Missouri Legislation Redefines Science, Pushes Intelligent Design 813
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports on new legislation in the Missouri House of Representatives which is seeking equal time in the classroom for Intelligent Design, and to redefine science itself. You can read the text of the bill online. It uses over 600 words to describe Intelligent Design. Scientific theory, the bill says, is 'an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy.' It would require that 'If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught.' The legislation's references to 'scientific theory' and 'scientific law' make it clear the writers don't have the slightest idea how science actually works. It also has this odd line near the end: 'If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth's biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.'"
It's a race... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to the bottom.
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Insightful)
Teach Darwin,
Teach Spinoza and Godel.
No problem.
Re:It's a race... (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer the Halting Problem to Godel, but that's another issue... This is just another brain-dead bill by the god-tard legion.
Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a much better idea. A fundamentalist Christian has no business seeing a physician or being in a hospital ever.
Any Christian that pushes intelligent design over evolution should have the courage of their convictions and forsake modern medicine. Glory in your disease, for it is a gift from God.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Funny)
It's only sad that they force this on the children. Adults being idiots and culling themselves off is a good thing.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Funny)
It sounds like you are describing evolution.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Funny)
My left arm for mod points.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the only problem is that half-decade gap between sexual maturity and legal adulthood.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Funny)
Now that I've turned 36, I consider anyone under 36 to be a child.
Back when I was 16, children were much younger.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
Teach religion all you want, in a comparative religion class.
In a science class, we want science taught. You're perfectly welcome (and encouraged) to come up with another *scientific* theory that describes how the various species came to be. It has to fit with our observed evidence (including the DNA record). If it does that better than evolution, then great, you win. Collect your Nobel Prize.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then it sounds like you just think parents shouldn't have to send their kids to regular school. They already can home school them or send them to a private school.
If they're going to public school, then they should be taught what everyone else is being taught that is going to public school.
But that's my point, there *isn't* a scientific alternative.. If you want them to be able to just skip it, like kids being able to skip sex ed, then that just seems silly.. because they're not having a logical reason they want to skip it. Going home school is a way to skip all of the stuff in which they don't believe.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
But we're not talking logic here, we're talking belief systems, and their frailty. Trust is very important to humans, and some will trust parental and mentoring sources more than "science".
It's best to question it all. Science has enormous chasms, charlatans, lack of referential integrity, and lots of bogus opinion marching around as fact. Yes, I prefer science, despite its problems.
But you're not fighting facts, you're fighting trust and beliefs masquerading as injecting doubts. The orthodoxy isn't going to give up. Best to educate them, and let them choose, so that they buy into what's going on around them.
Re: (Score:3)
Some would equate intentionally teaching lies to be a form of child mental abuse. In fact a standardized curriculum and education system is supposed to ensure that all children have an equal opportunity to succeed and are not held back by their parent's lack of knowledge.
How does that tally with letting the parents decide what their children are, or are not, taught?
Is it right that a child is held back based on their parents' belief in superstition and magic?
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
believers of evolution don't want religion being taught to their kids.
1. I don't have to 'believe in evolution'. It is a proven, scientific fact(despite the frequent and erroneous argument that it is 'only a theory').
2. I don't want it being taught to anyone, not just to my kids. It is so confoundingly stupid and against common sense, that it is like actively teaching disinformation and stupidity. I think we have plenty of both already.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only sad that they force this on the children.
I think this is the problem. Christian parents don't want their children being taught something that goes against their beliefs. This isn't all that different from the argument at hand, that believers of evolution don't want religion being taught to their kids.
Christianity isn't science. Creationism is not science, and Intelligent design is definitely not science.
There are certainly atheists who may not want their children exposed to religion, there are also many many people who are Christian who don't want religion taught in science class. It is just about impossible to keep children away from it in my area, where there are churches who use our school auditoriums to hold masses every Sunday, and accidentally leave pampllets all over the schools. There are also bible clubs and religion study classes as part of the curriculum. There is plenty of God in many of our schools.
All very well and good - I don't care what people believe in, as long as they don't try to force it on others.
Time for a little anecdote on just what happens though, in an environment where the curriculum is determined by faith....
