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Orlando Sentinel – Academic freedom, evolution and Ben Stein’s Expelled movie –the Florida House may consider them all — These guys keep trying different tweaks. This one is the next one in the bag of tricks. These guys will be making a mistake if they push this idea too far. There are weirder topics lurking that could push for more exposure under an academic freedom umbrella that is too wide open.
A local state lawmaker who is pushing Florida to adopt an “academic freedom” law — one that would protect teachers who are critical of evolution — has invited members of the Florida House to a private screening of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The controversial documentary, staring Ben Stein, is supported by the Discovery Institute, which advocates for Intelligent Design and has been pushing for academic freedom laws to protect those who share its views.
The invitation to see Expelled on Wednesday was sent to all members of the House by Rep. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, according to his legislative aide.
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I agree with this and I think we should adapt the schools to teach Creationism as an alternative to Evolution.
Also, I want to teach Alchemy as an alternative to Chemistry. Further, let’s offer Astrology as an alternative to Astronomy.
In fact, just offer sticking you fingers in your ears and screaming, “na na na na na na na na” as an alternative to learning.
I could care less what is taught in universities. Either way, it’s only a matter of time before they start pushing the buddhist or Hindu views of creation too. Plenty of scientists believe in creation. My wifes Biology teacher believes in creation. So what? Atheist’s need to practice more tolerance. Seriously. I’m not a Christian but when Jesus taught “Judge not others lest ye be judged” he was right. If you don’t believe in a creator and your professor does, well, just find a professor that agrees with your views.
This movie is going to fail.
They know it and are doing these private screenings to gain support for the cause before it fails in the market.
On a positive note, Richard Dawkins is thinking about writing a children’s book.
Goethe, the great old German poet, once wrote:
„Amerika, du hast es besser
als unser Kontinent, der alte,
hast keine verfallenen Schlösser
und keine Basalte.
Dich stört nicht im Innern
zu lebendiger Zeit
unnützes Erinnern
und vergeblicher Streit.“
my translation:
America, you’re better off
than our continent, the old.
Don’t have no decaying castles
no bedrock
You’re not disturbed from the inside
in lively times
by useless memories
and moot controversy.
—88——-
Seems that Goethe lived in better times.
If only this movement of the uneducated could be limited to a part of the world, bu tI feel that in the end, there will be more people who prefer to live in blissful ignorance.
pj
Holy crap…when did Ben Stein become a creationist? I use to have respect for the man, now….not so much.
The Truth has a way of standing on its own.
If Evolution is true then it will survive its critics.
If Creation is true it will do the same.
so my question is, why all the fear over teaching both and letting the Truth prevail?
#6 – Both sides have their respective “priesthoods”. Heresy is heresy.
#6 – so my question is, why all the fear over teaching both and letting the Truth prevail?
Creationism is a political attempt to shove theology into schools. It’s an attack on secular culture and divisive wedge issue.
Creationism is bunk science and a lie, and we don’t teach that in schools.
It isn’t fear. It’s irresponsible and morally reprehensible to teach Creationism in a school, unless it is in a class called, “The Stupid BS Idiots Believe 101”.
This is where we need to agree to disagree. Creationism is not a materialist philosophy that can be proved by empiracal means. Evolution does fall under that, and this seems to be what is missing in the ‘debate’.
While the two are not compatible, the are apples and oranges.
One is one, that the other is. You can look, see and understand, but you will choose.
I always thought Ben S was annoying. I guess I was right.
the thing with Creationism, which Creation myth does one teach? There are hundreds of Creation myths. So why pick the Aboriginal one? Why not the Judaic one? Or the Cree one? or Druid one? or ?
The thing with science, is that it’s based on facts. Something testable. Something that these creation myths don’t have.
So, clearly these fucking wackos won’t mind much if we start putting Origin of the Species in their churches for equal time, right? Perhaps we could rotate Sundays in their churches. One Sunday we’d have Creationism. The next we’d have biological evolution. The next we might have some basic cosmology. Perhaps work in a bit of quantum theory, at random intervals, of course, just to give an alternative to the cause and effect aspect they love to use to prove the existence of a creator.
#6 – Jim W.,
I think you just made the point you were not intending to make. You see, when you put creationism on equal footing with science you show that you have not received an adequate education. You really should do a bit of research on what science is and what it means.
Further, you should look at the definition of a scientific theory. It does NOT mean the same thing as saying that I have a theory about why the beer companies use women in bikinis to sell beer. Scientific theories are the closest thing we have to fact.
Evolution, that we descended from other animals is a proven fact. Natural selection is the theory that describes the mechanism for this, it is proven to an amazing degree. If something about either of these is later proven false, they will be replaced with science, not religion. There would then be a new theory that explains the way the world really is.
Evolution has made predictions about what the fossil record would bring forth as the record filled in. All such predictions of intermediate stages of feathers, intermediate stages in the development of whales, ever older versions of our own family, hominids, that are more and more similar to the apes from whom we descended are being found all the time.
Creationism asks more questions than it answers. It does NOT A DAMN THING to explain our world. The two are as different as they could be. Creationism is an assertion in search of data. Science is data in search of explanations.
