New Anti-Evolution Bill in Oklahoma

Here's some news on the latest "educational freedom" bills presented to the Oklahoma legislature. Keep in mind that both legislative branches and the executive are controlled by the same party in Oklahoma after the 2010 elections. I always find it fascinating that, when attempting to push a religion-based agenda into a secular organization like a public school system, people who believe they have God on their side of the debate feel it necessary to actively deceive the public as to their intent by using phrases like "educational freedom".

Two Oklahoma lawmakers file bills encouraging creationism
Blog with some good analysis comparing this to similar attempts in Texas.
And the Christian Science Monitor weighs in.

I think the CSM article sums it up nicely:

Despite the constant claims of creationists to the contrary, there simply is no debate among scientists about the validity of evolution. If you search research journals and attend scientific conferences, it becomes readily apparent that while there are controversies over the details of evolution, there is no controversy about the basic fact that living things have descended with modification from a common ancestry. Scientists argue how evolution happened, not whether evolution happened.

Fair's fair.

If they allow the Christian creation myth to be taught as a valid alternative to evolution, teachers should be allowed to teach all creation myths.
Obviously schooling will have to be extended by 10 years to allow time for this.

Science exams could then include the question:
Outline the basic mechanisms of evolution or recite a creation myth. (If you don't want my loving god to burn you in hell for eternity, recite the biblical one.)

In the interests of consistency, churches should be required to teach the theory of "use it or lose it", and the health benefits of masturbation.

Originally posted by Kailassa
If they allow the Christian creation myth to be taught as a valid alternative to evolution, teachers should be allowed to teach all creation myths.

I demand that children should be taught the controversy. You know, how Ymir drank the milk from a giant cow and the cow licked a man out of ice.

Let the kids see both sides of the argument and decide for themselves.

While I think it is important to nurture the imagination of children today ......


School is no place for fairy tales.

reply to post by PieKeeper


Clouds are made from the brains of Ymir tossed into the air!

Odin said it, I believe it...he'll probably straight up kill me if I don't...that settles it.

Now this is the sort of thread to blow off steam in while doing a take home exam...

I think one of my favorites that would absolutely need to be in the curriculum would be the myth of how Izanagi and Izanami created the islands of Japan by flicking drops of "salty water" off the end of Izanagi's "spear".

While it's somewhat comical to a lot of people, in this forum, especially those from outside the US . . . It's a sad state of affairs that every year there is a state/district that tries to sneak this in. I got out of teaching about 14 years ago, due to the public system in AZ being an absolute joke and not wanting to teach at a religiously funded private institution.

I really thought after the Dover trial that all HS Biology teachers should have read the transcripts to their students and sent home a copy, so "concerned" parents could see what their children are learning about in school. It's a shame that the initial lawsuit made the MSM here and provided plenty of political fodder to both sides, but the final ruling garnered nary a whisper. (Jeez . . . wonder why?)

Here is a sad, sad thread (article) on what biology teachers in America are faced with and their own knowledge of ET.

High School Biology teachers reluctant to endorse Evolution in class, study finds

Noticed only a few people have even seen the above thread . . . if posted or moved to this forum, it would have had a lot more play.

It's fun living in the most backward industrialized country in the world . . .

reply to post by solomons path


As a graduate of Dover High School (Bertha Spahr, one of the key witnessess for the ACLU, was my chemistry teacher and one of the reasons that I pursued a career in chemistry), I followed the trial with great interest and was also surprised and saddened that it didn't even get more attention at the time.

reply to post by iterationzero


I was in High School in St. Louis when the creationism in Kansas thing came up, though I didn't get that sort of great front row seat of reason, I did have plenty of evangelicals to contend with. Fortunately, I jumped on to the FSM noodle wagon quite early on, so I had plenty of delicious ammo.

It's retarded bills like that why I post in this forum section

Similar bull#:









Just as nuts as the Mark Twain n-word changes. I have quite a few black friends, and when I asked them about it, they asked me why they think being called a slave is better than the n-word, and that they rather have me call them the n-word than slave







Just following the mantra of this site by trying to make people deny ignorance

I think all origin based beliefs should be banned from any and all educational systems.

