Texas Science Curriculum Director Fired for Anti-Creationism Lecture Notice
The Texas Dept. of Education Science Curriculum Director was fired for forwarding without comment a notice of a lecture on evolution by a well-known author, an expert critical of Creationism. Texas policy seems to not allow criticism of ID theory by any of it's educators.
In 2003, Texas was 46th in the US in Math SAT scores, 49th in Verbal SAT scores, and ranked 50th in percentage of population with high school diplomas. Texas is perhaps the most influential state in the formulation of standards for textbooks.
In essence, many or most of our children are using books produced by the single least-successful education system in the country. The best that can be said of this is that most other states obviously do a better job with the same material.
And oh yeah, they're firing their science curriculum director for passing on information on a lecture about what is perhaps the single most successful scientific theory in history. That'll raise the scores...
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
I saw this image associated with the post somewhere else.
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I discussed America's stupid (sorry, but it is) return to Creationism with a friend, and he was speechless. He didn't even believe me about the "Creationist museum" and other fun mainstream shows of ignorance (The Republican debate where they talk about god and so on).
Coincidentally we were watching VH1 and this came on:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FU7XsoQXSW8
I had never seen it but the rant at 2:45 is so inspiring, we concluded that we really missed the USA of the 90's. Such a powerful and cool country.
Edit: If you care, Mexico is like 99% catholic and we still do not allow religious theories to be taught at school. Evolution, science is in the official textbooks (Except perhaps in private schools where they also teach about the bible).
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I remember when the whole 2 live crew happened here. I was not a mere half hour drive from the whole situation. Granted I couldn't drive since I was 6 at the time. But I remember Univision talking about it.
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People can make all the jokes they want about Canada but this kind of nonsense rarely if ever happens up here and it never survives a court challenge. We're getting closer to Mike Judge's Idiocracy every day.
"We're taught from a young age how to dodge rock hard objects moving at incredible rates of speed while simultaneously beating folks half to death with sticks. We do this for fun." -kung fu grip
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I thought multiple times when I was in Nova Scotia on just how hard would it be for me to simply stay there instead of coming back to the US. Believe me.. it was very tempting.
Oh and to make a few points that is always forgotten by the masses...
Not all Christians are Republicans.
Not all Republicans are Christian.
Not all Republicans are Conservative Brainwashed Religious Christian Nutjobs.
Not all Democrats are Liberals.
Not all Liberals are Democrats.
Not all Democrats are Liberal Atheist Pagan Demon Worshipers.
Politics and Religion do not intersect and should not intersect and it is the duty of the people of this great country to ensure that they never intersect. The Church does not run this country, the Government through the people run this country. School is a place of education, Church is a place of faith. Keep education and faith separate. Teach for knowledge not for tests.
Prederick wrote:
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis.
O RLY?
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
Idiocracy is a very contemporary film.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
I still contend it is a marvelous idea to forward a constitutional amendment that forbids a Texan from ever running for national office again.
This is the internet! In our natural environment, atheists run in packs and have dictionaries! --- JoeBeDurndurn
You Republicans, always with the Constitutional Amendments.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
Hey, you wanna seem like you care but not actually do anything? Propose a constitutional amendment. Gay marriage? Amendment. Abortion? Amendment.
All the mechanics of lawmaking without the votes needed to accomplish anything. It's win-win!
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How perfect the timing is on this thread. I was going to come rant about how my biology professor had to waste nearly thirty minutes of my life last night in lecture by tiptoeing carefully into the subject of evolution, going to great lengths to make sure the class knew she wasn't trying to dictate beliefs to people but that evolution as a process is absolutely factual under our current understanding of biology. It could've been a good lecture, but she's incompetent anyway and managed to drag out a 2-minute disclaimer into a rambling 30-minute apology.
I swear, I felt like I was attending class at a school in Saudi Arabia. Or Texas. Take your pick.
Farcry, you can probably learn more online than from your teacher if that's what you have to deal with. Talk.origins is a good place to start.
Anyone want my college textbooks? They're just collecting dust right now.
This really makes my blood boil. And the fact that this happened at the state level makes it even worse.