When I was in high school, the mandated sex education consisted of one hour during health class one day, where we were told if we had sex - though the word was never mentioned - we gould get veneral disease. What was interesting, the wording was such that we didn't actually know that that was our sex ed class until it was over. The classes were also segregated by sex. I have no idea how that ever passed muster. People who knew what was going on laughed, and people who didn't remained as clueless as before.
My senior year, there was a little more offered, but maybe two days instead of one. (but my grade was finished with that) Well, one of the young ladies became interested in the issue of basal metabolic temperature. She got another book at the library, and figured out the rhythm method. Well, some parents found out, and the parents came to a board meeting. The first guy up had a paper bag, and when called upon to speak, he pulled out a Penthouse, opened the Centrefold, and showed it around screaming that our school was teaching Pornography to theirr children. A lot of us kids were at the meeting for a different purpose. But this was shortly after they began showing pubic hair in the Men's magazines, and very ironically, there were several students that left that meeting knowing more about sex than they ever learned at school. Didn't matter that she didn't learni it at school. We learned that the athieststic, communists in the school system were busy destroying our youth.
That was sort of amusing, but the most insidious part of religion ruling school was in science class.
It beggars the imagination, but anything that did not agree with the concept of the universe being created in 4004 b.c.e. was not taught. This included a whole lot of physics. You couldn't teach about radioactivity, because anything with a half life greater than 6000 years was on shaky ground. There was no discussion of dinosaurs, and of course, evolution. we had a good bit of dissection biology, electrical based physics, and chemistry, we just didn't cover the entire periodic tables, every year it was a start at the beginning, and time ran out bofore we got to the forbidden elements, and no isotopes.
As a person who grew up in a religious household, and with even thoughts of becoming a priest during adolescence, I was pretty well versed in the Bible. As I neared graduation, however, I had access to a local university library. There I learned the forbidden subjects and knowledge. The ideas born of science by investigation and discovery, and experimentation. And not having seen a single verse in the bible that denied evolution, or even that 6000 year old universe, I was forced into the conclusion that all of the religious objections were due to a combination of fear of
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Intelligent design is not an oxymoron, it is a tautology; design by definition is intelligent. To qualify as an oxymoron the words themselves would have to be contradictory, like in the classic example "military intelligence," where it is to be assumed that the military is unintelligent. Living dead. Guest host. Deafening silence. The word itself means "sharp dull."
Unfortunately, there isn't a term for "a euphemism that reveals the speaker is a bag of arses," so we will have to settle for calling it unintentional irony. The Greeks and Romans didn't live in a relativistic enough world for the abuse of language by the unimaginative to be a problem worth talking about.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
design by definition is intelligent
Bullshit. If you really believe this, you haven't used Windows 8.
Re:Christians, physicians and hospitals (Score:5, Interesting)
Orwell - "Weakness is strength".
Awesome. Never saw that before. Thanks!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Pick a translation where the words haven't changed meanings in the last 5 centuries or so, and you might have a shot at actually understanding it. Let's try one, using that same passage (2 Corinthians 12:5-10):
Not so fast. (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to talk Old Testament morality? Game on!
Re: (Score:3)
I don't see how that's relevant - many parts of the Bible are history, and good history includes talking about people who did bad things, dumb things, and morally questionable things, not just talking about good people doing good things.
One story that I've seen anti-Bible people use to claim the Bible's offensive is a conversation between an invading general and whoever was in charge of one of the Jewish cities. The general trash-talks about how the Jews had better surrender or here's what he'll do to the
Genesis is most likely mythology. (Score:3)
Most everything before King David has no objective evidence.
Re:Not so fast. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Interesting)
Teaching different religions' theories (Score:5, Interesting)
At least some states have said that teachers have to teach Intelligent Design, but aren't allowed to teach any particular religion's view of who the Intelligent Designer is, because that would be establishing religion and therefore blatantly unconstitutional.
But that doesn't mean that different cultures don't have different beliefs about the design process that lead to different world views separately from the issue of the Designer's identity. For instance, did it happen quickly or slowly? Recently, or a long long time ago? Just once, or repeated in multi-million-year cycles? Did the stars, Earth, plants, animals, and humans get designed together, or in some order? How could you tell? Did the design follow song-lines? Were only natural processes involved, or supernatural beings, or pirates or other tricksters? Does there seem to have been just one designer, or multiple designers in the process? Does the design process appear to have been personal or impersonal? Can we learn anything from the distribution of genetic material in different human populations, or the genetic differences between modern humans and Neandertals and other apes? Why are we more closely related to fungi than to plants? How does Death affect design?
