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Tennessee Passes Bill That Allows "Teaching the Controversy" of Evolution
Layzej writes "The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill that allows teachers to 'teach the controversy' on evolution, global warming and other scientific subjects. Critics have called it a 'monkey bill' that promotes creationism in classrooms. In a statement sent to legislators, eight members of the National Academy of Science said that, in practice, the bill will likely lead to 'scientifically unwarranted criticisms of evolution.' and that 'By undermining the teaching of evolution in Tennessee's public schools, HB368 and SB893 would miseducate students, harm the state's national reputation, and weaken its efforts to compete in a science-driven global economy.'"
The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories ...
Well, there's your problem, right there. The overall concept of evolution is no longer a theory. Surely even the staunchest of Creationists must acknowledge the so called "short-term" evolution that gives us the ability to manipulate plants or breed wolves into dogs.
Yes, as with most fields, a long time ago there were sets of theories. Like prior to Watson and Crick, back when you had Darwinian Evolution, Larmarckian Evolution, etc. Not anymore though. You might have theories about very specific things in the field that might be impossible to prove -- like, say, what the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) looked like -- but Evolution is no longer a theory. The field moves forward while Tennessee makes themselves look like idiots from some forgotten era.
My work here is dung.
Why do politicians think they know more than scientists about reaching biology? They're wrong on this one... to much science to say evolution happened and the only support the creationists have is one book that's proven to be mostly fiction. If Adam and Eve were the first humans, then who wrote the biblical story?
Just as math should be taught in math class and so on. If you want to teach religion in a class dedicated to the subject, I'm OK with that. But it would need to cover ALL religions and beliefs, which I think people would throw the hissy fit to end all hissy fits over.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That education chalk board picture where 2+2=5 has never been seemed so relevant.
Some day, I'm hoping that all these retarded laws get bitch slapped back. Is it just that I'm young or are these people become more shrill and outspoken about this kind of idiocy? I'm only 25 and I'm hoping this is just a phase before we inevitably tell them all the shut the hell up and move on with things.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
...require any science taught in schools to have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis.
Evolution qualifies, creationism doesn't.
Astronomy qualifies, astrology doesn't.
Oh, and FWIW, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming *doesn't* qualify, unless of course some brave soul would like to make a clear falsifiable hypothesis statement for it :)
Call their bluff; announce an intent to entertain offers from other states to move their entire institutions, lock, stock, and intellectuals due to their services no longer being required by the state.
It's not just the Taliban that wants to go back to the 12th century.
Students who are unable to argue against those who attempt to oppose evolution on an argumentative basis are unlikely to ever go anywhere in the scientific community anyways. In other words, if the bill allows teachers to point out the arguments against evolution, and allows the students the freedom to argue against the teacher for those arguments freely, then I do not see it as being a problem. However, in reality most teachers will just fail or severely down-grade students who disagree with them, and if the bill does not include provisions to prevent that (which I doubt it does) then it is a terrible idea.
Fill disclosure: I am religious, and I do believe evolution is a valid and highly probably scientific hypothesis (I don't want to say I "believe in" it, because it isn't a matter of faith, it is a matter of reason). The two things in no way contradict each other and anyone who claims they do doesn't know what they're talking about (most probably, doesn't know anything about either religion or science and their respective fields).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
We won the civil war and are now stuck with them, they are as American as anyone.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...why so many places make such a big deal about evolution.
I was taught it in school with no one complaining, and I grew up in the loony, backwards state of Texas.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
to illustrate the controversy by simply screening "Inherit the Wind" in the classroom?
Let's start teaching holocaust denial in history class then. It's a "controversy" too, right? And any lessons that touch on recent events should also teach the "controversy" about 9/11 being an inside job. Chemistry lessons should be augmented by alchemy.
If all alternative points of view (including the batshit insane ones) are equally valid, you have to.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In case you want to read the bill. I think 1D is the main issue.
Meh...they want to pass a law like that in their own state, I say let them.
I mean, it's not like every state can have people that go off to college and become highly educated members of society. Someone has to build the cars, right? :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
There are many examples of this. In world history rather than focusing on wars, we could include the faith based authoritarian regimes and ask if faith has been used to create the oppress more than used to help the oppressed. Again, not take sides. Just have student read about the controversy in order to develop students better at problem solving.
We could do the same thing in literature, reading books that teach the controversy of religion, democracy, and capitalism.
