Pharyngula

Posted by: BobC | August 12, 2008 12:56 PM

Even in Idiot America sometimes rationalism beats batshit insane.

Posted by: Ryan F Stello | August 12, 2008 1:02 PM

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Any university/alternative teaching collective or individual that explicitly establishes itself as presenting non-mainstream views cannot expect the mainstream to accept those views.....ignoring the question of whether such views are idiotic.

Hopefully that puts things in context for the dominionists, here.

Posted by: Richard | August 12, 2008 1:07 PM

So following Calvary's logic, they'd be OK with courses from a school like, oh I don't know, Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory, receiving full credit at UC?

Then again, probably not.

Posted by: Justin N | August 12, 2008 1:09 PM

Woot! I'm feelin' a little pride in my university system right now. Of course, this is one tiny little drop in the sea of irrationality that makes up the good 'ole US of A, but yah. Go UC

-A UCR student

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 12, 2008 1:10 PM

It's the old, "my religious freedom means that you pay the consequences for my ignorance" idea.

Sure, we're supposed to certify that these ignoramuses have knowledge, because they call their prejudices "knowledge".

That makes baby Jesus cry, especially if he ends up being medically treated by some incompetent who preferred myth to fact.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Blaise Pascal | August 12, 2008 1:18 PM

Rather than a victory for rationalism, this is an object lesson for antirationalists.

ACSI didn't lose on the merits, they lost due to overconfidence and bad legal strategy.

They believed they would win a "facial" challenge to the policy -- that UC's policy was inherently discriminatory. They build their whole legal strategy around winning the facial challenge.

They were wrong; in March, the judge said the policy wasn't inherently discriminatory. As such, ACSI would have to argue that, as applied to this particular case, the policy was discriminatory.

The trouble is, there was no time left to prepare that case -- find and depose experts, gather evidence to submit, etc. -- before the deadlines imposed by the court schedule. There's some odd rule about evidence having to be submitted to the court 90 days before trial so the other side has a chance to deal with it.

ACSI got expert depositions in, but after the deadline.

The judge basically disposed of the case piece by piece, reminding ACSI repeatedly that to prevail, they need admissible evidence, and the evidence they submitted was too late, thus not admissible, so they had no admissible evidence, so they couldn't to prevail.

I expect that ACSI will be back, soon, with another school "discriminated" against, and won't miss the deadlines next time.

Posted by: SC | August 12, 2008 1:19 PM

No pointless poll? You're no fun at all, Californian.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin | August 12, 2008 1:22 PM

D'oh!! What's my major malfunction? Obviously, only the word "so" was supposed to be styled; I didn't mean to be shouting.

Posted by: JonathanL | August 12, 2008 1:25 PM

D'oh!! What's my major malfunction? Obviously, only the word "so" was supposed to be styled; I didn't mean to be shouting.

Don't be silly! Random angry shouting is exactly the kind of behaviour we would expect from the headmaster at Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory.

Posted by: Alex | August 12, 2008 1:28 PM

"...afraid to teach from a Christian perspective."

should read:

"...afraid to teach from an Ignorant perspective."

They constantly confuse belief with fact, opinion with evidence. Idiots.

Great ruling Judge.

Posted by: Roy | August 12, 2008 1:32 PM

Great ruling! The Bible is not inherently historically accurate book!

Posted by: thundergunn | August 12, 2008 1:37 PM

I have had personal experience with many of these so called christian educators at schoolboard meetings and thru my local paper. No matter how hard I try to discuss with them the importance of education standards that meet or exceed that which is required for secondary education, they will always revert back to there religious mindset.

Posted by: Tony Sidaway | August 12, 2008 1:40 PM

That textbook does sound like a bit of a fright. The sort of material you'd expect to see used by godbothering parents of "homeschooled" unfortunates, certainly not part of a scholastic matriculation process.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 1:45 PM

Jackal, #8,

Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse.

Curious how that would work in several situations, given that "rationality" is arguing on the basis of evidence:

1) Some rational atheists argue for the efficacy of human torture. Some other rational atheists argue against it. So would teaching your children that it is OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is not OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse?

2) Some rational atheists argue for the justness of the Iraq war. Some other argue against it. So would teaching your children that the Iraq war was just be child abuse, or would teaching them that it was unjust be child abuse?

3) Some rational atheists argue that, unlike western religion, eastern mysticism is on firm empirical footing. Some other rational atheists argue that eastern mysticism is as irrational as Christianity. So would teaching your children to practice eastern mysticism be child abuse, or would teaching them that eastern mysticism is nonsense be child abuse?

4) Some rational atheists argue that animal testing is ethical, some rational atheists argue that it is unethical. So would teaching your children that animal testing is ethical be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unethical be child abuse?

5) Some rational atheists argue that strong gun control is needed. Some other rational atheists argue that strong gun control is ill advised. So would teaching your children that strong gun control is needed be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unnecessary be child abuse?

6) Some rational atheists argue that libertarianism is the cat's meow. Some other rational atheists argue that libertarians are nuts. So would teaching your children that libertarianism is sensible be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is asinine be child abuse?

7) Some rational atheists argue that vaccines are ineffective and the germ theory is nonsense. Some other rational atheists argue the opposite. So would teaching your children anti-vaccine, anti-germ theory ideas be child abuse, or would teaching them the opposite be child abuse?

Posted by: STRimmer | August 12, 2008 2:00 PM

WOOHOO!!!! California number 1!!!!

-UCD Student

Posted by: GuyIncognito | August 12, 2008 2:13 PM

I attended a school just like that during my junior high years. The week always began with a sermon delivered by the pastor in charge of the school. If that week contained a holiday, the sermon usually had the theme that the religious nature of that holiday had been usurped by the devil. We learned that Santa was just Satan with a few letters switched around, or that the Easter bunny was just Hallmark's version of an ancient pagan deity. Sometimes the reason for the holiday was specifically to honor the devil. The pastor harbored a special hatred for Halloween. Costuming your children and forcing them to beg for candy was likened to devoting them by fire to Moloch. Keep in mind this was a K-12 school. There were five-year-olds in attendance learning that their parents were preparing to symbolically sacrifice them to a pagan god that evening. That afternoon, I served a lengthy after-school detention for failing to complete a homework assignment. During my detention, the pastor was visited by his grandchildren, whom were of course dressed for an evening of burning for Moloch. Grandpa praised his grandkids for the creativeness of their costumes, and hoped they would get lots of candy. It was hilariously hypocritical. I guess it is only OK to mentally scar the children of others. Luckily, that school has since gone out business, due in part to the fact that it could only obtain accreditation for its curriculum from a few Bible colleges and therefore could not attract more than a handful of students. It would seem that occasionally the system does work.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 2:25 PM

Schmeer, #30,

In almost all the examples provided you give no indication if there is any evidence to support either of your options.

Take the "just Iraq war" example.

If there is no evidence for either position, then according to Jackal's Premise:

Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse

puts you at risk whichever position you offer to your kids, unless, perhaps, you are careful to qualify everything you say to them with "this is my opinion on the justness of the Iraq war, which is not based on evidence, i.e., it is sort of a religious position." Any dogmatic statement from parent to child, such as "of course the Iraq war is unjust" would be child abuse.

Posted by: MikeM | August 12, 2008 2:26 PM

One of my daughter's homeschooled friends was shocked to learn that my daughter doesn't own a Bible. This came in response to my daughter's acceptance of gay marriages, which her friend said God rejected.

On one hand, I'm glad I never bought my daughter a Bible, because it's a giant load of tripe. On the other hand, I kind of what her to own one so she can see for herself what a giant load of tripe it is.

As a UCSC graduate, I am relieved by this judge's ruling. We just cannot allow California's best universities to give fantasy an equal footing with reality.

But this is another reason Obama has to win the election. What will the US Supreme Court look like in 4-8 years if McSame is elected? He'll get a couple more relatively young Clarance Thomases on the court. We just can't allow that to happen, because we're about 2 Supremes away from overturning this ruling (as conservative as it currently is, it's still not quite conservative enough to overturn this ruling).

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 2:32 PM

Ugh. Glad you survived, GuyIncognito. OT, but your comment "It was hilariously hypocritical" reminds me of this: The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion.

Posted by: Qwerty | August 12, 2008 2:35 PM

This ruling is only over some of the courses they teach in which "Biblical truth" seems to take precedence over REALITY, but they still complain and seek justice from a high court. I am sure they'll call the present ruling persecution.

Get this: They are afraid they may have to water down their Christian education! Didn't they already do this to reality based education?

That said, I went to the school's website. I checked out the high school drama. (Don't ALL high schools have drama!) Seems they did Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" last fall. One wonders if the teachers know about Wilde's history? Did they teach the "controversy" about him?

That said, their next production is "Honk, Jr." which is a musicalized version of the "Ugly Duckling."

From their website: This show is full of characters including ducks, geese, a cat, a frog, fish, chickens, goats, pigs, and of course, swans.

WHAT!!!! No bacterial flagellum!!!!

Hooray for California courts insisting on rationality in our halls of higher education!

Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | August 12, 2008 2:37 PM

Why do they want to go to an evil secular university? Surely there must be colleges with an equivalent academic standing which teach their courses from a Christian perspective, right?

Right?

Anyone? Anyone...?

Posted by: Kagehi | August 12, 2008 2:46 PM

I would go a step further and Schmeer state that 2 out of 7 of his "examples" he gets ***wrong*** by being absurdly simplistic about what the stance of one side actually is, such as in the case of Iraq or Eastern religion, and that 4 out of 7 are examples of things that only people who later turned out to be theists "pretending" to be atheists ever pick the opposite side of (or where the percentage of those arguing the point is so absurdly small, such as torture advocates, that any attempt to claim that there is anything close to an "equal" split is absurd). The only one he almost gets right is the one with libertarians. I think they are absolutely, completely and totally batshit insane, but at the same time, their presumption that corporations tend to be better at finding solutions to problems, isn't *that far* off. The problem of course being, their view **assumes** responsible corporations, against all evidence to the contrary, and fails to account for the fact that those solutions are a result of having 10,000 employees, all with different ideas, any one of which might get a good one, as apposed to committees, or individuals, as in the case of the guy who made a nano-antenna, but couldn't think of any use for it other than a "boom box". They fail to grasp the fact that its not the corporations that make it work, but ideas, and that, in fact, the corporations' goal is "contrary" to progress, where ever a solution is "too good", or, "won't make them money".

So, even when right, about rational people having opposite stances on things, the reason for that he gets wrong. Its possible, in another example, to be desperate enough to be willing to torture someone, and still know its a proven fracking useless method, which produces too many false results. This doesn't make the guy that gets useful information right, or the guy that hates it wrong, it just means, in that *one case*, it was.. expedient. The next time, it might waste valuable time.

Posted by: SC | August 12, 2008 3:00 PM

Curious how that would work in several situations, given that "rationality" is arguing on the basis of evidence:

Not as curious as you seem to think, if you follow the very definition you've offered. (There's also no need to bring atheism into the argument - you can talk about rationalist education on its own.)

Some rational atheists argue for the efficacy of human torture. Some other rational atheists argue against it. So would teaching your children that it is OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is not OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse?

An ethical approach to torture, a rationalist would argue, must be based upon moral considerations informed by concrete realities. In this case, the supposed efficacy of torture has been shown to be a myth, and its negative effects on societies that use it have also been demonstrated (see the "Hitchens Under Torture" thread). Therefore, the argument that torture is an effective intelligence strategy is not a rational one. A rational educational approach would teach children to look at the history of torture and the arguments that have been made for and against it, the reality of torture in the past and present, the damage it causes, and the evidence of its inefficacy.

Some rational atheists argue for the justness of the Iraq war. Some other argue against it. So would teaching your children that the Iraq war was just be child abuse, or would teaching them that it was unjust be child abuse?

Teaching children to inform their moral views on the Iraq War, and any war, with concrete evidence concerning historical precedents and causes; participants and their positions; arguments that have been made for and against war in the past and present; and the human, social, and economic costs of war is the correct and rational thing to do.

Some rational atheists argue that, unlike western religion, eastern mysticism is on firm empirical footing. Some other rational atheists argue that eastern mysticism is as irrational as Christianity. So would teaching your children to practice eastern mysticism be child abuse, or would teaching them that eastern mysticism is nonsense be child abuse?

