Creationists switch from pushing ID to... "critical thinking"?

[AdMan]

Could intelligent design finally be dead? The term is conspicuously absent from the latest antievolution education bill, which passed the Tennessee legislature in March and awaits action by the governor.

The bill’s language reveals a new tactic on the part of creationists. They seem to have retired intelligent design and replaced it with a concept as sneaky as stealth aircraft.

“These bills sound very innocent,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. That’s intentional, she said. The legislation has been crafted to be legally bulletproof.

The Tennessee bill hijacks language from scientists and skeptics: Teachers are allowed to promote “critical thinking” in areas where there’s “debate and disputation.” That’s not unreasonable on the surface, since there are plenty of areas of dispute — the value of certain cancer screenings, the safest way to store nuclear waste, or what benefit feathers would have bestowed on dinosaurs.

And critical thinking skills can be taught by examining bad science, such as cold fusion, or pseudoscience, such as homeopathy. But those aren’t the controversies the bill drafters care about. The bill singles out climate change and evolution.

Creationists Switch Tactics In Tennessee

This isn't a totally new tactic, as creationists have been pushing to "teach the controversy" for a while, but promoting critical thinking while singling out climate change and evolution as areas of supposed scientific dispute does seem underhanded.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Or, they may actually get what they do not wish for.

 

[ben m]

So you need to find some atheist Social Studies teachers to serve as test cases.

"Under the terms of SB 893, we can discuss both sides of controversial and disputed issues. A student asked me to talk about the controversy among historians about the authorship and historicity of the New Testament ... "

 

[Muldur]

"Science" HATES it when it gets hoist on it's own petard.

How DARE those kids be taught to think for themselves? Don't they know they are supposed to accept as Secular Gospel the words of the Priests of Godless Knowledge?

 

[Dinwar]

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist. The movement is inherently dishonest, and this has been documented in public records. Given that at least one group is actively trying to create a theocracy in the United States of America (see the Wedge Document for proof) it is dishonest to even give them the benefit of the doubt. Their actions are consistent and purposefully directed towards achieving their objective.

This is merely another in a long line of attempts to re-brand discussions of Creationism as discussions of science. As such, it's no different from any other: it's intentionally designed to sound reasonable, in order to trick people into accepting it.

The dishonesty here is in implying that there's debate about Creationism. There's not, at least not in any applicable field. There hasn't been for 300 years or so. The modern version has precisely zero scientific validity, and as such no debate between Creationism and evolutionary theory occurs in any scientific arena that I'm aware of. The only debate that occurs is political, and that's simply not applicable to a science classroom. Social studies, sure, but not science.

A key concept of critical thinking is establishing a standard by which we can determine what topics are valid topics of consideration and which are not. Science has done this--only those ideas supported by indepenently varifiable data are permissible for discussion, and once an idea has been shown to be wrong it must be fixed or discarded. Creationism has been shown to be wrong, and the reasons why are vital to understanding evolutionary theory (remember, ALL scientists were Creationists prior to Darwin--there was nothing else to be--so discussing the reasons that convinced them is a great way to outline a discussion of the proof of evolution). But today's Creationism doesn't meet the standards required to consider an idea, and therefore should not be considered.

 

[Muldur]

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist. *snip rest for space*

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Dr. William Arion, Biochemistry, Chemistry
Dr. Paul Ackerman, Psychologist
Dr. E. Theo Agard, Medical Physics
Dr. Steve Austin, Geologist

<SNIP>

Dr. Patrick Young, Chemist and Materials Scientist
Prof. Keun Bae Yu, Geography
Dr. Henry Zuill, Biology

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

Also see here for the issue of whether or not creation scientists ever publish in "mainstream" journals, and the issue of bias against them:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1998/04/15/creationists-publish

A key concept of critical thinking is establishing a standard by which we can determine what topics are valid topics of consideration and which are not. Science has done this--only those ideas supported by indepenently varifiable data are permissible for discussion, and once an idea has been shown to be wrong it must be fixed or discarded. Creationism has been shown to be wrong, and the reasons why are vital to understanding evolutionary theory (remember, ALL scientists were Creationists prior to Darwin--there was nothing else to be--so discussing the reasons that convinced them is a great way to outline a discussion of the proof of evolution). But today's Creationism doesn't meet the standards required to consider an idea, and therefore should not be considered.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

Edited by Locknar: 

Edited, breach of rule 4.

