Tennessee makes it safe to teach "alternative" science.

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fangblackbone wrote:

I wonder if anyone has done an experiment where they test the limits of the most awful things they can say while mentioning that they are a christian and they love Jesus every 5 minutes and see if people will walk away proclaiming, "you know, that guy was allright and a good christian".

It would depend on the crowd.

fangblackbone wrote:

I wonder if anyone has done an experiment where they test the limits of the most awful things they can say while mentioning that they are a christian and they love Jesus every 5 minutes and see if people will walk away proclaiming, "you know, that guy was allright and a good christian".

You mean like the Republican primaries?

LarryC wrote:

I'm not familiar with American law on this. If you violate the Constitution and go against principles of SCOTUS decisions, what's the fall out?

This will not likely make it past a low federal court.

Mild case, the law is overturned federally-We all pay for it in the end.
Medium case, the law is overturned and the court imposes sanctions on the legislator or the attorney general. The country pays, Arizona pays a little.
Extreme case, as in Texas with family planning lost funding for healthcare, federal funding for schools is cut in response to the systems not complying with federal mandates and standards. Kids in Arizona really suffer.

I honestly wonder what would happen (aside from threats of violence and complete chickenfeces acts of vandalism) if I were to teach from the Skeptics Annotated Bible in one of those schools.

Paleocon wrote:

I honestly wonder what would happen (aside from threats of violence and complete chickenfeces acts of vandalism) if I were to teach from the Skeptics Annotated Bible in one of those schools.

I don't know that it's useful to continue to suggest that backers of this movement are seeking to introduce theology into public schools. We're past that. The Jones document already has the SCOTUS saying this quite explicitly. That's why I feel that the next logical step would be to just attack the movement directly in court as a federal time and money-saving move so they stop wasting everyone's time with this nonsense.

If they want to teach their kids theology, they're free to do that with all the time and money they want to throw at it. Set up private Fundamentalist schools like Catholics do. It's still a free enough country for that, I think.

If they want to evangelize, that works, too. They can throw whatever they want at this movement, and post signs and whatever. Get private clubs going and so on.

What they can't do is attack the government and seek to limit everyone else's freedom of religion by suggesting that the government is partial to their religion. That way lies theocracy. In short, these movements are not just anti-science. They're anti-Constitution, and it seems to me, deeply anti-American, if it's American to believe in freedom of belief.

dejanzie wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

I wonder if anyone has done an experiment where they test the limits of the most awful things they can say while mentioning that they are a christian and they love Jesus every 5 minutes and see if people will walk away proclaiming, "you know, that guy was allright and a good christian".

You mean like the Republican primaries?

Dammit, you beat me to it!

LarryC wrote:

What they can't do is attack the government and seek to limit everyone else's freedom of religion by suggesting that the government is partial to their religion. That way lies theocracy. In short, these movements are not just anti-science. They're anti-Constitution, and it seems to me, deeply anti-American, if it's American to believe in freedom of belief.

The problem is that a large number of the people involved in trying to establish the theocracy very much believe it is the secularists that are anti-Constitution, anti-Americans who are trying to deprive Christians of their freedom of belief. That group includes legislators, judges, and all manner of other people in positions of power and authority. They very literally believe that the governments role is to protect Christians in any application of their beliefs (with wriggle room via the No True Scotsman fallacy).

Bill Nye Boo'd In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

What the f*ck?

Jayhawker wrote:

Bill Nye Boo'd In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

That is a 2009 blog posting about a newspaper article originally printed in 2006, with what appears to have been a rather large heaping of exaggeration and misinterpretation.

http://www.examiner.com/article/reporter-of-bill-nye-moonbat-story-speaks

Do they think that a lunar eclipse is the moon blinking?

I'm amazed how easy it is to offend some people, if their attention is drawn to any deviations from their established world view and they flip out.

Edit: Ahh ok, blown out of proportion then.

Damn. Trolled by the "Onion effect".

I saw it linked in a Twitter tweet.

Sorry there were fewer bumpkins than advertised.

Apparently there really were people who walked out angry. It was the booing that was the exageration.

Truth is, you kind find outliers in any crowd. There are people who deny that there are atoms, deny the earth is round, deny the moon landing.

I'm not certain if it is just popular to point them out when they are Southern and Evangelical, or something about southern and evangelical culture that encourages them to act out.

Its when they show up to see Bill Nye.

Nevin73 wrote:

Apparently there really were people who walked out angry. It was the booing that was the exageration.

More than just the booing was exagerated... the blog post and original examiner article make it sound as though there was a general consensus against the idea that the moon did not emit light on its own, and from there that the whole town of Waco is (still) a bunch of crazy, ignorant, hicks. There is also an implication of some sort of cover-up, because a tiny local newspaper doesn't keep all of its articles online at all times, and dares to archive them. There are enough actual 'anti-science' stories and occurrences out there that need to be dealt with that harping on a non-event that occurred years prior is something that should be discouraged, not turn into the gleeful 'internet firestorm' that it did back in 2009.

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