Intelligent Design
gregladen | September 18, 2009WPTV.COM has a poll asking "Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?" and the possible answers are "yes" and "no." Which I guess means they are not really asking an "either/or" question although it is worded that way. Anyway, this relates to THIS STORY about people who work for a school system who are currently in trouble for contempt of court. Contempt of court is a jail-able offense, and it is NOT "offering prayer in public schools."
Of course, it is true that these individuals were originally in trouble for violating the First Amendment Rights of the…
gregladen | September 17, 2009We know there is a link between education, church going behavior, and the inability or unwillingness to accept that evolution is real and that humans evolved. But what exactly is the relationship? I think the following diagram includes the correct answer, but I'm not sure which one it is:
What am I missing?
gregladen | September 13, 2009... Or so I'm told.
Chris Holmlund says of "Creation" in an email:
"The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 % of Americans believe in the theory of evolution."
Here's a trailer:
gregladen | September 7, 2009Since the bloggingheads "diavlog" with David Dobbs and me was the first science-oriented installment to come out (more or less) since the repudiation of Bloggingheads.tv by Carl Zimmer and Sean Carrol, and now Phil Plait and PZ Myers, I think I should say something about why I did it and what I think about the whole thing.
I want to start out by saying that my remarks are provisional. I will not tolerate sophistic mumbo jumbo in the comments. Instead, I employ what my Lese friend JM used to tell me as as staring point: "I've got an idea or two for you. If you don't like them, just give…
gregladen | August 26, 2009If you are a teacher or a parent you may find some of these books especially useful to: a) prepare yourself; b) give to your child's teacher or a colleague; or c) give to a school administrator. Seriously.
Each link is to a review of the book to help you decide if you are interested.
The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design
Evolution vs. Creationism by Eugenie Scott, Second Edition
Don't forget to have a look at this post as well.
gregladen | August 14, 2009The following are links to selected posts on this blog that are related to science education or the evolution-creationism 'debate.'
The Wedge Strategy
Teaching Creationism in Social Studies: The Wedge Strategy, Plan B
Teachers Under Fire
Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design
Is Blood Ever Blue? Science Teachers Want to Know!
Drs Myers and Decker: Advice on Teaching Evolution
Ken Hubert, Hero of Life Science Teaching
Major Blunder in Science Reporting will Fuel Creationist Claims
Review of SMM Exhibit on Race and Racism
How fast does evolution happen?
Creationism and…
gregladen | August 13, 2009Chris Comer was the Director of Science with the Texas Educaiton Agency until she was forced to resign in November of 2007. That happened because she disseminated information about an upcoming talk that would likely be critical of creationism. She was fired because the TEA (hee hee he said .... "tea") claimed a "neutrality" policy and claimed that Chris had broken the policy. Her reference, via email, to the upcoming talk was an endorsement of ... OMG! Evolution! Evolution over Creationism!!!
Yes folks, you read that right. Chis Comer was effectively fired from her job as director of…
gregladen | August 12, 2009Well, I spent the morning with a wonderful group of Middle and High School teacher committed to doing an excellent job of teaching evolution in their classrooms. Then, I go check my email and I've got a similar number of people sending me this story about a person who could be the next mayor of Tulsa Oklahoma, apparently.
Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that also include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.
"It's first," she
said to calls of "hallelujah" at…
gregladen | August 12, 2009.... Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module"...
Jeanne d'Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I understand she gave her Life Science teachers a very hard time. This is the only contemporary depiction of Joan of…
gregladen | August 11, 2009Hot off the presses from the NCSE:
Are state science standards worthless? Are kids learning about evolution or being spoon-fed creationist pseudoscience? What's the proper role of state science standards in American public education, anyway?
To get some answers, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) conducted an in-depth survey of 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The good news: Current state science standards cover evolution more extensively than they did 9 years ago.
