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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.'"
...to the bottom.
Less *is* more.
This sort of behavior from elected officials should be considered treason.
It is severely hurting the future of our country and making the next generation more ignorant.
They should be removed from office and any position of power of influence over others.
is that someone is being paid to write this shit.
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.
morcego
Hmm, I am glad they are done indoctrinating children with Evolution.
Is there some way to stop people from seeing evolution as a threat? It is possible to believe in a literal creation and an old age earth. I know when I say my prayers for God to cure diseases and feed the hungry that God will be increasing mankind's knowledge of science and technology in order for this to happen. Just because God never makes mistakes doesn't mean clergy who interpret scripture into theology never make mistakes.
The whole situation is embarrassing. On one hand, a few select Christians look silly for not being able to understand evolution. But I think worse yet, some scientists actually believe that if evolution is real that God can't be.
On one hand, faith used correctly is a great force to do good in the world. When you realize God loves you and you live after death, you can have faith to spend this life helping the poor instead of living for yourself. But on the other hand, faith in something that is incorrect, well that will lead people to unquestioning and screwing up the world. Zealotry applied correctly can be good, but I think you don't have to look too far to see some idiots.
God spoke to me
That last sentence sounded strangely familiar: ....
"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."
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
Marcaen
We should also devote equal time in astronomy to the hypothesis that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and that the Earth is, in fact, flat.
teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course
They're supposed to be teaching the scientific method. ie: creating a hypothesis and proving or disproving it.. If you can't prove or disprove it, you've failed. Yet it is illegal for the teachers to mark it as wrong, since they can't question it?
So I could say elephants have a long nose because the flying spaghetti monster decried that it shall have a noodley appendage and I would be correct because I don't have to verify the identity of the flying spaghetti monster?
I mean not that I any way believe in any of the ID stuff (flying spaghetti monsters is my bumper sticker), but, even if you do, what do you teach?
"Some super brain/being designed it all. End of story".
This is so wrong on so many levels. The dumbing down of children for fanaticals has to stop, one way or another. People like Rick Sanatorium are destroying this country and need to be run out.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
This will make things worse, not better. One of the reasons we need public schools in the first place is to protect children from their parents, so to speak. Our country has a very real interest in making sure that all children have access to quality education, including children born to parents who don't believe in science, don't believe in government, or don't believe in education in the first place. The fist thing that will happen if the government gets out of the public schools game will be that a whole chunk of our taxes is going to flow towards supporting backwards "schools" where children will be indoctrinated into any one of the existing religions, and not get to do any actual learning. Over time, these children will lose out to those, who get a real education, but this won't actually be good for anyone. Ignorance begets ignorance, and these people, having lost access to a whole slew of opportunities as adults, will happily send their children to the same backwards "schools", in a never-ending cycle of ignorance and poverty. In the end, our nation is going to be even more polarized and worse off than where we are today.
In the long run, I'm pretty sure this is more harmful to religion than anything else.
For a reason. Banking _de_regulation caused the world crisis. Energy market deregulation caused Enron.
The cost of higher ed is due to government loan programs removing the market forces to hold the prices down.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Our country has a very real interest in making sure that all children have access to quality education,
Yeah, how's that working out for you? Here on earth, American public schools are a ridiculously overfunded disaster. We've doubled spending per student since the 1970s, and we sure as hell aren't getting what we pay for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
... we'll see that schools that teach hogwash will be less successful than schools that teach science.
What do you mean by "less successful"? There is, right now, a network of parents and private schools and churches and non-accredited "universities" and museums that have the specific goal of teaching what the reality-based community sees as hogwash. They make huge sums of money, have growing numbers of students, and show no signs of going away any time soon. Their goal is to prevent students from learning about evolution, the Big Bang, psychology, or anything else that would convince a student to reconsider the religious truth that their parents and Bible-thumping preachers have told them.
I am officially gone from
50 bucks says an atheist wrote that line as an easter egg.
I don't want to live forever with such stupid morons that have all this 'faith' and believe in such insane garbage. it's wrong. flat out wrong. it's a mental illness and a holdover from the age when humans didn't know jack shit about the world. and it's very very very very stupid and frustrating it continues.
I'm not sure i want to live now with all these people running the place... Forever is out of the question. No way. Fuck that. no. just... no.
I'll take the void thank you very much.
Sounds like the answer to most every question in science class can now be answered, "Because a wizard did it".
Woe be it to the teacher who questions the "Get out of Science Class"-Wizard!