They should be taught to investigate the alleged empirical footing of eastern mysticism or any religion or truth claim scientifically, if they are interested (and should also be taught how to evaluate sources critically).

Some rational atheists argue that animal testing is ethical, some rational atheists argue that it is unethical. So would teaching your children that animal testing is ethical be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unethical be child abuse?

Teaching them to form their own views based on an understanding of the history of animal testing and how and in what circumstances it's currently done, the arguments that have been made in favor or opposition to it, the current state of public control over animal testing, and the consciousness of animals and effects on them of various procedures as far as these are known scientifically should be the goal of rationalist education.

Some rational atheists argue that libertarianism is the cat's meow. Some other rational atheists argue that libertarians are nuts. So would teaching your children that libertarianism is sensible be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is asinine be child abuse?

Again, teaching children about past and present forms and theories of governance and how people have lived under them is the key. Libertarianism, like other theories of government, exists. Childrens' views about it should be informed by empirical knowledge, and libertarianism should be subjected to the same critical evaluation as any other.

Some rational atheists argue that vaccines are ineffective and the germ theory is nonsense...So would teaching your children anti-vaccine, anti-germ theory ideas be child abuse...?

No one who argues this would be a rationalist. It's the silliest example you've offered, but also possibly the most telling and the most on-point. Teaching children these ideas, which are lacking in and actually contrary to scientific evidence, would be, at the very least, grossly irresponsible.

(I'm arguing for rationalist education here, rather than for the teaching of unsubstantiated "knowledge" to be seen as child abuse, which I realize was in the comment to which you were responding. However, you seem to be implying that since people who call themselves rationalists or atheists [?] disagree on various matters, there cannot be a rationalist standard for education. This is wrong - that standard is encouraging kids to question and to judge and form views based upon their correspondence with observable reality.)

Posted by: Leon | August 12, 2008 3:07 PM

Hooray! It's a good day to be a Californian.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | August 12, 2008 3:09 PM

... UC standards require the course content to be largely reality based...

Would they disallow, say, history texts describing the United States as a peace-loving egalitarian nation working steadily to spread democracy, freedom and prosperity as it rescues helpless nations from evil dictatorships around the world and achieves internal progress through the benevolence of its own enlightened leaders?

That's what was in the books when I endured California public high schools.

Posted by: Moses | August 12, 2008 3:14 PM

you're going to point to the Bible and claim that it constitutes evidence to the contrary then you might as well point to Lord of the Rings and claim that Bilbo Baggins was real too.

Not meaning to date myself, but there used to be a bumper-sticker that said "Frodo Lives" before LotR became mainstream.

Posted by: SC | August 12, 2008 3:15 PM

And I'll add to my previous post that, in a world in which children are going to face attempts, sophisticated and unsophisticated, to manipulate them in ways detrimental to themselves or to others, not to teach them the importance of critically examining other people's views and of forming their own arguments and evaluating those of others on an evidentiary basis (and how to do so) is to fail them in a huge way.

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 3:19 PM

As for political views taught without acknowledging the subjective nature of political value judgements, I think that qualifies as detrimental to a child, though political views tend to carry less potential harm than religious views. One is talking about programs dictated by fallible men, the other is talking about acting on truth ordained by god. So while both cases of indoctrination may commit the same intellectual crime, religion has the capability to produce more harm to society. Thus, we would be quicker to condemn indoctrination into a religion as child abuse than indoctrination into a political party. Though, I despise the idea of both acts.

But the main point of this post is that verifiable facts and not simply vague value judgements are what are being twisted. It's not in claiming that Bush is the greatest president or Christianity the greatest religion that makes such schools dangerous. It's that they'll teach the earth is 6000 years old, or that evolution is a lie, or that the Jews really did wander in the desert for 40 years. All things we have conclusively shown to be false. That is without a doubt, abuse.

As for Jesus never having existed and the flood being a rip off, it may not be news to you Heddle, but you are not at all representative of the beliefs of the average christian, and so your flippant dismissal of such points is itself pointless.

Posted by: Spinoza | August 12, 2008 3:21 PM

Does this mean a defeat for empiricism?

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | August 12, 2008 3:24 PM

This is directly from a Bob Jones University middle school Life Science Textbook

by: William S. Pinkston Jr. and David R. Anderson

Chapter 10 - Biological Evolution

10A- How Biological Evolution Supposedly Took Place

(concluding paragraph)

Why people believe in Evolution

Many scientists speak of evolution as fact. Many people believe what these scientists say and never really know why they believe in evolution. These scientists also give people the idea that everyone believes in evolution. For a person not to believe evolution, he must be willing to say that the majority is wrong. Some people believe evolution only because they do not want to be different or ridiculed.

Satan wants people to believe in evolution. This is probably the main reason that evolution is so popular. Satan is a deceiver (John 8:44), and he wants people to believe that God's Word is not true. He keeps the belief in evolution popular because he can use it to lead people away from God.

And that, in a nutshell, is why UC is correct in not allowing credit for some courses taught at some schools.

Posted by: Agersomnia | August 12, 2008 3:29 PM

@#12:

I want to send you my CV to teach at the Hellsmouth! Just tell me where!

@28:

Do you have any problems reading? The issue is not with how rational something is, but if it's reality based, or a belief system.
A discussion on torture would be ethical in nature, and now that you mention it, how about Inquisition torture? A discussion on the theme would be historical, and give a perspective of where comes from the people who also supported the war on Iraq, and who preached at Church that it was justified to go and kill others, and invade their countries.
A discussion on the Iraq war would also address the fact that the USA President hid factual evidence from public, obscured, obfuscated and manipulated the facts and used the media to get people on their side based on non-rational arguments, not on evidence. And that ex-president Bush senior used holy war allegories to call his little "Desert Storm" at the beginning. Teaching kids about the nature of the government decisions and the ethical consequences will help them decide how to respond later in life when the Government tries to move their opinions with no clear idea why. Specially when the government promotes a Christian-Right (not atheist or rational) agenda when going to war, isn't it?
About religion, for starters we're not talking about facts but religious systems. As a second point, Buddhism in particular is (to my humble knowledge) the only religion that a) does not require a god to function b) openly states that if its precepts are proved false, will change c) does not deny scientific data. Much better than most judeo-christian groups, than almost all of the Islamic ones, don't you think?
About your so called problem with animal testing. What would be ethical would be to teach children to analyze ethical dilemmas rather than answer with a FAQ to every problem in ethics the children have to face. That way they will use rational thinking, ethical systems, and a logical backing to his decisions later in life. And animal testing is a very good example of an ethical dilemma that can be used in class. Also an argument pro-tests is religious in nature: God gave us all creatures on earth to find how to best use them, or did He not?
About gun control: Researching on the fundamental arguments of both sides of the discussion, and the actual facts (statistics, studies, etc) would be also a very healthy debate on ethics at school. Also worth mention is that the historical roots of the organization promoting lax gun controls (Rifle Asoc.) are interwoven with those of the KKK, a religious group. Wouldn't you mind to include that fact in your exposition?
And what about teaching them the basics of economic science and decisions. That capitalism is founded on a mix of pseudo-Christian/Protestant ideas (Divine Right and the like) and pragmatism with little concern for ethics at all? Or for science, for that matter. The most basic tenet of capitalism is that there will always be new markets. But it doesn't take into account that even the world has limits, and that resources are finite. A discussion on these topics should lead children into search for alternatives, or at least, moderation of mindless consumer life style.

Posted by: Moses | August 12, 2008 3:29 PM

as if statements such as "Jesus wasn't a real person" and "plagiarized from earlier Egyptian mythology" are novel and revealing.

Forty-years ago, yes, those were radical ideas in the mainstream. But no longer.

So, yes, you're right, they are neither novel nor revealing ideas. They are, however, facts as mundane and prosaic as they have become over the past 40-years. Just like Exodus didn't happen. Just like there were no miracles. Just like most of the bible and both Christian and Jewish belief systems have been shown to be changed, plagiarized or just plain wrong over the past 40-years of archaeology, etc.

Just like your Pavlovian denial of the truth is neither novel or revealing. Or that you're still stuck in the mindset of an 18th Century monk and are making laughable arguments that have been repeatedly trashed for being demonstrably false.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 3:33 PM

SC, #45

Let me state it differently.

For those examples, either there is sufficient evidence for one position or the other, or there isn't. In the former case there must be rational atheists behaving irrationally, such as, perhaps, Hitchens on the Iraq war. That would be a clear case of potential child abuse as defined, were someone like Hitchens to teach his kids, in spite of the evidence, that the Iraq war was justified. If it is the latter, that there is no sufficient evidence to prove either side, then whichever side you assume is not evidence-based but something closer to religion. That is, you "feel" the Iraq war is wrong, even though you can't prove it, or even convince someone else who is just as rational but with the opposing view that they are wrong. Again, the potential for child abuse as defined is great.

Your approach is a careful education where you never attempt to influence the child, just provide them with the facts. Admirable, but I don't see that happening.

To me, as long as we have families of whatever type, you just have to accept that the children are going to be "indoctrinated" with the religious and political views of their parents. The hope is that they will learn critical thinking and make their own choices. Believe it or not, even in Christian families (I didn't grow up in one, but my kids are) there is the acknowledgment that they will someday, almost without exception, challenge what they have been taught and will either walk away from the faith or "make it their own."

Dubiquiabs, #48

Heddle appears to be a genuine believer, unfortunately with no understanding of how science works.

That's bad, considering I teach physics at a university and do research in a national lab. Please don't tell my bosses.

And how did my science come into this--I agree with the decision in favor of the UC system. I do not think that public universities should have to give credit to creation-science courses.

A [Religion] is incomatible with B [science]. (except in electric monks and Heddle minds)

Ah, I see you claim science is incompatible with religion. If so, if "incompatibility" actually means something, then religion should adversely affect one's science. So perhaps you'll take my challenge which I have offered many times: I'll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists. If it weren't for the fact that Google would make it too easy I'd say: just pick out the five from the religious scientists. So I have to make it a little harder: your job is to pick out the five from religious scientists, and explain how their religion had a negative impact on their science.

If you don't take this challenge, then I'll consider it evidence that you acknowledge that "religion is incompatible with science" sounds good and right but in fact is meaningless in that it cannot be demonstrated.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | August 12, 2008 3:37 PM

"Not meaning to date myself, but there used to be a bumper-sticker that said "Frodo Lives" before LotR became mainstream."

My personal LOTR bumper sticker was: "Frodo failed - Bush is still president"

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 3:44 PM

Heddle, again you mistake the fault for being the teaching of value judgements. The fault actually lies in teaching lies.

In other words, to indoctrinate a child into an outright, verifiable, measurable, falsehood should be considered abuse. And that is why this church school has been rejected. Not because of the abusive nature of the teaching, mind you, but because Universities deal in the teaching of facts and this religious school is not interested in that. Thus, the University is not interested in them.

So, remember, to call the Iraq war "wrong" is inherently a value judgement and is much harder to prove or disprove, leaving it on the fuzzier side of what can be clearly called abusive treatment, not to mention OT from the facts of this post.

Posted by: Jackal | August 12, 2008 3:45 PM

Heddel, there's a difference between fact statements like "life on Earth evolved over billions of years" and value statements like "all people are created equal." My comment was only adressing fact statements.

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 3:52 PM

"incompatibility" actually means something, then religion should adversely affect one's science.

The problem with your challenge Heddle is that it restricts the outcomes of what "incompatibility" should entail to the only one that works for your challenge. It ignores the human ability to compartmentalize contradicting ideas while holding both to be simultaneously true.

Instead, the claim of incompatibility stems from two contradicting ways of viewing the world. Science being based upon evidence, and religion, revelation. That one person can hold both and still function is not disproof of their logical incompatibility, only evidence of the complexity of the human mind.

Posted by: damitall | August 12, 2008 4:05 PM

From over the Atlantic, I'm relieved to see the shaft of light projected by this ruling.

It's all too easy for us this side of the pond to think that America is fast sinking into a slough of irrationality, and we need reminding that sometimes the religious agenda for education is thwarted by sane and sensible people.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 4:09 PM

Michael X, #69 (and applies Jackal #71)

In other words, to indoctrinate a child into an outright, verifiable, measurable, falsehood should be considered abuse.

OK, so if I understand you correctly, only teaching something that can be disproved scientifically is child abuse. I take it then that teaching a child about hell is not child abuse, because science cannot disprove the existence of hell?

