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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?
I weep for the kids in Tennessee.
Aliens built the Pyramids
Teach The Controversy
http://controversy.wearscience.com/
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I mean they're just competing narratives, aren't they? I can hardly wait for the Gay Nazis for Christ to teach their 'controversy'. It will be awesome.
So when can science teachers start to tell these cults what sort of nonsense to spew in their brainwashing sessions every Sunday?
Trolling is a art,
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"
Throughout history, ideas have warred it out through the process of open discussion and debate. Right now, this issue is totally Balkanized and neither side is talking to the other. Opening it up to discussion might allow us to get farther than trying to pick on side or the other.
"Okay, students. Today we're going to 'challenge evolution'. Open your tests and follow the instructions. Be sure to use the scientific method to prove or disprove all of evolution's theories and predictions listed.
Pencils down. What was the answer -- Billy? Yes, that's right, Billy, we have challenged evolution and proven that it is true using the scientific method. Isn't that an interesting result? Well done, everyone!"
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
How can allowing teachers the ability to teach such utter bullshit help the U.S. stay competitive?
IMHO this sort of thing will only hinder the U.S. in the coming decades.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
A very appropriate name. Kids raised in TN are destined for failure. I'm sure there are some smart people there, but they moved in from out of state and/or are the exceptions.
I moved there in 2004, couldn't believe the ignorance, and ran out last year. That place is scary.
To be honest this is the kind of lawmaking I would expect from people there, a waste of time and further dragging the country down with more uneducated bible thumpers.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
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.
As Bill Bryson quipped, this is just "proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn't so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them."
Creationism (as in Biblical creationism) is spreading in China through missionary work:
http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/01/18/chinese-creationist/
But it's worse than that. US creationist organizations are actively translating their materials and working to disseminate them on a global scale:
http://nwcreation.net/international.html
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.
Can they teach the controversy that George Bush stole in 2000 election?
Let's teach the controversy!
I challenge ANY teacher to fail any kid or write "Wrong answer" on a test. Now you can sue the school if Johnny doesn't want to learn to read or write or do math, because God says he's right.
After all, God says Rick Santorum should be president, and we see how right God is so far on that front.
So now "God says" is a suitable answer for any test. Just ask Bill O'Reilly, who claims that the Tides going in and out are proof of God -- teach that one in science class. Moon's gravity pulling on the oceans? Bah! Superstition! 'God Says' is the right answer now!
WIsh I could'a used that for my SAT tests, I would have gotten a perfect score and attended Harvard!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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.
In the meantime, the rest of the World - even die hard theocratic countries - are pushing science educatoin
True, but apparently many Muslims (in both the Middle East and Europe) are just as militantly against the theory of evolution as evangelical Christians in the US. Moreover, it's not like many of these developing countries don't have their own pathologies; China still officially endorses Marxism, which as far as I'm concerned is as nutty as any religion. And everything I read about the Chinese government and their education system makes it sound like it's designed to crush independent thought and initiative. Our own godawful education system often does this more or less by accident, of course, but nearly every country - especially in the developing world - has struggles between modernizers and reactionaries, and the role of religion is complicated. (In China, for instance, the liberals endorse religious freedom, while the conservatives are militantly atheist.)
What's really depressing to me is that in a country which still has the world's largest economy - the country that started the biotech industry and the Internet - the state whose mean income is 44th in the nation thinks this is a worthy cause. But Tennessee isn't exactly Silicon Valley.
In my experience, the best and most enlightening learning has come through study of both the arguments for and against a specific topic, theory, solution, etc. I feel more confident in my opinions when I have heard all arguments and seen all evidence. If any of the evidence or arguments are hokey, let me be the judge of that. If I judge that argument A is a joke and B is correct, my conviction regarding B will be stronger than if a counter argument to B were never presented to me.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
I think one of the big problems with the debate is that the Creationism/ID/Faith/whatever side of the discussion deliberately muddies the issue by misusing the word "theory". Science has a rather clear definition of this word, but most of the things that the Faith side of the argument present as "theories" are hypotheses (at best).