Jim W. I would seriously suggest that you sue your school district for not preparing you for the real world and not giving you the education to which you were entitled. You have been seriously damaged by the educational system and are advocating doing the same disservice to future generations.
Academic freedom is pretty wide open as it is. You have people advocating the destruction of Israel on so many campuses. Then others that go all in for Marxism. I’d say they should dump teacher tenure.
This seems like an no-brainer but maybe not in the bible belt where they have problems with that sort of thing.
Hypothetically: a “historian” is free to teach whatever he believes; Let’s say… the Roman Empire really didn’t exist and the Holocaust didn’t happen.
But the school is free to fire them for such out-of-the mainstream teaching, too.
The same should hold true for “scientists” who are so out of the mainstream.
The URANTIA BOOK
Explains Explains the TRUTH about
Mankinds history .
Peace Coop
”The TRUTH Never suffers from Honest Examination.”
The dinosaurs would have made a big damned mess on Noah’s ark, so they didn’t make the cut. That’s why they are not here anymore.
Evolution and creationism are pretty well one and the same thing; we are, and everything is, and the truth is there, if you can see it. But the dark matter keeps getting in the way.
Ben Stein was always a science-ignorant Bush loving Republican. This is not some new thing people.
I think you’re proving my point, Eric. I would not expect a non-christian to believe in Creationism, as surely as I’d expect a Christian to not hold to evolutionism. Apples and Oranges.
Surely people of good reason and intelligence can talk and discuss without demagogory.
If you’re convinced of your position, why not discuss it?
#2
Alex, whether you believe in creationism or not is entirely irrelevant to whether the subject qualifies to be taught as science. Creationism is not science and therefore should not be taught as science. Just as we should not teach mathematics in an English class or Swahili in a Spanish class, we should not teach non-science in science classes.
If your wife believes in creationism (not just creation), then frankly, she’s incompetent to teach biological science.
#6
See above.
Where is Mr Mustard when we need him?
Last week on Book TV the discovery Institute had a speaker who addressed that the “new move” by atheists was to have evolution taught as religion in a science class and that this should not be allowed under the First Amendment.
The solution of course is to teach both or neither as appropriate belief systems.
Interesting how language can be misused and how hard it is to see through it if its what you want to believe.
# 20 Thinker:
Evolution is not a question of belief. Belief, the religious way, is an inverse proportional function of knowledge. The less you know, the more you will belief.
Evolution is science. The more you know, the more you will understand evolution.
Dawkins has created the term “argument from personal incredulity”. It’s what you always get from Creationists: “I can believe that X is the evolutionary predecessor of Y”. Sadly, the variable in this sentence is neither X nor Y nor evolution but it’s the person who speaks it. Knowledge will help overcome personal incredulity.
#22, bobbo:
You cannot teach science as a belief system. You can teach christian creation, ancient greek mythology, the flying spagghetti monster tales and the story of “Nessy” as equivalent belief systems, but not mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.
pj
hmf… the argument was obviously “I can’t belief….”
pj
#22 – bobbo,
What makes religion an appropriate belief system for anything when all it does is increase violence?
What makes science a belief system when it involves verifiable proof?
The way evolution is represented on this forum, its clung to like a belief system. Something not to be challenged or reasoned about. It is, it is logical, therefore indisputable. End of subject.
Belief of the fact of evolution has nothing to do with it being a fact. As someone mentioned earlier, it stands on its own…or not. The sciences are empiracal and provable. Evolution is the philosophy of how those science relate together to answer the question of the origin of species. That is a philosophical question, or at least a question with philosophical implications.
#25 Interesting point.
However, every gov’t that has heavily denied religion to its population (and denied the spiritual side to humanity) has inevitably turned out to commit murder on a scale never before seen.
So, your statement is demonstrably incorrect.
Ben Stein? What the hell you lose a little too much money with your game show?
All this sounds like a rehash of “intelligent” design, which has no sense of design or intelligence. I wanna write a book saying that I should be the world’s new dictator because of this mole I have and uh.. i’m the new Jesus. There I said it
#20 – I would not expect a non-christian to believe in Creationism, as surely as I’d expect a Christian to not hold to evolutionism.
Your agenda is transparent as can be.
Of course many non-Christians believe in creationism. Just not the mundane Christian creation myth.
Of course many Christians believe in evolution. Not all theists are idiots so in the cosmic Venn diagram of humanity, many Christians also believe in evolution… because it is a fact. It’s a scientific reality that is true regardless of your arrogant and misguided decision to be willfully ignorant of it.
And, “evolutionism” is not a real word.
I love reading these types of threads. I can tell by the level of vitriol who (on both sides) are unthinking fanatics…
#23–pjakobs AND #25–Scott===is obvious sarcasm that difficult to spot in writing? My point is so obvious, and yet you both seem to write to correct me, so let me rephrase:
The Discovery Institute ((an anti-Darwin not for profit institute with a website and everything)) put on an idiot speaker who revealed their next battleplan for getting Intel Design into the schools===it involves the dishonest linguistic techniques of equating science with religion and therefore either both should be taught on equal footing, or neither.
In other words, redefining words to reach an end, as Mr Mustard was fond of doing on this subject.
If I’m not clear enough, please provide your private mailing address so I can send you a turd by the mail as symbolic emphasis for what I think of the Discovery Institute and its speakers.