What if I am a die hard String Theorist and the LHC finds no evidence for String Theory? If I continue to teach my hypothetical prodigy child String Theory--am I guilty of child abuse? Or would there be enough ambiguity remaining in the possibility of String Theory, as compared with young earth creationism, that it would not be abuse? And if so, where is the line drawn? What percentage of scientists have to say A is wrong before the insistence on teaching A to your kids is abuse?

Falyne, #70

is that you can make an evidence- and reality-based argument for either side. A given individual won't agree with both at once, but two reasonable non-magical-thinking people might well be on completely opposite sides of all of them.

Let's assume you put Hitchens and Dawkins in a room and they pool their evidence. If they then work off the same evidence, and they both ruthlessly apply reason in the form of logical analysis and critical thinking, and yet they reach different conclusions regarding the Iraq war, then I submit part of their conclusion must be based on something other than evidence, on a "conviction" or maybe even a prejudice that is indistinguishable in type from a religious belief. The only other conclusion I see is that "rationality" isn't all it's hyped to be.

Michael X, #73

The problem with your challenge Heddle is that it restricts the outcomes of what "incompatibility" should entail to the only one that works for your challenge. It ignores the human ability to compartmentalize contradicting ideas while holding both to be simultaneously true.

Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What's the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it's just words.

Posted by: raven | August 12, 2008 4:10 PM

Tyler...fears schools will become afraid to teach from a Christian perspective. "We're worried in the long term, Christian education is going to be continually watered down in order to satisfy the UC school system," he said.

This guy Tyler is lying. The usual tracks of a fundie. When he says Xian he means fundie Death Cults. These aren't Xian schools, they are fundie xian schools. There are just as many or more mainstream xian schools, Catholic, Episcopalian etc. that teach a standard reality based curriculum including evolution.

FWIW, the available info from surveys is that kids from these schools don't do well on SATs or at the universities. Parents have to be a bit stupid to send kids to expensive private schools that prepare them for a career in lawn mowing.

Posted by: ndt | August 12, 2008 4:15 PM

Heddle, you're confusing values with facts. Rationalism is useful for determining absolute answers to the latter. There are no absolute answers for the former.

Posted by: TheOtherOne | August 12, 2008 4:18 PM

Parents have to be a bit stupid to send kids to expensive private schools that prepare them for a career in lawn mowing.

Not stupid, so much as believers. I was raised in a church that had its own schools, and constantly reinforced the notion that keeping your kids in the church's schools reduced their exposure to "the world" (and therefore to the devil). Never mind that one kid (who I knew in 5th grade) never learned how to deal with his dyslexia and would successfully read "the cat sat in" before stumbling over "a" . . . .

Then the church's schools acted far less than Christian in their treatment of my older brother, and I wound up going to public school for junior high and high school. I did better in public school than I ever had in the church schools, and had friends there.

A year or two later - the only time my mother *ever* walked out on a sermon - a guest pastor started in on how we must sacrifice to send our children to church school lest we lose them to the devil. Somehow, amazingly, neither she or I belong to any church anymore, much less that one . . . .

Posted by: raven | August 12, 2008 4:20 PM

Followed this case distantly. It looked like they were just going through the motions. Missing dealines by a year and half assed arguments that anyone could blow out of the water.

I think they did it just for the PR value and to look busy. There is no religious discrimination whatsover here. The kids can believe any strange things they want about history or science. They do have to also know what the mainstream academic findings are to get into UC.

Any of the parents that care about their kid's futures and aren't brain dead will have to rethink sending their kids to some glorified indoctrination center.

Posted by: Jackal | August 12, 2008 4:28 PM

heddle said:

OK, so if I understand you correctly, only teaching something that can be disproved scientifically is child abuse. I take it then that teaching a child about hell is not child abuse, because science cannot disprove the existence of hell?

What if I am a die hard String Theorist and the LHC finds no evidence for String Theory? If I continue to teach my hypothetical prodigy child String Theory--am I guilty of child abuse?

Please recall the original sentence: "Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse."

If there is no evidence for hell, then its existance should not be taught as a fact. If there is no evidence for String Theory, then it should not be taught as a fact. However, if there is a theory with scientific evidence for and against, then, by the original statement, you could teach either side. Personally, I would prefer a class in which the evidence for each side is presented and the student is incouraged to research, reason and write a paper arguing which side they believe has the stronger evidence.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 4:33 PM

ndt, #84

There is no rational basis to either side of that argument. Hitchens's values are just different from mine.

Fair enough and a rather frank admission. Now I ask: how are these "values" any different from a religious presupposition?

Similarly, TheOtherOne, #86

So they use different values to interpret the evidence, and place different weight on different pieces of evidence - so what? In what way is that similar to the typical claim that Christianity is true because a book says so? That all failure to find any concrete evidence outside that one single oft-translated-and-revised book?

Again, what are these values based on? We seem to agree they are not based on evidence, or we get back to square one: we could just pool the evidence and our values would converge. Let's grant I believe in something because a book says so. Why do you have the values you have? If they are not based on evidence, what are they based on? And if they are not based on evidence, and your parents taught them to you, did they commit abuse?

Posted by: Aegis | August 12, 2008 4:37 PM

"If you don't take this challenge, then I'll consider it evidence that you acknowledge that "religion is incompatible with science" sounds good and right but in fact is meaningless in that it cannot be demonstrated."

Nope. The reason that they won't take the challenge is that religion and science, when applied to the same question, are incompatible - or can only be forced into compatibility by excessive hand-wringing and dissonance. When applied separately, they don't always infringe upon each other, which is why even a bible-banger can construct a bridge as long as they don't think that "the hand of god" will be a substitute for proper statics formula.

A much better test is to have a scientist who happens to be christian hold strong and fast simultaneously to both their scientific views AND those views endorsed by their religion. For instance, Genesis - no matter how liberally read - is completely incompatible as a view of the development of the universe/earth when contrasted with the scientific viewpoint. That some scientists are capable of ignoring their beliefs long enough to do good work in many fields is not evidence that religion and science are compatible. Good religious scientists are good in spite of, rather than because of, their religion. Once they attempt to use religion to "help" them in their work, they become bad scientists, as surely as those who fabricate results or ignore evidence for secular reasons like money or fame.

That said, there might be some religions that would be compatible with science. Any religion who, upon receiving contrary information, was willing to quickly modify or discard doctrine based on that evidence, would qualify as such a religion. I know of no religion that takes this route, however. Another sort of religion that might qualify might be pantheism or the worship/reverence of the natural world.

In any case, it is clear that religion doesn't of necessity make you a worse scientist as long as those religious views are ignored while researching. That's why your test is invalid- Any scientist whose papers are published in a respectable forum will have been shown to have that ability to disconnect personal belief from evidence evaluation. Others have been selected out - you just never hear of the failures because....well, they failed.

Posted by: kermit | August 12, 2008 4:41 PM

Heddle?@65 "I'll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists. If it weren't for the fact that Google would make it too easy I'd say: just pick out the five from the religious scientists. So I have to make it a little harder: your job is to pick out the five from religious scientists, and explain how their religion had a negative impact on their science."

So, explain how religion contributes to these papers, or fails to contribute to the atheists' papers. I am unclear what "compatible" would mean in these cases. I would say that religion is orthogonal to science, not incompatible. Didn't a rock and roll guitarist just get a PhD in astrophysics? But I don't think his music contributed anything, other than paying the bills.

When making claims of fact about the world, they are either testable or not. If they are verifiable, then they are fit material for scientific study. If they are not verifiable, they are simply irrelevant to science. My workout buddy in the university was a devout Christian, and earned his PhD with a thesis on citrus tree viruses. He informally taught me a fair amount of evolutionary science in that time. But he never tried to convert me - he knew he had no evidence to support his religious beliefs.

I had to drop my first major of computer studies because I wasn't prepared for the math, even though my paperwork said I was. There was no unfair discrimination involved; I just wasn't qualified to go thru those courses without remedial work.

Anyone who makes statements of facts contrary to verifiable data should be prepared for the consequences - such as people disagreeing with them or schools not accepting their "education". UC doesn't care if an applicant is Christian, or Druse, or Wiccan. But they care if they're prepared for the math and science and history and language they're expected to take.

Posted by: Pablo | August 12, 2008 4:44 PM

Why do they want to go to an evil secular university? Surely there must be colleges with an equivalent academic standing which teach their courses from a Christian perspective, right?

This is the same thing I am wondering. There are countless private institutions that would gladly take the money of those from this school. See the aforementioned Bob Jones University, or Liberty, or Oral Roberts.

Posted by: JHJEFFERY | August 12, 2008 4:53 PM

Heddle #77

"Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What's the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it's just words."

I truly don't know the answer to this one sir, but I know who does. Ask Giordano Bruno--he knows.

Posted by: Bobber | August 12, 2008 4:58 PM

James #96:

There is no non-Biblical first-hand account of the existence of Jesus - no text, no testimony, no Roman tax record, no anything. While it is probable that a man named Jesus who led a religious movement existed in Palestine at the time, it is by no means definitively proven that there was such a man, and certainly no evidence for the claims of miracles found in the Gospels.

Posted by: ndt | August 12, 2008 5:00 PM

Posted by: James | August 12, 2008 4:53 PM

#34 Comments are not bad, however, secular history has proven the existence of Jesus the man through the writings of early Roman Historians and Jewish Hellenistic Historians whose writings still exist.

Except that's not true.

Posted by: Aegis | August 12, 2008 5:05 PM

Beaten by others, but I suppose James is referring to Josephus, Tacitus, and the like. Someone has been reading too much Josh McDowell, since there isn't a single reference to Jesus in any early text outside the bible that I am aware of - all that remains are references to his followers, and some references that were added into writings of other historians centuries later. Also: FAIL.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 5:12 PM

Kermit, #93,

So, explain how religion contributes to these papers, or fails to contribute to the atheists' papers.

Didn't a rock and roll guitarist just get a PhD in astrophysics? But I don't think his music contributed anything, other than paying the bills.

My point exactly. There is no evidence that Rock 'N Roll and science are incompatible. And there is no evidence that religion and science are incompatible.

Aesis, #91

A much better test is to have a scientist who happens to be christian hold strong and fast simultaneously to both their scientific views AND those views endorsed by their religion.

Could you reword that--I cannot figure out what the test is. How would you administer this test, whatever it is? I provided straightforward simple guidelines for my proposal.

ndt, #94,

If someone says "The US should not invade countries in order to install friendly governments", that's a value claim.

I understand--but again my question is, where does this value come from, this value that is not based on evidence but is instead a feeling or a conviction, and how is it different, in any substantive way, from a religious conviction?

W. Kevin Vicklund, #90,>

Yeah, maybe I moved the goalposts, but that was because the original argument was problematic. The original argument stated when there is no evidence, it is abuse. But at any given moment there might be a modicum of evidence supporting YECism. For example, it took a while to respond scientifically and definitively to the YEC evidence of residual Carbon-14 in diamonds. Thus, for a little while, there was arguably "some" evidence. Since this is a recurring happenstance, I didn't think that Jackal meant it is not abuse as long as you could find some tiny shred of evidence that has yet to be explained.

Posted by: cyan | August 12, 2008 5:15 PM

Allen Chapman @ #34:

"The Bible is largely a collection of sky-worship allegories and astrology."

first misread "collection" as "cloaca", and liked the statement even better

Posted by: Kseniya | August 12, 2008 5:19 PM

Ask Giordano Bruno--he knows.

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 5:24 PM

My god Heddle, but you are incapable of following a line of logic. As a matter of fact, that is where this whole problem of "incompatibility" stems. It is, again, religion's method of discovering truth and science's method are logically incompatible. We also don't experimentally test the law of non-contradiction Heddle, do you disbelieve in it?

As for your claim that totally unverifiable claims are incapable of causing harm, and only verifiable measurable ones are, I never said that was so. I simply stated that value judgements are not as easy to be clear on, where as measurable ones are. A claim that one will burn in hell for eternity if one doesn't believe that which can't be proven should also be considered abuse, not simply for the vile nature of the claim, but because there is not evidence anywhere that would lead one to believe this is true.

String theory on the other hand is thought to be possible because the math works out. At present, while we can't get at it empirically, its evidence rests on its compatibility with the math. But are you really attempting to claim that teaching a child that string theory is perfectly true causes as much damage as teaching a child that burning for eternity is true?

