2016's First Batch of Anti-Science Education Bills Arrive In Oklahoma (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It's only January and we're already seeing the first anti-science education bills of 2016 going through the Oklahoma legislature. The state's lawmakers fight over this every year, and it looks like this year won't be any different. "The Senate version of the bill (PDF) is by State Senator Josh Brecheen, a Republican. It is the fifth year in a row he's introduced a science education bill after announcing he wanted 'every publicly funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution.' This year's version omits any mention of specific areas of science that could be controversial. Instead, it simply prohibits any educational official from blocking a teacher who wanted to discuss the 'strengths and weaknesses' of scientific theories.

The one introduced in the Oklahoma House (PDF) is more traditional. Billed as a 'Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act' (because freedom!), it spells out a whole host of areas of science its author doesn't like: 'The Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics, and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.'"

Comments

Yes i like to discuss creation vs. evolution

[drolli]

Creation: does not make falsifiable predictions (since for every lack of evidence you can always claim that "the creator decided not to do it that way" -> is no scientific theory

Evolution: makes falsifiable predictions -> is a scientific theory.

Discussion over.

WRONG - Incorrect - Lie

[Tulsa_Time]

Oklahoma is 29th in state GDP.

It's the Sorting Hat

[goombah99]

The sorting hat is just putting these people in Slytherin.

Google "Nixon's southern strategy" for some insight on this sorting hat. over the last century the parties have nearly flip-flopped in role. It used to be that the party that became the Democrats were the party of the "evil" southern slave holders and republicans, the party of abe lincoln, were busting that up. This continued through reconstruction. Then there came a gradual flipflop culminating in FDR amd the rise of a liberal dominated government. But even their the south was still democratic. It was Nixon who set the stage to flip the south to the republicans and chose his platform accordingly. THe democratic party went into decline as there was an anti-liberal backlash against the vision of humphrey and mondale. The Democrats didn't recover until clinton, when the party swung the party away from liberal and to the center. Or to be more correctly, this change happened in that era, and clinton rode the wave.

So people do sort themselves regionally. The parties that adopt those regions behave like them. the platforms shift accordingly.

Re:That's reasonable

[serviscope_minor]

theory of gravity (General Relativity) has far more weaknesses

Such as?

So far general relativity has failed none of the tests thrown at it. This means it is not weak and well largely never be overturned. That's because it produces observably correct answers and so those bits are correct and will remain so.

It's known to be incomplete, much like Newtonian machanics. That just means it's incomplete and won't be overturned any more that Newtonian mechanics have been overturned.

So far the main missing thing is detection of gravitational waves. This is not yet lacking to the point where people have doubts about relativity being correct. It's still well within the problems of detecting very, very weak effects.

Re:Dogma is dogma...

[serviscope_minor]

You are confusing dogma with facts.

The earth is approximately spherical. This is not dogma, it's been observed. Anyone questioning this and for example postulating that it is flat over a large scale is generally considered a fool.

People who demand Darwinist macro evolution theory is fact

It is a fact. It's been observed to happen in the lab up to and including speciation of macroscopic organisms. Secondly, the tree of life has been arrived at by two completely independent means and yields almost identical results. That is overwhelmingly strong evidence and combined with everything else is enough to raise it to the level of a fact.

In this case, I mean MACRO evolution

That's a term made up by creationists. There is no micro and macro evolution---there is only "evolution".

Charles Darwin was very clear about this weakness of his theory and gave examples which disqualified the theory.

No he didn't. There is no evidence that disqualifies evolution. If there was, it wouldn't be a great theory and we'd be looking for something better. There are things he couldn't explain but that doesn't mean they can't be explained now.

Scientific discovery did not stop 150 years ago.

Only someone woefully ignorance of science would think that. We'e filled in a lot of the gaps. We know much more now about how evolution occurs and the mechanisms by which it occurs. We have much much more data and have better predictions from the theory.

But the principle of evolution and the consequent apearance of new species is a fact.

If there is not a God, you'll never know.

I know there is no god to the same extent that I know there are no unicorns (if you like I'll describe my unicorn theory to you). Do I have incontravertible proof either way? Nope, but neither seem particularly likely, so I shall carry on with my life as if unicorns (and god) don't exist.

Oh and for fun: first define "god".