Would you believe a Nebraska community college is offering a course in creationism … and awarding science credits for it? If any McCook Community College students tried to transfer to my university, I'd argue that any who took that course ought to get negative credits because we'd have to assign additional corrective work to scour the garbage out of their brain.
The course is offered as a physics class. I'm getting a bit fed up with the arrogance of some physicists and engineers, could you please police your own? I can't imagine a biology faculty member trying to create a course that taught his or her own idiosyncratic vision of physics, one that defied the expertise of their physics colleagues, but some physicists and engineers seem more than willing to declare biology to be all wrong.
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Well to be fair if I had to place creationism into some category of science it would straddle physics and biology, since much of creationism is concerned with the creation of the universe.
Of course this is all overlooking the fact that what they are teaching is certainly unfiltered bullshit of the highest potency and doesn't deserve to be on the same campus as legitimate science much less in the same curriculum.
You have obviously not looked at the enormous divergence in some parts of physics, such as string theory. Within that variance I might suspect the differences you are finding between "real" biology and creationist biology are small.
"I'd argue that any who took that course ought to get negative credits because we'd have to assign additional corrective work to scour the garbage out of their brain."
Ouch! Give the student a break. Students take alot of courses, that doesn't mean they accept everything they are taught! Just don't count it as a biology course.
Creationism would be a good class for a history department to offer. Or maybe an anthropology department.
Quick, Theorist Boy! I've just gotten a tip that our nemesises(es), the not-really-physicists-who-administer-community-colleges, have a hideout down by... er.. Nebraska! To the frictionless Physicist poles!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na....
---Physicist Man
(Theorists should ALWAYS be the sidekicks. Engineers are the guys in funny shirts working for the villians.)
I could see Creationism as perhaps a Philosophy credit, but that's a stretch as well.
I'm trying! There are several skeptical and atheistic engineers where I work, but I admit we have a lot of true believers too.
At least we fired the guy who believed in Bigfoot and denied the Moon Landings. He got in an argument about that with another of our engineers, who happened to be a real live "rocket scientist".
I was glad they fired him before he found out I was born in Roswell.
Off-topic, but I want to share something amusing I ran across in yesterday's NYTimes piece about Philip K. Dick:
"His early novels, written in two weeks or less, were published in double-decker Ace paperbacks that included two books in one, with a lurid cover for each. 'If the Holy Bible was printed as an Ace Double,' an editor once remarked, 'it would be cut down to two 20,000-word halves with the Old Testament retitled as Master of Chaos and the New Testament as The Thing With Three Souls. "
Not sure what can be said of this... Teaching creationism as physics is just factually wrong. To the extent that the two overlap, the overlap would consist in creationism's misrepresentation of things like cosmology and radiometric dating techniques.
Thanks for the link PZ.
I hope the college's board of governors receives many firm letters from all you Pharyngulites out there. Maybe just a concise and cool-headed paragraph to get the word across.
What is there to teach in such as class?
"Good morning, class. Please take out a sheet of paper.
These are the Laws Of Creation.
1. God somehow emerged from nothingness.
2. God somehow created everything.
3. God somehow controls everything.
If you have any questions, you will go to Hell.
Any questions?
Good. We will have the Final after lunch."
On behalf of sensible physicists everywhere, I apologize. I don't know what I personally can do to help correct this problem, but every idea I can think of, I will try.
(By the way, the difference between string theory and any other part of physics is far smaller than the difference between creationism and biology. You don't have to take my word for it; just read your Alan Sokal. The professors and graduate students I've met who work in string theory are about as level-headed as you can ask for.)
C'mon; it's obviously poli sci.
;)
Warren:
I was thinking it would belong in "Modern Propaganda Techniques 412" or "Psychopathology of Truth Denial 301".
PZ wrote:
Remember Robert Lanza? Give him a teaching position and that's exactly what will happen.
If it were some kind of rhetoric 101 credit for picking apart the arguments and reminding them that if they ever used any of those techniques in those papers they would lose marks, sure. English department. Or Political Science, propaganda credit.
Creationism is cross-disciplinary equal-opportunity BS. Creationism chews up distinctions between natural sciences and social sciences and spits them out as one big wad of nutrient-leached pablum.
(I'm not usually this metaphorical in the morning...)
Simple Country Physicist: I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as "creationist biology." It's an oxymoron. A creationist cannot, by definition, be a scientist. One seeks to cram the world as he or she sees it into the narrow confines of religious dogma; a scientist seeks to describe the world as he or she sees it by using a verifiable method, facts, and data.