If you want to teach Intelligent Design as Science, not just as philosophy, you can do it, but you'll find it's a much harder problem than its proponents think, and they may not like all the questions you'll be asking, much less the answers your students come up with.
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Funny)
Teach Darwin, Teach Spinoza and Godel.
This list will never be complete. Or if it is, it will be inconsistent.
Teaching The Controversy - Properly (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if the anti-evolution folks really understand what they're asking for when they say that teachers should "Teach the Controversy".
One theory of evolution says it took billions of years. Another says evolution all happened in six days back in 4004 B.C. and then stopped, and that it may have gotten further restricted a thousand years or so later when all the land animals drowned except one boatload of them. How would you compare those two theories? What kind of evidence would let you reject or tentatively accept one of them? Are there fossil records that fit better with either? What about historical records from different cultures around the world? Does the distribution of animals around the planet tell us anything that would let us pick one of the theories, or lead us to modify either of them?
So yeah. Teach The Controversy. Proudly.
Re:Teaching The Controversy - Properly (Score:5, Funny)
Sample Essay Question:
1) Using the theory intelligent design, explain the emergence of the Ebola virus and construct a forensic psychological profile of the intelligent designer.
Re:Teaching The Controversy - Properly (Score:5, Insightful)
I still remember when, as a child, I was told God created man and woman. When I asked how, my dad took out encyclopaedia and we read the fascinating story of evolution. I never thought there was any conflict between my faith and science. That seems to be pretty standard among 'believers' in Europe. I really don't get how this can be such a deal in the US. You can only stare at provable facts (and tools like carbon dating) and ignore them for so long before you feel like a fool.
Superstition (Score:4, Funny)
This is why we can't have nice things.
Re:Teaching The Controversy - Properly (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always found the "Teach the controversy!" line to be humorous. How much controversy is necessary to require equal representation in a classroom? If I raise enough of a stink, can I get a school to teach alchemy alongside chemistry?
Re:Teaching The Controversy - Properly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Insightful)
It really fucking is. The reason for NOT teaching intelligent design is written right into the fucking text of the law.
"(2) "Biological evolution", a theory of"
"(3) "Biological intelligent design", a hypothesis"
Amazing how they got that right then got the entire text of the law wrong.
I also like how they added "biological" to the front of intelligent design. It both makes it oh so obviously more legitimate and less pseudo science and also suggests we were created by aliens instead of god/gods/pigdemons/whateverotherrandombullshitpeoplearegullibleenoughtoswallow at the same time.
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, no. They got the text of the law exactly right. They said that it had to be taught, then said that you cannot teach who the creator is unless you can prove it scientifically. In order to comply with the law, schools in Missouri will have to teach intelligent design in a way that clearly casts it as an unprovable philosophical discussion rather than science. If anything, this will help disabuse those students of any notion that ID is a true scientific theory, which will actually lead to folks in that state having a better grasp of science in the long run.
Don't get me wrong, it ain't science, and it really doesn't belong in a science classroom, but since we don't have philosophy classes in American high schools, at least Missouri's students will get to hear the science side of the issue instead of just an ultraconservative preacher's views.
Re:It's a race... (Score:4, Funny)
They'll just use their bible as their proof. "Look! It says it right there!"
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
How's that a hypothesis? For an hypothesis to be scientific requires that it be testable.
Re:It's a race... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well biological intelligent design is pretty well a fact. Dogs are one good example, wheat another. Then of course there is whatever Monsanto has been designing.
I don't see any problem with teaching how for the last 10,000 odd years we've been designing organisms.
Re:It's a race... (Score:4, Informative)
It both makes it oh so obviously more legitimate and less pseudo science and also suggests we were created by aliens instead of god/gods/pigdemons/whateverotherrandombullshitpeoplearegullibleenoughtoswallow at the same time.
How could you forget The Flying Spaghetti Monster! [venganza.org]
Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of behavior from elected officials should be considered treason.
It is severely hurting the future of our country and making the next generation more ignorant.
They should be removed from office and any position of power of influence over others.
Re:Treason (Score:4, Interesting)
Who benefits from teaching Anti-Science (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just about Evolution - that's a hook for getting one particular voting block supporting the Republican Party, and a favor to them for cooperating, but there's more to it than that. Teaching Anti-Evolution Anti-Science makes it easier to teach Anti-Global-Warming Anti-Science - same tools, same skepticism and unwillingness to believe the real world instead of the authorities.