My problem with teaching the controversy is that if I ask a christian why we have public school prayer when the bible prohibits it, they don't want to take about that controversy. So why are we taking about evolution when there is really nothing in the bible, or at the Christian testament, that prevents it from validity. Of course if they really wanted to pursue a controversy, they would be working on disavowing the trinity, something that no good protest, only the modern Catholics who follow the Council of Niceae, should believe.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
As a mathematics/science teacher in this fine state, I don't have a huge problem with this. I just made my students write a paper on Russell's Teapot, so I feel like I balanced it out.
But seriously, anybody that thinks these two pieces of paper mean anything...they don't. They say they allow for these things, doesn't mean we have to. And we won't.
It's too bad they didn't do this properly. There ARE controversies in evolutionary theory. They're not controversies in whether or not evolution works, but there IS disagreement in the specific mechanisms of evolution. Punctuated equilibrium or phyletic gradualism? Duke it out! Teach those controversies!
Oh wait, I guess I'm asking for science to be taught in science class. My bad.
In retrospect, can't we give them the option of succession? The new state of Northern Mexico would admittedly, increase border problems, but think of the tax savings! (http://www.flapolitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3311)
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Regardless, I don't see what is wrong in teaching kids both evolution and the evidence for or against it, and creationism and the evidence for or against it. People need to be encouraged to reason not just memorize whichever view we decide is "right" and cram down their throats.
That's the whole point there *is* no evidence for or against Creationism - it's a made up story based on a work of fiction. It's not a scientific hypothesis that can be debated. It's a set of beliefs. Just like I believe there's an invisible pink unicorn in my garage. Shut up, there totally is! Prove that there isn't! You just have to take my word for it and believe that it is there.
The pros and cons of the theory of evolution, however (and the wider discussion about the Scientific Method) are suitable topics for discussion.
Remember - A Sword cuts two ways.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
is manufactured. It's that some religious extremists in this country can't deal with the fact that the reality that hard science is discovering and exploring doesn't exactly match their creation myth of choice, and keep stirring the s*** because they're still trying to stuff that genie back in the bottle long after it's way too late.
There's only a "controversy" because they keep insisting it's "controversial" as a pretext to keep their foot in the door. And the fact is, creationism is not science, at best it's Bible-flavored pseudoscience that's already decided its conclusions and merely cherry-picks data to support those conclusions .. which is actually the opposite of science ..
My heart goes out to the intelligent youth in TN.
It gets better.
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So your claim is that without government funded education, only logic and reason would be taught? You must have never been to any private schools.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I don't understand why people are so against Evolution. Evolution doesn't go against Creationism, it can work with it. So maybe a "God" kick started the entire process and then Evolution took over and did the rest. People who are against Evolution because it can't be proven, well I would ask them to produce proof that a "God" exists. The existence of a holy book doesn't prove anything, it proves someone wrote a book and they made up some characters, there is literally no difference from a harry potter book or the bible, both written and both read and your never going to meet the characters.
Evolution exists! it's a fact, science has proven that animals, humans, plants, planets and the universe has evolved over time, what science hasn't proven is the existence of "God", having an open ended question doesn't prove "God" it just means that we don't know where the beginning is.
Whats my point, simple Evolution and Creationism are both valid streams of understanding, if your going to teach one teach the other. I believe in both, something must have happened to launch the universe into motion, but nothing is stopping evolution from taking it the rest of the way. I'm glad that now Evolution has to be taught, Evolution has occurred, it's a valid proven science, if your going to teach Creationism you have to be fair and teach Evolution.
If you (or anyone, for that matter) have a valid hypothesis worth study, then by all means bring it up! Any real scientist worth their salt would jump at the opportunity to explore a heretofore unknown theory.
However, if your entire scientific platform boils down to "God did it, now stop asking questions," well, you might as well join Santorum on his dinosaur and ride off into the sunset.
And by sunset, I mean 'big-ass volcano.'
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Did I forget something?
Palm trees and 8
One of the commenters pointed to this article:
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/832
It essentially makes an information theoretic argument that some unspecified designer may need to be invoked to better explain modern observations of biological complexity. That is, they claim (but I don't see the evidence) that certain biological configurations are better or more easily explained or explainable at all if we assume that there was some intent behind some aspect of resulting organisms. I skimmed the article, but I didn't notice it saying anything at all about irreducible complexity. It simply mentions that some things have much too high of an information content to be plausibly the result of evolution according to completely natural processes.