Garretson, the person responsible for the "Creation Science" course, also teaches six Chemistry courses and a class in Astronomy at the college.
I wonder if he keeps his fingers crossed behind his back while he's teaching astronomy...
A science credit! Those subjects are rivals in that they rival critical thinking - the kind necessary for the integrity of science. And I always question the degree of "scientists from the past were creationists." As with other famous figures - historical, literary, et al., I pay close attention to their letters to others in their fields and look at the context of the societies they lived in. "God" is such an easy literary insertion device, but how much did early scientists grapple with the notion of God? I know all the Einstein discussions, but can anyone recommend a good essay somewhere on this matter that includes a number of early scientists?
Physicists should write the school. Chris Harrison provided an address.
We could try writing to the Board of Governors. Perhaps faculty members of other universities or managers at potential employers would write? They could say that any transcript from McCook C.C. will be critically scrutinized for Other Flaws besides bogus science credits. I don't swing any weight, not being a citizen. I left a letter to the state governor or Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, on the comments section of his Web site, thanking him for making sure that international knowledge workers such as I won't have any serious competition from his state. But he never answered.
Yeah, but think how much fun it would be to take this class! I wonder how long it would take before I would:
a) make teacher cry.
b) be banned from class.
c) be told to shut-up.
d) all of the above.
Am I wrong, or is the ability to predict an important aspect of scientific theory?
It seems to me it would be an easy task to ask 'creation scientists' what predictive value their theory has, and if they can't answer, then they can't call it science.
Ok, now thinking about it, it would be hard for me not to take this class simply out of morbid curiosity. So you can't punish the students too much for it...
The scary thing is, the University of Nebraska is required by law to accept transfer credits from community colleges in the state. Since obviously we have no equivalent course at UNL, he couldn't get credit towards a major for it, but I've just emailed the dean to find out whether we'd have to accept this as a science distribution requirement.
According to Red State Rabble, the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education (which handles things like course equivalencies) has ruled that Garretson's course be given a philosophy call number.
http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/search?q=mccook
Of course, this just raises the question of why philosophy should be a dumpster for junk science. Surely, to teach a philosophy course, Garretson should have some sorts of credentials as a philosopher?
What worries me is this loon teaches General Chemistry courses that we are required to regard as equivalent to our own General Chemistry. When he teaches radioactive decay kinetics, does he tell them the half-lives were much shorter prior to the flood, as creationists believe?
This is reason #3,402 why I'm glad to be seeing Nebraska in my rear-view mirror. I remember when I came to UNL for my graduate work; the workers at the state capitol liked to make fun of Kansas for their creationism-in-schools fiasco.
I doubt anyone here is laughing now.
Surely, to teach a philosophy course, Garretson should have some sorts of credentials as a philosopher?
Not necessarily, particularly at the community-college level. If he was going to teach primarily philosophy courses, they might want him to have some graduate training or education in the field, but people teach out-of-discipline on occasion.
Yeah, please don't make philosophy, history, or anthro the garbage-heap for crap science. Deal with it yourselves.
Someone is this guy's chair; someone is his dean. I don't know if there's any faculty governance at McCook Community College, but someone needs to figure out the course-approval process, maybe take a look at accreditation, and raise questions about transfers. State Universities are being compelled to accept these things because legislators want BAs on the cheap, and there will be quality-control problems.
Let it also be said that most CC instructors work hard and there's some really good and innovative ed happening there too.
In South Carolina, the only courses that state schools "must" accept are designated as college transfer courses and on an approved list.
In other words, I couldn't just make up a new course at the tech/community college where I teach and have it accepted for credit by the University of South Carolina for credit.
* CHM 110 (General Chemistry I) would tranfer
* CHM 666 (Chemistry of Mentos, Diet Coke, and Cthulu) would not transfer
Is the system in Nebraska substantially different?
In South Carolina, the only courses that state schools "must" accept are designated as college transfer courses and on an approved list.
In other words, I couldn't just make up a new course at the tech/community college where I teach and have it accepted for credit by the University of South Carolina for credit.
* CHM 110 (General Chemistry I) would tranfer
* CHM 666 (Chemistry of Mentos, Diet Coke, and Cthulu) would not transfer
Is the system in Nebraska substantially different?
There is some leeway with transfer credits, and I can't find any list that puts Phys 2990 as a 'must transfer'--at least, not at UNL.