Routine common misuse of the word "theory" promotes a false sense of equivalency between a true scientific theory and a non-scientific (non-)"theory".
For example, compare the measurements and predictions of accuracy of a theory like QED (within ten parts in a billion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED ) against the predictive power of a "theory" like Intelligent Design. *That* is why professional scientists have faith in theories like the former, and most have little more than justified scorn for the latter.
Don't be so deliberately dense. M'kay? The law is what it is, which is an excuse (or license, if you will) for teachers to lie to their students about what is science and what is not. The sole reason for this is to advance creationism, in other words "Christian doctrine". To argue otherwise is to ignore a patently obvious truth. Does it demand teachers do this? No - not by my reading, but it is folly to suggest that it won't happen. The disgraceful result will be ignorant children and an inevitable string of legal actions that will drain money away from an already underfunded public education system.
This bill and the political whore's who caused (or simply "allowed") it to become law deserve every bit of the ridicule and outrage they're going to get.
> "I'm curious why the law in this article is taken as an imposition of Christian doctrine on teachers."
It's not taken as "an imposition of Christian doctrine on teachers". What people are complaining about is the fact that there are a lot of teachers who really want to teach creationism to kids and dis evolution in their classrooms. This gives them license to do so.
> "Every organized religion, be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, believes that there is a higher power that created the universe, as opposed to the atheist position that the universe just...is...because...it is."
Ok, but evolution is not the "atheist position" and creationism is not the "theist position". Rather, it's a question of science. Similarly, if a religion taught that all diseases are caused by demons (as St.Augustine taught), but those darn atheists taught it was germs -- it's not a question of teaching the "atheist" position of germ-theory vs the "theist" position of demon-caused-diseases. It's a question of teaching the established science.
> "Why is a teacher forced by this law to proclaim that the world was created in six days, and on the seventh, God rested"
They're not forced to teach that, but it's fairly easy for a teacher to stand up in class and talk about evolution as some fairy tale make-up by atheists and how life was obviously designed by a creator and, without getting too much into it, he can effectively paint the situation as "evolution = lies, creationism = truth, I'm not going to tell you which God did it, but we're all from the Bible-belt so we all know who we're talking about here." Wink. Wink.
> a) making it generic enough to avoid biases towards one religion or another or b) briefly exploring the Cliff's notes version of every major religious faith?
Yeah, like that will happen in a heavily Christianized state. I'm sure teachers will give a nice, balanced presentation for all the religions they don't believe in.
...is that the scientific allegation of spontaneous generation of life has never been proven. Do we have proof of evolution? Most definitely so. Do we have proof that mixing together chemicals creates life? Nope.
Ergo, until that is done repeatedly under laboratory conditions, atheists, your theory of the origin of life remains exactly that. A THEORY.
We have evidence of evolution and we have evidence that that mixing molecules together can create organic molecules. It wasn't long ago that chemists thought that organic molecules were somehow special and too complex to create by man. That theory turned out to be false. The evidence we have for evolution is in the fossil record. Fossils aren't continuous data collections, but snapshots left in time. Many fossils get destroyed before they get preserved. But evolution is a framework that explains common features between us and other primates, between us and cats, between cats and lions. Creationism does not explain why us and other primates look similar other than possible that God lacks an imagination. Young earth creationists also can get challenged by astrophysics and geology as there's evidence of an older planet, star, and universe than what creationists as the age of our planet.
According to Wikipedia, Tennessee is 41st in median household income in the US. How long are they going to hold on to even that position when all of the educated people in the state (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) start moving elsewhere so that their children will get a proper education? I think we can write off Tennessee for the near future.
Maybe the AMA and various other professional bodies should start reviewing the status of education in Tennessee to see if a child educated in such a system will ever qualify for med school. I'm pretty sure that I don't want a doctor who doesn't understand basic biology
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
"Do we have proof that mixing together chemicals creates life? Nope.
yes we do. We have for over 60 years. STFU and go home.
