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Repeal of Louisiana Science Education Act Rejected
egjertse writes "A Louisiana law that opponents say leaves the backdoor open to teaching 'creationism' in public schools will stay on the books after a Senate committee Wednesday effectively killed a bill that would repeal the statute. After hours of testimony for and against House Bill 26, which repeals the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, the senators narrowly deferred the legislation, effectively killing it in committee. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans."
Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could "lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures."
"Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man -- in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed -- if I had closed him off and just said, 'That's not science. I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself," Guillory said.
Why are we allowing people who aren't smart enough to decide what's best for children do just that? Why aren't we re-thinking how our government operates to prevent this from happening again?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The name you're looking for is James Ussher, a Calvinist archbishop.
The specific works where he specified that the date of Creation was the nightfall before 23 OCT 4004 BC (Julian calendar, mind you) were published between 1650 and 1654 (I don't know which of them first used the 4004bc creation time).
Why so many flavours of Christian seem to be addicted to the writings of a Calvinist archbishop, I've never understood. Most American Christians are, at best, uninspired by Calvinism....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
History is a breeze on these schools... they only go back 6,001 years (to include 2013).
What puzzles me, or rather amuses me is how many of the people believing in this nonsense are happy to operate their DVD players and/or GPS (among other things) without hesitation;
- And accept they will work, completely ignoring that those items are based on the same physical laws we determine the age of earth with.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
It means less competition for kids that are studying science and want to get a decent job. Plus, we always need more people doing manual labor with poor critical thinking and analytical skills. The only people these religious activists are hurting is their own kids. When their kids can't find a decent job, they can blame their parents.
Why? It's their own kids that will suffer.
Is this the same logic you'd use if you noticed that your neighbor came home stinking drunk and beat his kids every night? And, in case caring for the well-being of other peoples' kids is too much of a stretch for you, how about a little self-interest: you own kids are going to grow up to share the world with these guys.
Because such people do not think about why their GPS works, they expect that it just does as an article of faith. In short, it's magic.
Yeah totally. Also have you ever tried applying critical thought to math class? Those closed-minded teachers won't even consider that Pi might be three. Tell them that's what you believe, and they'll fail you out of sheer bigotry. Man, math must be too weak to expose to differing ideas.
No, I wouldn't use the same logic there. If I were to report the drunk for child abuse, everyone but his family would praise that act. If I were to try to save kids from religion, I would get death threats from morons. See the difference now?
Look, it's going to be hard enough for my kids to get into college. Right now it's so competitive for high schoolers that they have to cram their lives full of extracurricular activities and forgo many of the valuable experiences of childhood and adolescence just so that they can keep up with the other young go-getters around them and have a chance of getting into anything better than a state school. I, for one, welcome any measure that will reduce the amount of competition for the intelligent offspring of intelligent people who actually give a damn about educating the next generation. Anything that will give my kids a leg up over the children of the semiliterate, Bible-beating mouth breathers in the Bible Belt is a good thing, in my book.
[...] In short, it's magic.
So, you're saying, if we want to visit a different solar system or galaxy, all we have to do is to find someone stupid enough to go down on a long rope and kick the damn turtle in the butt?
Or maybe even better, lower a few billion tons of lettuce on a long rod at the other end...
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
No, I wouldn't use the same logic there. ... See the difference now?
Yes, I can see that if you are a coward, standing on principle to help others is not part of your logic.
So, instead of asking why "we aren't rethinking how government works" let's ask why we have a populace so ignorant and superstitious that WANT their leaders and politicians to enact such horseshit.
Because the education system put in place by those leaders keeps the population so ignorant and superstitious etc...?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Q: How do you keep a Baptist from drinking all your beer when you are fishing?
A: Invite two.
They are all 'uninspired by Christ'. The scary ones are convinced they are.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Minding you own business isn't part of yours?
There is a difference between someone beating their brats and that same person teaching the same brats something stupid.
If you want to teach your kids Christianity, Islam, Marxism or anything else go to it. The smart kids will be better for it, the dumb ones will never matter anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, all DVD players are based on a mass spectrometer.
The point of my post wasn't to say that giving your kids a religious upbringing is as bad as drunkenly beating them; rather, to attack the motivating "logic" of "why should I care if someone else' kids suffer." Perhaps it's my religious upbringing and Christian beliefs talking here, but I don't think "fine if only someone else gets hurt" is a good basis for deciding how to act. You might decide not to interfere for other reasons, like "I respect the right of other parents to raise their children according to their own beliefs," or "the kids aren't really harmed, anyway" --- but "screw you if you're not me or mine" is not a philosophical stance I am particularly friendly towards.
As stated in another reply: the point of my response wasn't to say that giving your kids a religious upbringing is like drunkenly beating them; rather, to question your motivating "logic" of "why should I care if someone else' kids suffer." Perhaps it's my religious upbringing and Christian beliefs talking here, but I don't think "fine if only someone else gets hurt" is a good basis for deciding how to act. You might decide not to interfere for other reasons, like "I respect the right of other parents to raise their children according to their own beliefs," or "the kids aren't harmed enough to justify intervention" --- but "screw you if you're not me or mine," the reasoning that lead off your prior post, is not a philosophical stance I am particularly friendly towards.