@ Rick
CHMM 666 is a valid course. There is a lot of chemistry going on behind a diet coke and mentos reaction (I watched it on MythBusters, so I'm an expert on these things). The introduction of the noneuclidean geometry of Ryleth and blasphemous incantations which only fancy can transmute to speech provide additional nucleation points on the mentos tablet that are imbued with the spores of Yog-Sothoth. I know that because I tried it near a resivoir in Arkham. It got out of hand... I had to drop it in a well to get rid of it. Then some dude from one of the universities came by and got all pissed at me.
I sent an e-mail to MPCC about the course, asking if it would count as science credit. A student advisor wrote me back, and it appears that the course does not count towards science credit unless it's an approved elective. Here's what they said:
"Since it is a special topics course, it will not count to fulfill requirements - only designated courses will do that. But it can be used to count towards elective credit - if appropriate for a program (i.e. Business would not accept it because they have a specific list to choose from for electives.)"
I hope this clears things up a bit.
I wrote to our Dean to get clarification about whether we have to accept this course for any kind of transfer credit. But here's another issue: Garretson teaches General and Organic Chemistry, which each have exact equivalencies at the University of Nebraska. We are obligated to treat those credits as the same as our own. So is Garretson teaching them that half-lives are not constant, as creationists believe, when he covers nuclear chemistry?
Our experience has been that students don't adequattely learn general chemistry in community college in any case. Now we have to contend with the possibility the instructor is lacing his lectures with 'creation science'.
It might be worth it in discussions like these to distinguish creationist-bashing from the bashing of the merely devout - and to limit the amount of the latter. Sure, a creationist explanation of the way life exists now is pretty hard to square with many branches of science. On the other hand, religious beliefs about life's origins operate on a scale fairly unrelated to evolution.
We can study evolutionary biology to learn how the world got this way and where it might be headed (though let's not make predictive power a prerequisite for all sciences... ecologists could wind up in trouble).
But we shouldn't demand that people renounce their particular favored creation myth in order to enter the conversation. In fact, to the people who need persuading most, the voices of Christians doing real science will be heard far louder than any of the rest of us. Let's not throw them out of the room.
I think you're on to something here.
The next time some state board of education pulls a Kansas and adds such junk to the science curriculum, institutions like Harvard and Stanford (it would be politically difficult for elite state schools to do this) should state that starting 3 years hence unless the curriculum is changed back they will no longer consider applications from that state.
Once the governor, senators, and business execs from that state realize that junior will no longer be able to go to Harvard, the board of ed will be out on their asses faster than you can say "Discovery Institute."
The same thing, on smaller scale, should be done with individual courses like this.
It sounds drastic and it is. Crap like this needs to be slapped down hard and fast. And does it punish the kids? Well, a substandard education is worse. And the point of the delay in implementing the ban is to give the local authorities time to get back on the right track. My bet is that it would never come to a student actually being rejected.
And philosophy and the liberal arts should not be dumping grounds for junk science. They have standards too. Providing, and only providing, the course presents a balanced and rigorous approach, consistent with other courses in the subject, should it be accepted.
Creationism is hard to square with reality... period.
Actually hard to square is a bit soft.
Creationism has nothing to do with reality.
Of course, this just raises the question of why philosophy should be a dumpster for junk science.
The fact is what this guy is proposing to teach is theological cosmology, and both theology and metaphysical cosmology are philosophical fields. What is wrong is that it is being presented as having something to do with physical cosmology and, I must assume, the theological aspects will be specific to evangelical Christianity and not theology in general (ie, a comparitive mythology type of thing).
It may well be badly presented and ill-conceived philosophy, but that's a smidgen better than presenting not-science as science with no conception whatsoever of what science is.
HEY, that's unfair. Physicists are far more likely to be atheists than any other science (< 10% theists), and evolution is a non-issue for most of us. I say it's because nothing convinces you that the universe operates damn well without a god like studying how it actually operates.
That must have gotten into the physics dept. because one idiot wanted it there, any self-respecting physicist would tell them to trash it.
The fact is what this guy is proposing to teach is theological cosmology, and both theology and metaphysical cosmology are philosophical fields.
I disagree. The age of the earth is a scientific question. Whether there was a global flood is a scientific question. When the dinosaurs went extinct is a scientific question. Formation of coal, oil and the Grand Canyon are scientific questions. In the guise of 'Creation Science' -- which is the course title -- he will certainly be providing bogus information about all of these questions.
It's bad science, not philosophy.
I dunno. There does seem to be some warping of some physicists minds... as if they're only smart enough to really understand the way the universe really works. It's a hubris that we see alot of. Some engineers seem to develop it too.
