The new face for teaching evolution in High Schools. After all the Dover pics, fair is fair.
Gentle reminder: Now hear this: No personal attacks (title of thread posted 15 March 2006 by Jim Robinson).
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To gauge the extent of fundamentalism's reach into American life, Miller evaluated adults' responses to three statements: the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally; there is a personal God who hears the prayers of individual men and women; and human beings were created by God as whole persons and did not evolve from earlier forms of life. In 2005, 43% of American adults agreed with all three statements.
Which we will soon regret.
The accuracy of this statement is what makes it so humiliating.
Since 1979, he says, the proportion of scientifically literate adults has doubled—to a paltry 17%. The rest are not savvy enough to understand the science section of The New York Times or other science media pitched at a similar level. As disgracefully low as the rate of adult scientific literacy in the United States may be, Miller found even lower rates in Canada, Europe, and Japan—a result he attributes primarily to lower university enrollments.
But that really is only a crumb. Rather more telling, perhaps, is this observation:
As time went on, more people said they had a good understanding of stem cells—21% in 2004, up from 9% in 2003—but only 9% of respondents could define the term when asked, compared with 8% in 2003.
In other words, over half the folks who believed themselves to have a "good understanding" of a scientific concept were in fact incapable of even a basic definition of something they believed they understood.
Not unlike a number of critics of Darwin's ToE, who busily refute strawmen without demonstrating the most basic understanding of what Darwin actually wrote and (accurately) predicted.
What I still don't understand is, why is your Republican Party embroiled in this? Over here, the Conservative Party is staunch in its support of both enterprise and science--how can you support one without the other?
to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts. ( from the article)
There is only ONE reason why evolution is such a hot topic: GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS!
If we did not have compulsory attendance, compulsory tax payer funded government schools, the controversy over evolution would dry up like dew on grass on a hot summer morning.
Evolution has PROFOUND cultural, political, and religious consequences for all the children in the government school. Those who win the government school struggle over evolution or ID will influence the political, cultural, and religious worldview of the next generation of voters, politicians, judges, film makers, journalists, artists, and community leaders of all kinds. Is it any wonder that the fight is so bitter?
There is NO way that the government school can approach the topic of the origins of mankind without ESTABLISHING the worldview of some ( with political, cultural, and religious consequences) without actively working against and deliberately destroying the political, cultural, and religious belief systems of others. ( Hm?....don't our state and federal constitutions have something to say about "establishment"? )
Is evolution soooooooo important in the daily work and lives of ordinary people, that government should have the right to actively promote or destroy the religious, political, and cultural worldview of some children while establishing the worldview of others? I don't think so, and rational people will agree with me.
Please remember that government schools use the threat of police force to compel children to attend and to compel taxpayers to pay for the government school agenda. That is what government means. It means the threat of police force.
The solution: Begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education. Parents, teachers, and principals should be deciding these matters privately in private schools.
By the way, evolution is merely one of HUNDREDS of curriculum and policy issues that have PROFOUND religious, cultural, and political consequences. Government must get out of the education business.
Evolutionists and environmentalists have done more to undermine scientific education than all the "dumb-it-down-for-equality" civil rights activists combined.
the embrace of antievolutionism by...."the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party"
This could become a DIM and MSM slogan as the 2008 election approaches.
The anti-Republican (and implicitly anti-conservative slant) should be of concern, not just for the future of conservatism and the Republican party (something which I, and nearly else here, has rehashed a hundred times before), but for the future of scientific literacy. Unlike the rest of you, I'm not a scientist nor do I have any formal scientific training. I'm just a rhetorician. But my particular academic training plus my layman's status may give me a unique perspective on this issue. The way I see it, part of the problem isn't just that the Republican party or conservatism are increasingly seen as anti-science; it's also that too many laypeople see science as hostile to their traditions and values, and for this reason, increasingly find themselves alienated from it. It's bad enough that blacks and other minorities are discouraged from pursuing science because it is perceived as being "white", but now, those groups are further discouraged, along with the majority, because science is perceived as "anti-religious" (something the article fails to mention is that blacks, Hispanics, and other visible minorities are also among the most devoutly religious groups in America), and for a large part of the population, because it is perceived as being "liberal". This is the impression I have received from many of many debates with creationists on FR, who grumble about "liberal scientists" in the public eye (as on this thread here). Although it is both the right and responsibility of scientists, as citizens, to speak out on politics, I fear that the public backlash on science may be a consequence of such outspokenness. Worse yet, instead of simply expressing politically liberal viewpoints, many scientists engage in ad homneim attacks against conservatives in general, declaring that conservatives are "too stupid" to be scientists or to even understand science, which only makes things drives the general public further away. What can be done, then? Well, first of all, scientists in the public eye need to recognize the consequences of their speaking out, to know their audiences, and that what they say will have multiple meanings to different audience members. While they should be prevented from expressing their political views, they should recognize the consequences of voicing them. Secondly, there has been a widely expressed question in the past two years: Where are all the conservative scientists? They don't exist, smugly say the liberals, who predominate among politically vocal scientists, including scientists who blog. But they do exist, as FR demonstrates, and they need to speak louder-much louder than they have so far. They need to let the public know that science is objective and universal and independent of any political belief system, and that it can be appreciated and understood by everyone. We hear so much about the need for women and minority scientists to serve as "role models" to encourage underrepresented groups; conservative and Republican scientists need to do the same (they may also be underrepresented, but how underrepresented is unknown to me). More conservative scientists need to organize themselves into coherent political organizations in order to provide strategies to educate politicians and the public, to start blogging more(nearly all scientists who blog are liberal, but there are exceptions, such as Razib at Gene Expression, Lubos Motl at the world's best physics blog, and a certain chemist), and basically let their voices be heard more in the mainstream of both the news media and scientific community. This won't solve the problem, but it may encourage greater public curiosity and appreciation for the importance of science in political understanding and decision-making.
It's a paltry belief in nothingness that masquearades as faith in Science.
This is the purpose of the purveyors of unknowledge. They hope that if they spread enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt about science, that people will come around to their particular theological position. That this has come to be associated with conservative politics fills the left with glee, but has people like Barry Goldwater rolling over in his grave.
I have a question which boils down the evolution/creation debate. Do you believe the first human being literally was created from nothing (one minute no humans, the next minute humans)? Or do you believe the first humans were were born in the womb as other mammals are?
Academia is a democrat island.. with a few RINOs which are basically democrats..
No more than basically they ARE moderate democrats..
Has anyone else noticed the tendency of CRIDers to be "puntuationally challenged"? Not all of them, certainly, but I wonder if the Ebonic-like approach to science ("science is whatever I think it be") is related to this phenomenon?
It seems to me the left and the education lobby are trying to pin the abysmal state of science education in the U.S. on the crevos, when in actuality the evo/crevo debate is a very, very small part of that picture. For example, the evo/crevo feud has nothing to do with the attempt to introduce a dumbed down high school physics curriculum in many districts.
Bookmarked as a solid example of the purposeful dumbing down by the illiterati.
The mullahs in Iran have a similar problem keeping western-thinking Iranians under their thumb. The more they squeeze, the more they engender resistance from people who resent being told how to think.
Any scientific theory too weak to stand on its own in the face of honest criticism is an abomination and deserves no protection from the state.
ID, I'd bet.
Development, perhaps. Though no cigar yet.
Try again.