Whether one is right and the other wrong, its not the responsibility of the schools to embed pre-origin belief into kids.

reply to post by iterationzero


woohoo let's spread ignorance like wildfire and corrupt all the young'ens. tell them if they close their eyes and wish real hard that evolution won't be true.

The amusing thing about this is the tendency to follow the local religion, and thus swallow a bucket-load of unproven beliefs as fact, could itself be the product of evolution.

get informed...darwin didn't come up the thoery, his dad started it. darwin stated that the entire theory was not to be trusted if one instance of reverse order was seen...and he couldn't explain the eye.!
reverse order is found many places in muscle type . it's as if a creator has incredible order in this universe and science has given over the the fact the deeper the tech goes.
the native american i saw on a video said it well...."you guys might be descended from chimpanzies....but we are not" they are merely our relatives. so stop being victims of the world view lies

reply to post by GBP/JPY

darwin stated that the entire theory was not to be trusted if one instance of reverse order was seen...and he couldn't explain the eye.!

Luckily we can today, and it perfectly fits the theory of evolution

smh.

Do they intentionally want to dumb us down (that is rhetorical...)? This is seriously messed up. But, it also reflects exactly what has been coming out in the news lately about our students' lagging performance in both math and science disciplines. But whatever, kids don't need (functional) brains when they have the dear sweet baby jeebus!
Most American Students Don't Understand Science, Test Scores Show
American Teens Trail Global Peers in Math Scores
'Report card' on science: Most US students aren't 'proficient'
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c12d54d914e7.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by BiggyMcBigPants


Of course it's related!!



The people are systematically being dumbed down, which makes it easier to control them. Part of that is trying to convince them we roamed the earth with dinosaurs, or that there's talking snakes that tells people what not to do. Kinda sad in the 21st century. Where I grew up, no one questioned evolution...it wasn't until I moved to the US that people seriously started claiming we co-existed with dinosaurs, or other hogwash like that the earth is only 10k years old.

If you're asking yourself why China is slowly overtaking your economy, it has partly to do with the fact that religion is influencing your lives way too much when it comes to rational subjects such as education.

Save yourself, Oklahoma.

Cobb Co., GA did this a few years back and embarrassed themselves and cost the taxpayers good money needless haggling it out in court.

Save yourselves now...

Originally posted by totalmetal
reply to post by iterationzero

 

woohoo let's spread ignorance like wildfire and corrupt all the young'ens. tell them if they close their eyes and wish real hard that evolution won't be true.

Seriously. If a parent wants to teach their child this at home, that's fine. If a school wants to discuss creationism or intelligent design in a comparative or world religions class, that's fine. But trying to ramrod something that has no grounding in science into a science class is exactly why we're progressively falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world in technological advancement.

Originally posted by GBP/JPY
get informed...darwin didn't come up the thoery, his dad started it. darwin stated that the entire theory was not to be trusted if one instance of reverse order was seen...and he couldn't explain the eye.!
reverse order is found many places in muscle type . it's as if a creator has incredible order in this universe and science has given over the the fact the deeper the tech goes.
the native american i saw on a video said it well...."you guys might be descended from chimpanzies....but we are not"

they are merely our relatives. so stop being victims of the world view lies

It doesn't matter to science who came up with a theory. All that matters is whether evidence can be found by other people to support or disprove the theory. Although it's often just one person who gets public adulation for an invention or theory, the circumstances leading to this achievement are commonly a culmination of circumstances, including a general interest at that time in the idea, and other people also investigating it.

If the theory of evolution was something that came to Mr. Ed in a dream, it would still have the same standing as a scientific theory after the same evidence had been found, and discussion, peer review and investigations had been carried out.

Do you have a citation for this statement supposedly made by Darwin?
Would you like to explain what you mean by reverse order?
How is this "reverse order" related to muscle type"?

The native American you saw was quite correct. We are not descended from chimpanzees. Humans and the other great apes are all descended from the one distant ancestor. So the chimps are our cousins, not our forefathers.