Not sure what can be said of this... Teaching creationism as physics is just factually wrong. To the extent that the two overlap, the overlap would consist in creationism's misrepresentation of things like cosmology and radiometric dating techniques.
oh, don't forget their horrid misrepresentations of SLoT as well.
technically, there should be an "anti-physics" section to assign it to, as a subsection of the "anti-science" dept.
Well, for one thing, physics probes the deepest mysteries of the universe (of course) so knowing physics qualifies you to teach any subject on the planet. Obviously!
In our defense, however, I know of one physical scientist who is up for tenure next year, and unlikely to get it due to his involvement with the Discovery Institute...
Question for anyone who's a lawyer, or is willing to pass this on to a lawyer.
I'm a Nebraska resident and taxpayer. MCC, where this class will be taught, is partly Nebraska state tax supported. There is court precedent saying that 'creation science' is a transparent strategem to get religion into the classroom. Do I have standing to file suit on first amendement grounds againt MCC for offering this course?
My email address is gerardharbison@mac.com, if anyone wants to contact me.
Forgive the obvious-stating here but: There's going to be some fall-out from this--the good people of Nebraska will complain to the college or their representatives about being forced to subsidize this horse's ass; or people who, unlike him, take science seriously, will bring it to his attention that he is a horse's ass; or his dean will call him on the carpet for making the school a national laughing-stock by being such a monumental horse's ass, etc.
When that happens, five bucks says that Garretson will insist that there's nothing whatever wrong with his science; rather, he's been just plain victimized--martyred, really--by all that anti-Christian discrimination in academia.
Maybe he's hoping for a gig at the Discovery Institute.
Actually, I saw some stats that said it was biologists who tended to be most atheist (athiest?). There are a fair number of physicists who can still cling to ideas about design and god-intervention because they are completely ignorant of biology. They're probably tied with the theistic evolutionist biologists who see no design in life, but are willing to conjure up a god of the big bang.
Not to mention that his "metaphysical cosmology" has about as much to do with metaphysics as the crystal lady at the New Age fair.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html
Profressor Harbison. I live in Lincoln, too. I have some contacts with ACLU Nebraska and have put in a call with their legal director. If you don't want to deal with the ACLU, I can.
I'll be in touch.
Eric Aspengren
Eric:
Thanks, and no problem: some of my best friends are ACLUers. :-)
I got an email from - well, there would be no harm in mentioning his name, but he didn't tell me I could, so I won't - a lawyer who's well known in anti-creationist circles, who says that while the standing issue may be complicated by Supreme Court action later this year, at the moment it looks OK. So if ACLU of Nebraska can recommend an attorney, I guess we're off and running.
They wouldn't have to just recommend and attorney. The might take the case, if it's a good case. They pick their battles very carefully. I used to work there.
You'll have to let me know who that attorney is.
My e-mail is:
phat-ass@thinkheavyindustries.com
Please let us out-of-staters know if there is anything we can do to help you.
I used to know how to spell, too.
Eric
There is a great quote which I cannot find for the life of me. It is something to the effect that the only thing more arrogant than a neuroscientist trying to understand how the brain works is a physicist trying to understand how the brain works. A prime example being the pair of physicists at the Neils Bohrs institute who suggested that it is sound waves (solitons), not action potentials, that are responsible for communication along nerves.
Does anyone know the actual quote and who said it?
Creationism should be taught as religion. There is no way it is not Christian (cultist) dogma.
What next, a course on The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Now that would be fun. As I recall the worship ritual revolves around consumption of the holy sacraments, pizza and beer on friday afternoons.
What is it about Kansas and Nebraska? I've driven through both several times and found them very interesting in an eerie and noncoastal sort of way. Empty desolate places make a nice change of pace from the rat race. Kansas reminded me of Mars in the early terraforming years.
It's not about Kansas and Nebraska. Minnesota, Ohio, and Georgia have had major pushes in recent years to teach creationism in schools. And you may have heard about a recent case in Pennsylvania.
Oh, and we really love clueless left/right coasters who describe our states as 'empty desolate places', based on an 8 hour drive-through on I-70 or I-80. We have everything from arid shortgrass prairie to dense bottomland forest, to vast sand-dunes.
When I was a grad student at SF State, there was a prof who wanted to teach a class on ID. The biology department turned him down cold, but he took his case to the academic senate who determined that it was an issue of academic freedom! The department had to schedule him a graduate seminar on ID. This was a while back...but still. San Francisco is not exactly a hotbed of creationist thought. I don't remember if he got enough enrollment for the class to run.
FWIW, while I used to be "Raven" on the old site, with the little stained-glass sun bear icon, I'm always "RavenT" nowadays, to avoid confusion with other Ravens or ravens.
