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Tennessee "Teaching the Controversy" Bill Becomes Law
MrKevvy writes "The Tennessee 'Teaching the Controversy' bill was passed into law today. 'A law to allow public school teachers to challenge the scientific consensus on issues like climate change and evolution will soon take effect in Tennessee. State governor Bill Haslam allowed the bill — passed by the state House and Senate — to become law without signing it, saying he did not believe the legislation "changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools."'"
The governor adds: "However, I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything that isn’t already acceptable in our schools."
I can't wait for the first lawsuit involving a teacher fired for teaching kids about gay sex in his sex-ed class, or the first atheist teacher who catches even a sideways glance for teaching about evolution openly in any way he/she wants to.
When I went to school in Georgia many years ago, biology teachers would have killed for a law like this. Not so they could preach about Jesus riding a dinosaur, mind you, but so they could teach *evolution* openly with absolutely no fear of retaliation for it.
Try firing Scopes now, you bible-thumping fucktards.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Politicians killing science in the American south. I wonder what they'll try to make controversial next. Gravity, perhaps?
Not because the bill means anything - I agree that it probably has no effect relative to what is currently allowed - but because we, as a nation, need to get over this urge to make meaningless laws.
If the law has zero net effect, than DON'T MAKE IT LAW!
And if the legislature makes meaningless laws, veto it as a statement of principle. If they want to override, that's their privilege.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What debate though? One side is backed up by reason and evidence, and the other is not. There's a lot of facts on one side, and a lot of plugging fingers in ears screaming "I can't hear you" on the other side.
This isn't a matter of picking a side, it's facts and evidence vs. fairy tales.
Trolling is a art,
You're assuming both sides have valid positions. They don't. One side is based on the principle of scientific inquiry, the other one on a book written by goat herders a couple of thousand years ago.
The biggest problem in the US right now is that everyone is assumed to have a valid opinion. in the vast majority of cases, there are a few valid opinions, and a whole lot of completely wrong intuitions, gut feelings and "everyone knows" positions.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I was against the idea at one time, but I'm thinking the time is come to make it a crime to pass legislation that blatantly violates the constitution. Obviously it will always boil down to intent, but the judge did manage to find intent in the Dover decision, that the school board had deliberately set out to teach a specific set of religious beliefs, thinly masked to be true. If they could be criminally prosecuted, say, for violating the constitution, as opposed to just escaping with a court loss, I'd wager this would disappear pretty fast, along with all sorts of other legislation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
See, something like this sort of happened before and when the University of CA systesm was sued, the judge dimissed it.
When TN students start getting rejection letters from accredited universities or at the very least colleges that understand that this is the 21st Century, maybe they'll change their tune.
This also happened with Kansas when one of their school boards banned teaching of evolution and California told their students to not even apply to their schools.
In the meantime, the rest of the World - even die hard theocratic countries - are pushing science educatoin. China is already on our heels when it comes scientifc progress.
Religious fundamentalism is destroying science education in this country - and giving everyone else of faith a bad name.
excerpt:
(b) The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school
governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public
elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create
an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages
students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical
thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about
controversial issues.
the part I that struck me was and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion
sorry fundies, but this is not about difference of opinion! that is a humanities issue. in science, we don't have opinions, we have evidence and building blocks that build bigger ideas. there is traceability, audit trails, repeatability and testability. NONE OF THAT is inside the realm of 'difference of opinion'.
you can like red and I can like blue. but this is NOT SCIENCE.
you are welcome to your opinions, but in the proper place and context. your 'feelings' and mythology are not science and don't deserve to be ranked inside the circle of science.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Theory and fact are two very different things.
Nonsense. To a Bayesian theory and fact are merely convenient labels for propositions of differing complexity and degree of inference.
No one with a mature understanding of the logic of science uses "theory" and "fact" as anything other than convenience markers. All propositional knowledge is subject to the same rules (Bayesian logic) regardless of how near (fact) or far (theory) it is from sense experience.
To argue otherwise is to declare oneself ignorant of almost everything regarding our knowledge of the world, which is never certain. The difference between someone who has faith the Bible is inerrant and someone who knows that evolution is responsible for the diversity of life is that the latter can revise their knowledge in the face of new evidence whereas the former will not change their belief regardless of the evidence. Faith, like all forms of certainty, is an epistemic error.
And no, I am not "100% certain" of that, in the sense that I am open to counter-arguments, although the Jayne/Cox derivation of Bayesian logic as the only consistent rules for updating our beliefs is compelling enough that I don't lose any sleep over the possibility it will be proven wrong, any more than I lose sleep over any other uncertain proposition, like the answers to "What is my name?" and "Where are my socks?" We get along with knowledge--which is inherently uncertain--just fine in all walks of life, and only an idiot insists on certainty as some kind of virtue when it is actually just a mistake.
Likewise, to use the uncertainty of all knowledge as an excuse to believe just anything is also a failure to grasp Bayesian logic, which says that we should accept the most plausible propositions, not just any old things we happen to want to believe.
People with an archaic, pre-modern notion of knowledge find all this mind-boggling, and I guess people in the southern US are going to be a lot slower than the rest of the world to learn any of it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Try talking to a smart Catholic who can cite Aquinas at the drop of a hat: they can make scientists look like imbeciles because very, very, VERY few scientists have a shred of knowledge about how to debate.
Why should scientists be impressed by someone that can cite Aquinas? Are scientists supposed to care what St. Thomas Aquinas thought when discussing evolution?
Well some cosmologists aim for a compromise, why the hell shouldn't all be presented and let each kid/student/person/parent choose and pursue.
That's fine ... except not all theories should be presented in the same class. Present those theories that could be tested using the scientific method in science class; present other theories in philosophy or similar classes. Evolution falls into the first category; intelligent design, creationism, the theory that Atum "took matters into his own hands", etc. fall into the second category.
I don't know whether to be pissed off that they're spreading falsehoods across the world, or happy that they're sabotaging a rival country's scientific progress!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Because creationism is not science.
That part's clearly true.
There is not debate. There is no controversy.
That part's clearly false. There's plenty of debate an controversy right here in this discussion. I think you meant "... in the scientific community", but there surely is in the Tenesee communities concerned with this law. The kids do need some sort of context here, since what they're hearing from their science teacher will conflict with what they're hearing from some other sources in their lives. A good teacher will teach "look, scientists agree that this is true, but non-scientists disagree", to make this very point clear: where the very real controversy lies.
Just a bunch of religions zealots shoving their shit with lies and manipulation down children's throats.
Nice flamebait. You mean of course "just people explaining their sincere beliefs to the next generation, beliefs with which I disagree".
That said, the very notion that some being created the beginning of the universe means you have no clue what beginning of the universe means.
The word "eternal" means "outside of time". Whether an eternal creator or a p-brane, there are many ideas that involve some reality larger then the universe, with a different time flow, from which our universe came. How sure can we be that our universe isn't in some lab / a simulation running in some larger reality? None of these are scientific until they make predictions, and there's no real reason to prefer one such creation story over another right now.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.