As I see it, the assumption that the governing processes are entirely natural is simpler, because it does not invoke the requirement for some external influence. They also make no claims in regard to the nature of these outside influences. Moreover, evolutionary theory doesn't preclude that some aliens or something may have had influence. It simply declines to explain in those terms, because there's no difference between an intelligent alien tweaking things in some imperceptible way versus some extra radiation causing some mutations and some specific ecological niche favoring certain traits. They seem to be implying that they can CALCULATE that certain biological complexity is extremely unlikely given our basic understanding of mutation and selection. But then again, everything we observe is a priori extremely improbable it's just that we have inordinate amounts of time and space for those improbable events to become probable, and we have evidence of the time scale from geology. We don't, however, have any direct evidence that there was anything other than planet-local natural influences behind evolution, and it's hard to define what exactly is and is not "natural."
So, is this ID article just being vague? Or are they making some interesting point? I don't just want to dismiss it as creationist dogma. I think that an information theoretic analysis is warranted. I just don't trust their understanding of the science or their underlying motivations.
Problem: In a democracy, everyone is (supposedly) equal. Therefore, 99 idiots and 1 Einstein steering a democratic ship will most likely run aground.
The whole thing comes down to politics. School boards are elected. Higher up politicians distribute funds to school boards. There are some fairly vocal individuals who may or may not represent the majority but have the ability to stir up powerful emotions among the electorate.
Proper democracy requires an educated informed electorate to function correctly. Proper democracy does not provide a way to bootstrap the system where the fundamental requirements are lacking.
Why would you need a new vaccine? It's not like the genetic makeup of viruses can change over time through a process of natural selection. This is the same reason why we didn't need to invent any new antibiotics after penicillin.
Why would they pray to God for a new vaccine? Vaccines cause autism and are evil!
Religion should be considered to be for adults only. We don't allow children to be involved with drugs, alcohol, voting, sex and so on legally before they've grown up to teenagers, why should brainwashing with a single particular religion be any different?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Sure they have 4 legs. And 2 arms!
A better way to get a fundamentalist confused is to ask them "Who was created first, Adam and Eve or the animals?"
Tell them to check both the first and second chapter of Genesis. If they stop after the first, they will only have one answer. It cannot have hapened both ways, it must be one or the other (or neither), so therefore the Bible is not 100% true. At minimum one chapter or the other must be false. It could be that both are false, but they might burn you at the stake for saying that.
If you don't know the answer, it only takes a few minutes to read both chapters. Then follow up and ask 'Was Adam or Eve created first? Or, were they created at the same time?" (the answer is both. Adam was created first and they were created at exactly the same time).
Self consistency is not a strong point in the Bible. That is very strange because any scientist will tell you that the universe is amazingly self consistent. Any seeming paradoxes are usually signs that our understanding and knowledge is lacking. If Both the universe and the bible are both from the same author, you would think that they would show the same level of self consistency.
How do I know the Bible isn't 100% true? Because my Bible tells me so.
The only thing I can see in Genesis that is an absolute truth is near the start of chapter 2. The bit about the harvest being ready and not a man to be found. Any woman will confirm that when there is work to be done there is never a Man around :)
From TFA:
In a statement sent to legislators, eight members of the National Academy of Science said that, in practice, the bill will likely [...] harm the state's national reputation[...]
The scientists got it wrong as well - thanks to blogging, like the publication here on Slashdot, the bill harms the state's INTERnational reputation... ;-)
Ignoring your choice of "children" in that statement ...
The other side of that discussion is over 150 million women in the USofA who are not treated as slaves because some man wants them to birth children for him.
I'll take the rights of LIVING woman over the rights or a unborn child any day.
Those "religious fanatics" are fighting to take away the rights of those 150 million women.
Enough of our coddling ignorance.
Enough of our mealy-mouthed, passive acquiescence to the willful denial of reality.
Enough of our society shooting itself in the foot by watering down our science education, and our discussion of science in the public and political sphere by mixing in myth and pseudoscience.
There is no controversy. There is no debate. There is no real "other side" to this discussion.
Modern evolutionary theory is one of the most wel-developed, well-supported scientific theories we have. It as much settled science as science can get.
Evolution is a fact, in that it is the label for a phenomena we can directly and indirectly observe.
Evolutionary theory is not somehow inferior to fact. Indeed, it is in many ways superior to the level of fact, in that it is made up of facts, and is tested and confirmed, repeatedly, against reality.
If your religion claims that evolution isn't true, then, when it comes to this subject, your religion is wrong.
We should stop letting this nonsense slide. Our nation is competing against highly technological, committed, dedicated workers from other countries. We aren't doing ourselves any favors by mixing myth with our science.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith