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Map of Publicly-Funded Creationism Teaching
Capt.Albatross writes "At Slate, Chris Kirk presents a map of schools in the USA that both receive public funding and teach creationism. It also shows public schools in those states where they are allowed to teach creationism (without necessarily implying that creationism is taught in all public schools of those states). There is a brief outline of the regulations in those states where this occurs, but the amounts involved are not discussed."
For all the trash that gets talked about Texas in this regard, it barely registers here, and only for some sort of "Responsive Ed charter school" that a Texan might explain better - sounds like it's not the normal school system.
Louisiana and Tennessee OTOH - ouch!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
For as big of a deal that is frequently made of this, it's a lot less then I'd expected. Honestly, it looks like it's only a "problem" in two states, and even there only list as much because "these schools *might* be teaching it."
on presumably a flat earth
More what?
Stoning of adulterers?
Slavery?
Animal sacrifice?
Other things Bronze Age religion requires?
If Christ turns water into wine, does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
If they want to go fucking with the establishment clause, no, I can't. Otherwise, no problem.
"The amounts involved are not discussed" because this is a non-story. I spent (served time?) 12 Years in a Tennessee school in a highly populated area and creationism was not taught at all. This article intends to imply that us backwards rednecks are teachin' the chillrens 'bout Jesus, and that simply isn't happening to the statewide scale this fancy map displays.
If Christ turns water into wine, does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
I turn wine into water... Uh oh.
First read the bills slate.com gives as evidence.
http://ncse.com/files/pub/lega...
http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bill...
Now, show me where it says, "teach creationism".
I'm not saying they are wrong, and that LA/TN aren't teach creationism; but those laws seem to protect teachers from getting fired for teaching [locally controversial] science the way I read them (as long as they don't explicitly say, "you're religion is wrong").
Unfortunately, the US's first major "nation building" failure might be said to have occurred after the civil war... We defeated the insurgency; but never really managed to rebuild a functional society in the southern provinces. If subsequent events are any guide, we may just suck at dealing with religious zealots with shitty human rights records.
Just can't let the 'I hate Christians' thing go can you?
It's not a "I hate Christians" thing. It's a "I hate dishonesty" thing. If you're teaching something in a class that claims to be a science class, then you are supposed to be teaching the scientific method (the core of "science") and things that have been learned and proven using the scientific method. Instead, if you are teaching creationism, you are not only teaching something that does not stand up to the scientific method, but you are also teaching that things that have been very well proven using the scientific method are wrong. This is dishonest. If you want to teach creationism or any other aspect of any other religion, that's great, just be sure to label the class "theology" and not something related to science.
How would you feel if, instead of something that Christians came up with, they were teaching Scientology as if it were fact? Do you think teaching that humans on earth came from the evil lord Xenu belongs in a science class? Regardless of which aspects of which religions are right or wrong, it belongs in a theology class, not a science class. Or, to make another analogy, should a school be teaching about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in a math class? Regardless of whether what they're teaching is right or wrong, that topic belongs in a history class, not a math class.
It's not hate to want factually incorrect, archaic, dropped-from-the-mainstream facets of Christianity removed from public education in Tennessee and Louisiana.
Only the literalist interpretation of the Bible demands such teachings, but such followers are caught between their own sense of reason and their own faith. Those followers feel if they bend on this, and say the Bible is not perfect, it is the same as denying their entire faith. Most versions of Christianity no longer hold such literal interpretations, so based on the map, it may be a Baptist thing?
If Christ turns water into wine, does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
Cold Coors Light.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You seem to fail and distinguishing the concept of "scientific theory" against "made up after too much wine" theory. In scientific terms, the word theory has a special meaning.
I believe GP's point was that the more theories there are, the better - and I agree. Hell, let's chuck all the 'theories' in there, right down to the last turtle.
I'll explain:
While the Earth is a whole hell of a lot lot older than ~6,000 orbits, it does provide one benefit: You get to force students to think outside the box. Show them what crap science looks like. Towards that end, we really ought to force the little rugrats to think - long and hard; the earlier, the better. Meanwhile, maybe as a reaction, this will spur the school boards to bring back a few things that have been missing from public schools for way the hell too long: Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific Methodology, Critical Thinking, and (actual) Debate. I learned all of this in Catholic school around 6-8th grades, whereas most public high schools don't even bother (let alone at the lower grades). Basically, I want to see this Creationism stunt force the schools into teaching kids to question everything they're told, and more importantly, giving them the tools to actually do it.
Let's face it - nowadays, kids are basically taught to do what they're told in matters that are critical (e.g. civics, science), but to be overly-creative in superfluous matters (art, sex, etc). Maybe in a perverse way, this push for creationism, such as it is, will reverse the slide.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What happened to you U.S.A? You used to be cool.
Arizona: As many as 15 schools that teach creationism may be participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship program for disabled children or children attending underperforming schools. (Arizona has not released a list of private schools that have received students on this scholarship.)
READ: There are 15 schools in Arizona that teach creationism (*sigh*), and they are apparently eligible to receive tax credits for certain disadvantaged students on a scholarship, but there's no data that says any of these schools actually have any of those students.
The Slate doesn't mention this, but there's a WAY bigger loophole.
You can, in Arizona (as well as a lot of other places) donate up to $200 per person (or $400 per household, IIRC) to a school fully tax deductible from your state taxes. As long as you've got $200 worth of state tax liability, and you like the school your kid goes to more than the general education fund, you can just give them $200 in cash in December, and "get" $200 off your Arizona taxes as soon as you file. Every school here sends their kids home with a donation form every year - it's a cash grab.
So, as long as it's a valid school, you can use state money (in a roundabout way) to pay for their creationism.
does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
No but my liver does. Always knew the damn thing was evil.
Nearly half of all Americans believe that humans were placed on earth in their current form, magically by the hand of God Himself, with no evolutionary changes or modifications every occurring. And the number is rising.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/218...
Do you want to know what brings about the biblical apocalypse? Ignorance of the natural world in which we live. Buckle your seatbelts, because the ignorant are starting to drive this bus we call civilization, and the last stop is not utopia.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
aka Land of the Derp, home of the homeless.
stand as a bulwark island of rationalism and progressivism against an encroaching sea of faith-based ideology.
I weep for thee
TFA is itself flame bait. Note that the map shows schools that may teach alternative theories (including arguing against human caused global warming), but in the title implies that they do teach creationism using public funds.
I can't wait until "The joy of sect" becomes mandatory reading in high schools.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I hope that MIT, Cal Tech, and other top notch science places write an open letter to these school guidance departments, superintendent offices, and the local news paper, that every students who comes from one of these schools will automatically be rejected because of the poor science curriculum that includes creationism.
I urge the slashdot community, who are alumin of these schools, to contact them and urge their alma maters to contact these high schools and reject creationism.
I hope that this would change these school policies.
And, by 'H', you mean Hate, right?
sig: sauer
They are disadvantaged: they don't know evolution.
Table-ized A.I.
Throwing invalid and in many cases demonstrably false claims at students who don't have the background to see the invalidity is ludicrous. I mean, why single science out? Why not teach Holocaust denial in history class? After all, wouldn't that challenge students too? Perhaps you could also teach 2+2=5 and French verb conjugation in English class.
Schools are supposed to teach science, like any other subject, to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Teaching students that somehow just because someone calls some nonsense claim a "theory" is not teaching at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You should care - it seems that Hawaii is not an US territory anymore.
See, this is why we need good science education. You don't even know what science IS. Its aim is not to "prove things without a doubt."
