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Missouri Legislation Redefines Science, Pushes Intelligent Design
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports on new legislation in the Missouri House of Representatives which is seeking equal time in the classroom for Intelligent Design, and to redefine science itself. You can read the text of the bill online. It uses over 600 words to describe Intelligent Design. Scientific theory, the bill says, is 'an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy.' It would require that 'If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught.' The legislation's references to 'scientific theory' and 'scientific law' make it clear the writers don't have the slightest idea how science actually works. It also has this odd line near the end: 'If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth's biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.'"
Sadly, there are nutcases like that. Called "Christian Scientists"
Rest in peace, oh great America. You had a nice run leading the world in science and technology.
Pretty soon now you will be just another religious state, just like the ones you are fighting right now, but with a different religion.
That is not true.
One-in-Five Adults and One-in-Three Under Age 30 Have No Religious Affiliation. This kind of stuff are the death-throes of religious conservatism. As the more normal people leave formalized religion, the crazies are left behind. Without a moderating influence, they get even crazier than before.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It's a bill not a law.
Hearings not scheduled, not on the house calendar. You've been had ARS... this is a publicity stunt by 2 conservative politicians to garner attention for their next election by introducing a bill popular with their tiny constituencies, guaranteed never to even get voted on, but sure to bring in gullible leftist reporters who are all too eager to snap up any tidbit of info that might portray their political opponents in a negative light. And you guys are flooding ARS with traffic because you're also so eager to believe it.
Sponsor: Brattin, Rick (055) ... et al.
Co-Sponsor: Koenig, Andrew (099)
Proposed Effective Date: 8/28/2013
LR Number: 506L.01I
Last Action: 1/31/2013 - Referred: Elementary and Secondary Education(H)
Bill String: HB 291
Next Hearing: Hearing not scheduled
Calendar: Bill currently not on a House calendar
http://www.house.mo.gov/billsummary.aspx?bill=HB291&year=2013&code=R
As if there were nothing in the world actually worth reporting on, they've got to spoon feed you this horseshit. How many people die in Africa from AIDs per day? Oh wait, you can't blame that on republicans so it's uninteresting. Fuck you.
Intelligent design was invented by a PR company in the 1990's, a lobby group names Discovery Institute invented it, as a way of using religion against the religious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute
The strategy is known as a Wedge Strategy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
Make evolution a test of faith, then get them to deny evolution, so God created everything EXCEPT evolution, and to accept that you have to ignore the lack of puppie fossils, and all the other stuff in front of your eyes and deny science.
Once you've got them ignoring things as a test of faith, everything from Global Warming to Oil depletion suddenly becomes deniable. Remember 'God promised not to destroy the earth again hence Global Warming cannot exist'?. That's a sucker whose fallen for Wedge Strategy.
Also a fact was that the Scopes trials in which John Scopes allegedly broke the law by teaching evolution in a public school occurred in 1925. Well before the US "had its good run". Shenanigans by evangelicals on this topic have been ongoing for a very long time and have been mostly irrelevant to anything except making noise and grabbing headlines. The smart people in the USA would not have even had to turn in their graves, they proceeded unabashed while quite alive and vigorous.
We're going to survive this one. Science and Technology has many things going against it in the US right now, but this doesn't rate.
Intelligent design is not an oxymoron, it is a tautology; design by definition is intelligent. To qualify as an oxymoron the words themselves would have to be contradictory, like in the classic example "military intelligence," where it is to be assumed that the military is unintelligent. Living dead. Guest host. Deafening silence. The word itself means "sharp dull."
Unfortunately, there isn't a term for "a euphemism that reveals the speaker is a bag of arses," so we will have to settle for calling it unintentional irony. The Greeks and Romans didn't live in a relativistic enough world for the abuse of language by the unimaginative to be a problem worth talking about.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Why are you naming the Republican party?
Obama failed to close Gitmo, called it a success. Obama failed to stop warentless wire tapping, called it a success. Obama raised the deficit $5 Trillion, called it deficit reduction. Obama doubled unemployment, called it a success. Obama said waterboarding is torture and is illegal, started killing US citizens without trial via drones. Obama proposed the upcoming mandatory spending cuts, said the Republicans created it. Romney said Mali was full of AlQuaida, was called a liar, they attacked and held an oil refinery. Romney said Obama refused to call Bengazi attack terrorism, was called a liar, Candy Crawley had to apologize later for calling Romney a liar when he told the truth.
Not sure what you are trying to prove, unless you are so stupid you just assume the DNC lies are true and refuse to look things up yourself.
Me thinks you have a memory problem, and a current events problem. The oil refinery attack was in Algeria, Obama lowered the unemployment rate and inherited a $5 trillion debt after Clinton handed The Shrub a $300 billion surplus. The other items I'm not touching as they are either in process or are unsupportable and not worth arguing about with a half wit. STOP WATCHING FOX NEWS!!! Mostly because it's not.
Between 40 and 50 percent of everyone believes in the Genesis story as literal truth depending on the poll. It's been that way for 50 years. The last Gallup survey had it somewhere around 46-48 percent.
What is striking is that over the decades, this number has not budged much.
1 in 5 adults and 1 in 3 under 30 aren't enough to stem the tide of derp.
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/706
Death throes of religious conservatism? I think not.
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BMO