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Tag Archives: Intelligent Design
Poll: Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?
WPTV.COM has a poll asking “Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?” and the possible answers are “yes” and “no.” Which I guess means they are not really asking an “either/or” question although it is worded that way. Anyway, this relates to THIS STORY about people who work for a school system who are currently in trouble for contempt of court. Contempt of court is a jail-able offense, and it is NOT “offering prayer in public schools.”
Of course, it is true that these individuals were originally in trouble for violating the First Amendment Rights of the children and others in the school system they work for, and for mixing church/state business. They were ordered by a judge to stop doing that, they defied the order, and that is what got them in trouble.
Anyway this is a poll you might want to visit, but don’t just vote; Comment also. Let the poll-maker know that they are not really asking the right question.
The Poll is Here. It is currently at 10.6 percent yest, 89.4 percent no.
Why are most Americans creationists?
We know there is a link between education, church going behavior, and the inability or unwillingness to accept that evolution is real and that humans evolved. But what exactly is the relationship? I think the following diagram includes the correct answer, but I’m not sure which one it is:
This film is being kept out of US theaters
… Or so I’m told.
Chris Holmlund says of “Creation” in an email:
“The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 % of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.”
Here’s a trailer:
Continue reading This film is being kept out of US theaters
The Blogginheads.tv Controversy
Since the bloggingheads “diavlog” with David Dobbs and me was the first science-oriented installment to come out (more or less) since the repudiation of Bloggingheads.tv by Carl Zimmer and Sean Carrol, and now Phil Plait and PZ Myers, I think I should say something about why I did it and what I think about the whole thing.
Continue reading The Blogginheads.tv Controversy
Back to school: Books on Creationism
If you are a teacher or a parent you may find some of these books especially useful to: a) prepare yourself; b) give to your child’s teacher or a colleague; or c) give to a school administrator. Seriously.
Each link is to a review of the book to help you decide if you are interested.
Creationism/Evolution blog posts, etc.
The following are links to selected posts on this blog that are related to science education or the evolution-creationism ‘debate.’
Chris Comer Appeals Creationism Related Ruling
Chris Comer was the Director of Science with the Texas Educaiton Agency until she was forced to resign in November of 2007. That happened because she disseminated information about an upcoming talk that would likely be critical of creationism. She was fired because the TEA (hee hee he said …. “tea”) claimed a “neutrality” policy and claimed that Chris had broken the policy. Her reference, via email, to the upcoming talk was an endorsement of … OMG! Evolution! Evolution over Creationism!!!
Yes folks, you read that right. Chis Comer was effectively fired from her job as director of Science of the TEA because she gave the vaguest hint that she supported evolution over creationism. I’m sure you already know that story.
Anyway, she sued, and the court in which she sued ruled against her because that court did not feel that her claim … that the TEA had violated the establishment clause … was valid.
Truthfully, this is a tricky one. The court ruling against her in this case did not mean much regarding church and state or evolution vs. creationism.
Well, Chris Comer has filed an appeal in the US Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit. The appeal was filed on August 6th and asks for …
…review the record de novo and reverse and vacate the district court’s decision. Specifically, it should grant Comer’s motion for summary judgment, and vacate the grant of summary judgment for defendants, as well as the dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint. At a minimum, this Court should vacate the grant of summary judgment to defendants, plus the order dismissing the complaint, and remand for further proceedings.
Here is the original ruling.
Here is the appeal.
You can see a summary of this story here. As soon as I hear more I’ll let you know .
Whack-Job Creationist Running for Mayor in Tulsa
Well, I spent the morning with a wonderful group of Middle and High School teacher committed to doing an excellent job of teaching evolution in their classrooms. Then, I go check my email and I’ve got a similar number of people sending me this story about a person who could be the next mayor of Tulsa Oklahoma, apparently.
Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that also include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.
“It’s first,” she
said to calls of “hallelujah” at a rally outside the zoo. “If we can’t come to the foundation of faith in this community, those other answers will never come. We need to first of all recognize the fact that God needs to be honored in this city.”Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofit groups and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”
When asked whether she meant that she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches.” When asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.”
Continue reading Whack-Job Creationist Running for Mayor in Tulsa
What to do with Bible thumping students
…. 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
State science standards under attack
Hot off the presses from the NCSE:
Continue reading State science standards under attack
Free Admission to the Creation Museum
As you know, PZ Myers and a well behaved group of just over three hundred interested skeptics visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky last week. One result of this visit is an epic post by PZ which pretty much obviates any need to actually to go to the museum yourself.
If you are a student assigned to go to the museum and do a report on it, just use PZ’s blog post, it will be much easier. Here it is!
304 non-believers visit creation museum, don’t cause much fuss
A group of scientists, students and secularists — 304 in all — visited Petersburg, Kentucky on Friday to tour exhibits on display at the Creation Museum.
The visitors are in town attending a conference of the Secular Student Alliance, a group formed “to organize, unite, educate and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics.”
The Creozerg Visit to the Creation Musuem
I wish I coulda been there … by all accounts it sounds like the Creozerg visit to the Creation Museum went well. A couple of kids were thrown out because they said things or whatever, which is good because it shows that the whole point of the creation museum is to express, secure, and protect a particular point of view and to supress others. For your entertainment, I’ve collected a handful of links from the event. Please visit these links, and if you are a social neworking kinda person, digg-em-up or stumbleuponthem or whatever. It would be very nice, would it not, if over the next few months anyone who sought information on the creation museum found lots of these stories on the top of the google food chain?
If you have a blog, you know what to do. and in case you don’t, just open this page (the one you are reading now) with Firefox, and hit ctrl U. Then, find the code for the list of links, copy, paste, blog.
It is happening: CreoZerg Moves In
The CreoZerg (and I’m not entirely sure what a Creo-Zerg is) is underway. PZ Myers and the atheists are moving in to the creation museum. Details here. Twittering here.