 

[Dinwar]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Most of these people don't have training in the appropriate fields, and therefore ARE dishonest in pretending to be experts. I mean seriously, you have PHYSICISTS commenting on BIOLOGY. If you can't see the flaw there, you understand neither field well enough to comment on this.

Also, that list is of HIGHLY questionable validity--numerous scieintists have requested to be removed, due to the fact that the wording of the survey was dishonest, for example.

There's also the small fact that the list of scientists named Steve that support evolution is much longer than this entire fraudulant list.

Then there's the fact that I'm a paleontologist, which means I'm fully capable of examining the evidence on my own and coming up with my own conclusions. No list of experts is going to sway me--only ARGUMENTS will. If you wish to discuss the actual evidence, I suggest you go to the "Evolution: The Facts" thread stickied at the top of this subforum.

Also see here for the issue of whether or not creation scientists ever publish in "mainstream" journals, and the issue of bias against them:

Science has rules. Creationism does not follow them. Then they scream "Foul!" when science rejects their studies. Pure stupidity on their part--it's not like the rules of science aren't well-known.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

Behe is a fool and a fraud, without any respect in serious scientific circles.

Out of curiosity, are you a young-Earth creationists or an old-Earth creationist? Also, please explain in your own words Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium, without looking it up. I ask not to point and laugh at how little you understand about evolution (you may actually undestand it as well as I do), but rather so that I can understand what your level of understanding is and what your views are,s ot hat I don't straw-man your position or talk down to you.

 

[dudalb]

Wow.
And this is happening in Tennesee.
Inherit The Wind 2 I guess......

 

[Resume]

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

He can differ all he wants as he was destroyed on cross examination in the Dover trial.

 

[marplots]

The problem with the critical thinking and debate idea is there is no end to it. At what point in the curriculum do the kids get to move on? Just "teaching the debate" would take years -- after all, the topic has been bandied about for as many years as I've been on this forum and looks to continue for many more.

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that. Here is what creationists have to say, here is what modern biology has to say. The teacher, of course, being a skilled and certified expert, should also have some input -- showing the flaws they perceive in the positions.

Then again, I think creationism will fall flat on it's face when exposed in this manner. Maybe it's a way to protect kids from the crap they hear in church.

 

[Dinwar]

after all, the topic has been bandied about for as many years as I've been on this forum and looks to continue for many more.

The other issue is that children don't have the knowledge to understand the issues. I've been trying to understand evolution for 10 years, and I'm certainly not going to pretend to know all of it. I know the things I've focused on, but I've simply not had time to learn all of it. Besides, a lot of this requires a certain understanding of other facts before you can understand the larger concepts--you need to understand anatomy to understand paleontological phylogenies, for example. You need to understand biochemistry to really understand genetics. And so on.

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that.

Won't work. The issue is that to make an informed choice you need to understand the data--and that's the part Creationists fail at (Behe's a perfect example, in that he simply ignored for a long time the myriad of intermediate eyes that currently exist in the world today in order to argue that the structure is irreducibly complex). And understanding the data takes a long, long time.

 

[ben m]

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that. Here is what creationists have to say, here is what modern biology has to say. The teacher, of course, being a skilled and certified expert, should also have some input -- showing the flaws they perceive in the positions.

Then again, I think creationism will fall flat on it's face when exposed in this manner. Maybe it's a way to protect kids from the crap they hear in church.

Problems come in when you remember that some science teachers are, themselves, creationists. Not most, maybe not even many, but some. These folks want to teach creationism---if you gave them leeway to do so, they'd adopt "Pandas and People" as a biology textbook. If you give them leeway to "teach the controversy", well, they'll dig up some slick images from creationist textbooks, some ugly images (Haeckel? Huxley?) from biology textbooks, and ... well, if the students end up getting the impression that evolution is atheist pseudoscience, that's how controversy works, innit?