And yet, he was able to realize that observable evidence was more important then simply chanting "God did it" over and over again.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The religious movements must really feel the pressure if they resort to hard-line legislation to impose their world view AND restrict the critique. And to completely redefine the term "scientific theory" to suit your agenda feels entirely like a Stalinist reasoning. In the USSR, during the most repressive period, members of the opposition were committed for life to mental institutions because, to paraphrase, only mad men would oppose the great ideals of the communist movement. Will we see something similar in the US? Atheists being sent to mental institutions, because only mad men would hold no faith in their hearts and minds?
These bigoted idiots get away with what they do and say because we,
who do know better,
don't treat them and their ideas with the mockery that they deserve.
Respecting their right to believe (and we must) is not the same as respecting the idiotic beliefs that they hold.
I have a much better idea. A fundamentalist Christian has no business seeing a physician or being in a hospital ever.
Any Christian that pushes intelligent design over evolution should have the courage of their convictions and forsake modern medicine. Glory in your disease, for it is a gift from God.
Why not let the elected officials teach their electors' children what their electors want them to teach their children? They are representing their electors. Isn't the core of democracy giving the majority of people what they want, no matter what it is?
I don't see the problem. What they'll teach is wrong and isn't the truth. So what? Lots of shit you hear and people tell you are wrong and not the truth. Eventually these kids will grow up and do a bit of reading and learn things on their own. And eventually some of them will come to realize that what they learnt in school wasn't true. And they'll know then to take everything with a grain of salt. Isn't that a good lesson?
I'd say it is more "MIT, CAL-TECH, and Stanford" vs "Government run learning center"
By preventing independent educational institutions from gaining hold, you get the homogeneity you seek, but you do so by preventing centers that specialize in excellence, (even if just in theory.)
No parent wants to admit that their little sunshine isn't the next einstien, even though he pulls straight C grades, and can't read. As such, no parent wants to have the de-facto segregation between schools that specialize in high performing youth, and in schools that specialize with those with learning problems, even though in both cases, the children who need those environments will better have those needs met.
Socially, it is unfavorable to accept the reality that not everyone is the same as everyone else, and that some people have disabilities, and others are naturally more gifted for academia. This is because it causes a glass cieling to occur, especially where poor academic performance is really caused simply by being financially disadvantaged. Eg, you could be brilliant, but be too poor to attend a premier school, and as such, be held back from your true potential-- while students that really shouldn't be in premier schools, are in those schools, because mommy and daddy are filthy fucking rich.
It is next to impossible to segregate academic scores from financial background, because the two correlate very closely. An increase in the quality and variety of food stuffs, and quality of academic freetime are both directly tied with increased test scores.
This is the basic catch-22 of the current system.
How do you reward excellence, and assist those that clearly need help, without appearing to give prefferential treatment to the financially affluent, and without stigmatizing people with only minor learning disabilities?
The shot version: you really can't.
We try anyway, and demand homogeneity, but the raw material of the students is simply just not homogeneous. This leads to all the failings we currently have, and an impetus by people who mean well and don't know any better, and those that have a specific philosophical or cultural/religious agenda to "fix it."
You simply can't fix the problems that plague the system we currently have, without discarding homogoeneity, and embracing specialist educational tracking.
The deep connections between affluence and test scores, mean that the affluent will always get unbalanced representation on the higher end of the distribution, when you do so.
Welcome to the real world, where shit fucking sucks, and ideal solutions don't exist.
"...incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy..."
Sounds like a lot of Green people I know.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, from the Principia Mathematica:
"But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions."
- Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
I am officially gone from
These inbred, idealistic, heretical politicians do not understand the difference between truth and faith.
You do not see the Roman Catholic Church (or many other organized religious organizations) have a problem with teaching science as a science and religion as a religion. The schools of higher learning, run by these religious organizations, openly teach the concepts of evolution as a science without interference.
So, why can't the Missouri legislators get their act together and leave science to the scientists and religion to the clergy?
So much for separation of church and state. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion (after all, every set contains the null set). State mandated hokum being posited as science is an abuse of faith and science.
I strongly believe there is no god. I also believe that the evidence for evolution is a very strong argument for the non-existence of god, and that is why I think so many believers have a problem with it.
However, those who are believers and think evolution is real too, well, that's just an example of cognitive dissonance.
But I mainly take issue with your last paragraph (after all, you can believe whatever you like, I don't care). "Faith used correctly". What on earth does that mean? People can do good things, and people can do bad things. These acts may be driven by their beliefs, but invariably the belief is used to justify the act, not the other way around. I see many people of faith committing atrocities in the name of that faith, in fact I would say on balance they are the majority. People do good for many reasons, and faith does not need to come into it, but a truly bad act is usually aided and abetted by faith. Yes, it's a perversion of what "faith" means to the majority of believers, but that's the reality of it: suicide bombers would almost certainly not commit those acts just because they felt like it.
