Bill Allows Teachers to Contradict Evolution

Helical writes "In an attempt to defy the newly approved state science standards, Florida Senator Rhonda Storms has proposed a bill that would allow teachers to contradict the teaching of evolution. Her bill states that 'Every public school teacher in the state's K-12 school system shall have the affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins.' The bill's main focus is on protecting teachers who want to adopt alternative teaching plans from sanction, and to allow teachers the freedom to teach whatever they wish, even if it is in opposition to current standards."

This happens everywhere

I only had to look at my teachers to see that they contradicted evolution.

Re:This happens everywhere

They should put a little protection in there for those that want to teach the Flat Earth concept, too.

Re:This happens everywhere

They should put a little protection in there for those that want to teach the Flat Earth concept, too.

Don't laugh, I went to a catholic grade school which had books in the library that honestly showed a earth centered solar system.

Sounds fine to me

What's the big deal? Stupid teachers still wouldn't be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" anyway, since -- according to the summary -- the information still has to be scientific (and "ID" fails at that).

Under Who's Watch?

The Intelligent Design crowd has pushed "scientific" evidence that is in their favor. Under what jurisdiction would the "scientific" basis fall? Would it be the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS?) The School District's "science" advisor? The teachers themselves?

Without a concrete definition of whose "science" you are using, any teacher could find some half-baked textbook that proclaims to be scientific and tell the School Administrators they're teaching true "scientific" information.

Re:Under Who's Watch?

Without a concrete definition of whose "science" you are using, any teacher could find some half-baked textbook that proclaims to be scientific and tell the School Administrators they're teaching true "scientific" information.

There's a simple, unambiguous test anyone can apply to objectively determine whether a theory is scientific. That is: is the theory falsifiable? Does the theory make predictions that could potentially be proven wrong by evidence? Intelligent Design fails this test.

So if you have kids, and they are taught intelligent design in this school system, then sue. You'll win. Every time a judge has heard the issue, he's ruled that intelligent design is not science. Because it's not, and it's easy for anyone impartial to see that.

Re:Under Who's Watch?

It doesn't disprove intelligent design. It proves that intelligent design is unscientific. Unscientific beliefs could be correct, we have no way of knowing. But the point is, that since this bill would only allow teaching of the full range of scientific criticisms, that intelligent design is not included in that.

If a human foot print is found next to a fossilized dinosaur bone, would that not prove that Evolution is wrong?

Right, now come up with an example for intelligent design. You can't, no matter what you observe you can explain it by saying God designed it that way.

The thing is, you either BELIEVE that God created everything or you BELIEVE that evolution is the reason we are here or you BELIEVE something else. There is no way to truly scientifically prove how things began. Both intelligent design and evolution are religions.

As the great prophet Groucho Marx once said, "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Evolution is confirmed by masses of predictions that have turned out to be true (i.e. evidence), intelligent design has none.

Re:Under Who's Watch?

Apparently every court in the US is going to have to deal with this one. Creationism (and ID is simply a diluted almost claimless variant of that) has failed every time it's been taken to court. What it does do is waste millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Re:Sounds fine to me

As my ID pushing narrow minded coworker said:
"The Bible IS science."

I shit you not.

Re:Sounds fine to me

Woah woah woah, don't throw those nutjobs into Utah, The Discovery institute [wikipedia.org] (major proponent of ID) is out of Seattle, Washington. Most scientists here in Utah are just for the dino fossils, cancer research, or cold fusion :D

Re:Sounds fine to me

To say those sites are biased would be an understatement. Listen, there is no way that you can prove scientifically that "God did it" is right or wrong. So, it ain't science. So, there are not two sides to this argument. There is one side. ID is NOT science.

If you want to teach your kids that "God did it" is an acceptable answer to anything you don't personally understand, then fine, do that in your home or church or wherever... BUT don't pollute my children into believing that crap also. I'd like my kids to have a fair chance in the world economy, where in most 1st and 2nd world nations, they can manage to keep science to true scientific endeavors.

Re:Sounds fine to me

If it's such good science, where is the research? Why is the Discovery Institute purely a political machine? Hell, one of its great minds (supposedly) Michael Behe has never ever published any peer-reviewed article or done any research involving ID.

ID is not science. It's watered-down Creationism, a legalistic attempt to sneak past the First Amendment. Read the Dover transcripts to find out just how much science there is to ID.

Thank Heavens for that

God willing, math teachers will be the next to be freed from the chains of having to teach facts in school.

here we go again

Creationism wrapped up in the guise of scientific knowledge and academic freedom. This is an OBVIOUS effort by members of the FL legislature to pander to religious groups. It just happens to be couched in an "academic freedom" argument. Don't buy it. It isn't value neutral and it isn't fair.