According to the report, 40 states received satisfactory grades for the treatment of evolution in their…
gregladen | August 10, 2009As you know, PZ Myers and a well behaved group of just over three hundred interested skeptics visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky last week. One result of this visit is an epic post by PZ which pretty much obviates any need to actually to go to the museum yourself.
If you are a student assigned to go to the museum and do a report on it, just use PZ's blog post, it will be much easier. Here it is!
gregladen | August 8, 2009A group of scientists, students and secularists -- 304 in all -- visited Petersburg, Kentucky on Friday to tour exhibits on display at the Creation Museum.
The visitors are in town attending a conference of the Secular Student Alliance, a group formed "to organize, unite, educate and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics."
Read the rest at ABC News
Hat Tip PZ
gregladen | August 8, 2009I wish I coulda been there ... by all accounts it sounds like the Creozerg visit to the Creation Museum went well. A couple of kids were thrown out because they said things or whatever, which is good because it shows that the whole point of the creation museum is to express, secure, and protect a particular point of view and to supress others. For your entertainment, I've collected a handful of links from the event. Please visit these links, and if you are a social neworking kinda person, digg-em-up or stumbleuponthem or whatever. It would be very nice, would it not, if over the next few…
gregladen | August 7, 2009The CreoZerg (and I'm not entirely sure what a Creo-Zerg is) is underway. PZ Myers and the atheists are moving in to the creation museum. Details here. Twittering here.
gregladen | August 5, 2009..that even when you try diligently to separate the politics of religion vs. creationism and to say again and again that religion can go along its merry way as long as it stays out of the science classroom, people like Casey Luskin will still find the words in your rhetoric to accuse you of attacking religion.
Back in May, Genie Scott appeared with me and Lynn Fellman on Atheist Talk Radio, where we discussed science education. Genie is the director of the National Center for Science Education.
In a recent posting on the Discovery Institute web site, Casey Luskin makes the contrast between…
gregladen | August 4, 2009The 'documentary' (or, actually, "stupidumentary") Expelled! No intelligence allowed ... bla bla bla ... coordinated with this release will be a novel called Fossil Hunter, by John Olson (obviously a made up name) ... bla bla bla ... which is about a scientist who is maligned and harassed by the rest of the scientific community because she questions evolutionary dogma.
Never mind that. This is a link to a recently released review of a book from last year. You can go comment on the review, if you like!
Here, you read about it, I'm going to take a nap:
When Dr. James leads an expedition into…
gregladen | July 24, 2009From the NCSE:
Three historians of science are unhappy about their treatment in a creationist movie about Darwin, as they explain in a note in the July 2009 Newsletter of the History of Science Society. Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert write, "We have recently been featured in a documentary film, 'The Voyage that Shook the World,' produced by Fathom Media of Australia and directed by Stephen Murray of Synergy Films, New Zealand. We were led to believe that the movie was being made to be shown as an educational film on Australian broadcast television and possibly elsewhere.…
gregladen | July 9, 2009... In which I narrow the gulf between two allied factions enough that with a running start you can jump across ... maybe.
It has been suggested that Accommodationism is "a more moderate atheist perspective on the nature of religion and science."1 In this view, religion and science are not antithetical, and can exist side by side.
I think this is a fair description of accommodationism, and it is what bothers me about accommodationism itself or the description of accommodationism, depending on who's doing the talking, but I also don't think that this is what certain people who have been…
gregladen | July 1, 2009If so, and if you are an American, you are in the majority. But 16% of your fellow Americans have not. If you are a citizen of the UK, where Darwin lived and stuff, 9% of your fellow citizens have not. Shocking.
These are perhaps the least noticed but in my view most amazing results of Yet Another Poll (YAP) about creationism and evolution that is skillfully analyzed by John Lynch at Just Another Prop. I agree with John's conclusion that a (too slim) majority of Americans are "theistic evolutionists." Add that to the a-theistic evolutionists and we have more people in the Evolution camp…