Can you (or someone else) expand on this? I am not a physicist and am curious as to what you are referring to.
Ready for a 6 month lesson? ;-)
First off, DVD players use a laser. Lasers obey to certain rules, it's an interaction between electrons, atom nuclei and photons (light, the laser light).
We can reliably predict the behavior of those "systems".
I'll try an example now (to stick with the lettuce).
Let's assume you are a farmer and are growing lettuce. No you find several heads of lettuce. Some fresh, some with leaves withered, some rotten.
As a farmer you can determine how long ago the lettuce head was cut.
Physicists do the same. They know how long lettuce (atoms) need to decay, based on physical laws that make the laser produce light.
So when you look at a stone, you look at the "withered leaves" and can tell how old it is.
Hope this makes sense.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
If you don't want your kids exposed to religiosity and pseudo-"science", put them in private school or move out of state. It's not the parents that don't want their kids exposed to "intelligent" design and creationism that should have to be putting their kids in private school. It's the ones that do want their kids exposed to that non-sense. If a school is publicly funded (i.e. a state school/institution), there is no reason why religious dogma in any of it's forms should be allowed to be taught. That's the biggest problem with all of this sort of non-sense, it changes the wall of separation, which should be a nice impenetrable wall, though it unfortunately hardly ever is. Into a very slight bump in the road, if it even amounts to that much. God(s) and religion need to be kept out of science, out of government and out of education in general, but since there will always be private religious schools, the least that can be done is to keep it out of public school.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
The "Discovery Institute", the leading purveyors of pseudo-science hokum to the Far Right, who have somehow become a "think tank" involved in creating science curriculum in more than 25 states, has started a nationwide campaign on right-wing radio programs, pushing their notion that it's the Christian Conservatives who are the "real protectors of science" not those awful secular scientists (who are probably kenyan muslims too).
I heard their "director of research", a "Dr Stephen Meyer" who wrote a book called Darwinâ(TM)s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design on the radio earlier this week, talking about how the fact that our genes have "digital code" in them is proof of an "intelligent designer" because you can't have things like "circuits and digital code" without someone intelligent to design them.
I'm not joking, they are spending millions on a PR campaign talking about how the Christian Right are the true lovers of science. And exhibit A is how "the science establishment" still teaches evolution.
We are so fucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Louisiana is one place I will not consider moving to.
And, for you grammar Nazis, Louisiana is one place to which I will not consider moving.
And, for you Cajuns, I ain't gonna go to loosiana no more.
you can't have things like "circuits and digital code" without someone intelligent to design them.
I present Windows 8 ("digital code") and the Zune ("circuits") as counter examples.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Yes. And you can't have an intelligent designer without an intelligent designer designer.
From there it's turtles all the way down.
and I'm still baffled that it could have
I'm not sure another state in the south has such a progressive history, and still manages to lean progressive in some fields, and yet still lets crap like this through the legislature.
Pi is never wrong. Unless it's like strawberry glaze, but accidentally using strawberries that aren't ripe and still bitter... then it's just horrendously wrong.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Kopplin
http://www.repealcreationism.com/
FYI: Zack is a college student who, while a high school student in Louisiana, decided that no one was going to repeal this law while he was in school. He started an organization to try and ensure that Louisiana students could get a proper education.
Maybe he should run for state senator!
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
If you don't want your kids exposed to it, put them in private school or move out of state.
Must be nice to grow up with enough wealth that it doesn't even occur to you that not every fucking person can afford private school or to pull up stakes and move to another state across country (because none of Louisiana's neighbors are any better). My niece is stuck in Louisiana for the foreseeable future, through no fault of her own. Her kids are in public schools because the private schools in her area that are affordable are all Baptist shitholes that are even worse.
Education should be a local issue.
Why? So that the children who grow up in Grosse Pointe Shores can get great educations to ensure that they continue to rule unopposed over the children who grow up in Benton Harbor? This was always the whole point of funding schools through local property taxes, so that the rich can forever dominate the poor no matter how intelligent and talented the poor kids might actually be.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It's a fine line. Your definition of suffering is likely informed by you own beliefs.
I'm suffering from a 'the lack of a personal relationship with the flying spaghetti monster'. People have been burned for less.
'Screw you if you're not me or mine' is just the reflection of 'Whatever you want to do; no skin off my back'. If you want people to stay out of your business, in the long run you have to keep them out of your business. You want insurance? Expect the insurance agent to think some of your business is his business. Government isn't different. No such thing as a free lunch.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wow, why are you so closed minded towards other ideas?
As the saying goes: "Keep an open mind – but not so open that your brain falls out". Even if you accept that his "vision" really happened, and was not the product of a mentally unfit mind, he acknowledges that it is not science and then argues that because sometimes non-scientific methods work it means that science education should contain non-science. That's as logical as arguing that because meteorology sometimes works all music classes should now contain content on predicting the weather..
