New Mexico Bill To Protect Anti-Science Education 726
An anonymous reader writes "From the Wired article: 'If educators in New Mexico want to teach evolution or climate change as a "controversial scientific topic," a new bill seeks to protect them from punishment. House Bill 302, as it's called, states that public school teachers who want to teach "scientific weaknesses" about "controversial scientific topics" including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — "other scientific topics" may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson. Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.'"
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Informative)
Behe's claims were utterly demolished during the Dover Trial. He seemed tragically unaware that IC was in fact predicted decades ago, and does in fact have a perfectly naturalistic explanation. Behe may be a biochemist, but the only reason he even has a job is in large part due to tenure, and in no small part because you won't find a single actual publication in a journal by him expounding on his ID theories.
Re:How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, first of all. Things in science are not "proven" in the sense that there is some point when you say "Well, that's 100% positive". As much as any theory can be proven evolution has been proven.
Secondly, "it's still a theory" indicates a woeful ignorance of what a scientific theory is. Theory, in science, isn't some wild-assed guess. It is well supported by multiple streams of evidence. What you're committing is the etymological fallacy, conflating two different definitions of a word.
As to the evidence for evolution, it is rather vast. If you have any doubts on that point, visit http://talkorigins.org/ [talkorigins.org].
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Informative)
False is not the correct term, it is not 100% accurate. Newtonian mechanics is an excellent model with valuable real world applications. In fact, in most cases nobody is going to bother with quantum mechanics or general relativity to solve engineering problems that can be solved with Newtonian mechanics with more than enough accuracy to produce the desired results.
Other than that I think you are making an important point, you can't teach PhD level courses for every subject to every student. You can teach enough to create an informed and educated society that can have a meaningful discourse which is not what we currently have on the subject of evolutionary science. Most of the discourse from those who question evolutionary science is from individuals who don't have even the most basic clue as to the principles of evolutionary science and simply regurgitate pseudo-science garbage some quack fed them.
Re:What scientists... (Score:3, Informative)
That is total bullshit.
Climate scientists don't deny the fact that climate changes naturally, especially over long time periods like tens of thousands of years. In fact, as I'm sure you're aware, they are the ones who proved that in the first place.
Climate scientists have also proved that climate can also be changed by human activity. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the rate of human-caused change is currently much greater than the rate of non-anthropogenic change; that is, human activity can cause changes over the span of tens of years that would take tens of thousands of years to occur without humans.
Re:How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:5, Informative)
When you are educating students on basic science and teaching scientifically accepted theories it absolutely is anti-science to turn around and tell the students that it all may not be true and they will have to rule out alternative hypotheses before they should accept evolutionary science even though most of the students will never have the necessary education to effectively analyse evolutionary evidence themselves.
And lets be honest, it is anti-science because the objective of these efforts to teach wishy washy science to students in public schools is not intended to produce a generation of scientifically astute students, the purpose is to undermine confidence in science and perpetuate ignorance.
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Informative)
m has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?
The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.
Putting this concept into a simplified list.
A works well enough
The combination of A and B work better than just A
The combination of A, B and C work better than the combination of A and B
The combination of B and C work better than the combination of A, B and C
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Informative)
Finally! Someone who will understand what I'm about to say!!!
Yes, the evidence also STRONGLY supports gravitation theory.
But not completely. Quantum theory, GTR, and modern gravitation theory all produce similar predictions in weak gravitational fields, but they diverge as the field becomes strong. How does modern gravitation theory explain that?
Likewise...for what possible reason, according modern gravitation theory, could something else like writing that has nothing at all to do with gravity happen?
Though many people reading this won't admit it, the fact that I have posted my qualms with gravitation theory here proves that there is a controversy And that controvery is this: is the gravitational force explained by gravitation theory, or is it due to Intelligent Falling? This is big, heady stuff. And I'm not saying I know that gravitation theory is wrong and Intelligent Falling is right, but I should have the right to ask (in taxpayer-funded public school science classrooms in a country founded on separation of church and state), shouldn't I?
Ok, enough mimicking your credulous nature. IC and ID are not scientific theories because they make no testable predictions. Without proposing a competing theory, you are essentially saying, "We shouldn't buy evolution theory because it doesn't explain everything! We should ignore the many useful predictions it makes and by the way I have nothing else of value to contribute in its place but still that's what we should do." Well, in case you missed my point above, neither does any other scientific theory. It turns out theories don't have to explain every single thing in order to be useful.
Read this [google.com].
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Informative)
How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? Take away one chamber and the whole thing doesn't work. Add a chamber to a three chamber heart and it fails. Nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart.
See here [livescience.com]. Reptiles have a 3 chambered heart, but some (turtles) show the beginning of the formation of a septum separating the ventricle in two chambers. An article in Nature back in 2009 described the discovery of the genetic mutation that led to complete separation - I couldn't find the link to the Nature article itself, but here's [sciencedaily.com] a digest and here [pandasthumb.org] are a few quotes. The most important conclusion there is IMHO that there exists a relatively minor genetic change which leads to the formation of the extra heart chambers, advantageous for natural selection
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html [talkorigins.org]
Behe has been debunked. Get over it. He has no standing in the evolutionary community, he is a laughing stock at Baylor and only tenure and the fact he doesn't use the university "letterhead" so to speak keeps him in a job. I'll repeat, he has never ever ever ever published this in any peer-reviewed journal. On top of being an anti-intellectual liar who only manages to fool hopeless morons, he's also a coward.