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How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists
io9 ^ | January 15, 2013 | George Dvorsky

Posted on 01/16/2013 4:41:13 PM PST by EveningStar

For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.

(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: arth; creationism; evolution; louisiana; lsea; notwithatenfootpole; science; scienceeducation; zackkopplin
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To: allmendream

AMD, putting aside your reference to Hitler [and all your other ‘absolute’ type statements past and present], your new little protege, Zack Kopplin, also thinks global warming is true science - lol.

Your ivory towers are quickly crumbling b/c the state and authority figures with which you are so heavily involved and indebted are quickly going monetarily bankrupt, which only makes sense b/c they are also morally bankrupt.

Prepare for your funding to be removed soon and your very survival challenged on a daily basis - all thanks to the alters at which you worship - the great state of naturalism.

Choose ye this day whom you will serve!


81 posted on 01/17/2013 5:11:22 AM PST by BrandtMichaels
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To: BillyBoy
... it is a theory based on evidence and observation.

Not really it is "evidence and observation" based on a theory.

82 posted on 01/17/2013 5:31:57 AM PST by BykrBayb (Somewhere, my flower is there. ~ Þ)
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To: aMorePerfectUnion

Even more intriguing is that life springs only from life. Therefore life must be eternal, no?


83 posted on 01/17/2013 5:41:42 AM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: allmendream

From the article: School vouchers, he argues, unconstitutionally fund the teaching of creationism because many of the schools in these programs are private fundamentalist religious schools who are teaching creationism.

“These schools have every right to teach whatever they want — no matter how much I disagree with it — as long as they are fully private,” he says. “But when they take public money through vouchers, these schools need to be accountable to the public in the same way that public schools are and they must abide by the same rules.” Kopplin is hoping for more transparency in these programs so the public can see what is being taught with taxpayers’ money.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Given that the Government School System is itself unConstitutional how can he rationalize the above? I find it hard to support a big government statist.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He goes on:

“But it also violates the separation of church and state,” he says. “Teaching Biblical creationism is promoting one very specific fundamentalist version of Christianity, and violating the rights of every other American citizen who doesn’t subscribe to those beliefs. So it would be stomping on the rights of Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Humanists, Muslims, Hindus, and every other religious group in the country.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What separation of church and state? The one where the state is your religion?

His inability to apply science to government weakens his argument.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

More from the article:

Science, he argues, is observable, naturalistic, testable, falsifiable, and expandable — everything that creationism is not.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So the above is true, then why not apply it to liberalism?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here he takes a hard left turn:

He worries that, if Louisiana (and Tennessee, which also has a similar law) insists on teaching students creationism, students will not be the ones discover the cure to AIDS or cancer. “We won’t be the ones to repair our own damaged wetlands and protect ourselves from more hurricanes like Katrina,” he says.

SNIP

“We don’t just deny evolution,” he says, “We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science. I’m calling for a Second Giant Leap to change the perception of science in the world.”

To that end, Kopplin would like to see $1 trillion of new science funding and an end to denialist science legislation. He wants to see the American public become more aware and better educated about science.

“My generation is going to have to face major challenges to our way of living — and the way to overcome them is through rapid scientific advancement,” he says. “But as as of right now, America has a science problem.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He almost gets it, but the answer seems elusive. He’s calling for more Al Gorism and less Creationism, more government and less religion, more dumbness and less logic.

He’s inconsistent and it’s the liberalism that makes his argument so weak and him so ignorant. Science hasn’t fixed his mind yet, but he’s young.


84 posted on 01/17/2013 6:09:27 AM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: allmendream

> “If I plate a bacteria out, blot it on ten different plates - then subject it to ten different stresses - I will get a heat resistant strain through evolution, a cold resistant strain through evolution, an antibiotic resistant strain, etc, etc.”

Yes but you still have bacteria. You don’t have an amoeba and yet left-wing anti-God evolutionists will project frogs and fish from such experiments.

What you are describing is natural selection, a generational form of adaptation.

If I work out passionately with heavy weights I can metamorphose to something in a category more akin to a Mr. Universe.

If I equip a room with heavy weight lifting equipment and teach weight lifting then I am a progenitor of buff persons, a form of natural selection because they came to me of their own will influenced by external causes such as primitive urges to mate with stronger partners (from the physical perspective). But still they are humans.

The evolutionists that stretch natural selection, survival of the fittest and metamorphosis into a theory of ape to man have twisted scientific results to fit their atheistic or satanic beliefs. They are simply against God and want nothing more than to use science to further their anti-God agenda.

