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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
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.
For a reason. Banking _de_regulation caused the world crisis. Energy market deregulation caused Enron.
... 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
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?"
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 drug users let their kids use drugs.... etc
Because it's not the parents (voters) being harmed (mentally in this case). It's the children...
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
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
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.
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.
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
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