Har Mar is a funny little shopping mall in Roseville Minnesota. It is the home of the annual Twin Cities Creation Science Science Fair. Sometimes we visit the science fair, but it is not to laugh at the students….
Continue reading There is a small difference between Har Mar and Har Har
Tag Archives: Creationism
Courts allow University of California to reject credit for Creationist High School courses
A federal appellate court has ruled against a Christian school in Murrieta which had sued the University of California over its refusal to accept high school courses that rely on the Bible as the unerring source of truth.
Next step: Homeschoolers!
(Hat tip: August Berkshire)
Will Minnesota Standards Allow Creationism in the Classroom?
The following story is current, but the issue is not new. But interesting. …
Science standards for Minnesota schools are about to be set for the next six years. Is the battle to keep pseudoscience out of our classrooms over? Sadly the door has been cracked open for intelligent design, an idea with no real scientific basis cooked up by creationists, to remain in Minnesota’s classrooms.
The same vague science benchmark that was a compromise in the intelligent design controversy early in the Pawlenty administration still exists, unchanged, in this round of science standards. These standards will begin next school year and be in effect until 2017.
Continue reading Will Minnesota Standards Allow Creationism in the Classroom?
What to do with Bible thumping students (a repost)
…. Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it’s early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about “carbon dating.” This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you’ve gotten to the “evolution module”…
The student is talking about C14 dating and how it “has problems.” But you are a life science teacher and can’t think of a single point in your class that you really touch on C14. Dating in the evolution section does not involve C14. This is for later time periods, more in the area of archaeology, and you know nothing about it. So you brush off the question but are left with an uneasy feeling.
Next class, probably just after class, the same student, again at a moment that gives you zero warning and usually no time to think of how to respond, mentions something about the Laws of Thermodynamics. This question you find more interesting and possibly even useful as the starting point of a “teachable moment…” The nature of life itself includes the fact that life works upstream against entropy. That one utterly mind-blowing aspect of life is really all you need to define life itself. If that was the only thing you used to define life, you would have very few non-life entities or events accidentally included. If you can truly understand … I mean really, really truly at a detailed level understand …. how the heck life works against the gradient of entropy, then you will understand a LOT (like, at the MA level, at least) of what is going on. To get a believable and reasonable level of understanding of this, you must get more than just basic cell function … it is not good enough to just say “The mitochondria are the tiny little powerhouses of the cell” because you have not explained how that works. You need to know about ATP and stuff. Really, you even need to know why cells use ATP as energy but none of the other obvious forms of energy that they could use … the phylogenetic effect at a very
Continue reading What to do with Bible thumping students (a repost)
Messing Up Darwin’s Origin
Please do me a favor. Start collecting those bogus-ized copies of Darwin’s Origin being distributed by Ray Comfort. We’re low on firewood up at the cabin. Oh, and if you see Ray, puke on his shoes for me, OK?
It’s not that I like burning books. But this is not burning books. When Ray Comfort distributes a faked-up copy of The Origin, he’s committing a kind of intellectual violence. Tossing the books into the wood stove is a parry.
If you want to reduce the effects of global warming, you could always bury them in your garden thus sequestering the carbon they are made from.
Here are the details from the National Center for Science Education:
Continue reading Messing Up Darwin’s Origin
How Young is the Grand Canyon?
To answer that question briefly, it is really really old if you mean “how old are the oldest rocks that are exposed by the Grand Canyon,” and it is probably just a few million years old (5 or 6 by some estimates) if you mean “how long did the canyon itself take to form.”
Dawkins on O’Really
Hat Tip Julia
How to teach evolution in the college classroom
An item from the NCSE:
Continue reading How to teach evolution in the college classroom
Los Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film
You’ll recall that it was recently reported that the Californial Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record” which is apparently a creationist documentary.
Well, now, the venue has cancelled the showing and the ID people are all lathered up about it.
Continue reading Los Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film
The latest on evolution from the Vatican
A recently published statement on current scientific knowledge on cosmic evolution and biological evolution from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences concludes: “The extraordinary progress in our understanding of evolution and the place of man in nature should be shared with everyone. … Furthermore, scientists have a clear responsibility to contribute to the quality of education, especially as regards the subject of evolution.” The statement appears in the proceedings of “Scientific Insights into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life,” a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held from October 31 to November 4, 2008.
Well, that about settles it then…
Continue reading The latest on evolution from the Vatican
Massachusetts Bill To Push Creationism Into Schools?
This just in from the NCSE:
Continue reading Massachusetts Bill To Push Creationism Into Schools?
Genie Scott Wins Major Award!!!
This just in: Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the NCSE, has won the California Academy of Sciences Fellows Medal.
This is somewhere between an Oscar and a Nobel. Congratulations Genie!!!
Cell Signals and Creationism
Lately, creationist rhetoric seems to increasingly mention the idea that if scientists really understood evolution, life, and biology, then why don’t they just create it themselves, as a kind of proof of concept? This rhetoric usually includes a statement like: “They can’t even create a simple cell … ”
Continue reading Cell Signals and Creationism
Intelligent Design Documentary
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The debate over Darwin will come to California on October 25th, when the Smithsonian Institution’s west coast affiliate premieres Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record, a new intelligent design film which challenges Darwinian evolution. To view a trailer and clips from the film, please visit www.darwinsdilemma.org.
Darwin’s Dilemma will be screened at 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 25th in the IMAX theater at the California Science Center, with a post-film discussion featuring Darwin skeptic Dr. David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, and leading intelligent design scientist Dr. Jonathan Wells, biologist and author of Icons of Evolution. The screening is sponsored and hosted by the American Freedom Alliance.
How the evidence for evolution was made up by Satan.
hat tip: Rebecca