Excerpt from House Bill 4382:
Sigh.
thanks for the link. Hadn’t seen that one slip past - odd, since I’m in Lansing.
Sent it on to various folks here, sent e-mails to a co sponsor and my so-called House Rep (who’s probably in favor of it).
hee hee hee … I love it.
JonF quoted Michigan House Bill 4382:
[underlining mine]
And here I thought a “theory” had to have predictive power and at least a little bit of objective evidence backing it up. :rolleyes:
Thanks, Jon. Yeesh. Have you seen any news items on this? Or have any idea how likely it is to pass?
Ugh. These idiots just don’t give up.
Two things. First, I meant to ask if you’ve seen other articles on it. Second, when I went to check that one, the link is dead.
Excerpt:
State Representative Robert M. Gosselin
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California
My take on it is the same as many others. This guy wants to push his beliefs on my children whether ot not I want him to. I’ve been sending email to everyone I know here in Michigan asking them to bug the hell out of their Congressperson/Senator to NOT pass this idiocy.
Just got an e-mail from my State House Rep. in it, he says that he’ll ‘take my concerns into consideration’ which is odd because his characterization of the legislation is
arghhhhhhhhhhh!
From my response, “I would again suggest to you that until you understand scientific methods,
you refrain from legislating your religious opinion into the school
curriculum.”
I live here in the South, and I am used tothe assumtion by most people that the South is a hotbed of protastant fundalmentalism. But I am beginning to suspect that the Midwest is at least as bad as we are.
It’s exactly as bad. Before I left Detroit in the early 80’s they still had blue laws.
Xploder quoted Michigan State Representative Robert M. Gosselin:
Oh, yeah, there’s nothing at all religious about the notion of a superior being. :rolleyes:
The thing is, these legislators must know that if this bill ever gets passed, the Federal courts will strike it down as Unconstitutional faster than you can say Edwards v. Aguillard. If I had to guess at their motivation here, I’d say these legislators were trying to look like they were pro-Creationism in order to attract votes from the Biblical Literalists in their constituencies, rather than actually trying to change the Michigan school system. And, of course, plenty of legislators will be afraid to vote “no” on this bill out of fear of being labelled “anti-God”.
[sub]sadly disappointed that no ones’ noticed that my State Rep misspelled the word “intelligent”.[/sub]
Lawmaker wants to see schools teach beyond theory of evolution
Legislation challenges evolution
Bill would OK teaching several theories on the beginning of life
State lawmaker has no place monkeying with school science
Michigan Creationism Bill. Or Greene’s Creationism Truth Filter and look for the link to the Michigan page about 1/3 of teh way down.
I noticed … but it’s too late now, I guess.
Michigan is a scary place.
'Fraid so. I live in Kalamazoo. We have a disturbingly high number of churches up here. I mean, there’s only one PBS station, but at least 3 or 4 christian channels.
A few months ago, I recall a big protest in Grand Rapids about a lingerie store which had pictures of models up in the windows. I mean, it wasn’t even particularly racy stuff. Swimsuits, and there were soccer moms out in droves. Weird.
You can’t throw a rock in heavy traffic without hitting a car with one of those stupid fish things on their bumpers (or a car with a WWJD bumper sticker).
(Italics were added.)
The phrase “unproven theory” is redundant. By definition, no theory worthy of the name can be proven. A theory can only be proven if it is tested under all possible conditions, over all time.
Any theory, such as atomic theory (matter is made up of atoms), or the theory of relativity, is unproven. However, a theory’s value comes with its ability to explain the observed evidence, and to make predictions.
Even if it does this admirably, the theory is still not (and never will be) proven.
(It drives me crazy to hear creationists decry evolution because it is not “proven.” Repeat after me: “NO THEORY WILL EVER BE PROVEN!”)
This site makes the same point, in the context of the Big Bang theory:
slortar wrote:
Hmmm …
Just moms showing up in droves. Not dads.
I wonder if its because these women feel threatened by the sight of all those gorgeous “other women” in the pictures…
On August 14th, 1999, on page C01, the Washington Post carried an item that got wide circulation here in Kansas. It was titled “AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT IN KANSAS”
It was a hilarious “memo” from God, to the members of our State Board of Education, on their decision to eliminate the teaching of evolution as science. All it would take to apply this humor to Michigan would be to change the name of the state. If I amy be permitted to quote God in the article:
“You guys were supposed to figure it all out for yourselves anyway. When you stumble on the truth, you are not supposed to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and proceed as though nothing had happened. If you find a dinosaurs toenail, you’re not supposed to look for reasons to call it a croissant. You’re not big, drooling idiots. For that I made dogs.”
and
“The folks who wrote the Bible were smart and good people. Mostly they got it right. But there were glitches. Imprecisions. For one thing, they said that Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, and then Cain begat Enoch. How was that supposed to have happened? They left Tiffany out entirely!”
I recommend that the Michigan legislators read the whole thing before getting the same thing written about them.
I don’t think the bill(I emphasise the word “think”) is trying to remove evolutionism from high schools, but rather trying to point out that it is taught as fact. I think a lot of this comes because the schools receive state and federal funding and consequently, many people believe that they should not promote a theory as a resolved fact.
I’ve always thought this would be a good idea.
One, let teachers teach evolutionism all they want, even put extreme emphasis on the fact that nearly all scientists believe in it. Teach it as the main working theory of all biology, since it is.
Two, teach in a much shorter version other theories that have been proposed, including creationism but not only focusing on it. There are other versions of evolutionism and other theories entirely that have been proposed regarding the origin of species. I don’t think the teacher has to promote these views, since he/she probably doesn’t believe in them, but at least let them get out there so students can decide for themselves.
Of course, this bill isn’t trying to do that so you have a right to be mad. By the way, tell me where I’m wrong in my idea. I am an honest seeker of truth.
I think you are only in error in the portion I emphasized above.
Based on my fairly extensive reading and experience, “other theories that have been proposed” fall in three categories:
-
Theories that have been totally disproven and therefore should not be taught in the public schools except perhaps as illustrations of how science discards erroneous theories and corrects itself.
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Non-scientific religous dogma, mostly “The God of the Bible did it and that’s that”, but there are a few Muslim and Krishna and Native American versions. The Supreme Court has ruled that teaching such theories as science violates the Establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, and therefore these should not be taught as science in the public schools (both because they’re not science and because teaching them as such is unconstitutional).
-
Being kind, incompletely formed speculations (e.g. Behe’s Irreducible Complexity and Dembski’s Explanatory Filter) that may eventually fall into category 2 or just possibly might eventually become real scientific theories. Most non-creationists believe these already are in category 2. Be that as it may, these should not be taught in public schools at the high school level or below, because they are not yet scientific theories and they’re too speculative to introduce to non-experts; they would just muddy the waters. We don’t teach advanced string theory (and the speculations based on string theory) in high school because the kids just aren’t ready for it at that point. Similarly for the “category 3” stuff.
When someone comes up with a scientific theory as an alternative to evolution, I’ll be all for teaching it in the public schools. I’m waiting.