Religion & Law

Yogisms

Posted on February 23, 2008
As should be expected, "it ain't over 'til its over" in Florida.The latest maneuver is that the anti-science forces are pushing for an "academic freedom" law to add a provision to the standards permitting teachers "to engage students in a critical analysis" of evolution...

Of Apples and Eden

Posted on February 22, 2008
There was a fine example on February 13, 2008 of the fact that the Discovery Institute was, for once, being completely truthful when it said of its "blog," Evolution News & Views:The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site...

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch ...

Posted on February 21, 2008
Well, people are catching on ...Back when the notion of appending the word "theory" to "evolution" in the Florida science standards was first proposed, coming from a group of state legislators in early February, I labeled it as a "throw me in the briar patch" solution for the Board of Education...

Origins of Antiscience

Posted on February 21, 2008
A thought:From the beginning, the core of individuals who built the ID movement was concerned with the materialist focus of American society and of science, which they associate with materialism. For example, science explains events and observations through natural causes; the principle of methodological materialism rules out appeals to divine cause in science...

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Legislative Thinking

Posted on February 20, 2008
.Florida State Rep. Marti Coley, who had been making noises about having the legislature add "theory" to every appearance of "evolution" in the state science standards has pronounced herself satisfied with the last minute change made by the Board of Education to call it the Scientific Theory of Evolution" (along with the "Scientific Theory of Atoms;" the "Scientific Theory of Electromagnetism;" the "Scientific Theory of the Big Bang;" and the "Scientific Theory of Plate Tectonics")...

The Deed Is Done

Posted on February 19, 2008
The Florida Board of Education has approved the new standards with, as was reported before, the addition of "the scientific theory of" before every use of the word "evolution." There is no report on whether the phrase was added to any other theories addressed in the standards...

Of Forests and Trees

Posted on February 19, 2008
A thought:Most working scientists see themselves as clearing a small patch of light in a great glowering dark forest of unreason. Confronted with pseudoscience like "Intelligent Design," they see the darkness pushing back at them, trying to reclaim what they have so painstakingly cleared and lit...

Netcetera Sucks

Posted on February 19, 2008
Orac tells the tale of cowardly, chickenhearted, craven, dastardly, faint-hearted, lily-livered, pusillanimous, gutless, yellow-bellied, ignoble, uncourageous poltroons at Netcetera who pulled the plug on Le Canard Noir's Quackometer site in the face of a threat of a lawsuit by a homeopathic woomeister by the name of Joseph Chikelue Obi and the equally wooish Society of Homeopaths...

Centers of Education

Posted on February 18, 2008
The Lakeland, Florida Ledger has Casey Luskin (dis)gracing its pages with another of his PR attempts at smoke and mirrors. The main complaint is that the factually accurate report by the proposed science standards that evolution is "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" will "elevate Darwin's theory to a dogma that cannot be questioned...

The Danger of Freedom

Posted on February 18, 2008
. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. - Thomas JeffersonCarol V. Hamilton has an excellent article at George Mason University's History News Network on why the notion that the United States is a "Christian Nation" is, at the very least, misleading and, as propounded by the Righteous Right, is an outright falsehood...

Where Have We Heard This Before?

Posted on February 17, 2008
A thought:[P]rotestations often come from both creation-science and ID proponents that they are not trying to remove evolution from the classroom. They claim that they merely want to give students "all the evidence" or "the complete range of scientific theories" -- which, of course, in practice includes giving them creation science and/or ID along with evolution...

That's a Plan

Posted on February 17, 2008
A thought:In a move that could endanger Florida's flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.This is a dangerous idea -- not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought...

That's Entertainment

Posted on February 16, 2008
Well, Variety has now gotten into the act.Reporting on the fantasy flick, Expelled, it said:Producers of the $3.5 million film, which has been enthusiastically backed by anti-evolution think tank the Discovery Institute, have harnessed some big guns to get the film's message out...

Parceled Out

Posted on February 15, 2008
Uh, oh ... They may be catching on!The Associated Press is reporting that the Florida Board of Education may append the phrase "scientific theory of" to "evolution" and all other scientific theories mentioned in the new standards. As I pointed out, this is something of a Brer Rabbit solution, since the standards do a good job of also laying out the difference between what a scientific theory is and what the vernacular sense of "theory" is...

Into the Future

Posted on February 15, 2008
A thought:In this information age, when science is the key to national prosperity and to protecting the planet, there needs to be more emphasis, not less, on understanding the concept of a scientific theory.A scientific theory is not conjecture. It is a coherent framework that successfully explains natural phenomena...

