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Texas Bill Outlaws Discrimination Against Creationists In Academia
ndogg writes "There is a Texas bill, HB 2454, proposed by Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler, that will outlaw discrimination against creationists in colleges and universities. More specifically, it says, 'An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.'"
Sounds reasonable. Discrimination makes us no better than those damn creationists.
I believe this bill also needs to be modified to allow one to teach that the green cheese fairy living in the pumpkin house by the spaghetti farm on the dark side of the moon helped manufacture earth from the primordial cheese whiz with the help of the space goblins.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Funny how the same party that had Rand Paul insisting that desegregating lunch counters was "unconstitutional" is now trying to create affirmative action for fundamentalist retards. I guess it's only OK to protect the rights of white Christians, not everybody else...
Almost all my professors believed in God. They thought the Initial Singularity, big bang, expansion, evolution of stars, and all of it was part of his design.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I say "preach it!". It being intelligent design.
Not the "God made the world in 6 days, rested on the 7th and it is all described in the Bible".
I just want to see just how fucking angry and upset these Christian retards become, if there was a course called "Creationism 101" which taught that the Spaghetti Monster created the world yesterday, that Allah (God, the Islamic version) created the world in six days as per the Koran, that Yahweh created the world in six days as per the Torah, that Brahma and Vishnu created the world, and then left the Christian God out of the curriculum.
I mean - the Christian God is already covered by Yahweh and Allah, so why waste time on that.
And the Creationists should be happy, because their "Anti Evolution" point is taught, which is what they want. They keep claiming they just want people to know that evolution isn't the only option.
This should be obvious. Someone should not be discriminated against because they disagree on any subject--as long as their research and performance don't suffer.
There are a ton of loony professors around in all subjects and no one freaks out about that.
I guess all the people of slashdot would rather stifle any differing opinion--that's rather sad.
conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.'"
That's a big loss.
So politicians now define what an "alternate theory" is? Sorry, but ID is not a "theory". It's hogwash, bullshit, dumbfuck, nonsense, insanity or any of a selection of similar terms. It is not even a theory, and definitely not a scientific theory.
To cut a long discussion short, it lacks an important part: Falsifiability.
If creationists want to have their delusions discussed by honest people, they have to make one concession first, and that is the willingness to be convinced that it's all hogwash, bullshit, nonsense, you get it. They need to say "my theory proposes X and Y, and it forbids Z. If Z can be shown to be true, my theory is a piece of crap and I'll stop plastering it everywhere and brainwishing my kids into believing it."
Science is full of faults and bad theories - but it has an uncanny ability to rid itself of them. Creationism (in both its pure form and it's ID camouflage) has been debunked hundreds of times, practically every time a real scientists so much as takes a good look. And yet it's still thrown around, largely unchanged. That is not science, that is fanatism.
And by regulating science not on the ground of proper scientific conduct, but on grounds of ideology, those politicians have just delivered an excellent proof that they are not to be trusted with truth, facts, knowledge or in fact anything, least of all running the place.
When will we have our Tharir place to rid ourselves of this caste of no-gooders who have turned everything that was once good about our democracy against us and are driven by nothing but greed and power?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Where politicians started dictating what is and isn't legit science and ultimately killing scientists that didn't agree?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
[circa 1861]
Texas: We are free to leave whenever we want. South Carolina did.
Congress: No you aren't and neither are they.
Texas: Who's going to stop us?
Congress: We are.
Texas: You and what Army?
President: Mine.
OK, it didn't quite play out like that but if it happened today, it might.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Oy, your argument has more holes than swiss cheese
1. The vast majority of them did their work before 1859.
2. The list is of scientists who believe in God, not those that believe in creationism
3. For a number of them the 'God' that they believed in was not the Evangelical, Literalist, Christian God, which is the god of creationism
4. Including Einstein in that list is simply wrong; they admit as much when they point out that he did not believe in a personal god.
Sadly, your arguments are par for the course for creationists.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
I can't believe that I am quoting this website .. but I think you should try telling your point of view to these scientists for a start.
(a) All of the scientists on that list are long dead. This is not a coincidence. Science ... um ... evolves, and what Bacon or Newton believed about a universe about which they knew far less than we do today is irrelevant to the modern practice of science. We take what is useful from their work -- which is a great deal, to be sure -- and discard that which time has shown not to be useful -- which is also a great deal.
(b) In the specific case of Einstein, religion's been trying to claim the guy for a long time, but he made it quite clear in a number of statements toward the end of his life that he wasn't having any. The fact that fundamentalist types have to twist his words and deliberately ignore most of what he said about the subject to make their point is a clear sign of intellectual bankruptcy.
(c) Religion != creationism. There always have been, are, and most likely always will be a great many religious scientists doing good scientific work. In order to do this, they must be willing to accept the logical conclusions of the evidence available to them, and if those conclusions conflict with their beliefs, modify their beliefs accordingly. People who can't do this -- which, given the overwhelming evidence for evolution, means at this point pretty much all creationists -- are incapable of doing actual science.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I'm conflicted on this...