Students already face an uphill battle in getting over unscientific hunches formed in childhood. Evolution, in its fullness, is a rejection of those hunches. This bill clouds the issue by allowing teachers to present a curriculum that plays to those hunches in order to serve as religious indoctrination. Think about some of the main "tenets" of ID: the notion that complexity cannot occur from iterated evaluations of simple rules--they claim things like the eye are "too complex" to have been formed via "random" mutation. This SOUNDS reasonable, until you realize that it is just a play on our intuition. It isn't true in the slightest. The same with the claim that animals or humans were elegantly designed. While there is what some scientists would call elegance in plenty of biological forms, their implementation shows signs of prior adaptations. It takes a lot of careful study to learn exactly how and why our endocrine system or our vascular system is imperfectly adapted let alone begin to think about how pregnancy is an imperfect adaptation. This is why ID is primed for the 8-12 crowd. Those critical thinking skill are just solidifying. There isn't a large movement to teach ID in colleges because the material would be rejected at greater rates.

This is religious nonsense packages as science. Nothing more.

Standards

...to allow teachers the freedom to teach whatever they wish, even if it is in opposition to current standards.

Then they're not standards anymore. That's why we have standards, so you can be guaranteed a certain level of uniformity and quality. If you don't have to follow standards then they become suggestions.

I'd like to see these people eat a big pile of USDA Grade A beef - but with flexible standards that the stores are allowed to define as to what "USDA Grade A" actually means. Would you eat it? Hell no.

Let's see how well it protects...

...teachers who elect to teach their students scientific material about homosexuality or birth control.

Or does the bill only protect the "freedom" to teach material on certain selected sides of certain selected controversies?

Yes!

The flying spaghetti monster has always sought to be taught in Florida classrooms, and thanks to some foresight by genius politicians, he can!

Doonsbury had the right idea

Doctor: Before I give you this injection, I have to ask you an important question: do you believe in evolution?

Patient: Of course, not! Why do you ask?

Doctor: You see, I have this flu shot here. If you believe in evolution, you will accept that the flu bug is constantly changing and evolving, thus your immune system will not recognize it and you'll come down with the flu. With this shot, your immune system will be up to date on the latest strain.

Patient: And if I don't believe in evolution?

Doctor: You've already had the flu once, therefore you'll never catch it again.

Patient: But that's not...that's not...true?

Doctor: As a liberal and scientist, I would never want to force another person to accept my own views and beliefs, even if they happen to be manifestly correct.

Or to put it another way:

adventurer #1: I do not believe there is a bear in that cave.
[mauling, violence, blood]
adventurer #2: So you say. But your disbelief seems not to have dissuaded the bear.

Re:BAD idea.

I want the state OUT of my bedroom

Uh...you consider K-12 classrooms your bedroom?

Maybe you shoulda posted that as AC...

Re:BAD idea.

The way to challenge an accepted scientific theory is not to "critique" it. The way is to come up with alternative theories that make testable predictions, and then use the predictions to falsify the incorrect theories. What predictions does the "theory" of ID make, and how do we test them?

Re:Weep for our republic, fear for our children...

How come every time I read some news like this I start to hear "Dueling Bangos" playing?

How about a law that says that if I don't believe pot causes health problems I can choose to smoke it legally?

Re:Contradict a Theory?

Incorrect.

Apes, monkeys, and humans all evolved from a common primate ancestor. Due to differing environments and differing pressures and selection criteria for said differing environments, the populations of primate ancestor-species evolved in separate directions.

The 'missing' fossil evidence question is a red herring: every time a transitional fossil is found, the creationists say "OK, what came between that one and the next one?"--moving the goalposts, in other words. Archaeology is not geneology: you will not get a continual record of every generation back to when time began.

In addition, fossils are not the only evidence. There are patterns of genetic structures, there are cases of comparative anatomy, there are multiple other lines of evidence to choose from.

Re:Contradict a Theory?

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the existance of an intermediate life form (monkeys) show that "natural" selection lost, as we now have humans (selected appearantly) and monkeys together (the life form that "lost").

Well, you are mistaken.

Here's a hint: if evolution really predicted that every time a speciation event occurred there would be a "loser" species that would go extinct, then it would predict that there would be exactly one species of organism on the entire planet. Obviously then, either evolution is absolutely ridiculous (since there is obviously more than one species in existence) or you don't understand it. Which is more likely?

Hint number two: both branches of a speciation event can "win" because they can fill different ecological niches. Monkeys lost out on the "high intelligence and tool-making" niche; humans lost out on the "living in tall trees" niche.

Here's some evidence for you.

Regarding the transition from apelike ancestors to the current varieties of primates, it's a lot more than theoretical. For example, if humans were created separately from chimpanzees, how come we share at least six endogenous retroviruses [blogspot.com] in the same places in our genomes, and no other primates have those retroviruses there?

And as to transitional fossils - here's my favorite, one you can even partially test on your own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal. Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as 'irreducibly complex' - just Google around a bit.)

It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Fossils representing over 11 separate stages have been found. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.

Common descent explains this, and many other similar things, handily. I'm still waiting on creationist explanations. Can you point me to one?

Re:Science != Teleology

What I can't understand is how this is even a debate for public schools. I went to a Catholic school through junior high and there wasn't even a discussion about this. We were taught about evolution in science class, *and* in religion class we were taught that the creation stories were not meant to be taken literally.