The Republican Party doesn't really care much about evolution. But their Corporate Sponsors really do care about global warming, and about anything that might force the government to make laws that affect their business. Anti-Evolution is fun, but anti-global-warming is where the money is.
Re: (Score:3)
Treason to who? American citizens or the ones that manage the government? Usually treason means going against the ones in power. Dumb voters are voters after all, they do what they are told to do, they are trained to just believe, not think. Intelligent or critical thinking ones, in the other hand, could vote against them, rebel, move away or do enough noise. Better that not be a lot of them.
Anyway, unless the elected officials responsible for this are lawyers, I should not attribute this to malice if can
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Treason:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
The Enemies always have been and always will be ignorance and stupidity.
Open and shut case I'd say.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't even have to frame the enemy as an idea instead of a person or state. Killing off science in your country actively helps any nation who opposes you to gain the upper hand in the long run.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you naming the Republican party?
Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because Representative Brattin, the bill's sponsor, and Representatives Koenig & Bahr, the bill's co-sponsors are all Republicans?
Re:Treason (Score:4, Informative)
Why are you naming the Republican party?
Obama failed to close Gitmo, called it a success. Obama failed to stop warentless wire tapping, called it a success. Obama raised the deficit $5 Trillion, called it deficit reduction. Obama doubled unemployment, called it a success. Obama said waterboarding is torture and is illegal, started killing US citizens without trial via drones. Obama proposed the upcoming mandatory spending cuts, said the Republicans created it. Romney said Mali was full of AlQuaida, was called a liar, they attacked and held an oil refinery. Romney said Obama refused to call Bengazi attack terrorism, was called a liar, Candy Crawley had to apologize later for calling Romney a liar when he told the truth.
Not sure what you are trying to prove, unless you are so stupid you just assume the DNC lies are true and refuse to look things up yourself.
Me thinks you have a memory problem, and a current events problem. The oil refinery attack was in Algeria, Obama lowered the unemployment rate and inherited a $5 trillion debt after Clinton handed The Shrub a $300 billion surplus. The other items I'm not touching as they are either in process or are unsupportable and not worth arguing about with a half wit. STOP WATCHING FOX NEWS!!! Mostly because it's not.
Also educational misconduct and fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Treason may be the wrong word if one wants to be precise, but there is certainly something like treason going on. The creationists are willfully trying to undermine the country's scientific future and to infect school children's receptive minds with pure nonsense. As an analogy it's very true.
There's also some very severe professional misconduct occurring there, because non-scientists are pretending to be scientifically competent and dictating school science curricula.
Are carpenters allowed to establish guidelines for how surgeons will do heart surgery? No, they lack the professional competence so they are not accepted as having standing in the matter. What's happening in science education in a few US states is directly analogous. The creationists have no standing in science and so should have the door shut firmly in their faces.
Pretending to have scientific competency when you don't even know how science works is pretty clear fraud. Aren't there controls in education to keep charlatans from taking jobs for which they have no professional competence? Apparently not.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:It is their job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any other justification than "we are right" to explain why a state's citizens should decide what the schools that they pay for teach their children?
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Not to their own facts.
If it teaches unverifiable bullshit, it isn't education, and doesn't belong in a school.
By all means, let parents and special interest groups pay for teaching their children whatever they want, but not within the school system. Remember that schooling isn't just by and for the tax payers of a state, but part of the UN charter on children's rights. As such, it transcends mere state legislation.
what annoys me the most (Score:4, Interesting)
is that someone is being paid to write this shit.
Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Insightful)
Rest in peace, oh great America. You had a nice run leading the world in science and technology.
Pretty soon now you will be just another religious state, just like the ones you are fighting right now, but with a different religion.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it really wasn't all that long of a run, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, Athens had a century or so as the center of learning, Alexandria lasted several centuries, Rome had a couple of really good centuries, Baghdad spent 3 centuries on top, Britain had a pretty impressive run from about the mid 1600's to the end of the Industrial Revolution, etc. And what all of those societies had in common was that they placed the highest value on knowledge and learning and not so much value on foolish religiousity. And the ruling class supported those scientific efforts for their own sake, not just because they were profitable.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it really wasn't all that long of a run, in the grand scheme of things.
