Texas Bill Outlaws Discrimination Against Creationists In Academia 1251
ndogg writes "There is a Texas bill, HB 2454, proposed by Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler, that will outlaw discrimination against creationists in colleges and universities. More specifically, it says, 'An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.'"
Republican style PC (Score:1, Interesting)
So what, is this the Republican version of PC? I'm sorry Creationists but your worldview is wrong. If you can't handle this fact, grow up and get over it. The rest of the world is not obligated to pander to every loony belief that everyone holds.
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fair enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure they can, they just can't call say why. "Applicant smelled like bad tuna. Do not hire."
Fair enough (Score:3, Interesting)
If they are, say, art professors, or theology professors. But if they are scientists, then this is stupid. Believing in creationism is a sure sign of a bad scientist. You can't be a good scientist and believe in creationism any more than you can be a good scientist and deny the existence of gravity or atoms.
On the bright side, if they extend this to outlaw discrimination against believing any stupid thing then it'll make getting a job really easy. If an interviewer asks you about something you don't know, just claim you don't believe in it. If they don't hire you, sue them. Profit!
Re:yes but... (Score:5, Interesting)
actually, this bill is discrimination against every other religion that's out there. So I'm amazed they will try to do this. A law against "discrimination of all religions" is different than a law against discrimination of a single religion. This would be laughed out of courts and overturned pretty fast if it ever passed and was challenged.
Re:yes but... (Score:3, Interesting)
The flat earthers deserve more respect they are closer to the right answer than the ID crowd
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm [tufts.edu]
Politically motivated Pseudo Fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
To be sure, discrimination is the whole point of academia, that is discrimination on basis of academic merit. People who cannot show academic rigour are vigorously discriminated against (e.g. they will not get tenure, they will not get their articles published in the mainstream journals, and they will not get recognition). Only in that way are shoddy work and pseudo-science kept at bay. Most of the time.
And yes, that's all very "elitist" because Joe Sixpack simply no more capable of judging is someone is or is not academically capable than he is of analysing a mathematical proof, a statistical test, a laboratory result, or judging if a medical diagnosis is right. If Joe Sixpack were so clued-up he'd be hired as a researcher or a professional. Only he isn't, for excellent reasons.
As Creationism lacks all and any academic merit, it is no more than reasonable to be able to refuse people who subscribe to it from joining the Biology faculty.
Despite its name, "Evolution Theory" is not a mere "theory". On the contrary. There is both an enormous existing body of solid and well-documented evidence for Evolution Theory, and it is corroborated on a continuous basis by just about every on-going field research (from bacteria to beetles to birds to elephants and all kind of plant life). This makes it a *well-tested* and *well-verified* theory, which is why it is at the basis of contemporary Biology.
It wouldn't be a problem is a creationist joined a liberal arts faculty, the maths faculty, or the civil engineering department. Those academic fields are sufficiently fare removed from creationism that they will not be impacted.
But for those who would join the Biology faculty the standard is somewhat higher: they must first show that they know in detail that they know what they are talking about (as in passing exams). After that, if they wish to dispute the foundations of the subject area they wish to don a mantle of authority on, they must first *disprove* with specificity what they dispute, in a scientifically acceptable way. For example in the course of their PhD research.
Then and only then can they be admitted (and they usually will be).
All this is needed to ensure that no *religious* arguments creep into the debate, because religion has no overlap with science and should not be confused with it.
Most of the world gets this, only the US (well certain groups within the US) is in the unique position that it starts blurring the line again centuries after the separation between Church and State and the decoupling of Theology from the Sciences during the Renaissance. It is interesting to note that in this the US finds itself in the company of Islamic Extremists, who too wish to assert the authority of their particular interpretation of word of their particular deity as paramount over reason, dispute, or evidence.
In defense of creationists (Score:5, Interesting)
Forrest Mims is a creationist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims [wikipedia.org]
I read his engineering notebooks and built circuits out of them. I will be forever grateful to him for that. It was the most fun I ever had in science, and I learned a lot of useful stuff.
It blew me away when I found out that a guy that smart and cool was a creationist. But there are a lot of engineers who believe in Bible-belt creationism.
If Mims were proposed to teach an engineering course, there's no doubt that he's qualified. If he were to teach a biology course, maybe not. If he were to teach a general science course, I don't know.