That's a tricky problem in this business. Sometimes you have good science teachers under a good school board, sometimes you have the opposite, sometimes you have the diagonal cases. "Teach the controversy" only sounds appealing in the good/good case.

 

[BravesFan]

Let them teach whatever they want, then when their children are laughed out of college biology classes they can get them all jobs pumping gas somewhere. Serves em right.

Seriously, not accepting evolution is true is akin to saying the earth is flat. We have the evidence, vast amounts of evidence. creationists have NOTHING. It's a silly thing that promotes Idiocracy

 

[W.D.Clinger]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Evidently.

As Dinwar pointed out, most of those people are expressing an opinion on a matter that's outside their areas of expertise. It's outside my area of expertise, also, but I can tell you a few things about the three people who listed mathematics or mathematical sciences as their areas of expertise:

Dr. Bryan Dawson, Mathematics

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann, Professor of Mathematics, US Naval Academy

Dr. Valery Karpounin, Mathematical Sciences, Logics, Formal Logics

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

Dr Bryan Dawson is chair of the department of mathematics and computer science at Union University, which is associated with the Southern Baptists. He has written two monographs, which were published by Royal Fireworks Press, which publishes books for the home-schooling market. Of the six peer-reviewed articles listed on his scholarship page, three were exceedingly unimportant papers that were published in the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences. The other three were even less important. Dr Dawson also lists one conference article, which appeared within the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference of the Assoc. of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences. Google Scholar does not report any citations of papers written by Dr Bryan Dawson.

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann used to teach at the US Naval Academy, but has retired. Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr Herrmann. Judging by his website, he's a critic of the Johnson-Dembski-Behe theory who thinks his own crackpot theories should be preferred to those advocated by the Discovery Institute. According to Google Scholar, Dr Robert A Herrmann's most-cited paper, which is about a topological notion (rc-convergence), has been cited only 33 times. Dr Herrmann says he has published 75 articles in 31 different journals, but his home page is devoted to Christian apologetics with a strongly mathematical bent. He gives himself credit for "the idea that mathematical analysis can be used to investigate the possibility that natural-system behavior is intelligently designed". He refers to Michael Behe's notion of intelligent design as "mostly insignificant but well-publicized", and appears to regard Behe as a crackpot who's trying to steal his ideas.

Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr. Valery Karpounin, and I have been unable to find any reliable information about him. Google Scholar does not report any papers by V Karpounin.

On the basis of that spot-checking, I'm inclined to regard your list as an unusually lame example of proof by false authority.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

According to Michael Behe's own colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University:

The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.

 

[Dinwar]

http://www.geosociety.org/criticalissues/ev_3.htm

Here's a fun website from GSA (Geological Society of America, a professional organization devoted to the study of geology, paleontology, and related fields) discussing this issue.

http://www.geosociety.org/positions/position1.htm

Here is that organization's official position.

http://www.vertpaleo.org/OnEvolution.htm

Here is the statement on evolution from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a United States organization dedicated to the study and preservation of vertebrate fossils.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

Here's a brief web course by the University of California at Berkley's Museum of Paleontology regarding evolution.

I can go on, but I think this serves to illustrate the intellectual vacuity of Creationism. It illustrates (doesn't exahustively present, but illustrates) the stance of organizations of professional scientists on this topic--you know, the experts.

 

[BravesFan]

Evidently.

As Dinwar pointed out, most of those people are expressing an opinion on a matter that's outside their areas of expertise. It's outside my area of expertise, also, but I can tell you a few things about the three people who listed mathematics or mathematical sciences as their areas of expertise:




Dr Bryan Dawson is chair of the department of mathematics and computer science at Union University, which is associated with the Southern Baptists. He has written two monographs, which were published by Royal Fireworks Press, which publishes books for the home-schooling market. Of the six peer-reviewed articles listed on his scholarship page, three were exceedingly unimportant papers that were published in the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences. The other three were even less important. Dr Dawson also lists one conference article, which appeared within the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference of the Assoc. of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences. Google Scholar does not report any citations of papers written by Dr Bryan Dawson.