Lastly, we base our values upon many things Heddle, and empirical evidence is one of those things, but not the only thing. Your muddling in subjectivism how we come to those conclusions to gain your views equal weight does your case no good. Such thinking simply undermines us all. I wish I had more time to explain to you how coherent and beneficial values can be established, but I would have hoped that you would be able to figure that our for yourself. Never fear though, I'm sure someone has more free time than me.

Posted by: Norman Doering | August 12, 2008 5:42 PM

Michael X wrote:

My god Heddle, but you are incapable of following a line of logic. ... We also don't experimentally test the law of non-contradiction Heddle, do you disbelieve in it?
As for your claim that totally unverifiable claims are incapable of causing harm, and only verifiable measurable ones are, I never said that was so. ...
... are you really attempting to claim that teaching a child that string theory is perfectly true causes as much damage as teaching a child that burning for eternity is true?

If there's one thing I learned debating theists it's that you are probably underestimating just how ignorant and dishonest they are:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html

Posted by: JoJo | August 12, 2008 5:45 PM

Tritium (³H) decays to helium-3 (³He) with a half-life of 12.3 years. Whether or not I believe in Jesus, Vishnu or Quetzalcoatl, tritium will still decay to ³He. If I write in a paper that tritium decay is caused by the direct intervention of Shiva, then religion has entered into my scientific life. Until then, my religious beliefs or lack thereof and my scientific beliefs have nothing to do with each other.

Posted by: ndt | August 12, 2008 5:57 PM

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 5:12 PM

Kermit, #93,

So, explain how religion contributes to these papers, or fails to contribute to the atheists' papers.
Why should I do that? I'm not the one making any claim. I didn't say: "their religion contributed favorably to their science." The claim was religion and science are incompatible.

Who made that claim? Are you sure you read it here?

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 5:12 PM
ndt, #94,


If someone says "The US should not invade countries in order to install friendly governments", that's a value claim.
I understand--but again my question is, where does this value come from, this value that is not based on evidence but is instead a feeling or a conviction, and how is it different, in any substantive way, from a religious conviction?

I'm not saying it is. The issue we are discussing here in this post is when people, in this case the plaintiffs in this case, confuse religious convictions for fact claims. A religious conviction that people should respect human life is not a fact claim that contradicts empirical evidence. A religious "conviction" that the earth is 6000 years old is. The latter is the subject of the blog post we are commenting on.

Posted by: Alex | August 12, 2008 6:03 PM

"Tyler...fears schools will become afraid to teach from a Christian perspective."
You mean schools won't teach bullshit? How is that bad again?

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 6:06 PM

"Moses"

Go back to your bean-counting. Clearly, you lack the native intelligence to perceive that only cranks believe Jesus never existed.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 6:11 PM

If there's one thing I learned debating theists it's that you are probably underestimating just how ignorant and dishonest they are:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html

Bitch please. The Rational[sic] Responders made fools of themselves, too.

Posted by: SC | August 12, 2008 6:17 PM

What's particularly interesting to me is that religious people always seem to envision hypothetical institutions organized by atheists or rationalists as so similar to religious ones. So heddle simply can't imagine schools in which children aren't indoctrinated, in which values aren't taught as facts, and in which children are actively encouraged to question and seek out knowledge for themselves. Thus, to teach something is always to teach it as a sort of dogma, never anything more complex. It's fairly disturbing, quite frankly.

Posted by: TheOtherOne | August 12, 2008 6:17 PM

Again, what are these values based on? We seem to agree they are not based on evidence, or we get back to square one: we could just pool the evidence and our values would converge.

You do realize that there's a difference between "I believe it's bad to hit someone" and "I believe that Jane hit John"? Whether Jane hit John is something where evidence can be examined and an objective answer can be reached. Whether it's wrong to hit someone, on the other hand, is far more subjective and depends on context.

As far as the question of Iraq, there is a lot of conflicting information about why we're there and how well we are succeeding at our theoretical goals (which means that different people could look at the evidence and disagree about how valid or valuable a piece of information is). And even if we agreed on why we were there and how well we were doing, we could still disagree on whether it was worth it, whether it was right for us to go in, and whether we should get out now or stay there - none of those are simple questions.

That's different from the not-complicated question of whether there is any evidence, outside the Bible, for the existence of Jesus Christ as he is described in the New Testament. And it's different from whether "the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events".

Let's grant I believe in something because a book says so. Why do you have the values you have? If they are not based on evidence, what are they based on? And if they are not based on evidence, and your parents taught them to you, did they commit abuse?

Uh-huh. So you believe that if your eye offends you, you should pluck it out? You believe that a calf should never be cooked in its mother's milk? Personally, my values are based on a personal decision that it is wrong to unnecessarily harm others. Do I still do some things because that's what my folks did (or taught me to do) when I was a kid? Sure. But I don't refrain from stealing because some book told me so - I do it because it's wrong to take what others worked for. Sometimes following my own code rather than a code from a book is harder, because it means I have to think about the consequences of my actions - but it means I won't be stoning any adulterers any time soon. Will you?

Posted by: Feynmaniac | August 12, 2008 6:26 PM

Heddle #65,
"Ah, I see you claim science is incompatible with religion. If so, if "incompatibility" actually means something, then religion should adversely affect one's science. So perhaps you'll take my challenge which I have offered many times: I'll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists"

If humans were completely rational beings this experiment might prove something. However people, that includes scientsts, are capable of holding contradicting beliefs. Stating that there are competent scientist with religious beliefs does not show that religion and scientist are compatiable.

Posted by: CJO | August 12, 2008 6:30 PM

He probably did exist, and was probably a somewhat dramatic figure of his time, but whether everything attached to his legend legitimately belongs there is another story.

Until quite recently, this was what I thought, too. Where does such a legend come from, if not some kernel of truth?

The fact is, though, the ancient mind was different from ours, profoundly so, and the whole concept of "truth" was different, and perfectly able to cover events of an avowedly mythological nature. The key to my change of thinking was reflecting on Paul's theology, his reports of travel to Jerusalem and meeting the "apostles" there. Nowhere in any of the Pauline literature is there any distinction made between Paul's experience with Jesus (bolt out of the blue on the road to Damascus: a vision) and the experiences of Peter et al, who, according to the Gospels, knew a human being personally whose name was Jesus and who healed the sick and hung out with low-lifes and said some things about "the Kingdom" and why don't we try being nice to each other for a change?

This indicates that they didn't know such a person, that even to the Apostles of Jerusalem, Jesus was a figure of mythology of whom they knew through visions, just like Paul. The twist is that, later, the figure of myth became a figure of legend via the Gospel of Mark. What tipped the scales for me was The Jesus Puzzle. There's lots more to say, but it's all said better there.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 6:34 PM

The Bhagavad Gītā is ahistorical

...and the bible isn't? Then why is it--and get ready for this, you moronic wank--SO GODDAMN FUCKING WRONG ABOUT SO FUCKING MUCH OF HISTORY?!

Posted by: cactusren | August 12, 2008 6:38 PM

Thanks for the happy news, Danio!

Bill Dauphin @12: Will you be teaching science at Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory? If so, where can I send my resume?

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 6:39 PM

Asterius clearly remains in that tender age of 19-23 where he believes content-free opinionated one-liners fool others into thinking he's well-read and educated.

Doesn't really work past sophomore year in college, kid.

So fuck off, you preening idiot.

Posted by: CJO | August 12, 2008 6:39 PM

Read Doherty, at the link I provided, and show, in detail, why he is wrong. Otherwise, I will persist in my belief that Asterius is a crank.

And you'll not get far here, assuming that we atheists haven't read the bible.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 6:43 PM

So fuck off, you preening idiot.

Brownian, you low-rent, trifling piece of shit, perhaps Dr. Heddle can help you. He is an educator and is used to dealing with with the occasional low-watt bulb like you and the other members of the echo chamber here.

Posted by: Wookster | August 12, 2008 6:46 PM

Hooray for California! It makes me proud (as always) to be a graduate of such a fine institution of higher learning.

To be clear, there are Xtian high schools providing a quality education to their students (even if it comes with a dose of delusion). My closest friends from college went to a large Catholic high school (come to think of it, so did my father, another UCD grad), and none of them were any more ill-prepared for college than my self or any of the public-school grads (nor were they particularly religious). The key is that their school taught religion as a completely isolated class, entirely segregated from the actual knowledge being imparted.

-Proud UC Davis grad. GO AGS!

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 6:49 PM

So I wonder who I should get to read the bible to me so they can explain which parts are ahistorical, which are historical and which are metaphorical. Aserious? Twaddle? Fred Phelps? Pope Ratzinger?

Y'know, if God really gave a shit about our eternal souls, he would have waited another 2,000 years to save the Jews and everybody else and sent a fucking email to each of us, rather than depending on fucks like Assholius to spread the good word. Christ on a cracker but they're less reliable than a tweaking meth-head Purolator courier.

Whatever. Bring back Kenny! Bring back Kenny!

Posted by: Wookster | August 12, 2008 6:50 PM

Mothra @ #126:

. "A Christian and a Golden Bear,
. A Lamp of learning shown the pair.
. Said Bear to Christian, 'would you care,
. explain to me why I'm a bear,
. and live in California fair.'"

That's fantastic!

Posted by: raven | August 12, 2008 6:52 PM

Asterius the "biblical scholar":

The Bhagavad Gītā is ahistorical, you clueless piece of shit. Also, if you are in the US, you sorry sack of shit, then you are in a distinct minority. We don't want your dipshit kind here, fucker.

Nineteen who are you kidding? I would say 12-14 at best. The age where kids think using words like fucker and shit are what educated adults use and besides, it makes you sound really cool.

And it seems he skipped his nap and/or medication today. Asterius, take your zyprexa, grab your teddy bear, and really, you will feel better in a while.

Posted by: heddle | August 12, 2008 6:52 PM

MichaelX, #111

But are you really attempting to claim that teaching a child that string theory is perfectly true causes as much damage as teaching a child that burning for eternity is true?

Now you are moving the goalposts. Your original claim, in #69, was:

In other words, to indoctrinate a child into an outright, verifiable, measurable, falsehood should be considered abuse.

You didn't say that the conditions were (a) it is demonstrably false and (b) it causes (judged how? by whom?) a sufficient level of damage. Your comment in #69 was, I think reasonably, interpreted as arguing that teaching scientifically false claims is abuse, period. As to your question, I don't think teaching String theory is abuse, even if the evidence against it becomes overwhelming, or rather the evidence for it continues to go missing. And I don't think teaching on the reality of hell is abuse or damaging, although I don't teach about "burning" because the biblical metaphors used for hell--a lake of fire, an outer darkness, and a pit, are somewhat contradictory and don't all imply burning, so I could not make any claim regarding what it actually entails.

Norman Doering,#113

What percentage of your comments are just blegs with a link to your blog? I have noticed over the years that you are quite Denyese-O'Leary-like in that regard.

ndt, #117

Who made that claim? Are you sure you read it here?

Yes, in #48

TheOtherOne, #127

I do it because it's wrong to take what others worked for.

As to you other question, I will not be stoning adulterers. But I have already made this argument too many times, here and on other blogs, including my own, and I don't want to get into yet another rabbit trail discussion on the applicability of Mosaic law to Christians. If you want links to those arguments, I can provide them.

Feynmaniac , #129

Stating that there are competent scientist with religious beliefs does not show that religion and scientist are compatiable.

Well, what is the effect of this incompatibility? If you can't demonstrate it, it's just words. All you can do is preach to the choir. It is just something you hold on faith. Where's the beef?

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 6:54 PM

Brownian, you low-rent, trifling piece of shit, perhaps Dr. Heddle can help you. He is an educator and is used to dealing with with the occasional low-watt bulb like you and the other members of the echo chamber here.

Oh, fuck. Not only are we dealing with an apologist (so how close am I on guessing your age, there Assy? Let's call it a win if I do better than your bible gets historical facts), but a Calvinist apologist who actually buys Twaddle's, er, twaddle.

You guys work harder at making your shit sound legit than film studies majors.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 6:59 PM

And Kelly and Brian didn't need to be that good -- Kirk and Ray destroyed their own arguments with no help from anyone.

The dumb asses cannot distinguish among the three laws of thermodynamics. Nor do they realize that energy conservation was probably violated by the Big Bang. Their attempts to cite science they clearly do not understand is worse than crocoduck, IMO.

