Considering how right wing SC is, this is rather remarkable. Here’s the details:
Continue reading Newsflash: Evolution Wins in South Carolina!
Tag Archives: Intelligent Design
Genie Scott on Skepchick
Antievolution legislation in Missouri dies
Missouri’s latest contribution to ruining science education has died a merciful death before even reaching committee. This did not happen by itself. This happened because we are keeping an eye on them.
We are watching you, Robert Wayne Cooper. And the rest of you. We are watching you too.
Read the happy details at the NCSE web site.
Genie Scott got a new hair cut!
… like, twenty years ago …
Continue reading Genie Scott got a new hair cut!
New Anti-Evolution Pro-Fundy Christian Book, Reviewed
C.E. Cupp is Ann Coulter before the bottle-blond crap is poured on her head, but maybe slightly less vile.1 She just came out with a new book: Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity
Continue reading New Anti-Evolution Pro-Fundy Christian Book, Reviewed
Alert: Evolution Suppressed in Connecticut
“Mr. Tangarone, a 17-year veteran of the Weston school system, claims that a program he wanted to teach about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln was rejected by the school administration because it involved teaching evolution — the scientific theory that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor.”
Intelligent Design’s Legal Status after Dover
First, there was plain and simple creationism, a Christian idea that, in an ideal Christian world, would be taught as part of any science dealing with the past, including biology (evolution), geology, and presumably history.
But the constitution stood in the way of implementing basic Christian teachings in public schools in the United States, though that battle took decades. Just as creationists were being driven off he landscape, a sort of Battle of the Bulge occurred, in the form of Intelligent Design.
Continue reading Intelligent Design’s Legal Status after Dover
Blast from the Past: Genie Scott on “Headlines on Trial”
Science proves that God created everything out of nothing.
Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:
Continue reading Science proves that God created everything out of nothing.
Texas Textbook Controversy on Nightline
Fundamentalist Christian dentist promotes drastic curriculum change.
Click here then click “Texas Textbook Controversy part way down the middle column.
First Annual Upchucky Awards Announced!!!
Which creationist was the most nauseating?
From the NCSE:
Continue reading First Annual Upchucky Awards Announced!!!
There is a small difference between Har Mar and Har Har
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
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)