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann used to teach at the US Naval Academy, but has retired. Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr Herrmann. Judging by his website, he's a critic of the Johnson-Dembski-Behe theory who thinks his own crackpot theories should be preferred to those advocated by the Discovery Institute. According to Google Scholar, Dr Robert A Herrmann's most-cited paper, which is about a topological notion (rc-convergence), has been cited only 33 times. Dr Herrmann says he has published 75 articles in 31 different journals, but his home page is devoted to Christian apologetics with a strongly mathematical bent. He gives himself credit for "the idea that mathematical analysis can be used to investigate the possibility that natural-system behavior is intelligently designed". He refers to Michael Behe's notion of intelligent design as "mostly insignificant but well-publicized", and appears to regard Behe as a crackpot who's trying to steal his ideas.

Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr. Valery Karpounin, and I have been unable to find any reliable information about him. Google Scholar does not report any papers by V Karpounin.

On the basis of that spot-checking, I'm inclined to regard your list as an unusually lame example of proof by false authority.




According to Michael Behe's own colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University:

I was just about to ask Mulder how many of those listed taught at Christian affiliated colleges but you beat me to it!

 

[Dinwar]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

I want to re-visit this statement. Here's my original quote:

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist.

Muldur ignored one viable alternative: That many of these people have never examined the evidence. This is likely the case in many instances. Most people don't even know WHERE the evidence, much less WHAT it is. I can only really speak to my field, but I can tell you from personal experience helping with fossil curation that what you see in a museum isn't even a tenth of what any museum has in storage. It can't be--there's simply not enough room in your average museum to display all of the fossils (fossil cabinets are specifically designed to maximize the space, while offering maximum protection to the fossils). The fossils are also the most photogenic ones the museum has, which aren't necessarily the best evidence for evolution. One of the most valuable fossils I've found consisted of a sliver of powdery calcite that looked like a fingernail clipping and which was about a third as big. It included a diagnostic trait for the genus I was working with, which confirmed my taxonomic placement--the better-preserved, more photogenic fossil didn't have that.

Unless you've had access to the back rooms in a paleo museum you cannot say that you've examined all the paleontological evidence for evolution, much less the evidence in general.

Geology is another area I can speak to with some degree of expertise. And I can tell you that most people who aren't geode-loving feldspar jockies (thanks, Sheldon Cooper! ) don't go to where the really good outcrops are. Outcrops tend to be in places people aren't, like Death Valley or fun places of that kind. Most people wouldn't know an alluvial fan sequence from a lacustrial sequence, because they've never seen either. And you simply can't see all of them--Dibblee wondered around the Mojave for his entire professional career and left data gaps (oddly enough, they're always where I need to work).

And even if you are exposed to the data, you don't necessarily examine it. Engineers aren't geologists--my life story is a testiment to that! We think in fundamentally different ways, and see fundamentally differnet things. I recently had an engineer ask if something was coarse silty sand. It was obvious to me that it was badly-weathered granite. Neither is wrong--and in fact the weathered granite is the source for the sand in the region. They're simply two entirely dfferent ways to interpret the same drill core. Engineers aren't trained to interpret the history of a site from the rocks they encounter--they're trained to figure out how to build something at the site, which is a different quesiton entirely. Not wrong, certainly--but not useful for interpreting evolutionary data.

Before I'm accused of the No True Scotsman fallacy, let me emphasize that I'm not saying that no one on this list has examined the data--there is NO excuse for a paleontologist to be on this list, unless either they are lying or the survey was intentionally misleading. What I am saying is that there are reasons for a substantial number of these names to be completley dismissed. They have not had access to the data, or their training doesn't include an understanding of stratigraphy, anatomy, taphonomy, or other fields necessary to interpret the data. As such they have every bit as much business commenting on evolution as I do on electrical engineering or handing out medical advice--that is to say, none at all.

(As far as the paleontologists go, 1) they are in the EXTREME minority, and 2) they pretty obviously are not unbiased from my quick wiki-walk. They also don't appear to have produced much in the way of peer-reviewed papers, which is quite telling.)

 

[marplots]

I was just about to ask Mulder how many of those listed taught at Christian affiliated colleges but you beat me to it!