Posted by: Norman Doering | August 12, 2008 7:00 PM

Heddle asked:

Norman Doering,#113
What percentage of your comments are just blegs with a link to your blog? I have noticed over the years that you are quite Denyese-O'Leary-like in that regard.

In your case Heddle, almost always. I no longer bother with engaging in your silly game and choose just to warn other people about what they are getting themselves into.

And you should read my blog too. It's your only chance of engaging me:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 7:02 PM

Asterius, please defend Heddle while calling us an echo chamber again.

I wish I could buy Pharyngula hangers-on for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. I could make a damn fortune!

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 7:07 PM

Anytime you want to make an original claim Asterius, rather than recycling a hair from Heddle's teabag you found between your teeth, be my guest.

In the meantime,

Echo!

Echo.

echo

_echo

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 12, 2008 7:09 PM

Is this the blog equivalent of shouting "Party! Party!" while your parents are outta town?

Sorry. I freaked myself out even typing that. I remember the horror only too well.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 7:11 PM

And it just keeps getting better. Keep it coming, please.

What taxes your cognition, dim bulb? The idea that energy conservation probably does not apply to the Big Bang? Or that the 1st law does not equal the 3rd?

Posted by: JHJEFFERY | August 12, 2008 7:13 PM

CHILDREN, PLEASE!

But the book to read if you want to be a Bible scholar, or even if you want to pretend to be one is Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, by John Dominic Crossan. This is a shorter version of his tome on the subject. He is perhaps the greatest living Bible scholar.

PS: no one who ever saw Jesus alive wrote a word about it.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 7:13 PM

If you think that energy conservation was probably violated by the Big Bang then it's your attempt to cite science you do not understand that is worse than crocoduck.

Wrong again, hayseed.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031106212441/http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11609.html

Posted by: Falyne, FCD | August 12, 2008 7:15 PM

*gives up arguing, makes popcorn*

Posted by: Kenny (not really) | August 12, 2008 7:17 PM

[Lurch voice]You rang?[/Lurch voice]
Dr Heddel knows more than you that is my OPINOIN. You athiests just wont listen to reason. Research NDE's yourselfs. The information is out there on the Internet. ALso quantum mechanics is very exciting with other dimensions. More than 3. If you dont beleive that Jesus existed then why would you beleive in Darwin and his stupid theory???

Posted by: StuV | August 12, 2008 7:18 PM

What taxes your cognition, dim bulb?

At this point, that you remember to breathe.

But do go on, you're very entertaining.

By the way, have you found any original sources for Jesus's existence yet?

Posted by: JoJo | August 12, 2008 7:19 PM

When I googled "big bang violation conservation" I ended up with some very interesting essays about conservation of baryon number being violated by the big bang.

Posted by: Alex | August 12, 2008 7:22 PM

"...while the laws of thermodynamics apply to the universe today, it is not clear that they necessarily apply to the origin of the universe; we simply do not know."

Big Bang

Posted by: Steve_C | August 12, 2008 7:22 PM

Asterius seems familiar.

Which banned troll is he?

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 7:27 PM

"...while the laws of thermodynamics apply to the universe today, it is not clear that they necessarily apply to the origin of the universe; we simply do not know."

Right Alex. The p.o.s. Rational[sic] Responders claimed the "3rd law" (really the 1st law) of thermodynamics was proof against creation. They, of course, were wrong.

Posted by: Mold | August 12, 2008 7:30 PM

What the good attorney meant was that the time for getting the weasel's nose under the tent is going away. Only under the auspices of Bush or Reagan did the craptastic diploma mills actually find work for their graduates. If they can get stare decisis on accredation for their skools, the courts will have to allow them to be treated on an equal basis with real colleges. The clock is ticking. Soon the troo beleevers will be out of office...facing indictments..and the replacements may not be as accomodating of Fudamentalist Beleefs.

Posted by: jj | August 12, 2008 7:33 PM

@#92
"I had to drop my first major of computer studies because I wasn't prepared for the math, even though my paperwork said I was. There was no unfair discrimination involved; I just wasn't qualified to go thru those courses without remedial work."

Spot on, that's exactly the idea. If you go to a fundie school that does not lay the proper groundwork for the topics you're going to learn, then there is no use in being in the class, you'll just fall behind and have to withdrawal or take the big fat F. I bet if kids trying to get into the UC, who did not get the right accredited classes went ahead and took their rejection from UC, went to the local JC, took the classes they needed and did a good job, you'd bet they'd be accepted. It's obviously not a religious argument, it's about having everyone who's in a lecture be on the same page so that the whole class isn't held back while one or two students have to get explanations on the core ideas that are needed to understand a subject. In a lecture of 500 students, like the biology 100a b and c I took at UCSC (I was a Marine Bio Major), you needed to have a good grasp of high school level chemistry, biology (including evolutionary principles) and physics. If one or two or even 30 kids don't have this, the lecture won't slow down for them, and they'll no doubt fail the class, and I've seen it happen on many occasions.

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 7:35 PM

I see it's idiot troll hour here at Pharyngula. School must have just gotten out.

Posted by: Norman Doering | August 12, 2008 7:38 PM

JoJo wrote:

When I googled "big bang violation conservation" I ended up with some very interesting essays about conservation of baryon number being violated by the big bang.

I see what you mean.

Still, what Asterius said sounds like pure quack to me.

It sounds quacky when I consider this:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070628051241AAv69AR

This is semi-paraphrased for brevity:

There is no need for the big bang to break the energy conservation principle and conservation of energy doesn't always hold in the same way as it hold in normal dally life. In the quantum systems energy follows the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Energy can pop into existence, like the Casimir effect, for a short period of time, it's called quantum fluctuation of the vacuum and this is confirmed by the experiments and is responsible for black hole radiation. It is speculated that the energy of the universe is very close to zero and by applying the uncertainty principle you come up with the idea that universe might be a quantum fluctuation.
Also time is not necessarily homogeneous at the time of big bang so energy is not necessarily conserved. That only applies locally - it's an observation, not really "law."
Supposedly if you add up all the other energy with all the gravitational potential energy the sum might be zero but there are many things unknown like dark mater, dark energy ect therefor nobody can say for sure about the total energy of the universe.

Posted by: Per-Erik Svensson | August 12, 2008 7:45 PM

"Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What's the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it's just words."

First, religion is a broad term, as is science. We cannot say that all of religion is incompatible with all of science. But we can say that most Christian theories are incompatible with most scientific theories. In fact, this can be said about most theories dealing with the same problem domain. Take the age of earth as an example. One theory states that the age is around 6000 years and another theory states that it is a tad older. Those theories are incompatible. It's simply impossible for a single person to hold both theories as true. Why? Because they are contradictory. They are not coherent. The earth must have a single value as its age.

To be able to answer our theory "religion and science are incompatible" we first need to define what is meant by religion and science. (Incompatible isn't that hard to define heddle.)

So, if we can agree that religion is a belief-based system and science is a fact-based system we have short (and kind of inaccurate) definitions. Now, when a belief-based system tries to explain effects it does so by proclaiming how it happened. When a fact-based system tries to explain effects it does so by exploring how it happened and see if this is concistent with the facts. Thus, the systems cannot come to an explanation in the same way - although they might very well come to the same conclusion/explanation. But they do so in different ways. Those ways are incompatible since a single person cannot both proclaim the explanation (and accept it at that) and at the same time search for an explanation.

Maybe you'd like another take on it. What you say about a semantic discussion? Religion is used as a synonym for superstition in this context. So the theory should be "superstition is incompatible with science". It would be great if we could agree that most religions share the following traits:

A belief or practice resulting from ignorance or a false conception of causation.
A notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.

That is, can we agree that most religions are superstitious? If not, we're only arguing semantics surrounding the word "religion". If so, we might be able to agree on science not being superstitious and thus incompatible with something that is?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | August 12, 2008 7:52 PM

Per-Erik, good luck getting Heddle to agree that his Calvinist worldview is based on "ignorance." I'm gonna bet that he'd deny the "superstitious" label as well, but he's surprised me before. Like it or not, the guy seems to be taken seriously as a (primarily teaching) physicist. He's got the compartmentalization thing down. I don't know how he does it (nothing up his sleeve), but he really sees no conflict between his scientific dayjob and his apologetic avocation.

Posted by: Jud | August 12, 2008 7:57 PM

heddle wrote: And I don't think teaching on the reality of hell is abuse or damaging...

Hmm, you lost me there. You mean that telling kids they may well go to the very worst place they can imagine and suffer unimaginably there for eternity because they (e.g.) have lusted in their hearts (find me a human being who's never done this) isn't a quite nasty thing to do, and wouldn't possibly be emotionally damaging to (e.g.) a teenager with a fertile imagination?

Posted by: SC | August 12, 2008 8:13 PM

OT: Nova this week on PBS - another rerun I haven't seen before - is about the cuttlefish, and offers some amazing footage. (It's on right now in Boston on Channel 2.)

Posted by: Michael X | August 12, 2008 8:22 PM

And for the benefit of any future or present trolls: Both science and religion make truth claims about the world around us and how it functions. In this way they seek after the same goal in contrary ways, unlike Rock and Roll, which has nothing to do with the search for empirical truth.

Some common questions that both science and religion have an opinion on:
Was the universe created?
How old is the Earth?
Is there a higher being that answers our prayers and hears our thoughts?
Does Heaven and Hell exist?
Etc, etc, etc.

Science attempts to test these claims by searching for and examining relevant physical data. Religion attempts to answer these claims by introspection and revelation.
By the way, Religion answers those previous questions one way: through bald assertion. Science either states that no evidence has ever been found, or it has outright falsified religions claims. What's important to remember is that in no case has positive evidence been submitted and tested that validates any of religions supernatural claims.

So, are religions methods of seeking truth incompatible with those of science? Hell yes.

Posted by: Jim Claunch | August 12, 2008 8:25 PM

Oh, I know that the Christian fundamentalists are wrong but really it is the Elves who are running the world and even Cars are moving because of Elves and all Elve course criteria should be approved by all academics everywhere. No one is smarter than the elves!!! You doubt it well become enlightened and read below...

Cars move because Elves push them.

How come we can't see any elves?

This post is not origional with me but is making the rounds on the Internet...
--Their magic makes them invisible.

How come they don't leave any fingerprints?
--They wear gloves.

Elves are little aren't they? They couldn't possibly have enough strength to push a car.
--They work in teams.

I happened across this on a message board on myspace, all credit goes to this person: LINK.
--Geoff--Still... some cars can go over 200 mph. Nothing can run that fast.
--They're magic, remember?

But humans invented cars didn't they? It's nothing to do with elves.
--The Elves INSPIRED people to build cars.

If Elves push them, why do they have engines?
--It amuses the elves to make us think we need engines and fuel.

Isn't that a bit evil of them? I mean this is a multi-billion dollar industry that ravages the environment.
--The ways of the Elves are not our ways.

So all those engineers and scientists working on hydrogen
engines and electric cars are wasting their time?
--The elves will provide, but it amuses them that humans think they're running the automotive industry.

But nobody's ever seen an Elf.
--They're invisible, remember?

Cars don't run without engines or petrol.
--Because if you don't play the game the Elves aren't amused. They might help you along a bit further on the fumes in your tank though. If you believe.

I don't believe, but I've made it just to the petrol station on fumes a few times.
--That's them giving you a sign they're real and asking you to believe in them.

But I'm sure people who do believe in them sometimes run out of fuel, even when they ask the Elves for more.
--Elves are capricious, sometimes the answer is no or they heed your call in a different way later on.

But look, fuel does burn and explode under the right conditions. Clearly it does relate to the ability of cars to go. Plus we make plastics and things out of petrochemicals. What gives.
--The Elves have evil rivals, Pixies, and they do everything they can to undermine Elf power and belief. Including using their magic to make it seem like petrol burns and explodes.

People die from it!
--Pixies are evil.

I don't believe you, this is ridiculous, give me any evidence at all Elves exist.
--Prove to me that they don't! They're in lots of books. Take Lord of the Rings for example.

That's just fiction and those elves can't turn invisible.
--It's a work by fallible, ill informed humans. You can't expect it to be 100% accurate but the inspiration for Elves had to come from somewhere. That's proof they exist!

So you don't have a single shred of evidence for Elves, do you?
--Your car moves doesn't it?