On the one hand, if there was no news about this bill, then it *might* just die off. Special interest groups often propose outlandish bills to generate publicity. Suddenly their cause gets millions more people aware. They very well might be a fringe group, but .05% of 300M people is still a large group.
On the other hand, it's very easy for special interest groups to push bills through because of the lack of scrutiny. No one else may care, so rather than fighting a seemingly innocuous addendum, politicians just OK it.
It be interesting if thousands of people suddenly wrote their Congress folk and representatives suggesting that similar provisions in the law be afforded to followers of the FSM. After all, if the existing anti-discrimination law is not sufficient and creationists are being harassed, then certainly the followers of the FSM should also get protection.
Actually, evolution is not a theory.. It is just still called "theory of evolution" to appease all of the religitards
Actually, that's not quite true. As Carl Sagan (Jebus! I loved that man!) said:
"Evolution is a fact amply demonstrated by the fossil record and by contemporary molecular
biology. Natural selection is a successful theory devised to explain the fact of evolution."
In any case, what frightens me the most is that all this ignoring of scientific fact puts our children at a severe disadvantage. It's difficult to be a biologist of *any* stripe if you don't accept the fact of evolution.
For the trolls and the few creationists who might read this, I'd point out that the flu shot you got couldn't have been developed without utilizing the tools that the theory of Natural Selection gives us.
What about the Flat Earthers? They deserve just as much respect as the ID mob.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Or, in the clever words of Christopher Hitchens: "That which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Yep. If it means they can also teach creation according to Norse Mythology and Spaghetti Monster then I'm all for it.
Can they even do a whole course on Creationism? I think they'll be all out of evidence/arguments in the first lecture...
No sig today...
Looks like the Retardicans are up to their old tricks.
"OMG the Bible is under attack! Better get out and vote Retardican you buck-toothed inbred hicks! Nevermind that we're taking away all the funding to try to educate your kids and stealing your homes and farmland out from underneath you, its Da Bible Under Attack!"
This kind of crap makes me sick to my stomach. Seriously. Texas has this one retard by the name of Dan Patrick - he's also responsible for the ultrasound bill these fundamentalist wack-jobs crammed through. He bought off his opponent in the 2006 senate race with underpriced stock in his radio station.
To call him a scumwad is an insult to scum everywhere.
Quoting from Wikipedia - which I don't normally do, but the link's been there a good long while even though Dumb Patrick is too cowardly to put his show on podcast - On January 27, 2011 on his radio show, Patrick defended his proposed 20% cuts to Texas education funding by saying that anything but engineering and medical research is "research nobody cares about" which he "will get rid of."
Sigh.
It should certainly be taken into consideration in the same way that any other deficiency in their knowledge base is. And we aren't talking about just college admission, either. I'm fairly certain that the first time a creationist fails a biology class because all of their answers were that "God did it", this will be used to file a lawsuit because they were not being given the same "academic support" as they would have if they put down those dirty evolutionist answers.
Fundamentalism, like Fascism, is indistinguishable from any parody thereof.
Yes, his old man, the guy who thought that Abe Lincoln shouldn't have tried to end slavery.
We're well aware that the Pauls are nothing more than vile bigots dressing things up in crap Libertarian phraseology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Rand Paul didn't say segregation was good, he did not describe his thought very well though. The argument is that the federal level government should stick to the constitution and let the states handle local matters.
So Paul thinks the 14th Amendment isn't part of the Constitution? Most people ignore the FACT that the democrat party supported segregation and the republicans opposed it.
The Democrats lost the South, which was overwhelmingly Democrat, precisely because they opposed segregation, and the Republicans gained it by supporting segregation.
Do you really feel that ANYTHING will make them rethink their views?
I like the world you live in - where all people change their opinions and beliefs once they learn new facts or contrary rational arguments. I really wish I lived there.
Unfortunately, I find myself in a world where people only use facts and arguments to buttress preconceived notions, no matter how untrue, unprovable, or illogical those notions may be. (Many of these people can be found in the Texas legislature.)
When the willfully ignorant claim intellectual superiority for no reason, it's the ultimate in arrogance. Why not hurl a few rocks their way?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Republican - there are still actual Republicans around. The ones who were closer to the center, who understood that the "screaming aaugh kill the government anarchy for all the low tax fairy will bring us everything we want" types are fucking insane.
On the other hand, the party has been taken over by a bunch of wack-jobs and front-group maintainers like the Kochs. The "Tea Party" types, the Ron/Rand Paul types. Those are the Retardicans.
They claim to worship "Reagan", but don't know the fucking first thing about what Reagan actually said. For instance, take the recent stuff in Wisconsin and the constant Retardican attacks on trade unions in general. What did Reagan have to say about Unions?
Here's a quote:
"They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here or it will not be passed on to our children." - Ronald Reagan, Sept 1, 1980
On the other hand, where do we find people who want to abolish trade unions? Oh yeah - COMMUNISTS and SOCIALISTS and FASCISTS.
"We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers' salaries and take away their right to strike." - Adolph Hitler, May 2, 1933
Benito Mussolini banned trade unions. Under Fascist corporatism, they were "enemies of the state." Kinda reminds me of the way the Republican Party works currently.