True. It was pretty much since the 1940s. But it was still a good run. Some very smart people in the USA government saw the writing in the wall and figure it would be a good idea to welcome all those scientists fleeing Europe (WWI and WWII) with open arms, and start investing heavily in science.
I bet they are turning inside their graves right now, so to speak.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Funny)
And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? and what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it's good old American know-how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.
- Tom Lehrer
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Informative)
Also a fact was that the Scopes trials in which John Scopes allegedly broke the law by teaching evolution in a public school occurred in 1925. Well before the US "had its good run". Shenanigans by evangelicals on this topic have been ongoing for a very long time and have been mostly irrelevant to anything except making noise and grabbing headlines. The smart people in the USA would not have even had to turn in their graves, they proceeded unabashed while quite alive and vigorous.
We're going to survive this one. Science and Technology has many things going against it in the US right now, but this doesn't rate.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Informative)
Rest in peace, oh great America. You had a nice run leading the world in science and technology.
Pretty soon now you will be just another religious state, just like the ones you are fighting right now, but with a different religion.
That is not true.
One-in-Five Adults and One-in-Three Under Age 30 Have No Religious Affiliation [pewforum.org]. This kind of stuff are the death-throes of religious conservatism. As the more normal people leave formalized religion, the crazies are left behind. Without a moderating influence, they get even crazier than before.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why do all of these supposed teeming masses of enlightened people sit about on their fat asses and DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.
These religious nutjobs got elected by the majority of people. They stayed elected and started trying to pass religious laws. And they passed. And still, you all sat there and did nothing.
How many more times do we all have to read about this shit happening in the US before people take a genuine stand against this tripe?
You non-religiously-affiliated -people need to grow a pair and start changing things before the shit really starts hitting the fan.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Informative)
Between 40 and 50 percent of everyone believes in the Genesis story as literal truth depending on the poll. It's been that way for 50 years. The last Gallup survey had it somewhere around 46-48 percent.
What is striking is that over the decades, this number has not budged much.
1 in 5 adults and 1 in 3 under 30 aren't enough to stem the tide of derp.
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/706 [richarddawkins.net]
Death throes of religious conservatism? I think not.
--
BMO
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty soon now you will be just another religious state, just like the ones you are fighting right now, but with a different religion.
There is another, more optimistic way of looking at this: we are seeing the last frantic struggles of a reactionary movement which can't adapt to social change. If you were to go back in time to, say, 1950, do you really believe that Americans as a group were any less superstitious or closed-minded? In that era, not only were racism and sexism often overt (or even violent), gays were subject to criminal prosecution in most states, often with involuntary psychiatric commitment, and I suspect evolution wasn't even an issue because it wasn't even being taught in most schools. Maybe the reason why there wasn't a big controversy back then is because there wasn't much disagreement - the country was far more conservative as a whole.
Look at it from the perspective of the religious fundamentalists: in the past century (and some of these trends are far more recent), women have career opportunities that were unheard of (and are a majority of new college graduates); gays are "out, loud, and proud", with gay marriage now legal in four states (and civil unions in several more); no-fault divorce is available in nearly every state (I think NY is the lone holdout), and the divorce rate is something like 50% as a result; young women write exhibitionist columns in college newspapers glorifying their promiscuity; single motherhood is more common than ever; cohabitation before marriage is practically the norm (at least if you're a coastal elite like myself); the biological sciences are changing so fast that in another few decades (a century at the most) we'll probably have redefined reproduction (and humanity); the government has replaced the churches as the primary distributor of charity; and last but not least, we know more about the history of our universe and our species than ever before, and it's simply not compatible with Biblical literalism no matter how hard you try. The religious conservatives perceive their entire belief system to be under assault by the government, pop culture, and the dreaded liberal elites, and they are frantically trying to hold back the flood of perversity and Godlessness by every legal means at their disposal.
