Intelligent Design
gregladen | May 20, 2010Missouri'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.
gregladen | May 3, 2010... like, twenty years ago ...
Back in 1989, Dr. Genie Scott and other scientists staged a mock debate between evolution and creationism. Where: San Diego meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologst. When: 4/6/1989
gregladen | April 21, 2010C.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, which explains everything you had wrong if you were a progressive liberal in the education business. The book even comes with forward by Mike Huckabee.
Well, Steve Levingston of Political Bookworm on the Washington Post web site has reviewed the book, and seeing as how he does not have a lot of background in the Creationism vs Reality struggle, he interviewed Joshua Rosenau of the NCSE…
gregladen | April 14, 2010"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."
Mark Tangarone, who teaches third, fourth, and fifth grade students in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program at Weston Intermediate School, said he is retiring at the end of the current school year because of a clash with the school administration over the teaching of evolution…
gregladen | April 2, 2010First, 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.
Intelligent Design is a scientific-looking theory which is really just more creationism…
gregladen | March 13, 2010Accoring 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:
Write a letter to Charles Darwin explaining why you believe biblical creationism is more plausible and reasonable than Darwin's theory of evolution.
Aubrea's essay is here in PDF form. The web site with other essays, the rules of the contest, and additional information is here.
I invite you to review this essay and comment on its veracity and validity.
Hat tip: Scott Lohman
gregladen | March 12, 2010Fundamentalist Christian dentist promotes drastic curriculum change.
Click here then click "Texas Textbook Controversy part way down the middle column.
gregladen | March 3, 2010Which creationist was the most nauseating?
From the NCSE:
When it comes to dissing evolution (and science in general) there's no lack of volunteers. How to decide which among them is the worst?
Enter the intelligently designed UpChucky Award, which recognizes supreme achievement in the field of persistently rejecting evolution in the most stomach-turning way imaginable. This crown of cluelessness, this diadem of density, this badge of bullpucky isn't awarded to just any Darwin doubter. The UpChucky is bestowed on that one creationist whose efforts in the preceding year would inspire Darwin (…
gregladen | February 10, 2010Har 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....
... that would be rude and uncivil, and despite the fact that politeness and civility are EVILE, when it comes to children we should not be all in their faces.
Rather, we go to the funny little mall to enjoy each other's company, those of us who wish we got together more often than we do, to browse through the Creation Science Fair displays, and to size up the local…
gregladen | February 7, 2010A 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.
Details here.
Next step: Homeschoolers!
(Hat tip: August Berkshire)
gregladen | January 26, 2010The 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…
gregladen | January 5, 2010.... 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"...
Jeanne d'Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I understand she gave her Life Science teachers a very hard time. This is the only contemporary depiction of Joan of Arc…
gregladen | December 13, 2009This is the problem with Christians. They think they have a special pass to do whatever they want as long as it done in the name of their god. Now don't get me wrong here. The average Christian does not think he or she is above the law on a day to day basis. But it is part of Christian religion and culture, and I'm telling you this from personal experience, to ignore the law when one feels that their god or their religion demands it. So, when Ray Comfort produced his bogused-up version of Darwin's Origin of Species, the idea of doing it LEGALLY did not seem too important, apparently.
So…
gregladen | December 1, 2009When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
Imagine the following two alternative scenarios.
Alternative Universe One
The Scene: Visiting Nurses Inc. VNI contracts with health care providers to send trained visiting nurses around to check in on newly minted babies and their parents. This is standard procedure in many health care plans, and of course, VNI wants to develop and maintain…
gregladen | November 24, 2009The The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin was published 150 years go as I write this. At the time, several different alternative theories of the origin and history of life were being discussed in the West. Some of these theories were theological. Theological ideas included a literal translation of the bible, with the flora, the fauna, and humans created in three separate but related creation events on a freshly made earth just a few thousand years ago. Another theological idea had an Abrahamic God's hand involved in the history of life but in ways we were not likely to understand until…
gregladen | November 16, 2009Bergman gave the argument FOR Intelligent Design, and Myers gave the argument AGAINST.
I have never seen an argument against Intelligent design so well made. It would seem that Intelligent Design is a point of view rather than a coherent theory, one that emerges as a socio political side-effect of the struggle between atheism and religion, one that has many proponents but no valid scientific published research to support it. Intelligent design, according to what I saw argued, makes little internal coherent sense. It is based on a two step process of reasoning: Irreducible complexity, which…
gregladen | November 16, 2009I believe they are trying to keep it secret, but that's Robert Luhn swinging around the big knife while raging about Ray Comfort:
The source of this video is the new NCSE Don't Dis Drwin site, HERE.
gregladen | November 16, 2009Tomorrow, the NCSE will release a response to Ray Comfort's tricked-out version of Darwin's Origin of Species.
I got a sneak preview of the web site and if you are good, I can let you see it too.
(a GLB exclusive!)
First, you need to go here and click around and get interested in dopplegangers. Then come right back.
...
OK, you're back, cool.
The new site addresses this gosh-awful rendition of the Origin of Species put out by the creationists that includes a creationist introduction and some pre-quote mined text. The NCSE has responded.
On November 19th, Los Angeles-based creationist…