By internal combustion and human ingenuity, not elves.
--So you think, the Pixies have gotten to you, I know THE TRUTH. Still, you believe what you want and I'll believe what I want.

What else do these Elves do?
--They speak to me in whispers.

Ooookaaaay... what do they tell you?
--That pixiess are evil, that we should stop solar cell research and that I should lobotomise your children with a chisel.

Ummm... then we can't really each believe what we want can we? --Your beliefs are going to screw things up for me.

Help! I'm being persecuted by the A-Elfist! He won't let me express my legitimate beliefs!

This material is not mine but is making the rounds on the net..I thought it might be appreciated here. I hope so...

Posted by: Carlie | August 12, 2008 8:51 PM

Yea, troll time! With old and new ones, goody.

We don't want your dipshit kind here, fucker.

Jesus must be so proud of you right now.

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 12, 2008 9:00 PM

Funnily enough, I'm not a troll. I've posted several times on a few topics that PZ has done. :)

Sorry guys. No troll here. Though I must admit, I haven't ever been called that. Bitch, Mean Bitch, Nasty Bitch--but never troll.

Toni

Posted by: Sastra | August 12, 2008 9:18 PM

Good post, Danio, and a correct ruling. Religion is indeed "compatible" with science, as long as it doesn't make specific empirical claims which skip the usual peer review, because otherwise it's contradicted. That's when it's not only religion, but bad science -- and demonstrably wrong.

Personally, I'd say that the best evidence that religion and science are not compatible is that the wisest religionists are those who keep their religious fact claims and scientific fact claims on completely different systems.

But of course, it depends on what you mean by "compatible." And "religion." And "science."

By the way, Dr. heddle is not a creationist; he's a theistic evolutionist. And I don't know, but suspect, he also agrees that this ruling upheld the academic standards of UC.

Posted by: Dawn | August 12, 2008 9:50 PM

@ElectricBarbarella - I don't think LisaJ meant you when she was talking about the trolls. Her following quoted line was froma different poster.

I agree with you on homeschooling. When done responsibly, kids may learn better than at traditional schools. You, I imagine, teach your kids the same way Atheist Homeschooler teaches hers.

Unfortunately, there is a large contingent of fundie homeschoolers who teach strictly from the bible or biblically based textbooks (and they are SCARY to me...I've looked at some of those textbooks).

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 12, 2008 10:04 PM

Dawn--I haven't figured the HTML tags for this board yet, so I apologize to Lisa if she didn't mean me. I hope not because like I said, Troll is one thing I've never been called. :)

Yes, there is a large contingent of fundieschoolers who speak loudly enough to make the rest of us look bad--I know plenty. :) But I also know that my "rest of us" are slowly(but surely) outnumbering them.

Believe me, when this case broke, it was all over the homeschooling boards as you'd suspect--"College hates Christians", etc...But I've more than just a "faithful few" under my belt and we hit them hard with our Logic and truth. They didn't like it and we didn't care.

I just hate to see homeschooling lumped so harshly, is all. I've not been here long enough to know who Atheist Homeschooler is, but she sounds neat enough.

Toni

Posted by: Bubba Sixpack | August 12, 2008 10:26 PM

Somebody call Bill O'Reilly, who's sure to follow up with an insane-o-rant. Secular progressives are unfairly imposing knowledge of reality on students. Discrimination against the reality-challenged, I tell you!

If these folks had the intelligence they were born with, they would realize that all they have to do is teach students reality, even though they don't have to agree with reality, and can even tell their students as much.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 10:31 PM

Wrong. He's arguing that under certain conditions, and the Big Bang before Planck Time may be such a case, conservation of mass energy is not conserved.

Learn some physics and get back to us.

Lemme break it down for you, dumb ass. Saying that energy conservation may have been violated at the Big Bang is essentially the same as saying that conservation of energy does not apply to the Big Bang.

Learn English and physics, then get back to me.

Posted by: Moses | August 12, 2008 10:36 PM

Posted by: Sastra | August 12, 2008 9:18 PM

By the way, Dr. heddle is not a creationist; he's a theistic evolutionist. And I don't know, but suspect, he also agrees that this ruling upheld the academic standards of UC.

I disagree. I've read Dr. Heddles crap for at least six years. Dr. Heddle believes in the anthropomorphic universe which was created with the very specific properties that it has now so mankind could be created and live in the universe. That this universe, and life, is only one of, possibly, billions of possibilities is entirely shunned because, according to Heddle, this universe was specifically created for us.

It doesn't get any more creationist than that.

Which is why I usually call him Mr. Puddle, because his entire line of reasoning is captured in this brilliant bit of satire by Douglas Adams:

...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 10:38 PM

He is a junior in high school and I am teaching him ordinary differential equations.

Good for you. I recommend Edwards & Penny's book.

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 12, 2008 10:44 PM

Yeah. Bean-counting "Moses" wants to give his kids a shitty secular education at home as opposed to one in the public schools.
********************************************************

You want to know what kind of stupid this comment was? So stupid, that stupid doesn't even fit. You just double-dissed your own shitty public school education, double negatives equal a positive--thusly making Moses "shitty education" not so shitty when it's compared to yours.

Moron.

(and for the record, not only do I have a public school education, but am also the wife of a public high school teacher. I don't diss on them as I know what they truly have to go through to educate the masses. It's hard.)

Toni

Posted by: Moses | August 12, 2008 10:50 PM

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 10:36 PM

Bean-counting "Moses" wants to give his kids a shitty secular education at home as opposed to one in the public schools.

Hey, dumbass Mk. II, my wife's got a PhD in biology and was a dual-major in fine art and I've got an MS in accounting with enough electives in Philosophy, Geology and Economics to have added them as minors (though I never saw the point, I was interested in these to learn, not to hang on the wall). We both graduated in the tops of our classes and there's nothing, save a foreign language which we hire native speaking tutors to teach, that a public school teacher could possibly teach our kid than we cannot teach her, only better.

In a week's time, our kid will do the same amount of schoolwork that any public or privately schooled kid will do in a MONTH. Further, having pulled he out of one of the top magnet schools in our district in 5th grade, we accelerated her education to her capablities and our kid is already YEARS ahead of her peers. They're still screwing around in 6th grade with multiplying and dividing large numbers. Ours is doing algebra and going into high school next year while her friend's finally head off to Junior High and learn pre-algebra.

This is her high school curriculum. All of these are to be taught to the AP5 exam level. Which means, when she's done at 16, she'll be ready for her junior year in college while your kid is believing if fairies, whacking off to Internet porn while self-loathing and wondering why he's such a loser:

Biology
Calculus AB
Calculus BC
Chemistry
Computer Science A
Computer Science AB
Macroeconomics
Microeconomics
English Language
English Literature
Environmental Science
European History
Comp Government & Politics
U.S. Government & Politics
Human Geography
Italian Language and Culture
Japanese Language and Culture
Physics B
Physics C
Psychology
Statistics
Studio Art
U.S. History
World History

So get over yourself, douche. You're just a gadfly on the wall.

Posted by: Moses | August 12, 2008 10:58 PM

I don't give a shit, you piece of shit. I am in mathematics. Beat that, bitch.

Math? That explains mostly everything about your condescending ignorance coupled with childish insults and inability to comprehend the universe. You guys are worse than engineers because they at least, at some point, have to actually deal with the real universe rather than their imaginary constructs they so devoutly hold...

You guys are just philosophy majors with numbers and no dates.

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 12, 2008 10:59 PM

@Asterius..

I, personally cannot beat mathematics. But my husband can:

Bachelors in Quantum Physics, Theater, with a Minor in Math.
Master's in Space Aeronautics/Space Mechanics/Space Science. Currently qualified to teach: Physics, Physical Science, Earth/Space Science, Chemistry, Theater, AP Physics, AP Chemistry and Math.

Me, I've just got a "measly" AS in Criminology.

Likewise, your intellect is dizzying--and I don't mean that as a compliment. Asterius, if you can't fuck like the big boys, get out of the bedroom. K? Thanx.

Toni

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 12, 2008 11:07 PM

Much as I'd love to stay up and continue this piss fest with certain people--I do have to sleep sometime. Tomorrow is a big day for me (2nd nephew being born), so I need sleep so I can be a wide-eyed cheery Auntie soon.

Toni

Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 12, 2008 11:19 PM

PS: no one who ever saw Jesus alive wrote a word about it.

And people who lived much closer to the dawn of Christianity than we do wrote things about their beliefs which sound, to put it mildly, heretical.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 11:24 PM

Asterius, if you can't fuck like the big boys, get out of the bedroom. K? Thanx.

Toni

There are no big boys among Pharyngula hangers-on, just big talkers and many penis pumps.

Posted by: gwangung | August 12, 2008 11:38 PM

What's up with all these avatars of Dr. Science?

Posted by: Kseniya | August 12, 2008 11:46 PM

What the heck is this? Argumentum ad diplomaeum?

There are no big boys . . . .

You must be new around here.

So, are religion's methods of seeking truth incompatible with those of science? Hell yes.

Indeed. What religion seeks is not so much truth as it is self-validation; it asserts the former in service of the latter.

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 11:50 PM

You must be new around here.

Nope. I was at pharyngula when it was still green acres.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 13, 2008 12:03 AM

For "diplomæem" [sic] please read "diplomæum". Trust my fingers to spoil a joke. . . .

Posted by: Ryan F Stello | August 13, 2008 12:07 AM

There are plenty of flakes in the UC system from secular schools.

Well then, it's a good thing that the biblical literalists are out of the system. Who knows what it'd be like if they were?

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 12:10 AM

Well then, it's a good thing that the biblical literalists are out of the system. Who knows what it'd be like if they were?

Biblical literalists are here, too.

Posted by: Patricia | August 13, 2008 12:15 AM

Asterius troll - and your point is?

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 12:18 AM

Where's 'here'? Context matters, you know.

I am part of the UC system. That's the context.

Posted by: NickG | August 13, 2008 12:32 AM

While I agree with the UC system's decision, I also think that they need to look at these kids as essentially disadvantaged or even abused kids. They didn't have a choice where they went to school, and the reason that they are not prepared to attend a UC school is because their fucked up religious parents put them in an indoctrination camp for 12 years.

Honestly I think they should be judged by the same measure that minority and impoverished kids should be be given an extra leg up. Its not their fault that their parents are asshats.

My suggestion would be that they accept kids from the school and require them to do remedial courses on science and history, etc. It behooves us as a society and a teaching system to right the wrongs that their parents did. It would also send a message that kids from that school are substandard. So it doesn't punish the kids, but it sends a message to the school and parents. Plus it would burn pretty bad to know that your kid has to read Zinn's 'A people's history of the US' and take a course in evolutionary biology to attend a UC school.

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 12:38 AM

While I agree with the UC system's decision, I also think that they need to look at these kids as essentially disadvantaged or even abused kids. They didn't have a choice where they went to school, and the reason that they are not prepared to attend a UC school is because their fucked up religious parents put them in an indoctrination camp for 12 years.

Honestly I think they should be judged by the same measure that minority and impoverished kids should be be given an extra leg up. Its not their fault that their parents are asshats.

My suggestion would be that they accept kids from the school and require them to do remedial courses on science and history, etc. It behooves us as a society and a teaching system to right the wrongs that their parents did. It would also send a message that kids from that school are substandard. So it doesn't punish the kids, but it sends a message to the school and parents. Plus it would burn pretty bad to know that your kid has to read Zinn's 'A people's history of the US' and take a course in evolutionary biology to attend a UC school.

I'd like to see you put in an indoctrination camp like pows have had to endure and then see if your bitch ass has the temerity to compare Christian schools with them.

And there is no evidence that I've seen to suggest the products of Christian schools perform worse than their public school counterparts.

F'ing loser.

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 12:42 AM

California is the state you advised AEGIS not to visit!?

CA is the state I advised him/her/it not to relocate to. Despite the liberal tilt of the state that is caused by shitholes like LA and (especially) San Francisco, this is not a particularly irreligious state. The Pacific Northwest states are known for that, not CA.

Posted by: Kseniya | August 13, 2008 12:45 AM

Nope. I was at pharyngula when it was still green acres.

So... you're saying that it's now Petticoat Junction?

Please. There are plenty of flakes in the UC system from secular schools.

Yes, but that's not exactly on-point, is it? Do secular schools teach that the Holy Bible is an inerrant historical text, and then proceed to request that the state recognize that curriculum as valid and equal to conventional scholarship?