The implication here is that they discount evolution because they teach at a Christian college, but it may simply be the case that they teach at a Christian college because that is where they feel most comfortable, including their views on creation/evolution.

Furthermore, the challenge to the creationist was something along the lines of "no scientist believes in creation," not that "we should only respect expert opinions on the matter."

Although I think TOE is correct, I have to cry foul at the goal-post moving. Plus, I think we've fallen into a trap here. It is not required that every last person with a degree (or even those with a relevant degree) has to agree. The matter is settled in a more general sense of science marching on to other things based on what is accepted in this area as factually correct. The matter of disagreement is a red herring. Scientists are people. They can be wrong, stupid, ornery or just stupendously obstinate. Science is a method that can also be wrong, but less wrong on the whole than some cherry-picked subcategory.

In a sense, science (the enterprise) exists to prevent people from being, well, too peopley.

 

[Dinwar]

Furthermore, the challenge to the creationist was something along the lines of "no scientist believes in creation," not that "we should only respect expert opinions on the matter."

Check out the wording for AiG's survey. It was intentionally misleading.

Plus, I think we've fallen into a trap here. It is not required that every last person with a degree (or even those with a relevant degree) has to agree.

This is broadly true. However, the issue here is that Creationists are trying to use these few disenters (and this is a VERY short list, by the way--more scientists work in my office than are on that list!), many of who are on there dispite requesting to be taken off, to argue that there's a controversy that requires being taught in schools. This is a transparently dishonest attempt to shoe-horn Creationism into a science class, but the issue must be addressed.

In other words, we're not saying that everyone has to agree--we're saying that these handful of detractors don't represent a genuine scientific controversy. There's a significant difference between those two statements, though Creationists try to equivocate between the two.

 

[marplots]

Dinwar, thanks. I think I see the scam.

There is a kind of guerrilla warfare going on.

I couldn't think of the term "asymmetric warfare," so I googled guerrilla warfare and found an interesting bit on wiki about how to defeat such tactics.

"The guerrilla can be difficult to beat, but certain principles of counter-insurgency warfare are well known since the 1950s and 1960s and have been successfully applied."

And they follow with a list of anti-measures I think are worth adopting in this fight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare#Classic_guidelines

An amazing recipe to defeat creationist affronts.

 

[ThunderChunky]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Anyone that promotes creationism as science is either ignorant, dishonest, or ignorant and dishonest. There is no middle ground and there is no debate.

 

[BravesFan]

Check out the wording for AiG's survey. It was intentionally misleading.

This is broadly true. However, the issue here is that Creationists are trying to use these few disenters (and this is a VERY short list, by the way--more scientists work in my office than are on that list!), many of who are on there dispite requesting to be taken off, to argue that there's a controversy that requires being taught in schools. This is a transparently dishonest attempt to shoe-horn Creationism into a science class, but the issue must be addressed.

In other words, we're not saying that everyone has to agree--we're saying that these handful of detractors don't represent a genuine scientific controversy. There's a significant difference between those two statements, though Creationists try to equivocate between the two.

Well stated!!!

yes , one can make a long list and say "look, they disagree so it's not really settled is it?" as a fallacious appeal to authority. However, if there's 50 names on the creation list and 42,000 names on the evolution list (and 1/3 of the creation list were tricked by suspicious questions) then it's not really a debate at all is it?

 

[shadron]

"Science" HATES it when it gets hoist on it's own petard.

How DARE those kids be taught to think for themselves? Don't they know they are supposed to accept as Secular Gospel the words of the Priests of Godless Knowledge?

Let me get this right - you propose to substitute for Biology, in which the students used to learn about the various denizens of the tree of life and their inner systems, a scientific/political debate in which the participants are given a 1000 page religious historic text and a biology textbook which title they are not prepared to spell, and have them debate the differences given a background of the Merchant of Venice, superficial knowledge of Sumeria, Egypt and China, and skills in fractions and decimal manipulations? And this goes on for how many semesters?

Imagine the context...

 

[arthwollipot]

Anyone that promotes creationism as science is either ignorant, dishonest, or ignorant and dishonest. There is no middle ground and there is no debate.