But that's a decision for the department to make, not the Texas legislature.
This doesn't prevent us from laughing at creationists.
Re:Fair enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
Having a wide array of scientific opinions is healthy. Creationism/ID is not science. As Carl Sagan observed, "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains leak out."
Or do you think advocates of phlogiston should be given equal time, or any time, at physics conferences?
Re:yes but... (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd think so... but other states (like Ohio) have in their Constitution that you must believe in a higher power to hold office. While it will never hold up (hopefully) and it's considered a "blue" law it's still in the books and it discriminates against a group of people.
Re:Fair enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
So would you not hire Einstein because he said, "God does not play dice with the universe"
Which actually is a quote with zero theological content. That isn't Einstein saying "Obviously QM is wrong, because the Bible doesn't say it is right", its Einstein saying, basically, "QM is flawed because nature is deterministic; QM isn't, therefore QM is incomplete". The former interrelation would rightfully disqualify him as a scientist, the latter is part of the normal discussion that makes science tick (see the argument related to the quote between Bohr and Einstein... heady stuff... and not theological in slightest). Einstein was probably an atheist.
This argument isn't about rhetorical flair.
Often the term "God" is used in a naturalistic way. Just like atheists can use the word "soul" in such a way that is devoid of Christian meaning.
And this isn't about just barring people with religion. No one would really argue that, since their are qualified scientists who hold some flavor of religious faith. Its about being "anti-science", or not being actually skilled in the field you are appying for. How can I be a biologist when I don't actually have a scientific position on it, and, unscientifically, reject evidence based on a very old book that has nothing to do with biology for evidence, or facts, or anything else related to the field? I want to be a professor of Computer Science, but I think that computers are actually run by little gremlins with abacuses, and no amount of logic, evidence, or theory will ever convince me otherwise. Should I be hired? Probably not.
Are you even remotely qualified to argue their assumptions, much less deem them unqualified to teach in their respective fields?
Argument by authority. If the statement isn't based on science, it doesn't matter how big a scientist the speaker is. If Einstein stated that his computer is run by little gremlins, then yes, I could easily dispute it. If any of these people you cite had scientific, evidence based, proof of the existence of a god, then we'd be having a much more interesting discussion. But being that there is no such thing as a bona-fide "God Expert", then, yes, I can debate with them on the subject, and completely disagree with them with no fear of being any more wrong than disagreeing with a crazy person at a bus stop. Ultimately being a famous, accomplished, scientist doesn't make you right on every issue, or make your ideas unassailable. In the aforementioned Einstein quote, he was proven rather soundly wrong by Neils Bohr, for instance. If there is a God, he does play dice.
Now if a scientist suddenly decided all of QM was wrong because "God can't play dice", then he wouldn't be qualified for the field, now would he?
Re:big loss (Score:4, Interesting)
I posted on here a while back a way to make ID a scientific theory by making it falsifiable. A lot of people took that to mean that I supported ID, which wasn't what I was saying at all. I was just tired of hearing the above quote over and over when it was quite obvious how to make it falsifiable.
You can read the whole thing in my Journal, but in a nutshell:
1) ID is not Young Earth Creationism (YEC), though it is primarily used as a smokescreen by YECs.
2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.
3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.
One very important point that got lost in all the noise is this: we will need a statistical method to determine intelligent design no matter what. Ignore the whole evolution thing - as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.
Re:Cheating? (Score:4, Interesting)
You try dragging a 55 tonne block up an inclined plane using only a wheel.
Um... it's not that hard. That's the whole point of having an inclined plane. I even saw a documentary where a small group of archaeologists were able to do it. It doesn't even take huge numbers of slaves to do it like sibling said; that just helps when the scale of the entire project is so large. There were far fewer slaves and a lot more well-paid skilled workers involved than commonly thought, anyway.
And that astronomical calculator is very impressive. But it doesn't demonstrate any technology we don't already know the Greeks had -- all the necessary geometry, astronomy, and machines were present. It's just remarkable for its degree of sophistication. It does not in any way imply that the Greeks -- much less the Egyptians -- had super-advanced technology. Hell, we know the Greeks had invented the steam engine in the aeolipile, but couldn't think of any practical use for it.
They did not have helicopters.