“CE”, “BCE”, Remove “Under God” from the Pledge, etc. and “Evolution” are all part of the same schtick of persons who think they are somehow superior and who find Christians to be an easy target to treat with their particular form of torment.

Evolution is not, has never been and will never be proven. The maximum likelihood statistical estimates used to posit evolutionary trees based on any number of observances such as genetic variation or single nucleotide polymorphisms DO NOT ADD UP to any form of proof that God never existed, that Adam was a fable, the flood never occurred or that Christ never conquered death. In fact one could say or think that Christ’s resurrection is a metamorphosis of earthly spiritual death back to spiritual immortality. And if you think things of the ‘spirit’ do not exist, you are blind. Within humanity it is all around you. Spirit and soul are just as tangible as flesh and blood, and are manifested in Good and Evil.

So yes we can go into the lab and perform genetic crossovers or gene knockout/insertion experiments and watch yeast or whatever model transform itself into more adaptable organisms of the same type. We have proved nothing in regards to God except that by concluding from such experiments that God does not exist we merely prove ourselves to be spiritual retards.

‘Spirit’ exists and is just as verifiable as your bacteria. Try doing a little ‘Science’ on the many species of ‘Spirit’ and you will end up in politics. Hopefully you will find the Bible to be your code map. Good luck or should I say God be with you and ‘select’ you to His will, blessing you with real worth rather than leaving you to continue with your effing little pissant rant against Christianity using ‘Evolution’ as your creed.


85 posted on 01/17/2013 6:51:31 AM PST by Hostage (Be Breitbart!)
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To: BillyBoy; Rightwing Conspiratr1
You pretty much nailed it. The difference is when a terrorist attacks occur, people don't claim it proves the science of chemistry ITSELF is therefore evil (or even try to blame a related field of science that knew NOTHING about the science in question you're attacking, like claiming Dmitri Mendeleev's Periodic table caused Alfred Nobel to discover dynamite, and therefore terrorist bombers are "Periodic tableists"). Any scientific breakthrough can be perverted for evil purposes, that doesn't make the scientific teaching itself "evil"

I don't see anyone claiming that the science of biology or biochemistry is in itself evil either.

86 posted on 01/17/2013 7:08:26 AM PST by metmom (For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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To: Hostage

placemarker


87 posted on 01/17/2013 7:12:47 AM PST by metmom (For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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To: hosepipe
"Even the stupid qualify for redemption...

True.
Even though the likelihood grows ever less with each evidence of anti-Christian bigotry.

Still . . . it is not our in our authority to judge.

88 posted on 01/17/2013 7:40:18 AM PST by YHAOS
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To: metmom; allmendream
"Looks like amd forfeited the argument from the get go."

Hear that, amd?. You forfeit (before you've hardly begun). And, according to a law you've invoked (wrongly) yourself (which you've also erroneously identified as a "rule")

89 posted on 01/17/2013 7:57:31 AM PST by YHAOS
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To: BrandtMichaels
Your ivory towers are quickly crumbling b/c the state and authority figures with which you are so heavily involved and indebted are quickly going monetarily bankrupt, which only makes sense b/c they are also morally bankrupt.

Prepare for your funding to be removed soon and your very survival challenged on a daily basis - all thanks to the alters at which you worship - the great state of naturalism.

Atheistic regimes are no friends of science and scientists either.

Think Stalin and Pol Pot.

90 posted on 01/17/2013 7:59:37 AM PST by metmom (For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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To: 1010RD

“Even more intriguing is that life springs only from life. Therefore life must be eternal, no?”

or created by Someone who is Hiself uncreated and can create the entire physical world, time and life itself.


91 posted on 01/17/2013 8:32:58 AM PST by aMorePerfectUnion (Gone rogue, gone Galt, gone international. Gone.)
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To: aMorePerfectUnion

Yes, although I was referring to the soul. If we’re all to inheirit eternal life, some to damnation and some to glory, being eternal then the soul cannot have a beginning, no?


92 posted on 01/17/2013 9:07:12 AM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: 1010RD

“If we’re all to inherit eternal life, some to damnation and some to glory, being eternal then the soul cannot have a beginning, no?”

No.

Souls come into existence. They have a beginning. The eternality of a soul before it is created is a manmade construct - and is not Biblical.

Add to that the mormonic idea that Gods (male and many females) breed in eternity to create spirit children. It is cultic.


93 posted on 01/17/2013 9:22:10 AM PST by aMorePerfectUnion (Gone rogue, gone Galt, gone international. Gone.)
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To: kearnyirish2

I dare say if all the great scientific minds from Newton to Einstein were presented with the latest advancements in information theory and DNA they would easily conclude it as undeniable proof of God’s existence [something they never denied, but definitely at odds with evolution]...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

In fact the complexity of written and spoken languages [both = coded information systems] alone ensures the need for a much higher god-like intelligence far surpassing our own.