Mind you, I'm absolutely not defending them; I find them ignorant and contemptible, and their actions contradict nearly every moral and ethical value I have. But, as someone who reads a lot of history, and often feels just as alienated from modern society, I think I have a pretty good idea how they feel, and the word is desperate. They're not winning, they're fighting a rearguard action, trying to return to a idyllic, morally virtuous, and thoroughly mythical past.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:4, Insightful)
One more point before I head out the door: despite years of trying, creationism (including its more PR-friendly bastard child Intelligent Design) has had absolutely zero impact in the one area where it might actually matter: actual science (both basic and applied). The only extent to which it affects biologists is that some people end up wasting time arguing with superstitious, scientifically illiterate morons instead of doing actual research. Every other scientist I know, including everyone I work with, just ignores them and continues applying our materialist worldview ("the scientific method") with ever-increasing gains. There will never be a disease cured by application of Biblical principles, which means the entire concept is ultimately doomed. It's just going to take another few centuries for the facts on the ground to catch up with the fundies, by which time the rest of us will have engineered ourselves into near-superhuman intelligence. (At least I hope so, but I probably read too much science fiction.)
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure hope you are right, and they are only being louder, and not more influential, lately.
I'm old enough to remember all the way back to the 1980s, and I think if anything they've been getting less influential. There have been an endless succession of predatory, hypocritical evangelists fallen from grace, supposedly unstoppable coalitions of religious voters that quickly collapsed, token theocratic presidential candidates, and the usual fuckwits pushing creationism. News media love the story of "plucky zealots push for moral laws", which they issue with some regularity, but it's just lazy journalism. (Remember when Ralph Reed was a Newsweek cover boy?)
I think the only area in which the fundamentalists have made significant gains is restricting the availability of abortion services in "red" states, and even so I think that's about as far as they're going to get. (Does anyone actually believe that California or New York would outlaw abortion?) On the opposite end, look at gay rights, which has made immense gains since I started noticing politics. Sure, the conservatives managed to pass anti-gay marriage propositions in a number of states, which basically just restored the legal situation to where it was in 2003. And as I mentioned, four states just legalized it by popular vote, which has never happened before. And I'm sure the fundamentalists will complain louder than ever, but in ten years, when Washington state is just as happy and prosperous as it is now (barring further nationwide economic catastrophe), and hasn't been smote by lightning or plagued by locusts or blown up by volcanoes, it's going to be even more difficult to convince middle America that letting their hairdressers marry is going to bring about the end of Western civilization.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sir Isaac Newton Was a True Blue Christian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sir Isaac Newton Was a True Blue Christian (Score:4, Informative)
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson [youtube.com] points out, from the Principia Mathematica:
"But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions."
- Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
Re:Sir Isaac Newton Was a True Blue Christian (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Newton was pretty much a lunatic by today's standards, believing in all kinds of crap - much of which the church would not touch with ten foot crucifix.
That didn't stop him from also making great progress in the sciences, but many of those were by-products of his quest for the philosopher's stone and other things we think ridiculous today, and which were thought blasphemous back then.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Science does not question the existence of the almighty. Science does not question the existence of creation. Science causes no crisis of faith in one that is faithful. All science does is disrupt those that want to use faith to gather personal power, wealthy, and in the process elevate themselves to the level of the almighty.
A science teacher of mine (Jesuit priest, actually) would teach evolution and everything else without any problems.
In his words: "Science teaches us how. Religion teaches us who was behind it, never HOW".
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:4, Interesting)
looking at Syria, America is currently pushing with all its might for yet another religious state, and in Egypt is also best friends with the forces of darkness (i.e. Mursi and his Brotherhood).
So we should have let Mubarak turn machine guns on the protestors? That's not really a good way to be a beacon of hope and modernism. Also, we haven't exactly done much in Syria, tens of thousands of deaths later. (Disclaimer: I am not actually advocating any particular course of action - I think we should mind our own business.)
This crazy foreign policy becomes much more comprehensible if we consider how America is already morphing into a religious state itself.
Dude, our religious fundamentalists despise the religious fundamentalists in the Middle East - one of the many reasons why they despise Obama is that they think it's his fault that the Muslim Brotherhood rules Egypt now. Rick Santorum, who is about as much of a hectoring, superstitious prude as you can find in our country, was quite vocal with his view that we should have backed Mubarak until the bitter end. Your statement makes pretty much zero sense.
Re:Well, it was a nice run (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't get away that easy:
Argue with them on substance, make them agree based on their own values. Learn about their religion and support your own views with scripture.