"your theory of the origin of life remains exactly that. A THEORY."
ah, I see you don't know what theory means.
Here is a simple explanation, hopefully you can muster the time to think:
Gravity is a fact: the theory of gravity explains that fact.
Germs are a fact: Germ theory explains that fact
Evolution is a fact: Evolutionary theory explains that fact.
It's mot detailed then that, but I doubt you would bother to read up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How many times has evolution been shown to be accurate? The last time I checked the conditions under which life supposedly evolved have not been recreated a single time. No "live" organisms have been synthesized from primordial ooze even once.
I think you're missing the distinction between "theory of evolution" and "hypothesis of abiogenesis". The latter does indeed lack firm scientific evidence; the best we have right now without recourse to the supernatural are guesses. The theory of evolution, i.e. common descent from a universal ancestor, is about as well-proven as anything in modern biology.
I am simply asserting that these things are indeed theories, not facts and can not be presented as facts.
Whether I agree with the theory isn't the issue. I believe that when a society chooses to teach theory as fact it begins the descent into a valley of ignorance that will take a long time to climb out of. I think it is important to be impartial when we teach the next generation, things are what they are - be objective. No matter how much you like an idea, classify it fairly and be open minded enough to allow it to be labelled properly so that the young minds can see a consistent treatment of the reality they are coming to grips with.
I would go so far as to suggest that even theory is a bit strong since we can not verify the hypothesis via repeatable experiment. If we could even know what the conditions were at the time the evolutionary process began that would at least be a start, however we don't even have the most basic facts to work with in this case.
Does it make sense to suggest that I am a flat earth, sun revolving around the earth type simply because I take issue with people characterizing theory with fact? That seems like a non-sequiter to me.
KK4SFV
We could go back to teaching/presenting the old theories that were held by the theologians and that infallibility of the Pope, with the Flat Earth and after that was shown to be hokum, the Earth the center of the universe. That is the problem with theologians making pronouncements about the real world, they haven't a clue. That is the realm of the sciences, and they are jealous that there is a whole area of existence that they are not the authorities on, which is how they control their flock and the pocket books of their flock.
But we are seeing a new trend of marketing going on. In one case with the religious "wrong" controlling their flocks to vote in ridiculous laws that impose their wrong headed and provably incorrect idea's onto the public and worse yet into the impressionable minds of our children. The other arm of that effort is to convince the electorate to vote for people who will vote in laws that will put them out of jobs, reduce their wages and allow them to have their money siphoned off but the upper 1%. Marketing has gotten much too effective in the world of low information voters, and blind faith believers.
Its a good time to re-read 1984. We are getting the infrastructure in place with the intelligence community and the lack of controls and oversight with our law enforcement arms and military. Now all we need is a "wrong" wing nut job elected and the Jack boot will descend with a vengeance.
Vote carefully, but vote.
Religious fundamentalism is destroying everything
I got here through a series of tubes
Moreover, it's not like many of these developing countries don't have their own pathologies; China still officially endorses Marxism, which as far as I'm concerned is as nutty as any religion.
It would be more correct to say that China pays a lip service to Marxism - it has, effectively, devolved into a ritualistic religion there. They've stripped all substance from it decades ago, and they certainly don't use it to make decisions.
Wait until the Muslim schools use this as a defence for teaching that Christians are evil and deserve to be killed.
I agree with your point of view, but from a spiritual point of view all religious communities agree that we lack the inner resources to guide ourselves for the better. Think of it as you're the one claiming global warming needs irrefutable proof when some concerns are proposed for study. You see them as trying to do something fishy, or waste time, while they see you as being ignorant and malicious. You should push your objections with an argument they understand.
uhm...
The USA was conceived as having a separation between church and state exactly because the early settlers arrived here in an effort to avoid religious persecution.
Correct, just be aware that in many cases it was to avoid persecution because their religion was seen as 'extreme', and thus they promptly formed communities that were religiously homogonous and relatively intolerant otherwise, at least within the community. The early federal government needed the protection from all the curches and such.
I don't read AC A human right
Christianity and Islam are boughs of the same tree, but I don't think Buddhism does the whole creation thing. As I recall they have a kind of trillion year long cycle of rebirth which goes on eternally.
Congratulations. You are more open minded than the educated majority
Don't be too quick to pat me on the back. I said we (scientists) don't know the answer, and our best guess is no more than that, but this doesn't mean that we support any of the superstitious bullshit that's been put forth as alternative explanations. The distinction is whether it does science harm to admit when we don't know something; I think it's more damaging (intellectually speaking) to make unsupported claims, no matter how scientifically sound, even as an alternative to blatantly unscientific claims. I suspect a lot of scientists would disagree with me from the perspective of public relations - because they think that admitting we don't know the answers to everything would simply be further ammunition for creationists and other naysayers. Sadly, they're probably correct.
but from a spiritual point of view all religious communities agree that we lack the inner resources to guide ourselves for the better.
This is not remotely true. But even if it were, how can you fashion "an argument they understand," when they have fundamentally rejected logic? In such cases, it cannot be said that you are advancing an argument, merely regurgitating something that religious adherents have already assumed to be true, that is also consistent with global warming. That's not an argument, but mere rhetoric.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
The matter of what is and isn't science isn't so cut and dry as people think. There are scientists and philosophers who do nothing by try to answer the question of what is and is not science. According to some who study this question, creation theory is a scientific theory, it's just a debunked scientific theory like luminiferous aether. According to them, creation theory is science because it is falsifiable and in fact has already been falsified.
You know, there is a point of view about how science has become a dogmatic religion of it's own (http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf). People take science as truth, on faith. What is the one true system of mechanics? The system that has not been dis-proven in any case (which would rule out the entire system according to the scientific method)? Newtonian? Relativistic? Quantum?
Evolution is a great example of this. No one argues about the principles of heredity, as laid out by a very religious man, a friar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel). But the larger, completely extrapolated principle of evolution is a topic of debate.
The argument goes like this:
Scientific Person: Rodents evolved to Monkeys evolved to Apes evolved to Man
Judeo-Christian Person: Man did not come from monkeys!
Scientific Person: Where did man come from, then?
Judeo-Christian Person: G*d created him in his image!
Scientific Person: Well there's no proof of that.
Judeo-Christian Person: Well there's no proof that!
Scientific Person: Didn't you just hear me say that Rodents evolved to Monkeys evolved to Apes evolved to Man? What more proof do you need? It's SCIENCE!
Judeo-Christian Person: And didn't you just hear me say that G*d created man?!?
And so forth. But there has never been a single documented case of a genus changing due to evolution, that I'm aware of. Not one. It can't be shown experimentally. Dogs have dog babies. Cats have cat babies. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Scientifically, evolution is a supported theory. But it is just a theory. According to the scientific method, everything is either a LAW (a set of assumptions to establish a framework) or a THEORY (a set of assumptions derived from the law that haven't been dis-proven yet).
And yet, here on Slashdot, the rank and file members of the cult of science cheered when schools in Georgia were forced to take that basic scientific principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method) off the front covers of their text books.
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered. " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selman_v._Cobb_County_School_District)
It's a valid, 100% scientifically correct statement. It was forced off of textbooks because of dogma.
The courts did right in Tennessee. A person might believe in science. A person might believe in Flying Spaghetti Monsters. A person might believe the world is flat. But a balanced viewpoint, and by extension a balanced education, requires more than an ostrich-like ability to stick your head in the sand when facing a viewpoint you disagree with while bleating a dogmatic mantra. And the courts should not silence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech) a debate because it hurts the sensibilities of ANY group. At least not in the US, where the Constitution (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html) grants the right to say anything.