Posted by: Wookster | August 13, 2008 1:02 AM

Asterius @ #250: "I need to see the anthology, Classics for Christians. From what I have read, it seems perfectly acceptable for an English class."

From what I understand, the problem is not in the anthology itself, but in the fact that they weren't reading ANY complete texts, only excerpts.

NickG @ #253: "My suggestion would be that they accept kids from the school and require them to do remedial courses on science and history, etc.."

They have exactly the same options as any other kid who has not completed UC's "a-g" requirements. These options include individual case-by-case application appeals, testing out of the required classes, or going to a community college first and taking the "remedial" classes there, which they could do while still enrolled in high school. Why should they be allowed to be admitted and take remedial classes at a UC when a kid from a secular school who is missing an "a-g" requirement is not?

If you are curious and would like to see an official guide to the "a-g" requirements, follow this link: http://www.ucop.edu/a-gGuide/ag/a-g/welcome.html

Posted by: Brownian, OM | August 13, 2008 1:03 AM

California is the state you advised AEGIS not to visit!?

What was that Altemeyer bit Blake Stacy posted about authoritarians holding inconsistent ideas?

We've got a particularly spastic troll today. Lots of Gish Galloping at little to no provocation. He's very proud of his intelligence and is almost desperate to demonstrate it. Somebody aim a laser pointer at the wall and watch him tucker himself out chasing it.

Posted by: Wookster | August 13, 2008 1:14 AM

Bob Brashear @ #212: "most of the math teachers are incompetent at basic algebra"

You don't want to be lumped in with all of the crazy homeschoolers. Fine, fair enough. As a math teacher (and the son of a math teacher), I don't want to be lumped in with the people unfit to teach math. I resent the comment that MOST math teachers can't do algebra, as most of the math teachers I have met (quite a few), are very competent, and could probable be teaching your son ODE's right now without a problem.

Posted by: craig | August 13, 2008 1:16 AM

Anyone who calls San Francisco a shithole is clearly not worth listening to.

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 1:19 AM

Wow, Asterius is one stupid, rude fuck. He's giving the inbred a bad name! And he probably IS speaking for the majority of dumb fucks here in Cali! Luckily there are lots of the nowhere near as fucking stupid as Asterius folks here, too.

How's your Mom, er, sister? And your son, er, brother?

Is it politically incorrect to make fun of the inbred, like Asterius? If so, I apologize to the rest of the inbred world...

Yet another vapid atheist. Dude, if you are too brain dead to come up with a decent insult, then it is best to refrain from posting.

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 1:23 AM

Anyone who calls San Francisco a shithole is clearly not worth listening to.

Then, by all means, listen to Gavin. The space betwixt his ears is as vacuous as yours.

Posted by: MB | August 13, 2008 1:33 AM

Ah, Asterius, the dumbfuck who apparently thinks his insults are "decent!"

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!

This blog has found the dumbest fuck in the entire state of California. That's an achievement!

Raven got it right with "Nineteen who are you kidding? I would say 12-14 at best."

What a tool, what a tool!

Posted by: Wookster | August 13, 2008 1:37 AM

Moses @ # 225: "our kid is already YEARS ahead of her peers"

...and MILES behind them in social development. Read an Ed. Psych. book sometime. Slavin's book is a standard, but there are lots out there. I'm NOT saying homeschooling is necessarily bad, but there is a very real danger of retarding your child's emotional and "moral" development, which at that age are very closely tied to interaction with her peer group*. Again, for anyone who is contemplating homeschooling their children, preparing yourself to be their teacher should include at least basic knowledge of Educational Psychology (which is why it is a required course for EVERY credentialed teacher).

*Any good ed. psych book should have information on research by Kohlberg, Piaget, and Erikson, among others, to support this assertion.

Posted by: Wookster | August 13, 2008 1:50 AM

Kseniya @ #274: "(Who is "Gavin"?)"

I would assume he meant Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, which is clearly the greatest city in this country, if not the world.

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 2:23 AM

Kseniya,

As Wookster wrote, I was referring to the kooja Gavin Newsom. Incidentally, I have appreciated your comments in this thread thus far. You and a handful of others serve to remind me that not all pharyngula commenters are pieces of shit, just the overwhelming majority.

Posted by: raven | August 13, 2008 2:53 AM

Is it politically incorrect to make fun of the inbred, like Asterius? If so, I apologize to the rest of the inbred world...

C'mon, get it right. In California, Asterias would be considered genetically deprived or gene pool challenged.

And there is data that kids from wingnut death cult indoctrination camps (which is not the same as run of the mill Xian schools) do poorly on SATs and struggle a lot at the universities. UC doesn't want to admit unprepared students who have been set up to fail becuase, DUH!, they end up failing.

There are many shots at the goal in the UC system. They can always take remedial courses and try again.

Posted by: pilaucooker | August 13, 2008 3:51 AM

I predict this kind of behavior out of Cali (which exports a lot of trends to the rest of us), will cause as much friction among people as the abortion issue did. Sad.
I went to a Catholic school in Florida for a couple of years. It was understood religion was a required subject to graduate.
Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho, boasts some Nobel prize winners, if I'm not mistaken. And they require a certain amount of chapel attendance per semester.
Many young people attend a private Christian high school or Jr. college for a few years before they move on to business college or law school. Some of those young people have indicated to me that they felt they were more grounded and disciplined in their pursuits for the experience.
This smacks of prejudice by the state of California and of course prejudice by U of C.

Posted by: shonny | August 13, 2008 4:31 AM

Posted by: Asterius | August 12, 2008 10:41 PM

Which is why I usually call him Mr. Puddle...

That comment is appropriate to a mind of your caliber. You are, after all, just an accountant.

. . . which beats being a trolling fuckwit any day, eh?

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 13, 2008 8:37 AM

Ahh, No--Wookster. No, we and they are not. I don't know which psych book you are reading from, but if anything--the socialization/social development skills of a homeschooler is miles ahead of that of their peers.

We aren't locked in the same room with the same kids for the same amount of hours and days for the same year being taught by the same teacher and are not allowed to socialize within that structure.

We don't get up, go to school and shut up either. We don't follow a herd or pack, we don't have stringent rules that govern any single amount of free time we have (a hall pass for the bathroom anyone?)

No--instead we are out in the real world doing Civics, volunteer work, some of us even have real jobs(wow!), we get our socialization from the real word and the people in it. Not X number of 9th graders telling us who we are, how we are to be it, or you can't be like them.

I really hate that socialization argument. Anyone who lays claim to believe in the social retardation of Homeschoolers has never been around homeschoolers and has no fucking clue what they are talking about.

toni

Posted by: Krystalline Apostate | August 13, 2008 9:21 AM

Anyone who lays claim to believe in the social retardation of Homeschoolers has never been around homeschoolers and has no fucking clue what they are talking about.

Posted by: heddle | August 13, 2008 9:25 AM

Pheonix Woman,

Jesus was, if the New Testament can be believed, a firm believer in the separation of church and state as well as in the separation of the spiritual and material worlds. "My Kingdom is not of this earth" was his response to those who wanted him to become a political figure.

"My Kingdom is not of this earth." Jesus said it, you should believe it, that settles it.

Let science be science and religion be religion. Keep Genesis out of high-school science classes, and we'll keep quantum physics out of Sunday schools. Deal?

1) I am a strong, very strong, unambiguous supporter of Separation of Church and State. I'm a Baptist. We (claim to have) invented it. I agree with the comments on separation by this famous American baptist. I could direct you to any number of posts on my own blog where I argue, as you say, that nothing in the NT indicates that church and state are to be entangled, and nothing in the NT argues that Christians should work to make sin illegal.

2) My one consistent position since I started writing on ID is that it is not science and has no place in a science curriculum in a public school. On other things my opinion has shifted, but on that point it has been unwavering.

So...Try either to ignore me or learn my actual position before you attack an assumed stance. Deal?

By the way, no need to keep QM out of Sunday school. We welcome it! I teach adult Sunday School, and have used wave-particle duality as an example of antinomy, a segue into a discussion of sovereignty vs. free-will. And just recently in Sunday School I discussed Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and its (in my opinion, abuse) in various free will discussions. QM is part of nature, nature in theology is called General Revelation, and General Revelation clearly belongs in Sunday School. Bring it on!

Posted by: Matt Penfold | August 13, 2008 9:54 AM

Sastra,

I have to take issue with you over your claim Heddle is not a creationist. He is: Not a YEC style creationists but he is still a creationist. He recently stated he rejects the scientific evidence for the evolutionary origins of morality as he believes morality comes from god. At the time I called him a pick and mix creationist as he accepts some science but rejects other parts of science based not evidence but on dogma.

Posted by: Wookster | August 13, 2008 10:14 AM

We aren't locked in the same room with the same kids for the same amount of hours and days for the same year being taught by the same teacher and are not allowed to socialize within that structure.

Um, read my post again. I never said anything about you being locked in the same room for hours or being forbidden from socializing.

We don't get up, go to school and shut up either. We don't follow a herd or pack, we don't have stringent rules that govern any single amount of free time we have (a hall pass for the bathroom anyone?)

Completely irrelevant to my point, but ok. Independence and social development are not equivalent.

instead we are out in the real world doing Civics, volunteer work, some of us even have real jobs(wow!), we get our socialization from the real word and the people in it.

I do believe I specified peers.

I don't know which psych book you are reading from

Slavin, Robert E., Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice, 7th ed.

Again, I never did say you shouldn't be allowed to homeschool your kid. If you go back and read my post, you will see that I finished by saying (and this was the point) that IF you are going to homeschool your kid, you need to prepare yourself as a teacher. There is more to teaching than mastery of your subject matter, which is why there is a credentialing proces for professional teachers.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | August 13, 2008 10:27 AM

Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho, boasts some Nobel prize winners, if I'm not mistaken.

So... you're saying that it's now Petticoat Junction?

[by the way, double-checking 'kipedia yielded this:

On November 19, 2007, original series director Richard L. Bare announced that he is working on a revival of Green Acres.

Posted by: raven | August 13, 2008 10:39 AM

pilaucooker the lying death cultist:

Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho, boasts some Nobel prize winners, if I'm not mistaken.

I googled NN college and Nobel prize winners and didn't come up with anything. This sounds like a flat out lie. Got any proof of this statement? A cut and paste will work. At any rate, it is irrelevant, the topic is California Death Cult kid indoctrination camps and their attempt to substitute lies for reality and then get UC to accept substandard courses.

The rest of your incoherent rant is bullcrap. UC accepts lots of courses from lots of religiously based schools. In fact, most mainstream xian schools, catholic, episcopalian, and so on have normal curriculums and no trouble from the UC system. This issue has nothing to do with religion.

What UC won't accept is substandard and wrong courses from a few cult fundie schools.

Despite your anecdotal stories that not all cult kids end up mowing lawns forever, the data shows that these kids have trouble with higher education. Which however, is easily fixable if they want to take a few real courses.

Which you didn't do. You have obviously drank too much fundie koolaid. Lies, irrelevant statements, conflating Death Cults with Xianity when they are a small subset, and then crying persecution where none exists.

UC discriminates all right. Against a few poorly prepared kids lacking basic knowledge and critical reasoning skills who are at risk of flunking out. Like you. Being ignorant is a choice, not a right.

Posted by: Steve_C | August 13, 2008 10:48 AM

I killfiled Asterius two days ago.

He wasn't worth the time then or now.

Posted by: raven | August 13, 2008 10:58 AM

Going to weigh in on homeschooling for once. Many of the few homeschoolers out here tend to be hippie/New Age or professionals.

If it is done right, the kids can easily be as prepared or better than run of the mill schools. Or vice versa. No generalizations on educational results can be made just on the basis of homeschooling.

I've met some bright, well educated homeschoolers that have gone on to get college degrees with no trouble.

What they all seem to lack is social skills and sociability. They tend to be awkward in social settings and a bit lost. Nothing wrong with that really, but it does make it a bit harder for them to get by. And they also outgrow it sometimes.

From this I take it that it is critical to provide a peer group and some outside activities so that they have a normal teen age life. We used to have "alternative" public schools for kids that didn't fit in and a lot of the brighter kids ended up going there while also being home schooled. Don't know if they still have those though, budgets have been tight.