Educational Malpractice

Posted on February 14, 2008
Just out of curiosity, I keep asking what "evidence against evolution" or "alternative theories" are the creationists in Florida asking to be taught to the state's children. The answers are less than forthcoming. Well, if there was any doubt about the nature of the "evidence" they are talking about, this article in the Florida Baptist Witness should dispel it...

Falling in Line

Posted on February 13, 2008
You may remember Florida State Representative Marti Coley, who has been pushing to append "theory" to every mention of "evolution" in the proposed science standards there. Asked if it should be called the "theory of gravity" in the standards, Coley said: "Sure...

Anticipation

Posted on February 13, 2008
They say "Nothing succeeds like excess," so you can stand some more about Darwin, right? Brian Switek, in a fine Darwin Day article (that I had only a minor quibble with), brought up this quote from Darwin in Animals and Plants Under Domestication:Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear...

199 and Counting

Posted on February 12, 2008
From Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography by Janet Browne: Twenty-three years after publishing the book that made him famous, Darwin died at home, aged seventy-three. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in London, the more usual location for state funerals, royal marriages and national celebrations...

Farsight

Posted on February 11, 2008
Darwin famously stated in the Origin of Species:To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree...

Darwin's Place

Posted on February 10, 2008
The Rev. Timothy McLemore, senior pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Oak Cliff, Texas, has some good thoughts on this Evolution Weekend:If we believe God is truth, we don't need to shrink from truth in whatever way it presents itself. We don't have to be threatened...

Majesty

Posted on February 09, 2008
As my contribution to James F. McGrath's suggested Blog-A-Thon this Evolution Weekend, I'd like to explore a bit Stephen Jay Gould's argument for religion and science occupying "Nonoverlapping Magisteria" or "NOMA." First of all, in Gould's reformulation of an old idea, the supposed "conflict" or "warfare" between science and religion is mistaken:The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory)...

School Admissions

Posted on February 08, 2008
In what can be fairly described as the Family Broen Show, the Highlands County Florida School Board members managed to avoid making fools of themselves ... in public at least.John Broen, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology, Elizabeth Broen, who is now teaching at the college level but was a teacher in the school district for five years, and Kelly Broen, a student at Hill-Gustat Middle School, all spoke before the board...

Falling Star

Posted on February 07, 2008
The Iowa Board of Regents voted 7-1 today to uphold Iowa State University's decision to deny Guillermo Gonzalez tenure. Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery that claims there is evidence for a Designer in astronomy, alleges that he was denied tenure because of his support for the "science" of Intelligent Design...

Herd Mentality

Posted on February 07, 2008
Speaking of Michael Ruse, he has a nice piece, entitled "Darwin and Hitler: a not-very-intelligent link," in the Tallahassee Democrat about the scant connections between Darwin's science and Hitler's murderous rampage.Before the First World War, a sometime member of the German military high staff, General Friedrich von Bernhardi, wrote a book arguing that war was a Darwinian necessity, a real obligation facing Germany in its struggle with Britain...

Other Opinions

Posted on February 07, 2008
.The International Society for Science & Religion, a group founded in 2001 under the inaugural presidency of mathematical physicist and Anglican priest Sir John Polkinghorne, has issued a statement on Intelligent Design Creationism, prepared by, among others, historian Ronald L...

Designing Descent

Posted on February 06, 2008
A thought:The difference between biology and engineering is that Life "makes it up as it goes along." Organisms look like they know where they are going mostly because they "know" so much about where they have been as a result of inheritance from their parents ? this is the sense in which common descent is the explanation for the mistaken appearance of design in living systems...

Foxy Politicians

Posted on February 06, 2008
In the latest turn in the Florida science standards saga, Republican legislators are threatening to throw evolution into the briar patch.In a story entitled "Evolution: Just a theory?," the Miami Herald is reporting that:Rep. Marti Coley, future House Speaker Dean Cannon and state Sen...

Centuries Passed

Posted on February 05, 2008
The Florida Baptist Witness has an editorial by its Executive Editor, James A. Smith Sr., asking that the Florida Board of Education ignore all the scientific and educational expertise that has been consulted by its Framers' Committee on the new standards and, instead, implement standards as bad (for the moment, at least) as those in some other states:Minnesota students must "be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including ? [the] theory of evolution...

Dishonesty Institute

Posted on February 04, 2008
But you already knew that, didn't you? Still, the evidence keeps rolling in and it's handy for me to stockpile it here and to share it with my many ... dozens of ... select group of readers.First, there is the ever-reliable Casey Luskin. If any way exists to make ID and its proponents look even more venal or vacuous, Casey will be in the forefront of the effort...

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