Journal jdavidb's Journal: Creationism does not imply 100% irrationality 26
The idea that people "need" to be taught evolutionary origins is nothing but petty bigotry.
The rationale for this mind-control and enslavement is the idea that people who believe in creationism are irrational and therefore incapable of making a positive contribution to the great "we" -- society. I note that this assumes two things: that creationism is irrational (I'll grant that many folks think this is proved, not assumed), and that there is some objective standard of how human lives should be spent contributing to society, some standard which says that a life spent one way is "right" while another way is "wrong," measuring according to some metric that I can't fathom about what's "best" for "all" (for sufficient values of "all" that actually, as far as I can see, actually translate to "some").
So let me give you those two points for the moment. I'm going to tentatively agree that creationism is irrational and that it is important to make sure that everyone is rational so that they can "contribute" to "society" or whatever the heck it is you hope to achieve out of having everyone aware of evolution.
Here's what you're missing: nobody is 100% rational, 100% of the time, on 100% of issues. It's not necessary for everybody to understand every piece of truth in order to function productively.
A lot of smoke is blown about how if kids aren't taught evolution they won't be able to be scientifically productive. Horse manure. It ain't so. You can have wrong ideas about what happened 7000 years ago, or 4.5 billion years ago, and still think quite rationally and scientifically about other things.
There's not a lick of evidence provided for the idea that kids need to be taught evolution in order to grow up capable of making a positive contribution to their society or their country. It's something we're just supposed to accept because men of bigoted faith like Richard Dawkins say so. And I'm not willing to see people enslaved (have their freedom taken away in the form of being forced to submit to compulsory reeducation of ideas their parents quite legally believed) just because Richard Dawkins is a bigot.
When I was in first grade my teachers encouraged other students to make fun of me and shame me because I couldn't crayon within the lines of coloring pages. This was cruel abuse, but I realize now it's symptomatic. School is systematically teaching the values we vote on, and today it's created a society that ridicules and shames people of faith, with the bigoted idea that they are 100% irrational.
Speaking of which, this is why I think a school system that is run by democracy is bound to failure. We could vote to teach everyone evolution, but we could just as well vote to teach them the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We could vote to teach everyone that homosexuality is acceptable, or we could vote to teach that such people should be stoned. If you really want your kids to be educated according to the consensus of scientists, then the absolute last thing that you should want is to have them in an educational institution run by a democracy.
(This is also a large part of why I won't vote. Remember when you're casting your vote next year in November about who is going to be my tyrant and king for the next four years and overrule the free choices of me and my children -- that I will not be making any such choice for you. I would never treat you that way.)
You still vote... (Score:1)
You are capable of inciting change, especially in this area. It is not easy, but the right thing rarely is ever easy. You are already working towards the idea that schools should not be a democracy, but what is the alternative or to what authority should they submit? And there is the trick, that authority is not the federal, state,
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You are still voting, if only by giving assent to the majority.
I'm definitely not giving assent. :) To do so would be sinful, according to my religious beliefs. The majority is acting entirely without my authorization, and their guilt is on their own heads.
You are capable of inciting change, especially in this area.
I'm well aware of that and working diligently on it on several fronts. But sinning by authorizing people to commit acts of sin and aggression against others as my representative is not one of them. The fact that I am capable of inciting change is not, to me, an argument in favor of voting; on the contra
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Sigh (Score:2)
Not bigotry: "Any proof for those claims? Come back when you do." And that right there, is kinda the whole point. It's not that evolution has to be taught, it's what we got. The minute a better theory/model/whatever comes along, it'll reign too.
Also, you're not helping, either. You start off your JE by defining terms, then lapse just as quickly into assumption-land (which you critique in your subject line no less!). I understand from the tone you're upset, but u
None of this is relevant (Score:2)
It's 100% true that we can have a productive society without teaching evolution in our classrooms. Likewise, our society would still function - we could still produce some NASA engineers - if our classrooms were required to teach the controversy about the spherical earth.
However:
1. It would unquestionably serve the *students* very poorly.
2. We cannot give any religion, even a majority religion, veto power over what
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I'm not at all asking for a right to mandate what children are taught. I'm interested in eliminating that right.
