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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.'"
So your biology department is not allowed to bias decisions when hiring against potential faculty members who don't believe in the basic tenets of biology?
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"
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
I dont think you know what affirmative action is, and calling an entire party "hypocrites" based on one man's opinions is quite absurd.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.