The German in me would like nothing more than to round up everyone who belived this crap so they could be systematically denied everything that comes from science: no technology, no medicine, no modern conveniences whatsoever. They could continue to believe that Jesus rode dinosaurs and we'd have a control group to measure natural selection's impact on human evolution. It's a win-win.
I wonder if they've heard of "the wheel"? Or do they get to pick and choose which innovations are divine "gifts"?
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
...the hell? Where do you go to school? I know Vancouver is pretty secular, but as someone taking three biology classes this semester, it's unbelievable to me that a university biology department outside of Rapture U. would have a problem talking about it.
I still remember how my first introduction to evolutionary biology went: "Here is a very, very simplified representation of the evolutionary path leading from the Ultimate Common Ancestor, to multicellular animals, to invertebrates, to fish, to amphibians, to reptiles, to mammals, to primates, to us." "Yes, we came from apes. Get over it." "Moving on..."
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
NO WAI!
The difference here is that a number of organizations are coming to the defense of those who want the books re-instated and pretty much everyone but the school board themselves is saying that they're wrong. This would also never survive a court challenge if anyone tried to mount one.
"We're taught from a young age how to dodge rock hard objects moving at incredible rates of speed while simultaneously beating folks half to death with sticks. We do this for fun." -kung fu grip
http://blog.digital-lifeline.ca
Didn't the Germans already try something like that once? How'd it turn out?
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
They just got the focus of their grand eugenics experiment wrong. They should have looked at *stupid* people* instead of the Jewish people.
*Apologies to any deliberately obtuse, blinkered or inherently ignorant people that might be reading this, but you know you deserve it.
Take me home, Bubbles.
Nice...we go from "people who don't think we came from monkeys are stupid" to "people who don't believe we came from monkeys should be the target of Holocaust 2007".
Tolerance ftw.
Might want to do a bit more research on that firing...
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him, than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word "darkness" on the wall of his cell.
-CS Lewis
Sorry if it came across a bit harsh there Nomad. I wasn't referring to the religious aspect of the argument myself (although I did mistakenly quote that bit as well), more just a poorly-aimed shot at ignorance in general.
Intolerance of intolerant intolerants ftw!
Take me home, Bubbles.
Apes.
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
This is a general biology I course at my local community college here in Iowa, land of easily offended religious types.
It's local and it's affordable, and it's a prereq for med school, so I'm stuck with it. At least finals are next week.
I seriously couldn't believe we spent nearly a half hour listening to an apology for teaching evolution. FFS, people, it's a science class. If you're going to be offended by evolution, don't take biology. If you want to make your "science" fit your religious beliefs, there's places like the Creation Museum for that.
Yeah, I'm not so keen on taking overreactions quite that far. I don't even think that people who disagree with the evolution of mankind from earlier species are stupid. I do think that if they contest the process of evolution, they have a lot of research to do to prove modern science wrong.
GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME YOU DAMN DIRTY APES!
Prederick wrote:
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis.
Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!
Take me home, Bubbles.
If you want to get technical, we didn't descend from apes. Humans and Apes share a common ancestor. There's no reason to assume that after ancestors branched off that apes didn't continue to evolve.
Also, creationism is. not. science. If you want to believe it, that's fine. Personal beliefs are not the realm of science. Testable claims are. Creationism, specifically intelligent design, is not testable (design an experiment to see if there is a God. Can't do it? Me neither), and therefore is not science. Done.
But that common ancestor was still an ape. Though modern apes are changed from those progenitor apes, those originals were similar enough to be grouped with modern apes.
...but who's counting.
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
Grouped in what way? For a shorthand, layman friendly way of communicating, you're right. But if we want to keep up with the level of specificity that a conversation this important warrants, I think it is important to be accurate.
Brendan Fraiser?
Well, ape is a genus, and ancestral apes would simply be other species within that genus. This is all speculation, of course, until we get our hands on a complete genome of these things. But based on fossil evidence and reconstructing DNA from modern apes, it seems very unlikely that they would have been considered taxonomically distinct from modern apes.
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
Jerk. Getting all wikipedia on me. I concede the point that We can call our ancestors Apes, provided we acknowledge that apes as we know now them have certainly evolved to some exetent during the interim period that humanity was doing it's thing.