all on their own. To do otherwise is to basically admit that our schools are brainwashing centers (which they are, but that's another discussion) and that most young minds are powerless to separate fact from fiction on their own (I hope to God they aren't, and if they are, we shouldn't waste money on "science classes" in the first place).
It will not happen overnight (hell, I have been watching it for 30+ years), but economic prosperity was the US' to lose, and the Religious Right is destroying it, bit by bit.
Once upon a time, I thought that open communication would help empiricism win out over magical thought, but after watching a couple of decades of religious right mumbo jumbo flowing out over the Internet, unperterbed by anything resembling empirical scepticism, I think nothing will penetrate their confirmation bias.
By pandering to our population's basest fears, they are systematically destroying the ability of one generation to teach the next how to think critically, and disrupting our ability to maintain science and math competence. We're toast, and it is time to acknowledge that, as the primitives dance around celebrating the 100th birthday of their harbinger, Ronald Reagan.
I am so glad my SOs do not want children.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Tell me of a test that would falsify AGW theory?
If there was a consistent downwards trend in typical global temperature despite increasing CO2 concentration (if other factors, such as solar irradiance, stayed constant). There, that wasn't too hard. Alternatively, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations didn't increase despite our emissions (i.e. there were feedbacks). Or, rather less likely, if someone did a new measurement and determined that CO2 didn't absorb IR after all.
while ONE test that turns up FALSIFIED is usually fatal to a theory. (If it won't kill a theory it isn't a proper test.)
Meanwhile, outside an "introduction to Karl Popper" book, pieces of scientific evidence are often not 100% in favour of one theory or another, especially in a system with many different things interacting. At most, they merely have a "most likely interpretation". There was no one piece of evidence that singly led to AGW theory, and there's to unlikely to be one that singly disproves it.
The sceptics find flaws and outright fraud in the models and datasets and they are attacked and suppressed
No they didn't, and if you think they did you weren't looking closely. And suppressed? Last I checked Watts was still publishing his website, and sceptics still get disproportionately large coverage in the mainstream press.
Modern Islam is not exactly a hotbed for scientific exploration and discovery, the reverse is true. This has not always been the case however as you'll probably know. While Europe was ravaged by norsemen and later held by the leash by restrictive and vindictive Christian churches in the early middle ages, the Islamic world was a place where scientific curiosity was not only allowed but even encouraged. Standing on the shoulders of earlier scientists from eg. Greece, India and China, scholars in the Islamic world produced many works which are still held in high regard. This was the Islamic golden age.
And then, something happened. Religious intolerance was probably one of the factors in the decline of scientific discovery in the Islamic world, led by theologists like Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059-1111) who used the tools of the philosophers to undermine philosophical and scientific inquiry.
Of course these developments happened in a span of centuries, not decades. It would not surprise me though if the decline of scientific learning in the Islamic world started just like it seems to happen in the United States of America, by religious zealots trying to undermine and discredit science and scientists and subverting science teaching to their own purposes.
--frank[at]unternet.org
If parents have little or no choice about what and how their children are taught, are they "just fine"? If people have little or no choice of how and what doctors treat them, are they "just fine"? Generally, how much freedom and personal choice can be taken away from how many for the people to stop being "just fine"? These are no idle questions. For example, in Germany there is no option for home schooling available to common folks for whatever reason they might want it - is that "just fine"?
Not sure if you meant to be sarcastic regarding totalitarian regimes keeping people "straight", but it is actually true to an extent. Say, Soviet children would get reasonable science education almost in any corner of the huge country -- and those of the very same children who grew up to be engineers and moved to the US are horrified with how their children are taught in public schools. Only a few of them can afford private schooling on their engineering salaries, and their efforts to bootstrap charter schools are viciously attacked by the US educational establishment such as teacher's unions etc. They do not feel "just fine" about this situation.
I find it strange that you mention AGW and "climate change" but don't go back to the "greenhouse effect" as I think the transition to "climate change" is more nuanced than a simple rebranding.
First we had the "greenhouse effect", the relatively simple principle that increased C02 in the atmosphere would reduce energy escaping into space much like glass in a greenhouse.
Then we had AGW which was the start of the examination of the consequences of the "greenhouse effect", the major effect being that the globe as a whole would warm, hence the name.
Then we had "climate change" which was continuing the examination of the consequences of AGW, ie what effect AGW would have on climate systems.
It is easy to portray that as a sneaky rebranding by "believers" but I think that is unfair, rather the name has changed to reflect more closely what the science is looking at as previous issues became more settled.
As I understand it the climate change models suggest an increase in extreme weather events but these aren't where you'd find evidence for or against climate change, models are models and modelling the whole earth or a significant portion of it and expecting results sufficiently precise enough to test is a bit optimistic I think.
If you want to disprove the science then you need to look at the details of the science. "Climate change" is not a theory but what is predicted based on many many theories.
If you want to look for falsifiable evidence then you need to look at the details and perhaps you should start at the bottom.
Does an increase in atmospheric C02 have the effect described by the "greenhouse effect"? This is pretty easy to test (as these things go) and you'll probably conclude what everybody else does.
Given that it isn't so much finding a way to disprove AGW as identifying other mechanisms that would counter the additional energy retention. Doing so may not be as simple as falsifying someone else's tests you may actually have to discover as yet unknown mechanisms of your own
If you can't do that and conclude that the science suggests that as a whole the globe is getting warmer then you can start working on the effects on climate.
If you want falsifiable tests you must be prepared to look at the nitty gritty, not just the large scale models, because the science happens at the nitty gritty level.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Politicians who wonder why the US is losing its competitiveness in science and technology need look no further than these sorts of moves.
...of personal agendas getting shoehorned into every aspect of life. Quite frankly if I wanted my kids taught creationism in school, I'd enroll them in a parochial school. That's what they're there for. If you want to teach creationism, get a job at a parochial school. Otherwise, keep your petty agenda to yourself.
I'm sick and tired of these people and their fucking stupid and insane religious beliefs, can anyone think of a way we can get them to be like those idiot comet cultists in Los Angeles back in the 90s? You know the ones I'm talking about, the group where the men cut their own balls off and then everyone ate a bunch of Jello pudding that had been laced with tranquilizers and they all died. Can we get the Evangelical Christoids to start doing this? Tell them that their penises and testicles are evil and that they need to cut them off so that they won't sin, and then get them to believe that Jesus wants them to overdose on tranquilizers and that they'll go to Heaven and bring about the Rapture if they do?
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
If history has taught us one thing it is this:
those who seek control always play on ignorance. the roman catholic church of the 4th and 15th centuries knew this and it looks like their modern successors are trying to do it to us again.
I think Frederick Nietzsche sums it up best: "Any species that seeks destructive behavior for its own ends does not deserve to survive".
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
We've had over two thousand years of this nonsense. We no longer believe thunder and lightning is created by Thor with his hammer. How do we move forward when we're taught not to question the world around us? In my opinion, to be religious is to be wilfully ignorant.
As an educator you have a special duty to teach established knowledge and valuable skills; I find it highly dubious that a teacher's personal opinions, political or religious, fall in to that category.
And, while it is arguably true that you should teach the children a healthy scepticism and critical thinking, I suspect this principle is only applied to the so-called "controversial" sciences, not to the Biblical myths or the right-wing agenda of that sort of teacher. If this was really about critical thinking, then they should teach the children why the Christian mythologies are implausible.
I've read far more Bible than most Christians. As a militant atheist my weapon of choice against Christians is the Bible...
No sig today...
Which Christians are you talking about? All religious people I know (Catholics, since I'm from a Catholic country) recognise the Theory of Evolution. The very own Vatican recognises the Theory of Evolution. Although I hate religion, there's some difference between a "Christian" and a brainwashed, ignorant nut-job.
Didn't you mean American Fundamentalist Christians instead?
If anyone who is skeptical of evolution is deemed to be "anti-science", then this conversation is over before it has even begun. Can't we do better?
The problem is that genuine criticism (like maybe yours) is hard to come by. What comes out is drivel funded by some religious types trying to push creationism and intelligent design, so I guess you have a barrier to cross but once you do, people genuinely think about it. It happens in biological science circles all the time.
It is something like geeks calling techsupport, they check everything and know what the problem is, but the person on the other end goes through an annoying checklist(starting with 'reboot your computer') because there were a thousand people who called with just your problem, thought they had a clue but did not.
Life forms are constructed of systems-of-systems (e.g., the "eye" is not just a single thing, it is part of an entire system of sight), and "survival of the fittest" is obviously not up to the task of explaining how these systems came to be. You can't select on something that does't exist yet.
That seems suspiciously like the irreducible complexity argument. For a rational non-scientist there are LOTS of places on the internet where you can get information from real scientists about how they think it happened.
I don't want to repeat everything here again, but can you take a look at this video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4742301713635559854# and then tell us what do you think the problem is?
Science ought to have nothing to fear from skepticism. Kids are plenty smart enough to tell religion from science (remember when you were a kid?), so we should have nothing to fear on that front, either.
I don't see how things like the Creation museum that shows men coexisting with dinosaurs is 'skepticism'. It's just about indoctrinating people with falsehoods. Kids are smart, but if you wrap them in an environment that tells falsehoods, they are vulnerable too. It's like keeping a program in a VM, it can never(almost) know that it's running in a VM, if you bring up a child in a bubble (homeschooled etc.) they grow up with strong false beliefs.
This space for rent.