If Christ turns water into wine, does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
Que syrah syrah, what ever will be will be.
Why just 3 theories? What about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? What about the Universe being sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure? Those "theories" are just a plausible as your Christian or your Simulation theories.
Evolution, on the other hand, makes testable predictions, something none of your other "theories" can claim, which makes then not theories at all in the scientific sense.
I suggest you go back to Grade 9 science class. You obviously need a refresher.
Interestingly, the Christian story and the simulation story are the only ones that solve every one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
But you go ahead and make that tired old argument.
We don't need to - the Supreme Court already made it for us, long before most of us were born. If you're unhappy with this, start working to repeal the 14th Amendment.
There's actually more logical evidence and less holes in the theory at the universe is a giant simulation.
Righto, matey. GIve me some testable predictions of your Simulation theory.
Evolution? We predict that organisms will change in response to changing conditions and we have observed it in action with the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Prediction followed by confirmation.
Your turn.
Further, a longitudinal study comparing Montessori and public schools shows that a large amount of our social pathologies can be traced back to pedagogical methods used by public schools.
Not only that, a cross-cultural neo-Darwinian study showed that a substantial number of semi-literate subpar I.Q. holders believe that multi-syllabic language tokens show utility in promoting an argument.
I suppose that explains your post?
Evolutionists want to teach evolution because they don't like religion.
No, that's wrong. Evolutionists want evolution taught because it is the best explanation was have for observed and verified facts.
*we have*
Fair enough. Then science teachers should probably stop telling students that the Bible is fiction: http://www.opposingviews.com/i... and that they can't talk about it: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com...
Have you ever even been to upstate New York?
85-92% of people think evolutionists are wrong depending on how you measure it since every religion in the world disagrees with it.
"Every religion in the world"... with the exception of, e.g., the major mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic church. Many of the largest Christian church bodies internationally are just fine with Darwinian evolution, and a world evolutionary/geological history consistent with modern scientific consensus. The people who disbelieve evolution because of their religion --- though quite vocal, and powerful in the US --- are far from representative of today's major world religions.
people still pick up a fossil and say "nope, this must be the sole explanation."
No, they pick up a fossil and say "this must be the sole explanation that does not rely on introducing multiple additional non-testable hypotheses". I know you're upset that scientists won't simply wave their hands and say "God did it" in response to anything we don't understand, but that's not really how the scientific method works. Technically, we haven't actually proven that the entire universe isn't actually the complex masturbatory fantasy of a pimply 13-year-old superintelligent extradimensional being, but we don't feel guilty about discounting that explanation when we're trying to figure out how modern life forms originated. If we didn't apply this parsimonious approach to scientific investigation, we'd still be using candles and horses and enjoying a 25% infant mortality rate.
Your "Codependent gender sexual traits" are unexplainable by evolutionary theory because they are NOT part of the theory. We do not teach it at all, no less as fact. Male Peacocks with bright plumage are more successful than less brilliantly plumaged males. There is no change to females reproductive system is needed. In organisms with exchange of gametes (SEX) offspring may receive genes from either parent organism. Some of the genes might only be expressed in certain sexes. So female chick from a brightly plumaged peacock will not display the same plumage. This mixing of gametes leads to maximizing the genetic variety of the species, Likewise your fish tale. If a male fish has a genetic mutation that is incompatible with the current pool of females then that the end of the line.. EXTINCTION. Most mutations will be benign, not resulting in any advantage or disadvantage in reproduction. These mutations will continue to exists in the gene pool. Some mutations will be deleterious and the organism may die or fail to reproduce. a very few mutations will result in individuals with that trait gaining a statistical advantage in passing on the trait.
Which of the 3 has more basis in logic and science?
None because all of your premises are ridiculous jokes.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
and the ones to blame here are more the parents than the schools. If no parent would send their kids to there these schools wouldn't exist.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I weap for thee...
Hey, you misspelled "weep" while calling other people dumb and uninformed. What a maroon!
Exactly. Science makes statements about the natural world. The supernatural is not something that can be tested.
To wit, an omnipotent being could have created the Earth and the whole universe 10 years ago, or 10 minutes ago, complete with people who have implanted memories of things that happened 20 plus years ago, and tons of evidence that make it look like the Earth is billions of years old. How can we tell the difference? How can we tell whether the Earth was created by some omnipotent being 100 or 6000 years ago, or any other number of years ago? We can't! There is no way to test supernatural notions. Does that make science worthless? Not at all. We knowingly operate with the provision that what we observe is in fact reality. It seems some people find it extremely disappointing that science cannot provide absolute answers to every question with no doubt whatsoever, and react by unfairly dismissing everything scientific methods have to say. They want Answers, and they don't understand or care they're asking too much of science.
Our observations of many different factors all point to the Earth being about 4.5 billion years old. Radioactive decay of many different elements all point to that same age. The ratio of hydrogen to helium and heavier elements in the Sun gives similar ages. A statistical analysis of the numbers of craters also points to great age. We are absolutely surrounded by geological features that could have come about through millions of years of natural processes such as erosion, but not mere thousands.
The GP needs a primer on philosophy.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Actually, yes. I was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination - not Baptist - and the items cited in the prior post were all part of the ideology, even if they were soft-pedaled because some of them weren't acceptable even then.
It's a morass of contradictions and Bronze Age rank superstition, with no saving grace but the poetry in some Old Testament books.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
It's quite a stretch to go from teaching in a public school what the Holy Bible says about creation and having that as another creation story along with abiogenesis (which has less proof)
There is less proof for abiogenesis then there is for Christian creationism? Tell me, exactly what is the proof for Christian creationism?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
You miss a valid point...while holocaust denial is obviously not taught by any reputable institution, a history teacher would be remiss in not pointing out that some topics surrounding the holocaust, such as whether the term should include non-Jews, are areas of legitimate debate within the historical community. But then...in history there is an acknowledgement that there is ultimately no one "true" answer, rather just the one most people agree is "most true." As a non-scientist, my perception is that science doesn't necessarily teach such nuances at as early of a level as most humanities. Probably I'm part because truth in humanities is harder to prove.
The problem is exactly as you surmised, you are working with popularized accounts, and probably written by someone with a less than academic understanding of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory never depends ""then magic happens". Does that mean that we understand every change in every organism? No. Might you cite some of these "Popular Proofs" I suspect that the laziness is in not caring about understanding the real the science. Evolutionary theory is the result of 100+ years of detailed taxonomic and genetic studies. And our understanding of the relationship between species changes from time to time as new evidence supports differing explanations. Talk to a biologist, professor or biology teacher if you want good information. (for the most part avoid elementary teachers, their science background is at best suspect) You cant do it in 500 words or 10 mins. The development of molecular biology (the study the molecular basis of life) has revolutionized how we study evolution. It has caused us to reevaluate some parts of our theory, but mostly it has provided additional strong evidence that supports the theory of evolution.
Pointing out that some nasty people believe nasty things is not the same thing as saying "And another theory is that no Jews were killed by the Nazis, and those who claim it is are members of Jewish conspiracy to enslave God-fearing Aryans."
The same goes for saying "And another theory is that God created humans 6,000 years ago, and it's just as legitimate as the claim that we evolved from a common ancestor billions of years ago."
Creationism isn't a theory, not in the scientific sense, so teaching it as a legitimate theory is teaching children a falsehood.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You seem to be breaking any bigotry stereotypes though.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
There's no "solid, indisputable proof" that anything has ever occurred. All things in the world may be disputed, that's called "falsifiability."
Teaching Christian Fundamentalism however, requires accepting a priori that the Bible is the only source of solid, indisputable proof, and that any attempts to prove it right or wrong are pointless.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Creationism basically equates God to a Las Vegas Magician. They can't seem to believe that God is capable of making a complex system such as Evolution and instead need to provide a simplified dumb-downed theory. God, if he exists, should be insulted.
The Christian fantasy and the simulation fantasy don't solve anything. They just say: "You can't ask questions about X because {the deity / the simulation} has declared it just so."
That's not a scientific theory and it certainly doesn't explain or solve anything.
While I happen to believe that large parts of the Bible are indeed fiction, I'm not aware of any science teachers who go around telling students that in the context of a science class.
And sorry, but religion has no place whatsoever in the public school system, so I am fully supportive of schools that ban citation of Bible verses in school, just as I'd support the banning of teach of Torah, Qu'ran, or whatever in the public school system outside of a comparative religion course.
simultaneously disproving higher intelligence and God as existing?
You don't even have a clue what that means.
Until those are true, evolution is simply a short-sighted theory that explains one possibility of our existence and creation and it doesn't even reach past 3 dimensional physical physics.
4 dimensional physics including time. That claim is completely irrelevant since evolution only deals with one dimension, that of time, and that is the only dimension that it should deal with since it is a theory of how life changes over time. Whether that life exists in three spatial dimensions or some completely different structure is irrelevant to the theory.
We've created antimatter, time dilation effects, anticipated multiple alternate dimensions, etc and people still pick up a fossil and say "nope, this must be the sole explanation."
Because those things have no bearing on the problem. Did you need to consider multiple alternate dimensions when you were buying groceries last?'
...read the entirety of Christ's teachings before commenting on them.
Yeah, ok. You read all of science starting from quantum mechanics going up to natural selection before commenting.
Creationism shouldn't be taught not because it may be false but because it is not verifiable with evidence that we can examine today, like evolution seems to be.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just because Islam is a particularly vile and disgusting religion doesn't mean we shouldn't rebut Creationists. We have time and energy to oppose Islamic fundamentalists as well as Christian ones, you know.
It boggles my mind that people can get away with teaching creationism (not just talking about schools) and other religious mumbo-jumbo to children. Teaching outright lies like this about how the universe works to children is just as bad as child molestation.
> There is no way to test supernatural notions.
SOME supernatural notions. Many supernatural notions, say like spontaneous generation have been disproved.
Reasonable inductive analysis can be used to exclude supernatural hypothesis until such can be experimentally verified.
Why just the Holy [sic] Bible? If you're gonna drag one fantasy in, drag them all. Ancient Egyptian creation myths. Japanese and Chinese creation myths. Greek and Norse creation myths. Bring 'em on! Flying Spaghetti Monsters! Douglas Adams' Great Green Arkleseizure!
They're all as plausible as the Christian version, so why not teach them all?
So why do we get so uptight about a few people wanting us to believe...
I have no problem with people believing whatever fantasies float their boat. I have a huge problem with their wanting to force said fantasies on kids under the guise of teaching science. As the post below said, teaching creationism in science class = child molestation.
Creationists have their tax money taken (whether they have kids in school or not) and used to fund schools that teach evolution.
So? The job of science class in public schools is to teach science. End of story.
I do study QM and natural selection in my spare time. And Christianity. And I don't doubt QM, natural selection, or Christianity. Occam's Razor... it's the simplest solution that the universe was created.
Parent can be paraphrased as "Bah, get off my lawn", so I'll just take issue with one thing: Back then, we did not have school shootings, knifings, etc.
Wikipedia says you're wrong, listing school shootings in 1902, 1959, 1975, and so on. And I bet there were plenty of knifings too... most likely too many to create a WIkipedia article.
If you go back and read the thread, I was referring to his misunderstanding of Christ's teachings. I didn't make a reference to Genesis.
And since that day, everyone spoke every word literally.
It has to be taken on faith or it'd be unfair as an "open competition" according to the original terms and conditions with Satan after the Adam and Eve apple incident.
*boggle*. Satan and the "Adam and Eve apple incident" :) ?? Awesome! :) And from that you go on to talking about teaching science?
Sigh. The OP probably won't even see the irony.
/* kids are basically taught to do what they're told in matters that are critical (e.g. civics, science), but to be overly-creative in superfluous matters (art, sex, etc). */
First, art and sex are not superfluous. If they are, you need to reassess your life's priorities.
But more importantly, Art, Music, and Drama departments are usually on the "hit list" when schools go looking at their budgets, deciding what to cut. I WISH we were encouraging more kids to be overly-creative in those so-called superfluous matters, because those art kids end up being the philosophers of your generation. If you haven't noticed, Art, Music, Literature, Drama are all bastions of "liberal democratic thought" and are thus on the chopping block, just like STEM. Both foster unfavorable "group think."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com... Science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
If Christ turns water into wine, does the Anti-Christ turn wine into water?
He turns water into Moonshine
Good one. :)
Are you saying that anything not agreeing with your own personal philosophy should be banned from public schools? I say let them all be read.
I agree that science can be (and sometimes is) elevated to the position of religion. But... If there's a maker, and he's vastly superior to mankind, he would likely possess the ability to keep himself from being observed, ever. (Also, how can a religious fantasy be insulted by itself? I got confused by that.)
the US, the explanation is that God isn't allowed to show up in the sky and scream that he's real. It has to be taken on faith or it'd be unfair as an "open competition" according to the original terms and conditions with Satan after the Adam and Eve apple incident.
WTF!!!1BBQ? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I strongly STRONGLY doubt most Christians believe anything remotely of the sort. That sounds like some sort of evangelical TV church rubbish more than anything that actually exists within any real study of Christianity.
It's a lot simpler with Buddhists. Everything doesn't actually exist in the first place, lol. It's hard to prove or disprove that but some science supports it.
Except it doesn't, that's an interesting thought experiment but ultimately worthless.
The argument that "some science supports it" devolves to:
"The universe is imaginary. Look at my compelling/suggestive evidence, which I took with this telescope, and thermometer."
"But if your right, the telescope and thermometer don't really exist, and the measurements you allege you took with them are imaginary too. So what does that prove exactly? Sweet fuck all.
Anyone who picks up a fossil and calls it the end-all evidence just because they're touching it clearly hasn't expanding their thinking enough to examine the true nature of physics and matter and space and reality.
Picking up a fossil and using it to make observations about the universe has a history of generating useful hypotheses to predict the outcome of future events. Sure it requires as pre-supposition that we assume the universe follows objectively observable rules. So be it.
Imagining the universe is a computer simulation or imaginary or spontaneously came into being 8 seconds ago may not be disprovable, but its not useful either, except to amuse stoners while they navel gaze.
Teaching it is fine, in a philosophy context. But its not science.
It's not a scientific theory at all, and it's not saying you can't ask questions. Who says science even has the ability to have all the answers? Because, if science can't ever get us all the answers, then there's something else...
Great, a map! Everyone will have something to do during the Obama economy (hunt down and harass their political opponents). Forward!
It's not like there will be any pesky jobs getting in the way! Finally, priorities.
I do not see the problem with "public" money via vouchers going to schools that teach this subject matter. The parents have decided that they want their kids in these types of schools and either agree with or are willing to accept that creationism is also taught there. The problems the liberals have with vouchers is that it takes the decision making process out of government and union hands. The whole God thing is just a red herring.
Show me where those things are in the new testament.
Because, if science can't ever get us all the answers, then there's something else...
And that "something else" should not be taught in science class. It should be taught in the "something else" class.
Besides, no-one can ever get us all the answers. The Universe does not exist for the convenience of people. It's extremely likely that we'll never understand many things about the Universe, and falling back on silly fantasies is an infantile response to the great mysteries of the Universe.
Are you saying that anything not agreeing with your own personal philosophy should be banned from public schools?
Of course not. You can teach the Bible, the Torah, the Q'ran in a comparative religion course in a school... that's fine.
Just not in science class or outside the proper context of a comparative religion class.
Christianity, or any religion for that matter, does not have to be incompatible with scientific reason
I disagree. Ultimately, at their cores, every religion is incompatible with science because every religion claims to derive its legitimacy from an omnipotent, omnicient, always-correct supernatural being (or maybe a bunch of such supernatural beings.)
Such an assumption is directly at odds with science, which at its core believes that natural phenomena all have natural causes that can be used to derive theories that make falsifiable predictions.
I find science so much more compelling than religion is that it actually works. Scientific progress has enriched humanity immensely. Religious progress? Not so much.
Thing is, science itself is being elevated to the position of religion
No, not at all. Inasmuch as I "believe" in anything, I believe in science because it actually works. When I get on plane, I'm pretty confident that Bernoulli got it right and that the engineers who built the plane have solid scientific reasons to believe it will fly.
I would certainly not get on a couple of two-by-fours and be flung off a mountaintop just because some religious leader had "blessed" the two-by-fours and assured me that by the grace of God [sic] they would fly.
Show me where those things are in the new testament.
Burning witches: Revelation 21:8 "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Owning slaves: 1 Timothy 6:1-2 "Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them." and also Ephesians 6:5: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ."
Gawd, the Internet makes things easy. :)
Education is controlled at the state level because they are supposed to experiment, with the best rising to the top.
"Experiment" meaning yes, some will fail.
Does anyone say "I hope our schools are as good as Tennessee or Louisiana"? Of course not. In that sense the experiment is proving out.
Just because it's not fast enough for you, doesn't mean it's not working.
Democracy is a bitch.
-Styopa
MAP
LA and TX... Correlation isn't causation, but damn!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I know that there isn't really any way to expose it on this scale, but teachers where I live usually either skip the origins section of the text book or openly flaunt evolutionary theory. They all seem to operate from a mild martyr complex.
Neither is Alaska.
Also, There is no reason to use 'an' when saying 'an US territory.'
signature is pants
Neither is Alaska.
Also, There is no reason to use 'an' when saying 'an US territory.'
And it is unnecessary to capitalize a word following a comma.
I'm struggling to figure out what teaching it had to do with my understanding of science? Creationism isn't science. I consider myself a Christian but I do not ever conflate matters of historical faith with how fast carbon decays or how electrons move or how likely the next jet I'm on is to fall out of the sky.
Knowledge of the bible has precluded rational scientific theory in exactly none of the self-professed religious people (e.g. Christians, Jews, Catholics, etc.) I've ever known.
Ultimately, at their cores, every religion is incompatible with science because every religion claims to derive its legitimacy from an omnipotent, omnicient, always-correct supernatural being (or maybe a bunch of such supernatural beings.)
This is not universally true. It's nearly true for Aberhamic religions, but there are a lot more religions than that. Buddhists don't even believe in a god, and certain sects of Hindus believe that their gods are symbols of aspects of reality and ideas can actually be adapted and changed.
You, like so many fanatically-militant Atheists out there, seem to think that all religions are exactly the same as the wacko Christians of the USA. Wake up and travel a bit and actually talk to people. You will find that there are a great number of people who believe in god or spirituality to some extent, and who also fully understand and accept the scientific method. Many people can and do believe things relating to the spiritual realm which are not in conflict with science in any way - they simply exist in a conceptual domain outside of questions we can try to answer with science.
It's divisionists like you who are the real problem. People who believe in things which you don't don't have to be your enemy you know.
It doesn't matter that much if people are confused about the origin of species. It matters a great deal more if they are confused about the origin of wealth, and unfortunately thousands of tax payer funded schools teach the equivalent of economic creationism.
Next step should be history course: God created the universe in 6 day and then rested the 7th day...
(I'm from Louisiana) If you look at the correction at the bottom of the article, Louisiana and Tennessee just look really bad because they appear to have put a bullet point over every public high school in the two states, which probably isn't an accurate representation of the distribution of ignorance. People in the bigger cities, yes, even this far south, tend to be more worldly than out in the boonies (except in Shreveport! They're different up there!). And using the word "education" is a stretch for some of these places. If they teach ID as well as they teach literacy, human civilization has little to fear.
Anyone notice the two states with the most dots rank 41 and 49 on the list of states ranked by average IQ? Coincidence? I think not.
If a person has the option to reduce their tax burden by instead giving that money to some private party, then the argument of whether it is private money or state money is simply a matter of semantics. No one in this thread has made the claim that private parties shouldn't be allowed to give their money to these organizations, but when that donation triggers a tax benefit, then that donation clearly effects the state's bottom line. I would think that this is glaringly obvious, regardless of whichever "ilk" one may belong to. Or are you deliberately trying to obfuscate the discussion?
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Almost all the publicly funded schools teach that this is a democratic republic with three independent branches of government that provide checks and balances to protect our constitutional rights. Given how laughably provably untrue that is, the Creationism is a relatively minor problem.
"disproves"
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
If otherwise rational adults can be conned in to buying that an omnipotent wizard 6000 years ago created the entire universe from nothing and now needs their tithe to fund his church, how do you expect children to be able tell how idiotic that is?
I hope you are right. Even the teacher who teaches creationism as truth and questions specific elements of evolution at least teaches children to not believe everything you are told, and some of those kids are going to start asking questions about creationism.
The worst is if the teacher doesn't question evolution at all, but just dismisses it or ignores it. "It's just a theory." And doesn't even bother to try to tear it down.
But, the New Testament doesn't really go into the creation of species, so Christians default to the Old Testament.
Absent from your 1-sided post is any sense of the multiple errors and outright lies that glut teaching life-by-incremental changes. If you wanna call it "creationism," you wanna slap a "religion" label on it when the real religion is the state religion of atheistic humanism. How about these guys are merely teaching the facts of how things really work?
Cranky educator.
But, the New Testament doesn't really go into the creation of species, so Christians default to the Old Testament.
The Old Testament doesn't go into the creation of species either. It says that God made animals. It doesn't say how.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I'm not a creationist, but I live in a red state, so I know enough of them to tell you their answer will be "But they're still bacteria". They won't believe it's evolution, until they see a bacterium evolve into something like a human.
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
Just because Islam is a particularly vile and disgusting religion doesn't mean we shouldn't rebut Creationists. We have time and energy to oppose Islamic fundamentalists as well as Christian ones, you know.
It's that kind of attitude that would have us treat papercuts before gun shot wounds in Emergency rooms!!!
then you are supposed to be teaching the scientific method (the core of "science") and things that have been learned and proven using the scientific method.
That's fine, as long as you realize that there are limits to how provable evolutionary science is under the classical "hypothesis-test-theory" scientific method we are teaching the kids. "Evolution" is not a single, clean, well-tested theory like "universal gravitation." It's a broad field of inquiry. We can do some predictable tests on either end (we can predictably mutate viruses, and predictably breed larger animals). But as far as I'm aware, we've never so much as synthesized even a single-celled organism from "primordial soup," much less grown it into a donkey by applying some well-tested formula.
For contrast, relativity is a theory that we can test, and although it has limits, we can predictably use it to do useful things like calibrating our GPS satellites. We can't do that with protozoa-to-mammal evolutionary theory, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit that it has gaps and limitations. Teach evolution, but teach it for what it is: a best-available composite model compiled from an entire field of investigations and discoveries, with lots of "we suspects" and "we're not sures." If we teach children to believe in the "Gospel of Evolution," like it's some kind of unerring, unassailable single Truth, handed down in its pure and unalterable form by the Gods of Science, then we are cutting off honest inquiry just as surely as a preacher who tells them that they will definitely burn in hell if they don't confess that the universe was conjured out of nothing exactly 6,000 years ago.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Such conclusions are drawn only from hand-picked evidence, that conveniently ignores anything which does not fit the preconception that creation happened. Not terribly unlike moon landing hoax advocates, actually.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unfortunately, the US's first major "nation building" failure might be said to have occurred after the civil war... We defeated the insurgency; but never really managed to rebuild a functional society in the southern provinces. If subsequent events are any guide, we may just suck at dealing with religious zealots with shitty human rights records.
Oh, come.
Surely any society that can produce John Carmack can't be all bad.
No, they pick up a fossil and say "this must be the sole explanation that does not rely on introducing multiple additional non-testable hypotheses"
I'd like to see the tests for leading hypotheses on the origins of life. Not a toxic pool of amino acids, but life. If you're only going to teach what you can test, there's a lot that shouldn't have been in my biology book.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Throwing invalid and in many cases demonstrably false claims at students who don't have the background to see the invalidity is ludicrous.
But the real world throws-out false and misleading claims all the time. If we don't teach students how to think critically, how to weigh evidence-backed claims against claims based solely on authority, culture, religion, etc., than how are students ever supposed to gain the skills required to make reasoned choices when encountering conflicting 'facts' for the first time?
I mean, why single science out? Why not teach Holocaust denial in history class? After all, wouldn't that challenge students too? Perhaps you could also teach 2+2=5 and French verb conjugation in English class.
I dearly hope schools teach Holocaust denial in history class, and the conjugation of French verbs in English class. Examining the reasons why Holocaust denial persists against overwhelming evidence to the contrary can teach far more about why the Holocaust happened in the first place than any mere regurgitation of the historical facts involved. In the same vein, comparing and contrasting English verb conjugation against the French equivalent can serve as a stepping-stone to understanding how language actually works, which can in turn lead to a whole host of fascinating ideas you might never have even imagined existed otherwise. So yes -- I do hope schools are teaching exactly these kinds of things.
Schools are supposed to teach science, like any other subject, to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Teaching students that somehow just because someone calls some nonsense claim a "theory" is not teaching at all.
You're talking about teaching science instead of religion in the classroom; what I'm suggesting is that we'd be better off if we simply taught the scientific method instead. Ultimately, I don't believe that science lies only in facts like the weight of an electron, or the density of water at one atmosphere, or concepts like the Theory of Evolution. At least as I understand it, what science is truly about is a way of looking at the world around us, thinking about how that world is actually put together, and then testing those thoughts to see if there's any evidence to support them. I think if you can teach core concepts like that to students, and get them to understand what it really means, than you'll have armored those students against the myriad of dogmatic 'truths' the world is all too likely to throw at them.
Yeah cos it's not like there's anything wrong wih beginning a sentence with "And".
ever used "--" in a conversation?
Huh? The universe being created implies a creator, which is not a simple solution as it leads to the question of where did the creator come from? With the simplest solution that the creator must of had a creator which leads to... Might just as well say it's turtles all the way down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
But those leading the 'Christian faithful' in states where these arguments are happening seem to have no understanding of what they claim to follow, nor how to actually live the examples their scriptures describe. What happens is that wanabee religious leaders learn all the political and power grabbing techniques, almost subliminally, since this is the shorter route to their 'pastor dream', and effectively bypass the hard work involved in actually internalising the spiritual discipline that should lie at the heart of a true spiritual faith. Then, of course, they cannot translate the abstract concepts and principles described into modern language and conceptual frameworks, and are left just spouting the external form of the words in their scriptures with no real understanding. This is tragic, especially in Christianity where there is a clear illustration of this problem, how it unfolds, and the natural egotistical reaction of those in power when faced with someone who actually understands what the scriptures are there to teach... and if you have a Bible to hand you can hardly miss it, since it's repeated four times in four different accounts at the start of the New Testament. How organised religion can make the same mistakes over again is an almost comical picture of precisely what the core of Christianity is meant, in part, to teach against. It's amazing how the faith, so distorted as it is, can still support many in their lives even still.
My understanding and point of view (with a background in maths and logic and a passion for physics, computers and internal martial arts) make the lessons of scripture/spiritual writing, whether Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Vedic and Taoist, to be important and logical consequences of the maths and science we have discovered, explained insightfully in a way that contemporaries of the authors of these teachings would have a good chance of understanding. I have yet, in my studies (and I am rather thorough and minimalist about what I do and do not assume), to find a single teaching that, given a suitable interpretation, does not make proper sense in light of modern scientific discoveries. I just wish others would see it that way.
John_Chalisque
It's more orthogonal to science than incompatible. They are about different things.
There are of course the "if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" idiots that try to pretend that just about any organised group of humans is a religion. Then there's the utter pricks that compare a field of science to a cult and then do a bait and switch, pointing out the faults of a cult instead of the field of science. Give such types a huge advertising budget or patronage of a major media tycoon and we get to hear about it as if it's not isolated cranks.
That's not evolution. Evolution is observed by microbiologists and others every day. You've just set up an unrealistic strawman up and stuck a label on it as if it's the only case. What motivated you to do it and why should we take your word on anything after such an attempt at manipulation?
Oh come on now - you are not thirteen years old are you? There's no excuse for such shit.
That's EXACTLY where this young Earth creationist bullshit comes from. Direct from the merchant in the temple Christianity-Lite franchises. Buy now to save your soul.
Now that's just shifting the goalposts. Even 'flu season proves it for all practical purposes.
Mendel knew the difference between his science and religion and was probably more pious than any reader here. That's the sort of person you are calling a liar.
That's a terrible and inaccurate example
yep.
but it was supposed to illustrate the idea.
It more illustrated your misconceptions about evolution than holes in evolution.
. Fish suddenly lay eggs an the male mutates at the same time to know to fertilize them remotely?
Nope. That's not even slightly how it works. It's not like sperm and eggs suddenly popped into existence and the male fish suddenly had to instantly know what to do.
Sperm as it happens are very ancient and span the animal and plant kingdom.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
(Uhm... that's all I wanted to say)
Your second quote is from Timothy though, and as regular Slashdot readers know, anything Timothy writes can be safely ignored as drivel...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's strange how they cannot believe in evolution because they cannot see it, but they can believe in a god that they are sure they will never see alive.
Meh. I was brought up Jewish, so to me the entire New [sic] Testament is a bizarre acid trip anyway. :)
At their core, Buddhism and Hinduism are equally incompatible with science because they posit the existence of supernatural beings or unprovable things like reincarnation.
I don't deny that a great many religions people fully accept the scientific method. They just put aside their religions when they do that, and I have no problem with that.
I would no more want Buddhism or Hinduism taught in a science class than Christianity.
No, not at all. Islam is a huge problem in large swaths of the world. Luckily for us in North America, it is not yet as big a problem (though we have to be vigilant) so it makes perfect sense to spend some energy countering the Creationists.
*whoosh*
You need to consider the possibility of fraud
Ok, so we need to consider the possibility of fraud.
The key question with fraud is what's the incentive to commit fraud? With climate issues, we have trillions of dollars at stake from the fossil fuel industries and infrastructure to a variety of publicly funded "green" policies and rent seeking.
What stakes are present with evolution that would provide incentives to commit fraud? I just don't see it.
Moving on, we have copious evidence from many different fields, plenty which can be collected by the casual observer, which demonstrate various features of evolution. You don't have to depend on the authority of others like you do with some areas of climatology (particularly, paleoclimate studies). I don't have to quote papers or percentage of scientists who believe certain things. I can merely just look at the fossil record or breed plants and animals and see for myself hard evidence for evolution. I can purchase, should I be ambitious enough, equipment to study evolution in microbes or fruit flies, for example.
I can travel to other places in the world and see, as Darwin did, a vast amount of evidence for evolution, or merely surf Wikipedia for the same effect.
Finally, it is just technically harder to commit large scale fraud in evolution-related fields than it is for climate research. There are plenty of examples of fraud, they're just all smale-scale and inconsequential, such as the Piltdown Man. One would have to orchestrate across many disciplines.
While if one wants to adjust historical and prehistorical climate estimates, one merely needs to attack a group of at most a few dozen climatologists who actually do that sort of research and are already beholden via funding and reputation. In particular, there is a ready vehicle for such things, the IPCC reports on climate change which provides a ready vehicle for filtering climate research in a fraudulent way.
As long as Louisiana schools are teaching it using Louisiana tax money why should I care? I'm in Maryland. Let 'em waste their money any way they see fit.
And sorry, but religion has no place whatsoever in the public school system, so I am fully supportive of schools that ban citation of Bible verses in school, just as I'd support the banning of teach of Torah, Qu'ran, or whatever in the public school system outside of a comparative religion course.
I disagree. It does have a place in public schools, even outside a comparative religion class, just not in science class. A proper western civilization class, ancient history class, medieval history class, or humanities class should also be bringing up the major religions of the period as it adds to the understanding of the period. Take medieval European humanities, most of the great works of art, architecture, and literature from that period were inspired by or patroned by Christianity (Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox), and don't forget the Moorish influence in the Iberian peninsula or the Norse influences in northern Europe.
Time to offend someone
But as far as I'm aware, we've never so much as synthesized even a single-celled organism from "primordial soup,"
There is a difference between abiogenesis and evolution.
Time to offend someone
Science states that matter cannot just appear out of nowhere,
Science states no such thing.
Matter can and does spontaneously appear out of nowhere. Any more strawmen for us to knock down?
It's just one school issue... not all of them. For instance, I live in the northeast. No creationism taught here. OTOH, the liberal nirvana of the People's Republic of Connecticut goes too far the other way. Take US History as an example. Non-exceptional students get taught US History in two blocks. The first block, the era of small government in the US is taught in 8th grade. It is taught largely as a fairy tale. I've read the book, cover to cover. It's slanted in too many ways to mention. It has ridiculous sidebars - with extraneous and/or irrelevant topics in US History put there to be "politically correct."
Meanwhile, the era of big government, Reconstruction through Today is taught in 11th grade. The focus of this book is things like the robber barrons, with little to no acknowledgement of the standard of living those "robber barrons" brought to the US. It shimmies right up to the notion that WWII for the US was started because the US cut off exports of oil and steel to Japan, instead of the fact that the Japanese bombed pearl harbor. The book glosses over the battles in the Pacific, and instead concentrates on the internment of Japanese Americans and the "questionable" decision to nuke Japan.
I insisted that both of my daughters take AP US History in high school so that they learn the entire history in one year, one devoid of this kind of historical revisionism that our school system foists on our children. Sadly, most of the students get the slanted version, and think that its reality. I doubt Slate will do an article on that, or the hundreds of other things I saw happen on my 9 years on the local board of education.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Sorry but why is creationism something that shouldn't be taught?
Creationism should not be taught in science class because it is not science.
It can be taught in a class on mythology. Or comparative religion. Just not in a science class.
Has it been disproven?
It's not science, so it's neither provable nor disprovable. You can't disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Great Green Arkleseizure or ancient Egyption creation myths. Should those be taught in science class?
As such it's still valid to teach it as a possibility
No, it's not. Science class is for teaching scientific theories, not creation myths.
Once you start banning ideas and theories from being taught you go down the path of censorship and book banning.
So it's OK to teach about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Great Green Arkleseizure, etc? Or are you one of those steekin' censors?
The problem is that you are assuming that the creator is subject to causality. It's possible that the "creator", which could just be a physical process and not an imaginary person, exists in a universe external to ours in which questions of what caused what and who created who are meaningless because time does not exist.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
"dehumanizing"
Abortion. Dehumanizing the baby inside. And a de facto sacrament of the Progressive Movement. When the progressive left stops dehumanizing babies, so they can kill them, let me know, and we'll talk about how "name calling" doesn't dehumanize anyone.
Posting AC IS cowardly.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
First, art and sex are not superfluous
Compared to civics and STEM, they are.
Certainly sex and art provide a richer and more soul-fulfilling part of our lives, but what good are they if you're locked up in a fascist dictatorship because your forebears were too busy chasing sex and art to pay attention to the theft of their liberties?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Creationism shouldn't be taught not because it may be false but because it is not verifiable with evidence that we can examine today, like evolution seems to be.
Even worse: creationism is not falsifiable, a crucial feature of any scientific theory.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Well... creation *may* be falsifiable... it just may not be terribly practical to try and do so.
I mean, assuming that the biblical account of creation were true, then man is supposedly at the summit of it all, and it stands to reason that nothing could ever really happen which would successfully annhilate mankind forever, since that would leave the universe without mankind to steward it. Therefore, if *ALL* of humanity were ever wiped out, and one did not actually face any supposed judgement day in the hereafter, then it's fairly hard to argue that the biblical account of creation has been shown to be false. The fact that nobody would be around to see it or appreciate it afterwards doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been disproven... and if some other species on earth rises up through evolution and develops intelligence (or an alien species equally unrelated to mankind), and they discover our existence and our beliefs through archeological research, they could realize that the notion we had was untrue because we were all wiped out.
Notwithstanding, if a person ends up actually facing judgement day after supposedly dying, then that experience would probably lend a lot of credibility to the whole concept for that particular person as well.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The thing is that it is apparently impossible to say anything about where the universe came from, at least from a scientific view point. The idea of some God[s] creating the universe for the reasons that most religious people put forward just seems so ridiculous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
As the post below said, teaching creationism in science class = child molestation.
I got modded into oblivion for echoing Richard Dawkins' statement that teaching religion in schools is child abuse, in the last thread that brought up the subject.
How is it that you're at +4?
Other modern translations: Ephesians: http://www.biblegateway.com/pa... Timothy: http://www.biblegateway.com/pa... The passage in Timothy is telling Christians to not complain, and to act in humility, even when they're being oppressed. The passage in Ephesians is saying the same thing. Here's the thing: Read 1 Peter 2:13: http://www.biblegateway.com/pa... which tells Christians to obey the law. In the old days, the law allowed for slaves; in the present day, it doesn't. The point is to always obey the law. As for Revelation: Many down-to-earth Christians believe it cannot be interpreted correctly in the present day. Some believe it is talking about the past; some believe it is a prophesy of things to take place in the future. No one who's emotionally healthy believes it's a literal book. Additionally, all that passage is implying is that (1) there is a creator, (2) he doesn't like those personality traits, (3) people with those traits are not going to be saved from [either the Earth's eventual destruction or "hell", I'm not quite clear on that].
I appreciate that you feel that way. However, I said "be banned from" (read: banned from discussion outside of theology class) and not "not be taught in".
And that "something else" should not be taught in science class. It should be taught in the "something else" class.
Fair enough. Then science classes should always teach that science may not hold every answer to every thing.
Besides, no-one can ever get us all the answers. The Universe does not exist for the convenience of people. It's extremely likely that we'll never understand many things about the Universe
We agree.
falling back on silly fantasies is an infantile response to the great mysteries of the Universe.
Correct, iff the preferred "fantasy" isn't the ticket to an "afterlife". Some bet one way; some bet the other.
He didn't preach hate. Some people pretend he did and put convenient words in his mouth. I'm NOT doing that. We don't know what he said on the topic, and I'm pissed off about various Go-bothering merchants in the temple telling me that he hates poor people etc.
Yes, you can just merely look at the fossil record which you've collected completely by yourself, and radiocarbon dated completely by yourself, and identified the fossils completely by yourself, etc.
You can collect fossils yourself. You don't have to verify everyone else's fossils. While you can't measure your very own global mean temperature for 351 AD.
Anyway, keep up your accusations of fraud. People will remember those for a long time. I think you're absolutely right to accuse climate scientists of fraud, but you need to accept that evolutionists have fraudulently scammed the public just like those fraudulent scamming paleoclimatologists.
I sense I've struck a nerve somehow. I also forgot two more signs of a scam. First, You have to act now. Despite knowing that global warming acts over centuries with at best modest effects, we are told that we need to act now.
And then there's the games played with "extreme weather" and the term, "climate change". The former is just an easy confirmation bias for any funny weather. Something weird or bad happens, somehow it can magically be tied into global warming. It's an easy means to generate news for global warming and keep it in the news.
Then there's the preference for the ambiguous term, "climate change" over the concrete and scientific term, "anthropogenic global warming". And considerable biased political activism historically by leaders of research institutions (James Hansen at NASA's GISS and Phil Jones at the Climate Research Unit at the UK's University of East Anglia, that's incidentally most of the paleoclimate interpretation in those two institutions).
In other words, I see not only see ripe conditions for the practice of widespread fraud in climate research, but what I consider actual evidence of the practice. I don't have a smoking gun that definitively indicates fraud, but I don't rule it out under the circumstances and I think it would be foolish for anyone to do so without further supporting evidence.
No, I'm saying that their suggestions of a Christian version of an Islamic state with sharia law are in opposition to Christian teachings. The separation of Church and State is one bit of the book they want to ignore in a quest to take over the state. I'm sure you know the sort of extremists I'm referring to and what political party they have been trying to take over since the 1980s.
Please consider what allocating that view to a strawman built in my name tells us about you. It's hard to tell if you are a real person or a cardboard cutout foaming at the mouth character from a Southpark script.
than the impossible task of digging up and radiocarbon dating speleothems from the 350s and analyzing their growth rates.
Which is irrelevant to the argument we were making. Speleothems do not measure mean global temperature.
Khallow knows that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans ten times faster than before the Great Dying has only modest effects.
This assertion is not based on evidence. Nobody was around during the end of the Permian to measure this and compare it to today. Or to tell us whether the degree of CO2 release is as important as is claimed today. Volcanos release a lot of other chemicals, some which are far nastier than CO2 and it may be those other chemicals which triggered the dire effects of the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
Your observation, even if accurate, also tells us nothing about the degree of absolute change. After all, there are faster changes in CO2 levels between the seasons than there are in collective rise of CO2 from year to year. Yet we don't care about those changes because they are reversed over the course of the year.
And I find it interesting how you prove my point by posting something so hysterical and unsubstantiated. Are you shilling for the Koch brothers?
Khallow is so certain of this that he's accusing climate scientists of fraud, apparently including Plass 1956 and Chamberlin 1897 which were presumably just playing games with the ambiguous term "climatic change".
Just because two people use a term doesn't mean that they use the term for the same reasons. Using the term, "climate change" for unspecified changes in climate (in other words, for the situation it should be used for) is a different kettle of fish than using it as a label for a very specific sort of change, namely, human carbon dioxide emissions (and to a lesser extent other greenhouse gas emissions) that happens to increase global mean temperature and a few related effects.
Just like a single fossil isn't sufficient support for evolution, global estimates require measurements at different locations.
And once again, we come to the fundamental different between the two things. A fossil is a direct observation of an organism that made the fossil. Collect enough fossils and you can trace the evolution of the organisms that made them.
The speleothem observation is something that might be relevant to a local temperature measurement or it might not. We don't know since we don't have direct observations of the climate of that time. So we could collect a bunch of such observation from spatial and temporally different points, but we wouldn't know whether we're collecting data that is relevant to the climate estimates we wish to make.
Fossils and oxygen isotopes are both direct observations.
Fossils are direct observations of the organism that made the fossil. "Oxygen isotopes" are the direct observation of a current ratio of oxygen in some geological structure which may or may not have relevance to a particular point or period of local climate in the past.
I think it's foolish to claim that one is directly measuring something climate-related when one has no means to back that claim.
Hopefully you're right to ignore Honisch et al. 2012.
What is there to ignore? Looking at the abstract, they make the claim:
Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistryâ"a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.
It's worth noting that they don't actually have evidence to back the claim of being "unprecedented". The more accurate and honest phrasing would have been that they had been unable to find evidence of similar rapidity of CO2 release in past geological events that they looked at.
For example, an obvious rebuttal is that a fast CO2 emission rate which didn't lead to long term changes in climate probably would not appear in the geological record.
Another issue is diffusion. Even in solid rock, you will have considerable diffusion of the isotopes they measured over the time frame of hundreds of millions of years. There could have been numerous times during the period of the Permian-Triassic extinction event when CO2 emission levels were increasing far faster than present, but due to diffusion, this fine detail would be lost.
Read more than the abstract. In particular, read page 1061 which I already directed you to. The relevant statement is near the end of the page.
Needs a user name and password. I don't have an account on the system.
Looks like I found a copy here.
Recent estimates for the total CO2 release put it at ~13,000 to 43,000 PgC in 20 to 400 ky -- an annual carbon release of ~0.1 to 1 PgC per year [compared with 9.9 PgC in 2008].
Here's the obvious problems with that particular comment. It's an estimate with order of magnitude error right there in time and another significant error in CO2 quantity (with a ceiling of 2 PgC incidentally rather than the 1 PgC claimed in the article). Second, time resolution is at best 20 ky. If a basalt flood eruption dumped 1,000 PcG or more in a single year, we wouldn't know. This ignorance about variability matters because of two factors, first, it probably understates the impact of the eruptions which are thought to have caused this extinction event by a large amount. Huge variability of eruptions would IMHO have created a much more lethal situation globally than even, continuous eruption would have done. Second, it weakens the comparison with human-generated CO2 emissions because those are far less variable.
Third, we don't actually accurately know the amount of CO2 released, because some of it would have been sinked. Or because the estimates are at best poor as I previously noted. We also don't have a good idea what else was released, which might have been more lethal than the CO2 (for example, sulfates or fluorides).
Finally, it's worth noting that even if your assertion is complete and accurate, it would take at minimum a millennium for current rates of CO2 production and 13,000 PgC (the lower bound) to put enough CO2 in the atmosphere to match the impact of this extinction event. The upper bound increases that to over four millennia. We should be able to figure things out long before that happens.
That last part leads to one of my bigger concerns. What is the hurry? Sure, we don't want to run the situation out for a few millennia until we end up in a huge global extinction event. But we can figure things out in far less time than that.
I think this research indicates it's just not ready for making decisions that affect the lives of billions of people. It's an interesting and somewhat plausible story, but there's just too much error and uncertainty.
But we don't even know if we'll have a large fossil fuel economy anywhere in the world by the end of the century.
Actually, the claim that the original manuscripts are inerrant is generally made by unreasonable Christians like YEC. More reasonable Christians realise that there probably isn't really such a thing as "original manuscripts"—at least not one that's easily conceived of—for many of the books in the Bible, so there's nothing "original" that can be inerrant in this sense.
In fact, generally the term "inerrant" is used to separate the wheat from the chaff. The traditional view of scripture is that it is that the process of reception and transmission is as inspired as the original writing—and therefore we can see (in real time by comparing manuscripts) that God doesn't care about the precise words and all the gnarly points, so the word "inerrant" is inapplicable.
That view has been lost to some extent in the protestant West, especially in America; but it is returning particularly in communities were a great many people had previously lost trust in the Bible but kept it because it was a part of their tradition, but also amongst evangelicals who realise that the scientific evidence for evolution is so strong that Genesis 1 and 2 can't possibly mean that.
Look out!
Species adapt to climate change by migration and/or evolution, both of which have rate limits past which extinctions become more likely. In light of this, why should the total be more important than the rate?
Because otherwise we would have huge extinctions ever spring and fall when CO2 is shifted into and out of deciduous plant leaves in the Northern hemisphere.
And keep in mind that we don't know what the actual rate of change was from year to year for the various extinction events discussed. Those studies you cited discussed total changes, couching in the language of average rate of change.
My opinion is that the Great Dying involved huge variability, perhaps from year to year. When you take two CO2 estimates, one at the beginning and one at the end, and draw a line straight through that, you are missing completely the important details of what happened.
I think this is quite relevant because I don't actually see a significant amount of stress put on species diversity from current AGW. My view is that most species (including plants and corals) are mobile enough to adapt to the current and near future projected rates of change. Habitat destruction is a different story, but even then, we're not comparing as you put it, "apples and oranges" when we compare a modern species extinction event with a prehistorical one.
Just suppose the national academies are right to say that we should try to limit global warming to "only" 2C. All else being equal, warming is proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. Here are three different ways to achieve that. Notice that the longer we wait to address the CO2 problem, the steeper our emissions cuts will have to be.
Note that you actually present no way to achieve reduction of CO2 emissions since the graphs in question just describe what would happen, if you did manage to find a way to reduce CO2 by the rates specified.
They also completely ignore why CO2 emissions occur. I could come up with similar graphs while trying to lose weight. Cutting a few percent of my calorie intake each year sounds like a great idea, until you pass the point of starvation and die as a result. There are huge costs associated with attempting to reduce CO2 emissions - especially if it is not universally embraced and someone uses it as a means to surpass everyone else economically.
Also, I think the 2 C set point was deliberately chosen to sell the "we need to act now" story. If instead, you pick 10 C, the PETM level of temperature rise, you can wait significantly longer, especially if, as implied by the recent IPCC report, the temperature sensitivity of CO2 emissions is significantly lower than advertised.
My view is that CO2 emissions fundamentally happen because we are running advanced technological societies and moving billions more into these sorts of societies. That is more than a fair trade for a slightly adverse climate outcome.
If you really are concerned about species extinctions in raw numbers, whether from any sort of climate change or for any other reason, then you need to tackle the real obstacles - habitat destruction and invasive species. If you just care about maintaining viable ecosystems, then it really boils down to habitat destruction. My view is that actually addressing AGW would cause more environmental damage than it fixes. Impoverished people don't care about the environment.
As I predicted, you found a slew of nonsensical reasons to dismiss Honisch et al. 2012.
You were wrong Those reasons weren't nonsensical and my post made it clear why. I don't get why you think quoting a paper which simply can't show what you want it to show somehow makes your argument. It's like the ritual is more important than the substance.
The Equlilibrium Charney Sensitivity range in the IPCC 2013 report of [1.5, 4.5] C/doubling is identical to that from the 2001, 1995, 1990 IPCC reports
But not more recent reports since.
The Earth System Sensitivity also hasn't changed significantly.
There's a big difference between a measurable quantity and the measurement of that quantity.
Of course, none of that applies to the marine extinction pattern I was trying to get you to recognize, because ocean acidification doesn't depend on climate sensitivity at all.
A "pattern" based on two out of three or more events, let us note. Going back to that Honisch et al. paper, I see a couple of illuminating parts. They mention the Cretaceous asteroid impact. That should have generated a similar ocean acidification event due to the release of large quantities of SO2 from impact with gypsum. But they saw a different marine extinction pattern. Similarly, I see at the top of page 1062 that there is no direct evidence for pH changes at the Permian-Triassic extinction. That weakens your argument a lot when you don't even know if ocean acidification was a relevant factor in one of the two extinctions that are being used as an argument for the danger of ocean acidification.
This paper and your arguments to this point indicate to me that someone has a need to shoehorn the great extinctions of the past into the narrative of "climate change" in the present. I think that's real sloppy. It also fits as weak evidence for my theory that climate-related research is being deliberately biased in the direction of claiming worse AGW effects than actually exist.
When I said we're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans ten times faster than before the Great Dying, you accused me of posting something so hysterical and unsubstantiated and not based on evidence, then asked if I was shilling for the Koch brothers.
[...]
Can we at least agree that there is evidence that we're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans ~10 to ~100 times substantiated published estimates of the rate before the Great Dying?
No. Those rates are not substantiated nor are they actually rates in the sense of an instantaneous change versus time. They have the right dimension values (a quantity per unit time), but they aren't actually measuring what you think they are.
but first I need to see that you're capable of agreeing that this evidence exists
You have a strange idea of what evidence means. Evidence distinguishes between relevant hypotheses (here, between the hypotheses that current CO2 levels are rising faster than during the Great Dying era or that they are not). The study you cite has a number of areas of ignorance, but the critical one for the claim you're trying to make is that they don't actually know the chemistry of climate over the periods in question on short time scales, particularly, the concentration of CO2.
As it currently stands, the primary driver of the Great Dying is thought to be volcanic, mostly due to the basalt flood eruptions that formed the Siberian Traps (a remnant of that activity which currently covers roughly a third of Siberia). What we can observe now about volcanoes is that they are not constant in nature. Even the more steady ones like the Hawaii volcanoes have episodes of higher and lower activity.
So I think it's likely that CO2 emissions (and other chemical emissions such as SO2, H2S, HCl, and HF) during that period of time varied wildly by many orders of magnitude. IMHO that was the global chemical input that life struggled and often failed to adapt to.
That leads to a very different and far harsher climate than today.
Thus, I think it is foolish to claim that this input and its effects can be determined completely merely by estimating the concentration of CO2 before the Great Dying and the concentration after the Great Dying, and drawing a line through those two points.
But from the point of view of providing yet another propaganda story from which to advocate the AGW theory, one doesn't need or want to look any closer at the Great Dying than this superficial analysis.
Okay, so you're obviously not capable of agreeing that this evidence exists.
And I've stated clearly why.
I guess you've gone about as far as you're will to go for now. Till next time.