I see next to no good in zealotry of any kind. Do good if you want to - it's easy to see that doing good has benefits that have nothing to do with religion - but don't do bad because your holy book tells you it's OK. That's just using a very shaky belief system to justify and reinforce a decision you alone took.
Treason may be the wrong word if one wants to be precise, but there is certainly something like treason going on. The creationists are willfully trying to undermine the country's scientific future and to infect school children's receptive minds with pure nonsense. As an analogy it's very true.
There's also some very severe professional misconduct occurring there, because non-scientists are pretending to be scientifically competent and dictating school science curricula.
Are carpenters allowed to establish guidelines for how surgeons will do heart surgery? No, they lack the professional competence so they are not accepted as having standing in the matter. What's happening in science education in a few US states is directly analogous. The creationists have no standing in science and so should have the door shut firmly in their faces.
Pretending to have scientific competency when you don't even know how science works is pretty clear fraud. Aren't there controls in education to keep charlatans from taking jobs for which they have no professional competence? Apparently not.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I don't buy that argument. Market forces can't usefully hold the cost of education down. Whenever reductions in education cost occur, the people who invariably take it on the chin are teachers, administrators, and other staff, both in salary cuts and staffing cuts, but mostly in salary cuts. If you keep the salaries down, those teachers will get jobs in industry that actually pay the bills. It's hard enough to convince people to teach at the college level as it is. The last thing we need to do is make changes that further jeopardize colleges' ability to attract talent.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of other places where budgets can be cut, but all of those cuts affect things that attract students, and most of those schools get their funding based on the number of students they attract. Thus, the administration is always wary of making those cuts.
And even if they did make those cuts, they would never be efficient about it. The whole system is quite literally designed to spend more money each year, whether it is needed or not. Instead of allowing excess resources to carry over from one fiscal year to the next like a responsible organization would, in higher ed, every penny that isn't spent goes back to the campus general fund. Worse, they usually reduce your department's budget by that amount going forward. This results in a strong incentive to spend any excess money before the end of the fiscal year. Then, when you actually need money for some unusual expense, you end up with a huge shortfall.
Until those fundamental structural problems are solved at every level of higher education, the efficiency problems are inevitable and unavoidable. If market forces "held costs down", they would do so by cutting teachers and reducing salaries. But that's not where the bleeding is actually occurring; it is the sum total of all the tiny expenses that causes problems, and those expenses are harder to control. So the quality of education would simply decline on a continuous basis, year after year. Indeed, this is basically what has happened to public K-12 education, precisely because they can't make up the difference through tuition and other external funding sources.
Of course, that problem is mostly limited to government-run schools. The reason that private institutions' costs have gone up is that they have to be more expensive than public schools, or else you don't have the prestige factor. Yes, to a limited degree, it would not occur if there were not adequate scholarships and other outside sources of funding available, if only because the cost and quality of public education would be reduced, but reducing the cost of an education at Yale isn't a particularly good argument for removing the government loans that enable the poor to attend state schools.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Is not intelligent design an oxymoron? My human spine has smaller vertebra at the bottom of my back than it does at the top, my shoulder 'ball and socket' joint design works like the engineer went to Phoenix University, and my freakin' liver can't process ethanol efficiently.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What have the anti-science nuts learned this century??
I dunno, but you're certainly out of touch with Christianity in the US. Most American Christians think of Catholicism as a totally different (i.e. fundamentally non-Christian) religion, like with Mormons and Witnesses. So pointing out a lesson learned by Catholics is like pointing out a lesson learned in communist Russia. Falls on deaf ears every time.
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.
Depends on how you define "literal creation". If you mean that as "God literally created the universe," then there's no conflict. If you mean that as "God literally created the Earth and all life upon it in six days, there's a fairly fundamental conflict. A literal interpretation of the book of Genesis simply cannot be reconciled with acceptance of evolution. A figurative or metaphorical view of Genesis is readily reconciled with belief in evolution.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't buy that argument. Market forces can't usefully hold the cost of education down.
They did exactly that until government guarantees made it possible for anyone to get student loans. By removing the risk of non-payment, the lenders had no incentive to consider whether the borrower was capable of repaying the loan.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
1: 'If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught.'