Let me re-iterate that I'm not trying to indicate "getting a crappy science education" is equivalent to "suffering." But, if (for whatever your reasons) you suspect someone might be "suffering," then you should weigh your reaction against some higher concerns (like respect for privacy and autonomy) rather than "not my kids; let 'em suffer."
'Screw you if you're not me or mine' is just the reflection of 'Whatever you want to do; no skin off my back'.
In this case, one is considering a third party: "Whatever you want to do to those children; no skin off my back." That's a little different from staying out of people's business to harm themselves. Now, in this case, as in many, there can be plenty of other mitigating circumstances: "saving" a child from a negligibly small harm isn't worth the far greater harms of meddling in others' affairs. But whatever your reasoning is for deciding whether or not to interfere in a situation, "my kids are fine so screw yours" is a crummy basis for moral guidance.
The Discovery Institute has a few things to throw at evolution. One is based on information theory, and from a scientific philosophy standpoint it makes sense. It deals with the concept of systems being designed. For example to make an army tank vast amounts of design are required. You do not need to take God into account. You can stop at you have this colossal amount of information that makes a system. You do not have to consider who put it there if you do not want to, thus completely removing religion from intelligent design.
If their argument was compelling, I think they must have explained it a little better than you. Based on your last line, it seems like you're describing the scientific principle of putting your hands over your ears and saying "LALALALALALALA!!!!"
The part of the title "The Explosive Origin of Animal Life" is a hot topic. The problem is the Cambrian Explosion, from where the life you see today originated. The problem with it is it seemingly spontaneously erupted. There should be a clear fossil record of organisms progressing to the Cambrian Explosion organisms, but the fossil record doesn't seem to be lining up. Darwin himself said the theory breaks down until that is resolved
Darwin is not the be all and end all on the subject of evolution. Frankly, he probably only wrote that out of a sense of obligation to Adam Sedgwick, who was one of his mentors. The Cambrian explosion isn't particularly surprising. Before it, organisms that formed fossils well weren't very common, then some adaptations crept in that conferred some distinct advantages over existing organisms in many niches, especially on land. Then you have rapid diversification as those niches fill up, and then the new organisms _become_ the environment, creating even more niches, not to mention arms races (seriously, literally arms in some cases). There's no hole in the theory of evolution in the Cambrian Explosion.
I do not see a problem with an information theory based Intelligent Design being taught in schools, because it is sound science. And the perplexities of evolutionary theory, mainly the Cambrian Explosion problem should be taught too, because that is sound and very exciting science.
Sorry, without a better explanation here of what you mean by "information theory based Intelligent Design", it seems to me more like a plan to sabotage kids understanding of Information Theory as well as Biology. The Cambrian Explosion should certainly be taught about as well. Imaginary problems with the Cambrian explosion... Well, I suppose it could be a good critical thinking exercise. The teacher could explain the supposed "problem" and have a round table discussion for the kids to present solutions to the supposed problem.
Pseudoscience is everywhere in Louisiana - a report from the ground.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Predicting it accurately would be very hard... but I think that the several orders-of-magnitude difference between 6000 years and 4.5 billion years means that it 6000 years is unlikely. Here's another way of looking at it: 6000 years/4.5 billion years is 1.33x10^-6 or 0.0001333%.
Secondly I doubt the age of the earth is calculated by fossil record because the earth predates the fossils by some quite significant margin. Only in fairy tales (you know the ones) was the earth and everything on it created in a short space of time. It spent quite a bit of time as a glowing hot ball of molten material, I doubt there were many fossil-leaving creatures around then. The movement of tectonic plates forcing things into the still molten core of the earth puts a bit of an upper bound on the maximum age of fossils as well. If you've found some source dating the earth itself by fossil record then they're either idiots or they have some interest in pushing inaccurate and terrible science
Thirdly in things that are dated by fossil record: I'd wager (even if you wouldn't) that the likely age of the fossil is known through radiocarbon dating or another technique, giving a range of ages where that fossil is likely to be found (extinction not being a modern phenomena). That way when you find rocks with those fossils in you can make a reasonable guess at when the rock formed. In other cases the formation of the rock happens at a known, or discernible rate (e.g. sedimentary rocks where a layer of sediment is formed each year), and so it is practical to date the fossils based on their position in the rock.
The error is pretty large, but then so is the timescale involved, and the accuracy doesn't need to be huge - being accurate to within 6000 years as illustrated above is actually ridiculously tiny, 100's of millions of years is probably a safer error range. The reasoning isn't circular where one of the data sets is calibrated against some other measurable fact.
BTW. I'm no geologist/physicist or other expert on these matters... someone who knows a bit more can chime in if I've made any wild assumptions. What I will say though is that I think it is more than likely we can make a pretty good guess at the age of the earth, with a significant margin for error.
Minding you own business isn't part of yours?
There is a difference between someone beating their brats and that same person teaching the same brats something stupid.
If you want to teach your kids Christianity, Islam, Marxism or anything else go to it. The smart kids will be better for it, the dumb ones will never matter anyhow.
Even 'dumb' or more accurately 'ignorant and misled' people generally get to vote. When you have a large enough number of ignorant and misled people voting, you have a problem.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial