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Freedom of Information Requests Turn Up Creationist Materials In Schools
An anonymous reader writes: In 2008, Louisiana passed a law that was designed to let teachers introduce creationism into public classrooms alongside evolution. Zack Kopplin, a student at the time, decided to fight the law by sending Freedom Of Information Act requests to the schools, asking for anything mentioning creationism or the law itself. While most ignore him, he has received documents showing a clear anti-science stance from school officials. "In one, which appears to contain a set of PowerPoint slides, there's a page titled "Creationism (Intelligent Design)" that refers students to the Answers in Genesis website, along with two other sites that are critical of that group's position. In another, a parent's complaint about a teacher who presents evolution as a fact is met by a principal stating that 'I can assure you this will not happen again.'"
Where you can get a side of jesus with your chicken sandwich and bash gays at the same time, of course the bible thumpers have their way in districts and states that support it, why is this a surprise to anyone?
Silence is a state of mime.
A generation or two of youth that are prejudiced against scientific understanding. Our future leaders.
I thought Dice saved the flame-baiting articles for Fridays.
'I can assure you this will not happen again.'
Intelligent Design has failed once, and so has Evolution. Of course it won't happen again. The principal who said that may be the only sane person in the universe. We all know that both ID and Evolution are flawed and only theories; they're not law. The obvious and only correct answer is that it (it? what is it?) is a combination of both theories. And I can assure you that this will not happen again -- it was a disaster.
More people need to be treated according to their beliefs, or not treated.
or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Just as real. Perhaps we should agitate for it and show these zealots who cry for fairness what they are really about.
Silence is a state of mime.
... that surveys have found that over 10 percent of the science teachers in the US teach creationism as a valid scientific perspective.
Let me guess, they are mostly in REDneck states.
We have a lot of problems in this country and teaching Stone Age Jewish myth as science is just going to make things worse down the road.
I miss the 1960s and the whole race to the Moon. Science was cool - not just a means to a middle class living.
That such truly stupid people exist isn't scary, but that they might rise above cleaning toilets to become teachers surely is. What a load of dickwash.
Not so crazy about Trudeau after his PEN remarks, but this nails it:
http://stupidevilbastard.com/2006/01/doonesbury_takes_on_creationism/
You have an epidemic of stupidity.
Congratulations, the discourse in your country is being controlled by a bunch of drooling idiots who have decided that no matter the physical evidence, they will simply go "la la la" and continue to say "teh god did it, thank you baby jeezuz".
So you know all those ignorant morons in the Middle East? The ones who want to bring back stoning and women being property? The ones who are such a threat to your freedoms?
Well, those people are your future.
The screeching mob of uneducated Christians in America is no better than the screeching hordes of uneducated Muslims everywhere else in the world.
Congratulations, you have taken a nation at the peak of knowledge and discovery, and allowed yourselves to be taken over by idiots who wish to live in the stone ages and deny the facts of the world around them.
America is a country in decline. A failed empire. Only you're too stupid to know that your future is bleak as long as you're going to have children who have been told that fairy tales are as credible as science.
So why don't you assholes stay in your own country, stop mucking around in world affairs, and shut the fuck up and leave the rest of the world in peace from your stupidity and bullshit?
Fucking nation of morons.
Anything presented in PowerPoint is easy enough to ignore, dismiss, or sleep through.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's funny how atheists act like they value personal choice and learning for yourself, but force their ideals on others more than most. Converting these kids isn't going to save the world. Just leave them be.
In the strict scientific definition, and since we have not seen speciation occur at a macro scale, but only interpret the data to believe that it is the case, it is correct to deny it the status of fact. Of course it is the current consensus BELIEF of all scientists in the field that want to be taken seriously...
are found to sponsoring that belief set for the education of their children.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Fortunately, the bible also contains the solution to this problem:
BURN THEM!!, BURN THEM ALL!!!!
Freedom of Information Requests (In The Southern States) Turn Up Creationist Materials In Schools ...
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons
Diana Was Still Alive Hours Before She Died
Just let hysterical climate change fanatics know that the ambiguous data used for their Most Resplendent Ever-Changing Computer Model is refuted as profane devil-worship, false witness, veneration of icons...whatever the fuck we need to do so they can maybe destroy each other, like reversing the polarity of a sound wave and combining the two...so we can have some damn silence.
Already done that way - Galapagos finches
The general population are not as stupid as Hollywood suggests - people who cannot tell the difference have other things wrong with them as well. Now there are lay preachers who see science as their enemy in increasing the size of their flock (or franchise for the more cynical prosperity worship type) who will PRETEND that science is a rival religion - but once again, many things are wrong with that picture and not just one. If a God is so puny as to be threatened by Mendel (more pious than just about any evangelical) and Darwin then it's not much of a God is it? About 3/4 of the people that refuted the great flood theory of fossils were ordained and they put it down to learning more about God's creation instead of letting it shake their faith. Science plus Religion is like having a hat and a sock and they don't have to fight for space on the same foot or head.
Currently, America has a glut of college graduates. More high school graduates, with only a mediocre understanding of science, is what the economy needs. It will help rebalance the workforce. So, Louisiana, please continue.
I've seen a lot of posts to this that seem to believe that all of America is like this. Let's be clear: this kind of crap is almost exclusively found in the Southeastern US. You don't see this in the Northeast (they believe in science there), you don't see it in California, or in the Pacific Northwest. Occasional pockets in the Midwest also get this batshit crazy, but there's a reason we hear about this for schools in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, etc.
Or, to put it in something that could be a the end of a very (too) honest public service announcement:
"Georgia Public Schools: someone has to build the cars!" (Credit to the show "Squidbillies")
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
You do realize that this sort of thing makes us look like petty, meddling, thought police, don't you?
So, I believe all you have to do is ask an "intelligent design" person why God is creating Drug-resistant Virii, or creating bacteria that doesn't die when you hit it with lysol.
Just ask anyone who works in a hospital. Hospitals are LOSING a battle against infections, because the bugs are getting smarter and tougher versus our ability to kill them.
So; why is God doing that? He's going out of his way to do that, since obviously, it would be heresy to suggest that the bacteria is evolving, right??
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Trying to eliminate a set of knowledge backed up by proofs that has benefited mankind enormously under the guise of following a particular religion's ideas (not all religions mind you) is beyond just stupidity.
This sort of idea of one group trying to force all others into a false belief system is also what was behing the rise of "Kings" and "devine right" of Kings and tyrants.
Any farmer or herder learns about breeding plants or animals: Encourage breeding of things with traits you select, discourage breeding of those without. Find instructions in Genesis 30, if you're religious. Thus, any conservative suggesting that evolution is counter to religion simply doesn't understand what he's talking about - and should be questioned about a lack of faith that God can rack up the molecules and do a near-"perfect break" rather than have to create creatures with design defects.
One might fruitfully discuss and debate sentience and self-awareness, and how humans seem to have made a quantum leap above other animals in that regard (though nature videos and pet lovers continually indicate more levels of intelligence in animals than previously thought). But that's still ongoing natural selection - SOME species was bound to make that leap, and kill off all of its competition, and since we're the ones who are left, it must have been us.
Don't teach either in school. Can't prove creation, can't prove evolution. Scientists GUESS that something they found is a billion years old, but they really don't know, they are just guessing based on a theory that can't be proven, since it would take a billion years to test it.
When I went to school, if I did not believe something, I don't go running crying foul, I just learn it. Don't mean I believe it. People are just scared for some reason of anything to do with religion.
"Several thousand years ago, a tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, these stories wore embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject [of origins]." - Tom Weller, Science Made Stupid
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/07/09/are_cyberbullying_laws_unconstitutional.html
It's either constitutional or it's not. They are not special snow flakes that get to be more equal than other's even if they hold government positions.
While this is worrying, what a lot of people aren't noticing is that this is a good sign. Orthodox Christianity is getting desperate. They're resorting to dirty tactics and forced indoctrination because an educated society has largely realized their little fairy tale is pretty silly. While our initial reaction is to panic over things like this, I look at it as nothing but a drowning man trying to grab onto whatever he can to stay afloat. The truth will win in the end.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
No, the actual problem is that the public school system forces government to make decisions about what is true and what is false. Sometimes government gets it right and sometimes government gets it wrong. Eugenics, forced sterilizations, and racism weren't just widely practiced in the US and Europe, they were justified with scientific results and taught as science in public schools. In particular, many public school textbooks in the US were profoundly racist. Although the goal of having an educated public is a good one, public schools and state-mandated curricula are an instrument of political indoctrination for the ruling classes. In 19th century Germany, for example, the state nationalized Catholic schools because it didn't like what they taught.
It is far better not to seek one absolute truth that government should teach through the school system, but to let parents make their own decisions. Parents will also sometimes get it wrong (as in the case of fundamentalist Christians choosing to teach creationism), but a minority teaching their kids stupid things is less harmful than a government, subject to lobbying and political pressures, imposing a curriculum on an entire state or the nation.
Then it's just fine and dandy, right? Because they're non-white, and hence 'eternal victims'...
But they wouldn't be 'victims' if they lived in their own country, around their own race, would they?
Nothing prohibits God's use of evolution as a means of Creation. After all, scriptures say a day in heaven is like a thousand days on earth, so God could have used evolution to create mankind.
they are the exact same level of stupidity. Just because someone is pathetic enough to actually believe any of them does not make them any less absurd. It only goes to show how big of a moron they actually are.
If anything would shut them up this would. Assuming that they are actually interested in reality, of course.
or are you trying to hide behind a false shield of impartiality to avoid admitting that you are a clueless tool?
It wont be the god they're looking for, Yes I can imagine our world being a petri dish, and I'm very disgruntled about it. :)
Teaching children creationism as fact is no different then lying to them, once you can rationalize lying to kids, you can do anything.
Some people disbelieve in the evolution of the iPhone, they think it was created ! ! !
Google and bing don't help. Google highlights creationist mythology as though it were scientific fact, and bing has the same nonsense cropping up as its first hit. Clearly these mysanthropes have managed to game the search engines, and the search engines can't be bothered to fact-check their own results (or highlighted articles! Come on Google, grow a brain!). A pity they can't use that same intelligence to think their way out of their own ass.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There was a discussion on a particular image site the other day about Bill Nye complaining that creationism is anti-intellectual. What I find ironic is that most people here, and 'scientists' including Nye seem to understand what science is or how it works.
This is science: You perform experiments to confirm or deny that some theory is likely to be generally true, to come up with some level of prediction of how things will play out. It is always possible that it won't play out in a well tested way, but with every successful experiment the chance grows smaller, but never to zero. This is the key, you can't prove that things "are not" or "do not." You can observe, and show that something is, any number of times but not infinity. That, realistically to anyone who can admit the limits of their own knowledge and methodology, is science.
Instead, everyone talking about science believes creationism is wrong because God hasn't been scientifically observed, falsely concluding that this disproves his existence rather than fails to demonstrate it experimentally. Or somehow the fact that some people can come up with the idea of evolution that it must therefore be true if we can argue there's some infinitesimally small chance that it is actually capable of producing the results it has. Nobody here has been standing around for billions of years to observe that.
One last thing... Did the billions of galaxies out there fail to exist 1000 or 2000 years ago because we didn't have the technology or know-how to observe them? Because that is what Nye and this article imply. The unobserved does not exist. Except when it does in the case of evolution or the big bang, because that's the side they've chosen and it's convenient for their argument.
So if Louisiana is going to teach creationism in schools, does that mean they're going to teach calculus in churches?
You don't need to directly observe something in order to prove that it exists. That notion is a load of hooey propagated by someone with no scientific knowledge or experience.
I have never been to New York City. There's a chance that I might never go. But I have seen ample evidence that it exists that I don't need to actually go there to accept as indisputable fact that it is real.
Do you even understand how science works? There used to be ample evidence that Mars moved in a retrograde motion. Evidence doesn't prove anything.
I did not read the article. However, the summary states that the presentation which refers students to the "Answers in Genesis" website also refers them to two sites which are critical of "Answers in Genesis". That seems like a good idea to me.
It is likely that students in Louisiana are going to come across the arguments made by "Answers in Genesis" sooner or later. Don't you think it would be a good idea for them to exposed to those arguments AND the counter-arguments at the same time?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
anti-"god" people are allowed to be anti-god and push their agenda...
yet anti-science people aren't.
Yet, science cannot prove the big bang (at least where all the matter came from - they say it's impossible to just appear out of nowhere on its own)...yet, fail to recognize that a greater being can possibly exist...something even darwin acknowledged...
As bleak as it may seem, I have faith in one thing that will prevent the complete downfall of our economy
Republicans HATE being poor
So as much as they LOVE their conservative values, if their beliefs get in the way of economic growth, you can be guaranteed that the all might dollar will win EVERY time. And, from experience, I also know that they can see the forest for the trees.
It helps keep you out of the hospital.
Not that I don't agree with the general sentiment when it comes to creationists. But it's not like arguments haven't been presented on that score. Sometimes you just gotta be funny.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Smoke more dope and hyperventilate about stuff that isn't really a problem.
Nope - you are making a false distinction here. I can only assume that you don't have any friends who are seriously religious with whom you have discussed the matter; especially for those who grew up outside the faith and later became believers, there is no doubt that they made a decision to live by the new world view which now became the most reasonable to accept. And remember that many many people who are intellectual giants have made that choice - it is a foolish canard that only the intellectually weak are religious.
Your claim that you can make 'tests' in geology is especially interesting. One of the more striking features in geology is the persistence of discordant dates in radioisotope dating; if you use different methods you get dates that do NOT overlap. Because the consensus is so strong that is a 'stoning offence' to seriously question the old earth hypothesis, these are routinely ignored. The alternative - suggested by the trick of offering newly generated rocks from volcanoes that show up as millions of years old when commercially dated - is that it's all actually hogwash. But you just get shouted at for that...
I have to be honest - there are facts that give creationists a hard time. But equally there are facts that give evolutionists a hard time as well. Both sides enjoy pointing out the planks in their opponent's eye. And both have vast amounts invested in being right - because their life choices in far wider areas are often determined by the perceived credibility of these claims: the trope of the fundamentalist kid who rejects his faith because evolution comes to convince him is well founded in reality. Add in the observation that humans usually conform to the dominant world belief when exposed to it over an extended period, it is a surprise that any survive exposure to secular colleges...
Given the absence of test tubes in which geological and palaeontological observations can be recreated to demonstrate that the interpretations made are correct, it is simplistic to categorise evolution and chemistry together as the same sort of science. As someone who started as a STEM student and is now a historian, it makes far more sense to see geology and palaeontology as branches of that arts subject and not 'science'. We historians tell stories based on observations culled from 'sources', both written and archaeological. Ultimately so does evolution and palaeontology.
Parent: "My child done learned something!"
School: 'I can assure you this will not happen again.'
The seas are rising and that the coastal areas will be flooded.
The slant of this article and much of the /. discussion is truly disappointing. As a graduate degree holding scientist, I can tell you that evolution, cosmic origin etc. are all far from decided as the God hating bigots try to proclaim. If you ask any honest scientist on either side of the debate, they will tell you that there are strong arguments on both sides of the debate and to try to shut down the discussion as "case closed" is an intellectually dishonest attempt to shut down further debate, as evidence has been mounting for the last 60 years that Evolution is actually a pretty bad theory and would have been abandoned long ago if not for the fact that the only viable alternative is creation by God (or an extra-dimensional being of unlimited power, a long winded way of saying God) which is an unacceptable option to the Athiests ON RELIGIOUS GROUNDS ONLY and has nothing to do with good science.
A few tidbits for the God hating bigots out there:
Spontaneous generation i.e. life coming from non-living material, was disproved as a theory hundreds of years ago, and we have never been able to observe or create living material from non-living material in the lab or in the universe. Ignore wild haired theories or this scientist trying to get a grant "thinks/says" this or that. Ignore the creation of organic material (lighting bottle experiment), which in reality is inconsequential (take living cells, with nothing but organic material, kill them, shred their structures and then try to get a "simple" living cell to form by whatever means from that soup. It is impossible, and any honest scientist knows this. Something living has never been created from non-living material. This is a simple fact, full stop.
If you review the big bang, as previous commenters have noted, all we know from science is that something infinitesimally small became very hot and expanded very quickly, and now the universe is cooling and slowing. In modern physics we describe this as an explosion, but we don't know for sure what existed at the time before the big bang. However, more and more evidence indicates that there was nothing before the big bang. We now have very solid evidence disproving the infinite expansion/contraction of the universe, as we know mater has a finite lifespan after which it will break down, which disproves that the universe, or it's building blocks have existed forever. We also know from both physics and logic that nothing doesn't explode or create, therefore, we require a source for the big bang that exists outside of the dimensionality of the known universe. Many people have not thought deeply enough to realize that logic dictates a cause and effect. Therefore, whether you want to call it God or an extra-dimensional being of virtually unlimited power, this is the most likely cause of the big bang based on our current knowledge of the universe.
Ah, but it does indeed. It shows that variation does in fact respond to environment. It's only one piece of the puzzle, though. No one claims that the peppered moths, by themselves, prove evolution. There's a lot more to it than that.
Take that variation, for example, and you can link it to speciation - which we can observe today. Heard of 'ring species'? The Larus gulls are several subspecies where variants live in a ring around the Arctic. The Herring Gull in the U.K. can interbreed with the American Herring Gull, and the American can interbreed with the Vega Gull in Russia. And so on, until you come to the Lesser Black-Backed Gull in the Netherlands. It basically can’t breed with the Herring Gull. Hybrids are extremely rare and don't seem to be fertile, like mules.
So, is it a separate species? You could breed it with its relative to the East, and so on. But what if, say, the Vega Gull went extinct? Would you have separate species then?
Now, imagine such variations happening across time instead of (or as well as) space, and you’ve got an idea how species actually do form, instead of the ’saltationist’ strawman that many try to imply.
The thing is, we have so gotten conclusive evidence. Here's one you can partially check on your own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal. Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise?
It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Fossils representing over a dozen separate stages have been found. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.
(Note that some have even cited the ossicles as 'irreducibly complex'. The more central figures of the ID 'movement', like Behe and Shermer, haven't done so... but I suspect that's because they know enough of the detailed fossil record to dissuade them.)
Or, my absolute favorite - the twin nested hierarchies! Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones, see below) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution. (Little-known fact: Linnaeus, who invented the "kingdom, phyla, genus, species, etc." classification scheme for living things, tried to do the same thin
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
because the truth is all there is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Because God is not a repeatable phenomenon but a person who sometimes chooses to intervene, and sometimes doesn't. It's therefore impossible to prove He exists; the best that we can do is engage with the testimonies of today and the past, and decide whether those stories of miracles are best explained by there being a God. For me the resurrection of Jesus remains the most convincing story from the bible; the reestablishment of the state of Israel and its survival in the 1973 war (especially on the Golan Heights where a small unit fought off most of the Syrian army).
However for a 'scientific' demonstration, the work of the Lourdes International Medical Commitee in studying the miracles that do occur at Lourdes and seeing if there is a non-miraculous explanation takes some beating. http://en.lourdes-france.org/d... Enjoy.
Creationism being taught by law is something that can only happen in a theocracy that forces religion on people. Creationism is a purely religious construct with zero scientific underpinning. In any state that has freedom of religion, creationism cannot be mandated to be taught.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Really, all the people promoting the myth that Evolution is "just a theory" have zero understanding of Science. Evolution is a theory in the sense of "model that explains how something works", same as "Theory of Gravity", "Theory of the integer numbers", etc. The word for "speculative explanation" in Science is "Hypothesis".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ok. So what? Now you've cleared the Catholics from the list of non-believers. What's your excuse for the millions of other Xtian sects? What is the excuse you use for your particular sect? See, you thought you were coming into this thread with some "insightful" gotcha but all you did was show your ignorance all in the name of pedantry.
To put it bluntly but NO, I don't think it is a good idea at all. Should we teach Aether Theory in Physics class (instead of history) or make sure that each one of our aspiring doctors knows the proper way to leech a patient so as to balance all the humors? It's crackpottery and it really just shouldn't be given any attention at all. Well I take that back- it should be used as a warning to others on how to spot an insane person.
It wouldn't at all. He's just sumdumass.
I WOULD smoke dope but it's illegal thanks to asshats like you!
You were taught that abiogenesis exists as a hypothesis (note, not a theory, and that scientists are actively researching it.
If you want to convince me otherwise, I'm afraid you'll need to de-anonymize and specify the school and timeframe involved.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Then parents can choose whatever school and curriculum they want for their children.
Just make sure that you tell kids as much as possible about evolution and creationism. If they are informed, then they can see through the BS and make a good informed choice. If you try to hide things, well... then you'll end up with dumb people who can't make good choices.
Oh, wait... that's what we have already.
Is it impossible for God, the God described in the Bible, to exist?
If you can engage in an honest debate, I will. Let's set a time limit of 3 days. Let me know if you need more time.
BTW, the only evidence for evolution is micro-evolution, which is called adaptation. Darwin's finches and the stickleback fish are both examples of adaptation.
There is no evidence for these five:
Anyone who is an evolutionism proponent, can you supply empirical evidence or evidence supported by the scientific method to support any of the five?
Two questions, I'd like to hear from someone who professes to be atheist or an evolutionist.
Just look at the "history" books they use in schools and how twisted and wrong even more current events are described in there. Some backwoods conservatives insisting on teaching creationism is the least of our concerns here! There is generally too much influence from the pseudoreligious fundamentalists on public life.