Evolution has zero evidence of language evolving from nothing anymore than it has evidence of life forming from non-life.


94 posted on 01/17/2013 9:42:10 AM PST by BrandtMichaels
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To: Blood of Tyrants
And when science can’t explain something, you can just make up something that sounds sorta right and claim it is science.

Didn't do well in your 8th grade science class, eh?

The PROPER Scientific method: systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses... leads to (the scientist hopes) a thesis (idea) becoming a theory, IF the formulation and testing and peer review and repeated testing under a variety of all conditions cannot disprove the thesis. And even after all that, it is STILL only considered a THEORY... and can be changed if future evidence and testing and ideas come along.

There is little "making things up" that survives in PROPER scientific channels.

Religion, on the other hand, relies on interpretations and translations of bedtime stories from thousands of years ago. Review and dissent are not allowed.

Given those two systems, I know which one is more reliable. Most proponent of the latter system are simply afraid to disagree... particularly when they feel that their eternal soul is on the line.

Personally, I prefer to put more FAITH into the system that allows ANYONE to challenge the current ideas, and does not use FEAR to keep everyone on the farm.

Just my 2 cents. I may get different input on the matter a few moments after I leave this mortal coil.

(Hint: I DO believe in God, I DO believe that the Universe cam from SOMEWHERE, and whatever that source is (including the Big Bang), it was arranged by the Almighty... but when it comes to explaining the laws that He installed into this amazing system he made for us, I will almost always look to those who seek those explanations using science rather than ancient books and translations and interpretations.)

95 posted on 01/17/2013 10:03:07 AM PST by Teacher317 ('Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.)
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To: Teacher317

But when it comes to evolution, since it has never been observed, they just made up something. And every time something new comes up that disproves their theory, they just make up something new to get around that inconvenient fact.


96 posted on 01/17/2013 10:14:46 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants (The only thing that Hollywood gets right about guns is that criminals will always get them.)
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To: allmendream; metmom; hosepipe
Creationism is useless.

You use “Creationism” like you would use “turd” to poison the well water. And, that is precisely the reason why you can’t accept the term “Creationist,” or “Creationism” as legitimate. You dare not give it up for the propagandist value you gain in using it in the same fashion you might use ‘fascist’ or ‘racist.’

In your abuse of ‘Creationism’ and of the people who understand its importance, you dishonor America and Americans, and generally all Christians. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” may be the work of one man, but it was an expression of the sentiment of a whole people – Americans; “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . .” Natural rights as a creation of God. Mankind and the Universe, a creation of God. Likewise the idea of government by the consent of the governed. I could recommend that you look to the etymology of the word “creation” but that would do no good since you dare not take the point, because your need to dirty up a whole people is so desperate. And, in the process, you care not how many innocent bystanders you pepper with your scandal mongering broadsides.

Typical of the usual Progressive practice you make a bald assertion bereft of any points supporting the naked charge. Worse, you've now adopted the practice of simply throwing out the assertion and then running away. That’s not very scientific (especially coming from such a science groupie as you)

97 posted on 01/17/2013 11:03:56 AM PST by YHAOS
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To: YHAOS

SPECIAL Creationism is useless when making any accurate predictions about the natural world. The less educated someone is the more likely it is that they are a SPECIAL creationist. So special they had to ride a special buss to school. They are the short bus crowd. Useless. Crying about it won’t help, but it is amusing.


98 posted on 01/17/2013 11:14:40 AM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: allmendream
SPECIAL Creationism is useless

Address your charge, “Creationism is useless.” Explain and justify your accusation on the basis of what you actually say. Attempting to shift the ground of your charge is a hallmark of a Propagandist.

You should be nominated for the annual Goebbels Award.

Congratulations.

99 posted on 01/17/2013 12:01:17 PM PST by YHAOS
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To: metmom
>> I don't see anyone claiming that the science of biology or biochemistry is in itself evil either. <<

Correct. You see them claim that the science of evolution and genetics is itself evil and crated as an insidious plan to promote atheism and godlessness. Unfortunately for them, the person who discovered modern genetics was a very devout Roman Catholic friar, so this goes against their talking points. Thus they simply completely ignore him and pretend "Darwin" invented genetics when in reality Darwin knew and said absolutely nothing about genes or chromosomes.

100 posted on 01/17/2013 12:36:22 PM PST by BillyBoy ( Impeach Obama? Yes We Can!)
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