I have actually done this. I have relied upon the writings of learned philosophers such as Roger Williams against literalism and that the hypocrisy of state endorsement of religion and state religions in general, "stinks in the nostrils of God." And you know what? Legislators who propose laws like this deserve derision. They deserve ridicule. Because they have violated their oaths of office. ID is a purely *religious* philosophy. It's not science. It's a *particular* version of "christian" philosophy. Attempting to enshrine it in law as science is an endorsement of a particular *brand* of christianity over all others.
State legislators in Missouri swear to uphold both the Missouri and US constitutions. And since the establishment clause was deliberately designed as a wall of separation (see Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists and Madison's letter to Livingston), you really can't get any worse in violating the oath of office by proposing laws like this.
--
BMO
Cue Babel Fish... (Score:5, Funny)
That last sentence sounded strangely familiar: ....
"If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth's biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course."
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
Following this logic... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... what? (Score:5, Interesting)
teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course
They're supposed to be teaching the scientific method. ie: creating a hypothesis and proving or disproving it.. If you can't prove or disprove it, you've failed. Yet it is illegal for the teachers to mark it as wrong, since they can't question it?
So I could say elephants have a long nose because the flying spaghetti monster decried that it shall have a noodley appendage and I would be correct because I don't have to verify the identity of the flying spaghetti monster?
what do you teach? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Some super brain/being designed it all. End of story".
This is so wrong on so many levels. The dumbing down of children for fanaticals has to stop, one way or another. People like Rick Sanatorium are destroying this country and need to be run out.
Don't worry (Score:3)
In the long run, I'm pretty sure this is more harmful to religion than anything else.
"... student belief in a nonverifiable identiy" (Score:3)
50 bucks says an atheist wrote that line as an easter egg.
Because a wizard did it (Score:3)
Woe be it to the teacher who questions the "Get out of Science Class"-Wizard!
This is why we need to mock religion (Score:5, Insightful)
These bigoted idiots get away with what they do and say because we,
who do know better,
don't treat them and their ideas with the mockery that they deserve.
Respecting their right to believe (and we must) is not the same as respecting the idiotic beliefs that they hold.
Does this include the environmental movement? (Score:3)
"...incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy..."
Sounds like a lot of Green people I know.
Cue the banjo music... (Score:3)
These inbred, idealistic, heretical politicians do not understand the difference between truth and faith.
You do not see the Roman Catholic Church (or many other organized religious organizations) have a problem with teaching science as a science and religion as a religion. The schools of higher learning, run by these religious organizations, openly teach the concepts of evolution as a science without interference.
So, why can't the Missouri legislators get their act together and leave science to the scientists and religion to the clergy?
So much for separation of church and state. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion (after all, every set contains the null set). State mandated hokum being posited as science is an abuse of faith and science.
It's a bill not a law. (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bill not a law.
Hearings not scheduled, not on the house calendar. You've been had ARS... this is a publicity stunt by 2 conservative politicians to garner attention for their next election by introducing a bill popular with their tiny constituencies, guaranteed never to even get voted on, but sure to bring in gullible leftist reporters who are all too eager to snap up any tidbit of info that might portray their political opponents in a negative light. And you guys are flooding ARS with traffic because you're also so eager to believe it.
Sponsor: Brattin, Rick (055) ... et al.
Co-Sponsor: Koenig, Andrew (099)
Proposed Effective Date: 8/28/2013
LR Number: 506L.01I
Last Action: 1/31/2013 - Referred: Elementary and Secondary Education(H)
Bill String: HB 291
Next Hearing: Hearing not scheduled
Calendar: Bill currently not on a House calendar
http://www.house.mo.gov/billsummary.aspx?bill=HB291&year=2013&code=R [mo.gov]
As if there were nothing in the world actually worth reporting on, they've got to spoon feed you this horseshit. How many people die in Africa from AIDs per day? Oh wait, you can't blame that on republicans so it's uninteresting. Fuck you.
a silly logic puzzle, or just flawed writing? (Score:3)
1: 'If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught.'
2: 'If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth's biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation.'
well, since the second condition is impossible to meet, and is a necessary condition to satisfy the first, it means only that scientific theory concerning biological origin cannot be taught in a course of study. (contrapositive)
so... does that just mean you can't teach abiogenesis? that is what `origin' means in this context, right? evolution is okay to teach, and doesn't trigger the latter necessary conditions, even though they mention ``biological evolution,'' apparently as a red herring.
wait. did they mean for this to be a silly logic puzzle, or are they just too stupid to realize what they're saying?