Posted by: Aquaria | August 13, 2008 11:10 AM

Just a shame California also permits home schooling, permitting IDiots to raise more IDiots

Hey, bigoted dumbass, not all homeschoolers are fundamentalists. Many of us homeschool because both private and public K-12 schooling sucks ass, not because we want religious education to dominate our children's curriculum, even the majority of Christian homeschoolers are that way.

Another atheist homeschooler here. Locally, there are enough of us to have well-attended meetings around town; sometimes, the atheist homeschoolers joined up with other non-Christian homeschoolers. The kids got the chance to make new friends (we have about a zillion ways for our kids to get "socialization"); the parents got the chance to talk shop, commiserate, get some new pointers/ideas about homeschooling, and to make some alliances that might be helpful later.

Again and again, I heard the stories of non-Chrisitan parents who took their children from the system because the children were being harassed so badly that it was detrimental to their education and their well-being, or because Christianity had crept too far into classrooms unchecked. Who will naysay a Christaloon in Texas?

For some of the homeschoolers, the choice is temporary, until a move to a different district, or until the child is old enough for the next level of school. For some it's permanent.

Either way, it can be a rewarding alternative to traditional school. It's flexible, and, if your schedule and location permit it, you can take advantage of every learning experience a large, historic, ethnically rich and diverse city has to offer.

Posted by: heddle | August 13, 2008 11:28 AM

Notkieran,

I don't know what you meant by your God-gravity theory, but neither Newtonian Gravity nor General Relativity is incompatible with religion. (Considering who developed Newtonian Gravity, there very thought is absurd.) Perhaps an example of how it could be incompatible is illustrative: A religion that states "God moves the planets about, micron by micron, by tapping them with his little finger" is incompatible with science. The statement "God created the universe, and through secondary means (the laws of physics) the planets move in their orbits" is not only compatible with science but actually encourages its pursuit.

And all religions require a violation of physical law, whether implicitly or explicitly, because religions deal, effectively, with the supernatural.

Very true, but so what? All that means is that religion proposes a domain outside the purview of science, the supernatural. You are, I think, confusing orthogonality with incompatibility.

You may personally BE religious, but do you believe in gravity or intelligent falling? When was the last time you tested your religion in the lab? When was the last time, in fact, your religion in any material way assisted your research?

Does this sound like a cogent argument when you reread it? Saying religion is compatible with science is not saying that religion is science. Do you actually think that a religious scientist is one who believes in "intelligent falling?"

You can't, can you?

Actually I can cite many peer-reviewed theology articles when I discuss religion, but not science articles because religion is not science.

The fact that you have religious colleagues merely means that they are either not scientists by the second definition 24-7, or they are piss-poor scientists at all times.

If they are piss poor scientists then take my challenge--from ten peer-reviewed articles pick out the five by the religious scientists and explain in what manner they are piss-poor. If you can't then, again, the statement "religion is incompatible with science" is impotent. It is no better or worse than if I claim "religion benefits science."

But then, according to you I am but a "self-proclaimed" physicist, so what do I know?

Posted by: Asterius | August 13, 2008 11:42 AM

. . . which beats being a trolling fuckwit any day, eh?

You need to expand your vocabulary, which necessitates you emerging from your parents' basement.

Posted by: Coriolis | August 13, 2008 11:44 AM

Heddle, if (most) religion demands a "violation" of a physical law (which you apparently agreed with), then how can you claim that it is orthogonal to science, rather then incompatible? Breaking a law of physics, is sort of by definition something that I as a physicist find to be my interest.

I think religion can be compatible with science, but it requires a view of religion that very few religious people actually have. Essentially, that god, being an omnipotent/scient being can do whatever he/she wants and let's say for example fool us into thinking that the earth is billions years old while in reality it's 4000 or what have you. That god is in a way a trickster, although they wouldn't put it that way, they would rather say that god's reasons are unknowable. I know a bible literalist who is nevertheless an excellent scientist who sees things that way - and I can respect that (in a way). But to claim that this is the view of even a small minority of believers is just wrong. For anyone who can't (or won't) do mental acrobatics of this sort the incompatibility is clear.

Posted by: Aquaria | August 13, 2008 11:54 AM

Just a shame California also permits home schooling, permitting IDiots to raise more IDiots

Hey, bigoted dumbass, not all homeschoolers are fundamentalists. Many of us homeschool because both private and public K-12 schooling sucks ass, not because we want religious education to dominate our children's curriculum, even the majority of Christian homeschoolers are that way.

Another atheist homeschooler here. Locally, there are enough of us to have well-attended meetings around town; sometimes, the atheist homeschoolers joined up with other non-Christian homeschoolers. The kids got the chance to make new friends (we have about a zillion ways for our kids to get "socialization"); the parents got the chance to talk shop, commiserate, get some new pointers/ideas about homeschooling, and to make some alliances that might be helpful later.

Again and again, I heard the stories of non-Chrisitan parents who took their children from the system because the children were being harassed so badly that it was detrimental to their education and their well-being, or because Christianity had crept too far into classrooms unchecked. Who will naysay a Christaloon in Texas?

For some of the homeschoolers, the choice is temporary, until a move to a different district, or until the child is old enough for the next level of school. For some it's permanent.

Either way, it can be a rewarding alternative to traditional school. It's flexible, and, if your schedule and location permit it, you can take advantage of every learning experience a large, historic, ethnically rich and diverse city has to offer.

Posted by: heddle | August 13, 2008 11:56 AM

Coriolis, #311

Well of course you can define religion to be incompatible with science by an axiom: Science is all there is. That is philosophical naturalism, and I agree with the statement that "religion is incompatible with philosophical naturalism." But I hold to the definition of science that equates science to methodological naturalism. That is, when I do science I approach it only as if that's all there is. I don't approach it expecting the supernatural to intervene in my experiment, nor expecting that I have to invoke the supernatural to explain some puzzling data. If I were lucky enough to find myself "owning" and working on a seemingly intractable bleeding edge problem in science (alas, I'm not nearly that good) I would die looking for a scientific explanation before I claimed "God did it."

Posted by: heddle | August 13, 2008 12:06 PM

Matt Penfold, #314

No, I meant to ask the question I did. You answered it and in doing so showed us you are not a scientist. Note I did not ask if there WAS an explanation, I asked you if morality CAN be explained as natural process. You have said there is not, that there is no possibility that morality can be so explained.

You have crossed over to being a garden-variety liar. I wrote nothing of the sort. I said quite clearly that something like brain damage demonstrates that morality results from natural process. What I said was I can't (nor can you) explain it. There are also many effects in physics that I believe are the result of natural processes, but I can not explain them. If that makes me a non-scientist, so be it.

Even though most people on here dislike me, I suspect that many would agree that you have, rather troll-like, misrepresented my answer.

Posted by: John | August 13, 2008 12:15 PM

"You need to expand your vocabulary, which necessitates you emerging from your parents' basement."

Let us know if your mouth ever leaves your mom's diseased twat. I doubt it does, but one never knows for sure.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | August 13, 2008 12:26 PM

You have crossed over to being a garden-variety liar. I wrote nothing of the sort. I said quite clearly that something like brain damage demonstrates that morality results from natural process. What I said was I can't (nor can you) explain it. There are also many effects in physics that I believe are the result of natural processes, but I can not explain them. If that makes me a non-scientist, so be it.

Let me remind you what I asked: "Do you accept morality can be explained as the result of natural processes ?".

Why lie about what you wrote? You must know we can check back.

I did not ask if such an explanation currently exists. I asked if one CAN exist. There difference being that by using CAN I was asking if an explanation exists OR COULD EVER EXIST.

This was your reply: "No. It obviously can not be explained--if you can explain it in terms of natural processes then go wait in Sweden for your Nobel."

There it is. You admission there is currently no explanation, and that no explanation can ever exist.

You said it. Stop lying and saying you did not.

I had you down as being a bit better than another liar for Jesus. It seems I was wrong. You say something then try to immediately claim you did not say it. Not only a liar, but a fucking idiot as well.

Posted by: Tulse | August 13, 2008 12:50 PM

when I do science I approach it only as if that's all there is. I don't approach it expecting the supernatural to intervene in my experiment, nor expecting that I have to invoke the supernatural to explain some puzzling data. If I were lucky enough to find myself "owning" and working on a seemingly intractable bleeding edge problem in science (alas, I'm not nearly that good) I would die looking for a scientific explanation before I claimed "God did it."

I'm not clear how this position differs in practice from naturalism of a philosophical kind. If you are not willing to entertain supernatural explanations for physical phenomena, how is that different pragmatically from philosophical naturalism? Unless, of course, you want to argue that although the supernatural exists, it has absolutely no influence on the physical world, in which case you part company with practically all other religious believers.

Posted by: SC | August 13, 2008 1:01 PM

The statement "God created the universe, and through secondary means (the laws of physics) the planets move in their orbits" is not only compatible with science but actually encourages its pursuit.

The last part of this is certainly debatable, and is in any case an empirical question; the first part is a clear indication of how heddle wants to have it 82 ways at once. He says he's a Baptist. But when pushed on the matter of the incompatibility of science and religion, he falls back on hypothetical religious claims that are those of deists, not of Baptists and other Christians. Then he proceeds to exclude morality from this vague deistic structure. If this supernatural realm and being are orthogonal to the natural world and do not intervene in the laws of physics, then you could make the same argument about the evolution of morality that he has about the movement of the planets (no need to cling to that alleged gap, either). But the Christian god is not a noninterventionist god, as heddle well knows.

Posted by: SC | August 13, 2008 1:17 PM

By the way, no need to keep QM out of Sunday school. We welcome it! I teach adult Sunday School, and have used wave-particle duality as an example of antinomy, a segue into a discussion of sovereignty vs. free-will. And just recently in Sunday School I discussed Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and its (in my opinion, abuse) in various free will discussions. QM is part of nature, nature in theology is called General Revelation, and General Revelation clearly belongs in Sunday School. Bring it on!

This response is disingenuous, as it seems plain that the comment to which heddle was responding was only using QM as an example of science in general. If heddle is claiming that he is representative of Baptists, who generally "welcome" science in Sunday school, well, I'm going to insist that he support that with some data. My own childhood "I'm no kin to a monkey" Baptist church / Sunday school / day camp / summer camp would constitute a clear exception.

"General Revelation"? Blech.

Posted by: heddle | August 13, 2008 1:25 PM

SC,

his response is disingenuous, as it seems plain that the comment to which heddle was responding was only using QM as an example of science in general. If heddle is claiming that he is representative of Baptists, who generally "welcome" science in Sunday school, well, I'm going to insist that he support that with some data. My own childhood "I'm no kin to a monkey" Baptist church / Sunday school / day camp / summer camp would constitute a clear exception.

The only data I have is that my last two churches were both biblical-inerrancy (along the lines of the Chicago statement on inerrancy) proclaiming, conservative Baptist churches. In both cases I taught/teach adult Sunday school. In both cases I brought science in. Last Sunday I talked about Collins and argued how a theistic evolutionist can obviously be a Christian. So far I have not been excommunicated.

If your point is that many Baptist churches have forgotten our heritage of supporting separation of church and state, I agree. If your claim that many have embraced YEC-ism dogmatically, I also agree.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | August 13, 2008 1:31 PM

I see Heddle has no answer to the evidence he lied.

Very telling. He must think we are as stupid as his co-religionists.

On a related issue, why do people seen to so willing accept his claim to be a physicist ? He has never once provided any evidence to support that claim. In fact he has shown plenty of evidence that he knows very little about how science works, and has also shown himself willing to lie (as evidence by first his admission that the did not accept there ever could be evidence for the evolution of morality and then his denial he ever said such a thing).

He has denied he is a YEC or OEC, and has compared himself to Miller or Collins. Well we can leave aside the fact Miller and Collins are real scientists. Heddle has shown that when it comes to honesty he has more in common with Kent Hovind. Like Hovind, Heddle is nothing but a lying scumbug who deserves nothing but total contempt.

Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 13, 2008 1:55 PM

Ummm... watch the gross, sweeping generalizations, there, Toni.

Respectfully,

Kseniya (a public school kid from K thru 12).

***********************************************************

I could request the same be made of the sweeping generalizations being made by several posters regarding homeschoolers. Is what I said empirically a sweeping generalization? Not quite.

There have been studies done that show the kind of socialization one receives in school is very similar to negative socialization. **Your** school experience may have been pretty good, but you would be in the minority.

My only point in making that statement was to say that the issue of socialization(whether it refers to public, private, or home schooling) is really a