There's a third option. They could have been innocently misled by others.

ETA... who were either ignorant or dishonest.

 

[ThunderChunky]

There's a third option. They could have been innocently misled by others.

ETA... who were either ignorant or dishonest.

That would make them ignorant as well. A creationist cannot be both honest and informed without admitting that their beliefs are unsupported by science.

 

[Corsair 115]

If they're going to teach the "controversy" over evolution, I have to ask: when will they insist on the teaching of the similar "controversy" over the Holocaust? Or the "controversy" over the Apollo moon landings? Or the "controversy" over 9/11?

If actual evidence doesn't matter, then pretty much every bit of crockery should be taught in the name of "teaching the controversy".

 

[Fishstick]

I'm not so sure about this gravity thing. How can we be sure God isn't just pushing everything down? I think both sides should be taught.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Add a critical thinking class to the program that teaches the skills to analyze arguments and encourages a critical attitude towards everything, including their world views, with a self examination of their origins. No need to mention evolution or creationism. That might go a long way to ensuring the death of U.S. evangelicalism with the new generation.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I've noticed that when Bible thumpers teach kids to "think critically," the Bible itself is explicitly exempt from any rigorous form of critical thinking.

 

[Farsight]

I think "critical thinking" should be taught. It revolves around scientific evidence, and logic, and why people believe the things that they do despite the evidence to the contrary. Provided that it is taught, and this bill isn't just a ruse, creationism won't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

The problem with religion is that people teach others to accept what they're told, and have faith, et cetera. The people doing the teaching know full well that if you catch 'em young they will believe it, and accept it, and when they grow up, they will fight for it. But this isn't just a problem with religion. Other interest groups attempt to do this too. And all these interest groups will oppose critical thinking.

They won't be too keen on this forum either.

 

[Kotatsu]

the words of the Priests of Godless Knowledge?

I may misunderstand you, but as you seem to be arguing in favour of the opposite of the high-lighted section above, may I ask you what this opposite is?

 

[Dinwar]

I think "critical thinking" should be taught. It revolves around scientific evidence, and logic, and why people believe the things that they do despite the evidence to the contrary. Provided that it is taught, and this bill isn't just a ruse, creationism won't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

Well, that's the thing--Creationists have learned to draft laws such that they SOUND reasonable, but once they're put into place they amount to nothing more than a smear attack against evolution and teaching Creationism without any in-depth examination.

Again, these people are not honest. The fact that they are still trying to get Craetionism into schools, despite the fact that it's been ruled unconstitutional, attests to that. The fact that they're hiding behind wiggle-words and loose verbage does as well. And their goal is explicite--they don't want ot teach science or critical thinking, but rather they want to institute a theocracy in the United States. Any time you hear of a law drafted by a Creationists you need to examine that aspect of it.

 

[Acleron]

Let them teach whatever they want, then when their children are laughed out of college biology classes they can get them all jobs pumping gas somewhere. Serves em right....

It would be a shame for the kids who have been defrauded of the right to be able to think for themselves.

And unfortunately, doesn't seem to be happening here ...

A growing number of biology and medical students are rejecting the very basis of their chosen subject in favour of creationism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8931518/Islam-Charles-Darwin-and-the-denial-of-science.html

It appears you can walk out of lectures with no penalties.

How things have changed, I had real reasons for wanting to miss certain lectures although I suspect the university might not have accepted boredom as an excuse.

 

[AdMan]

Tennessee’s Anti-Science Bill Becomes Law

...An alternate approach has appeared in a number of bills (again, all with nearly identical language) that would protect teachers who present the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, although the bills single out evolution, climate change, and a couple of topics that aren’t even theories. Again, the goal seems to be to use neutral language that will allow teachers to reiterate many of the spurious arguments against the widely accepted scientific understandings. Tennessee’s House and Senate had passed a bill that took precisely this approach.

The state’s governor, saying the bill doesn’t “bring clarity,” has decided not to sign it. But he’s decided not to veto it either, which will allow it to become law.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

If they're going to teach the "controversy" over evolution, I have to ask: when will they insist on the teaching of the similar "controversy" over the Holocaust? Or the "controversy" over the Apollo moon landings? Or the "controversy" over 9/11?