And I am a left-coaster, and I probably am clueless in a lot of ways, so if the way out-of-staters could help is "not at all; this is best handled en famille", that's cool, too. but I wouldn't call the prairie an "empty desolate place".
You mean there are more roads in the midwest than I70 and I80? Been on both. LOL. Didn't mean to insult those states but if you grow up in the mountains and forests of NE or WC, it looks radically different, flat, no trees. I sort of liked it really.
Not sure if someone already covered this since the thread is getting pretty long, but I've got some unsettling news for you guys. It's not just the odd course in creationism at some Nebraska Community College -- the so-called Institute of Creation Research claims to have a graduate school that actually offers degrees in science:
"In 1981, ICR founded its Graduate School, offering M.S. degree programs in the fields of Astro/Geophysics, Biology, Geology, and Science Education."
Near as I can tell from the somewhat cryptically worded materials on their web site, they have actually been accredited by the state of California to do this! No, I am not (unfortunately) making this up.
But here's the real knee-slapper:
"The purpose of the ICR Graduate School is to discover and transmit the truth about the universe by scientific research and study, to correlate and apply such scientific data within the supplemental integrating framework of Biblical creationism".
Say what?
I smell straw.
The protection of the integrity of science education in the here-and-now (and for the future) is NOT a witch hunt. Creationism isn't an inappropriate subject. It's an inappropriate subject to include in a science curriculum. Is that so hard to grasp?
Because that's pretty much the only thing it's good for. Everything of value in philosophy is immediately absorbed by actual disciplines - what remains is useless garbage.
You will deeply regret it if you inform them otherwise. Trust someone who lives on what used to be the pristine foothills of the Front Range... it's better if the world thinks you have nothing to offer. Then they won't lead some exodus of Biblical proportions out of California so they can pave your backyard.
I am going to inflict some lasting damage on the first Californian who says to me, "Colorado used to be such a nice place to live!"
Trying to decide whether Intelligent Design is bad science or bad philosophy reminds me of the Bill Hicks sketch on pro-life activists. "Some of my friends think these pro-life people are annoying idiots. Other of my friends. . . think they're evil fucks. You should hear the arguments at my house: They're evil! They're annoying! They're idiots! They're fucks!
"People, please, come together! Can't we just join hands and call them evil-annoying-idiot-fucks?
"But that's me: Libra rising, the Scales. And strangely enough, also Shiva the Destroyer. . . ."
My friends have told me that I look like Bill Hicks.
Trying to decide whether Intelligent Design is bad science or bad philosophy reminds me of the Bill Hicks sketch on pro-life activists. "Some of my friends think these pro-life people are annoying idiots. Other of my friends. . . think they're evil fucks. You should hear the arguments at my house: They're evil! They're annoying! They're idiots! They're fucks!
"People, please, come together! Can't we just join hands and call them evil-annoying-idiot-fucks?
"But that's me: Libra rising, the Scales. And strangely enough, also Shiva the Destroyer. . . ."
My friends have told me that I look like Bill Hicks.
Trying to decide whether Intelligent Design is bad science or bad philosophy reminds me of the Bill Hicks sketch on pro-life activists. "Some of my friends think these pro-life people are annoying idiots. Other of my friends. . . think they're evil fucks. You should hear the arguments at my house: They're evil! They're annoying! They're idiots! They're fucks!
"People, please, come together! Can't we just join hands and call them evil-annoying-idiot-fucks?
"But that's me: Libra rising, the Scales. And strangely enough, also Shiva the Destroyer. . . ."
My friends have told me that I look like Bill Hicks.
Blake was a bit quick on the clicks.
Dammit, ScienceBlogs.com crashed (Internal Server Error 500), and somehow my post gets triplicated like a Form 27B-6 in mating season.
...the so-called Institute of Creation Research claims to have a graduate school that actually offers degrees in science:
Yep. Glenn Morton graduated from there -- then went to work in the oil patch, and discovered everything they taught him was BS.
Come on! How can you delve into the issues of the tensile strength of elephants' backs or the compressive strength of turtle shells without Physics? Give the poor guys (not the elephants or turtles) a break!
Blake Stacey: Does the APS regulate programs and courses in physics? Perhaps that would be a useful avenue to use.
Gerard Harbison: ARRG. You're right about philosophy. I think there's some merit to letting non-philosophers who publish in foundations research of their respective disciplines and cite and make use of the philosophical literature routinely to get counted, though, so it is important not to go overboard.
Sarcastro: Only that it should interact with the philosophical literature. I mean, I rag on Plantinga all the time, but he's at least "inside", so to speak, in that respect.