In other news, legislation says pi is 3 (Score:3)
Once, there was a legislature that attempted to make pi=3, [wikipedia.org] because it would make life so much simpler.
The World Laughs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Public schooling is a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
... we'll see that schools that teach hogwash will be less successful than schools that teach science.
What do you mean by "less successful"? There is, right now, a network of parents and private schools and churches and non-accredited "universities" and museums that have the specific goal of teaching what the reality-based community sees as hogwash. They make huge sums of money, have growing numbers of students, and show no signs of going away any time soon. Their goal is to prevent students from learning about evolution, the Big Bang, psychology, or anything else that would convince a student to reconsider the religious truth that their parents and Bible-thumping preachers have told them.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say it is more "MIT, CAL-TECH, and Stanford" vs "Government run learning center"
By preventing independent educational institutions from gaining hold, you get the homogeneity you seek, but you do so by preventing centers that specialize in excellence, (even if just in theory.)
No parent wants to admit that their little sunshine isn't the next einstien, even though he pulls straight C grades, and can't read. As such, no parent wants to have the de-facto segregation between schools that specialize in high p
Re:Public schooling is a bad idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I've actually bought this book (Kindle Edition) and skimmed it. Blergh. The old "government made banks to give subprime loans to poor people" (no, it didn't) and "without Fed there'd be no bubble" (and no modern economy).
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I don't buy that argument. Market forces can't usefully hold the cost of education down. Whenever reductions in education cost occur, the people who invariably take it on the chin are teachers, administrators, and other staff, both in salary cuts and staffing cuts, but mostly in salary cuts. If you keep the salaries down, those teachers will get jobs in industry that actually pay the bills. It's hard enough to convince people to teach at the college level as it is. The last thing we need to do is make
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Yes, because the truth is a terrible thing children must be protected from. That way they can grow up just as delusional as their parents.
...and keep voting Republican.
Not that Democrats are much better, but lately the Republicans have been winning the 'party of reprehensible poltroons' contest hands down. (Republicans currently hold 65% of the Missouri House and 75% of the Missouri Senate.)
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not let drug users let their kids use drugs.... etc
Because it's not the parents (voters) being harmed (mentally in this case). It's the children...
Re:Look I know God is real, but this isn't the bat (Score:4, Informative)
However, those who are believers and think evolution is real too, well, that's just an example of cognitive dissonance.
But I mainly take issue with your last paragraph (after all, you can believe whatever you like, I don't care). "Faith used correctly". What on earth does that mean? People can do good things, and people can do bad things. These acts may be driven by their beliefs, but invariably the belief is used to justify the act, not the other way around. I see many people of faith committing atrocities in the name of that faith, in fact I would say on balance they are the majority. People do good for many reasons, and faith does not need to come into it, but a truly bad act is usually aided and abetted by faith. Yes, it's a perversion of what "faith" means to the majority of believers, but that's the reality of it: suicide bombers would almost certainly not commit those acts just because they felt like it.
I see next to no good in zealotry of any kind. Do good if you want to - it's easy to see that doing good has benefits that have nothing to do with religion - but don't do bad because your holy book tells you it's OK. That's just using a very shaky belief system to justify and reinforce a decision you alone took.
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on how you define "literal creation". If you mean that as "God literally created the universe," then there's no conflict. If you mean that as "God literally created the Earth and all life upon it in six days, there's a fairly fundamental conflict. A literal interpretation of the book of Genesis simply cannot be reconciled with acceptance of evolution. A figurative or metaphorical view of Genesis is readily reconciled with belief in evolution.
The why do rocks not have puppies? (Score:5, Informative)
Intelligent design was invented by a PR company in the 1990's, a lobby group names Discovery Institute invented it, as a way of using religion against the religious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute
The strategy is known as a Wedge Strategy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
Make evolution a test of faith, then get them to deny evolution, so God created everything EXCEPT evolution, and to accept that you have to ignore the lack of puppie fossils, and all the other stuff in front of your eyes and deny science.
Once you've got them ignoring things as a test of faith, everything from Global Warming to Oil depletion suddenly becomes deniable. Remember 'God promised not to destroy the earth again hence Global Warming cannot exist'?. That's a sucker whose fallen for Wedge Strategy.
Re:Entropy (Score:4, Informative)