If actual evidence doesn't matter, then pretty much every bit of crockery should be taught in the name of "teaching the controversy".

 

[Sideroxylon]

The final missing frame is where the school board member hands the teacher a Bible.

 

[quarky]

The most irksome aspect, to me, of creationism, is that it focuses on one version out of very many. Why not teach the kids the creationism of various Indian tribes?

Wasn't the grand canyon formed by a giant snake that was angry with a turtle?

 

[Kotatsu]

The most irksome aspect, to me, of creationism, is that it focuses on one version out of very many.

The annoying thing, I feel, is that there are so many actual controversies in evolutionary biology that are infinitely more interesting than whether or not God had a hand in the creation of the universe.

While I do care about creationists lying about what I do for a living, I don't really care if there is or is not evidence for God or creation or whatever. The phylogenies I reconstruct, and the species I describe, and the evolutionary processes I speculate on work perfectly fine without divine interference, but would not change one bit if there was unequivocal evidence that it was all God's doing after all. There would still be evidence for colour-changing in peppered moths, and beak-size changes in Darwin's finches, and the loss of eyes in cave fishes, and all the other stuff. I would still get the same phylogenies based on the same data, and I would still find the same morphological differences between the same specimen. It simply does not really matter.

What does matter is that the focus is put on the wrong things. The world is wonderful, and animals and plants and physics and chemistry and geology and so on is awesome whether it's all God's doing or not. Pyrosoma won't stop being a jet-propelled sea squirt colony you can swim into, Symbion pandora won't stop having the weirdest life cycle known to mankind, the Rift Lake cichlids won't stop being amazingly diverse, scorpions won't stop glowing under UV lights, the Emperor Tamarin won't stop always giving birth to twins and signalling each other with their long, blue tongues, and Volvox won't stop being one of the most beautiful plants in existence (1) just because you add/subtract God to/from the world.

Even if we were to grant that discussions of God are relevant to biology, the "controversy" over his/her existence must surely be the dullest of all controversies in evolutionary biology. A top ten list of the greatest debates in the history of evolutionary biology would not include that of God's existence. Does orthogeny exist? Punctuated equilibrium or continualism (or both)? Can "ancient asexuals" exist, and if so what does that imply? Allopatric, peripatric or sympatric speciation? What about despeciation and respeciation? What is a "species"? Or a "genus"? Is there a difference between "parallelism" and "convergence"? Why does sex exist? Even the seemingly dull, but oh so prismatic, "Is a species a set or an element?"-debate is more interesting than the question of God, as is the (sort of still ongoing) discussion on paraphyly.

The list could go on for pages, without finding an controversy or an argument that is not both more intellectually fulfilling than the creationism/theories-based-on-data-from-the-real-world-and-actual-logic debate. These are all rewarding debates that would be interesting and relevant to biology whether or not God exists.

It may very well be that some god steered evolution to produce us, or even that everything was created to look as if evolution happened. The God hypothesis is after all just one step less parsimonious than any non-god hypothesis. But why does that matter in the least? Regardless of the answer to the question, "Does God exist?", we still have data which can be, and should be, sorted, analysed, and explained with non-divine methods.

You should be allowed to start your first lecture on evolutionary biology by just saying: "God may exist; he may also not exist. That is entirely irrelevant to this class. Now: do ancient asexuals exist?"

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(1) Note: This is an opinion.

 

[steve s]

I'm not so sure about this gravity thing. How can we be sure God isn't just pushing everything down? I think both sides should be taught.

Intelligent Falling.

Steve S

 

[jasonpatterson]

I think "critical thinking" should be taught. It revolves around scientific evidence, and logic, and why people believe the things that they do despite the evidence to the contrary.

In the states where I've taught critical thinking has been part of the science standards. The difference between that idea and what this type of bill (now law??) does is that it singles out evolution and climate change as areas where this should be done (because apparently these are highly controversial areas of study...)

The purpose of these laws is to make it legal for creationist teachers to shoot holes in evolution for an ignorant audience based the usual pack of lies and misinformation. We also get the bonus of having climate change deniers doing much the same.