2: '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.'
well, since the second condition is impossible to meet, and is a necessary condition to satisfy the first, it means only that scientific theory concerning biological origin cannot be taught in a course of study. (contrapositive)
so... does that just mean you can't teach abiogenesis? that is what `origin' means in this context, right? evolution is okay to teach, and doesn't trigger the latter necessary conditions, even though they mention ``biological evolution,'' apparently as a red herring.
wait. did they mean for this to be a silly logic puzzle, or are they just too stupid to realize what they're saying?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Once, there was a legislature that attempted to make pi=3, because it would make life so much simpler.
You want to talk Old Testament morality? Game on!
Do you really want to live like this? Do you really want your CHILDREN to live like this?
Cafeteria Christians indeed.
The entropy of the solar system has been increasing since it was formed. What makes you think it hasn't? The existence of life on earth may have decreased entropy in some places but the solar system overall has increased in entropy. You can't look at the earth in isolation when the sun is adding energy to the earth, you have to consider the entire system.
Anybody who offers books by Ron-freakingly-stupid-Paul does not deserve anything else. Sane people can read real economists.
I've actually bought this book (Kindle Edition) and skimmed it. Blergh. The old "government made banks to give subprime loans to poor people" (no, it didn't) and "without Fed there'd be no bubble" (and no modern economy).
Do you have any other justification than "we are right" to explain why a state's citizens should decide what the schools that they pay for teach their children?
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Not to their own facts.
If it teaches unverifiable bullshit, it isn't education, and doesn't belong in a school.
By all means, let parents and special interest groups pay for teaching their children whatever they want, but not within the school system. Remember that schooling isn't just by and for the tax payers of a state, but part of the UN charter on children's rights. As such, it transcends mere state legislation.
No, Newton was pretty much a lunatic by today's standards, believing in all kinds of crap - much of which the church would not touch with ten foot crucifix.
That didn't stop him from also making great progress in the sciences, but many of those were by-products of his quest for the philosopher's stone and other things we think ridiculous today, and which were thought blasphemous back then.
Science does not question the existence of the almighty. Science does not question the existence of creation. Science causes no crisis of faith in one that is faithful. All science does is disrupt those that want to use faith to gather personal power, wealthy, and in the process elevate themselves to the level of the almighty.
A science teacher of mine (Jesuit priest, actually) would teach evolution and everything else without any problems.
In his words: "Science teaches us how. Religion teaches us who was behind it, never HOW".
morcego
I don't know if the anti-evolution folks really understand what they're asking for when they say that teachers should "Teach the Controversy".
One theory of evolution says it took billions of years. Another says evolution all happened in six days back in 4004 B.C. and then stopped, and that it may have gotten further restricted a thousand years or so later when all the land animals drowned except one boatload of them. How would you compare those two theories? What kind of evidence would let you reject or tentatively accept one of them? Are there fossil records that fit better with either? What about historical records from different cultures around the world? Does the distribution of animals around the planet tell us anything that would let us pick one of the theories, or lead us to modify either of them?
So yeah. Teach The Controversy. Proudly.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Most everything before King David has no objective evidence.
At least some states have said that teachers have to teach Intelligent Design, but aren't allowed to teach any particular religion's view of who the Intelligent Designer is, because that would be establishing religion and therefore blatantly unconstitutional.
But that doesn't mean that different cultures don't have different beliefs about the design process that lead to different world views separately from the issue of the Designer's identity. For instance, did it happen quickly or slowly? Recently, or a long long time ago? Just once, or repeated in multi-million-year cycles? Did the stars, Earth, plants, animals, and humans get designed together, or in some order? How could you tell? Did the design follow song-lines? Were only natural processes involved, or supernatural beings, or pirates or other tricksters? Does there seem to have been just one designer, or multiple designers in the process? Does the design process appear to have been personal or impersonal? Can we learn anything from the distribution of genetic material in different human populations, or the genetic differences between modern humans and Neandertals and other apes? Why are we more closely related to fungi than to plants? How does Death affect design?
If you want to teach Intelligent Design as Science, not just as philosophy, you can do it, but you'll find it's a much harder problem than its proponents think, and they may not like all the questions you'll be asking, much less the answers your students come up with.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's not just about Evolution - that's a hook for getting one particular voting block supporting the Republican Party, and a favor to them for cooperating, but there's more to it than that. Teaching Anti-Evolution Anti-Science makes it easier to teach Anti-Global-Warming Anti-Science - same tools, same skepticism and unwillingness to believe the real world instead of the authorities.
The Republican Party doesn't really care much about evolution. But their Corporate Sponsors really do care about global warming, and about anything that might force the government to make laws that affect their business. Anti-Evolution is fun, but anti-global-warming is where the money is.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They are faithless because they need proof of God in form of a literally true Bible, which leads to this absurdity. If I didn't have a shred of faith I wouldn't be out trying to change the laws, I'd be trying to change me!