Stalin abolished all the unions. After all, under Communist rule they were "no longer necessary." And yet somehow the Retardicans say "Unions are communism."
Oh really?
The crossroads question today is, as these Retardicans reveal more and more of their true selves, will the people of America recognize them for what they are and tell them to go the fuck away?
Is it Ironic that you can't see how the second paragraph lumps you in with the people in the first paragraph?
As far I understand everything you complain about in the second paragraph are imaginary problems that don't actually exist:
Science hasn't broken faith with you. You've broken faith with it. You attack it based on rumors and innuendo.
You're falling into the same trap as the "morons" you dislike. You believe ridiculous fairy tales because that's what you want to believe, you either refuse to look at or consider the evidence that contradicts what you believe and you repeat lies to justify your erroneous conclusions.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Can they even do a whole course on Creationism? I think they'll be all out of evidence/arguments in the first lecture...
Absolutely they can! In the theology department where content of that nature belongs.
I have no qualms with religion being studied as it is an undeniably vast and rich area of human sociology and history. But it is not a science in any sense of the word.
I don't think universities should discriminate against the nature of an applicant's work, but they without a doubt should be able to discriminate based on the rigor and relevance of that work. We trust in that process to smack down crackpot tabletop fusion physicists. Why can't we trust it here? Show me a prof with scientific evidence of god (that passes muster in the scientific community) and he can teach science all day long. Kind of like when Rembrandt said "show me an angel, and I will paint you one."
Eek!
Not to denigrate the ingenuity of the ancients -- they were, after all, essentially identical to us today and no less clever -- but the only advanced technology evidenced by the Pyramids is the technology of the inclined plane and the wheel. There's a reason ancient pyramid-shaped buildings are found around the world, and it's because it's amenable to ramps.
There are no legends of Atlantis, except those created in the last couple centuries. There is, however, the writings of Plato where he created the concept of Atlantis, and explicitly said it was a made-up thought experiment and totally not real. For over a thousand years, everyone knew that. But then people who had never read Plato decided it must be a real place, and invented all kinds of stuff like that nonsense about "crystals".
The hieroglyphs(new link to get past Tripod) are just a case of your brain pattern matching for you. You forgot to mention the jet craft that doesn't look like it'd fly very well, and the "UFO" that would make the helicopter and jet plane obsolete. It's not like in context it says "Then we used our awesome [helicoptor glyph] to fight against the enemy's [jet fighter glyph], with the help of our friends from the sky in their [UFO glyph]. It only makes sense as language if you interpret as the Egyptologists do, as one set of writing superimposed on another. But I guess this is the one place where evidence for the Egyptian helicopter exists, in the middle of a bunch of gibberish babbling, and such fundamental technology just wasn't mentioned anywhere else.
And no, they did not know about genetics. The X and Y chromosomes differ by a lot more than a "rib". What they "knew" was that what they were writing was not intended to be taken as a science textbook.
The enemies of Democracy are
Do you really feel that ANYTHING will make them rethink their views?
Yes. I've turned around a lot of folks on various woo topics by simply not acting like a dick. I even convinced some that the last Bush administration was really, really bad, and I didn't have yo call him Shrub or Dumbya or anything. Fancy that!
The moment you reduce any opposition to mindless robots and start name calling *you* have failed.
I like the world you live in - where all people change their opinions and beliefs once they learn new facts or contrary rational arguments. I really wish I lived there.
You do. The number of extremists on many issues is not as large as you think. Turn off the news channels and pundits and hyberbolic blogs for a while and go meet real people.
Why not hurl a few rocks their way?
Because it doesn't work, and you are now operating on a zero level of intellect. Any claim to intellectual superiority will be soundly and justifiably laughed at.
If this passes I hope they do teach Spaghetti Monster Creationism, and debunk it in class, as a way of debunking creationism in general in a "hey doc, my...friend has this problem" kind of way.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
goes through the aspects of intelligent design and the discrimination that occurs in the scientific culture
The discrimination is well-deserved since, in the end, the best thing anyone proposing Intelligent Design can say is, "Some mystical power, that we can't identify, test for or measure, is responsible for everything."
So how exactly is that science? If you can't identify it, test it or for it, or measure it, it's not part of what we know to be reality.
EVERY scientific hypothesis or theory ever devised fell under one or more of the above. All the theories regarding gravity, light, infections, digestion, the way objects move in a vacuum, were all tested over the centuries using the scientific method.
So tell me, how is one supposed to test for an omnipotent and omniscient being?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
By that reasoning, we shouldn't be teaching our children anything in schools at all, and definitely not ever testing them. This isn't a question of having an open mind to competing theories. You are arguing that basic scientific rigor leads to a lack of scientific progress.
Assholes like you try to convolute nebulous mysticism with science and pretend that the two are somehow on equal footing, and the rest of us get stuck trying to keep our children from getting taught this festering pile of lies. Come talk to me about perspective and insight when you bring along a hypothesis that is both testable and not already empirically proven untrue. Until then, you aren't offering valid criticism, you are spewing worthless bullshit.