And Americans wonder why the world is basically laughing at them.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The United States infiltrated by those who seek to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I am a molecular biologist.
We engage in biological intelligent design every day to earn our pay. Some of us have even figured out how to sign our in vivo code; others simply copied the method. Therefore, the intelligence responsible for any designed system is rarely in question.
I believe in the scientific method (hypothesis>experiment>theory>experiment>law)
Evolution just happens to be the answer you arrive at, when you use the scientific method.
I would rather have faith in the method that provided the answer, than faith in the answer alone.
What i find most tragic about this news and the comments is how many people entirely misconstrue the supposed debate between faith/philosophy and science when, in fact, there is almost no common ground between the two... they deal with very different aspects of the universe and our experience of it in our brief lives.
A few postulates to consider (some humour intended herein):
1) Numerous books of the Bible are written poetically and as allegory... Genesis and Revelations are the two most obviously allegorical books of the bible and is not an accident the first and last books are allegorical in nature (it kinda sets the tone for the entire compiled scripture). Some how a lot of Christians 'bishops/pastors/etc." didn't get the memo at some point and started interpreting the whole bible literally. Comical to say the least
2) Many (most) Christians worldwide do not believe the world is only 6000-10000 years old... so don't lump them all into one group. AS it often happens in human existence, the dumbest people are often the loudest people. Throughout christian history, lots of leaders said lots of dumb things (that are not intrinsically support by the Bible by the way)... to go crazy and throw away an entire body of philosophy/faith because a few or even many people say some silly things is just not very scientific... yes, scientists, I'm holding the standard of being a good science and maintaining some objectivity even when it is something you really don't like. As a PhD scientist, I have heard a lot of scientist say dumb things at conferences, even read incredibly dumb things in peer-reviewed journals (which means the reviewers were dumb too). I have said some incredibly dumb things too! We seem to only remember the great scientists and forget that for every Einstein there were and still are hundreds of reasonably bright people saying and doing things that ranging anywhere from unimportant to just ole dumb. This is still the case today... less than one percent of the worlds population is responsible for over 98% of the world technological advancement. So lets not pretend like science has never made mistakes and is somehow pristine and perfect... it is not. Hundreds of years from now scientists are going to talk about how dumb we were to stick with quantum mechanics, the standard model, blah blah, for so damn long when there were (and have been for some time) some huge problems with the theories... and at the same time, we as a society really are not funding and encouraging enough totally revolutionary, outside the box, thinking.
3) The universe is here with lots of mass and energy (more than anyone can possibly conceptualize) and yet, from our meager scientific observations, mass can be neither created or destroyed... so we have some explaining to do. Right now, Science does not have all the answers In fact, there are a lot of fundamental "how and why" type of questions to which science doesn't have the foggiest notion of an answer and can't even conceive an experiment to develop an answer. So, being intellectually honest for a moment, one can hardly fault someone for looking to the existential for answers. i would in fact argue to 'believe' that science will one day answer all the burning questions of why and how the universe/existence came about requires a "leap of faith" (the very thing religion is ridiculed for). Seriously, despite incredible technological advancement in the past 2000 years, science is not any closer to figuring out why we are here in the first place and what this existence/universe is all about. But that is okay, it is NOT sciences' job to figure out why we are here or even necessarily why physical laws are the way they are.
4) Atheism is a philosophy/belief/faith and it is not the only philosophy/faith of "Science"... there is no systematic scientific proof in favor of any stance on the existence/non-existence of a supreme being or the supernatural. No logically perfect argument can be construed for or against... just drop it. Realize that reach of
This is why we can't have nice things.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Evolution is not abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is not Evolution. Anyone claiming otherwise is a fraud and a liar.
Just get the government out of the education business entirely.
If parents want to send their kids to a school that teaches 'science' classes about the flying spaghetti monster, more power to them. As long as there are no government subsidies, there's nothing to argue about. The parents and students can vote on the curriculum with their dollars and their feet.
Bring some entrepreneurship and consumer choice back to the business of education.
The separation of everything and "The State" has failed because the state has slowly and inexorably infiltrated itself into every aspect of our lives. That's how The Constitution has been dismantled, much to our detriment.
Separate The State from education and none of this debate is necessary. Separate The State from the idea of marriage, and that debate goes away as well.
It was supposed to be a warning, not a blueprint.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Read the book The Seashell on The Mountain Top. It's about Nicholaus Steno - which is pretty much the father of modern Geology. He grappled with many of these issues and early on came to the conclusion that the study of science was a way to get closer to God. They are not mutually exclusive of each other. IDK why it's so hard for people to grasp that.