But as long as people are exercising that "right," I'm pointing out in this journal entry that what you decide to teach about origins is pretty much irrevelant to having an advancing civilization, by most metrics, and so the "we must teach children this theory of origins idea or we'll be backwards and not progress" mindset is really based not on measures of progress but on the bigoted idea that
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Evolution is as critical to understanding modern biology (I'm in my lab, having just heard a rather poor talk about mathematical models for sequence optimization) as a spherical earth is for a sound understanding of communication satellites. This is simply a material fact.
Now, you are correct that it is not "essential to our civilization". Neither are satellites, if you think about it.
However, from a tactical standpoint, if we want our (American) civiliz
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However, from a tactical standpoint, if we want our (American) civilization to remain competitive in advanced technological fields vis a vis India, Europe and China, we would be very poorly served in failing to teach our children that the earth is a 4.5 billion year old sphere covered in organisms that evolve over long time scales.
This is a perfect example of the bigotry I'm talking about. Belief in evolution is not necessary in order to remain competitive in advanced technological fields. I'd appreciate it if you could demonstrate otherwise.
This is not "religious bigotry"
I never said it was religious bigotry. It's bigotry of one class of people against another: the class of people that believes in evolution assumes the class of people who do not are stupid and incompetent, rather than just misguided about one fact.
if the Amish refuse to teach their children how to use power tools, they will tend to make poor machinists.
Agreed. Now demonstrate for me that b
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In order to understand why, you have to be familiar with how biological research is done, what is studied, and how the research is applied. I can go into the details of the science if you really want, but talking science to laymen is not really my forte.
It is po
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"Belief" in evolution is not what is required - "acceptance of the material fact of evolution" *is* required. Furthermore, knowledge of the specifics of the current state of understanding in evolutionary theory is generally required.
Why? This hasn't yet been demonstrated to me.
In order to understand why, you have to be familiar with how biological research is done, what is studied, and how the research is applied. I can go into the details of the science if you really want, but talking science to laymen is not really my forte.
Do you expect people to seriously accept a proposition that the children of laymen in America must be educated in evolution when you aren't able to elucidate why? If you feel you have any role to play in convincing people to accept this proposition, then it seems that it would behoove you to learn how to explain it to laymen.
I invite you to try to prove it to me. I did just fine in biology in school, and last I checked my intelligence was rated above av
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http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~ecolevol/fulldoc.html [rutgers.edu]
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However, from a tactical standpoint, if we want our (American) civilization to remain competitive in advanced technological fields vis a vis India, Europe and China, we would be very poorly served in failing to teach our children that the earth is a 4.5 billion year old sphere covered in organisms that evolve over long time scales.
Rereading this entire discussion, this statement I think serves as a perfect summary of what I'm trying to consider. I may reformulate this entire journal entry next week, recap the discussion, and restate it as the negative of this statement. Because I just can't see how it's tactically important, or competitively important, for "our" children to believe a particular age of the earth or a particular theory about the origin of life and species. Maybe it'll become more apparent if I read through that wh
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It's 100% true that we can have a productive society without teaching evolution in our classrooms. Likewise, our society would still function - we could still produce some NASA engineers - if our classrooms were required to teach the controversy about the spherical earth.
However:
1. It would unquestionably serve the *students* very poorly.
2. We cannot give any religion, even a majority religion, veto power over what is taught in our schools.
I agree with #2, but disagree that A MAJORITY OF VOTERS cannot have veto power over what is taught in our schools, and that if they want to use religion as their reason, so what? Nothing in the Constitution states or implies they cannot. It says they cannot put religion IN the schools, perhaps, but not that they cannot take things OUT for religious reasons.
And that informs #1: who is to say how it serves the students? Only the voters of a particular school district get to make that determination. Not y
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Yes, that excerpt does express it better than me, particularly the bolded sentence. Why would that offend me? :)
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Yes, that excerpt does express it better than me, particularly the bolded sentence. Why would that offend me? :)
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Those statements are critically flawed
No, they are not.
The farmers do not HAVE to believe anything. If they don't want their children to get a secular education, let them enroll their students in religious schools
You have your facts wrong. They were not saying creationism should be taught in school. They were saying evolution should NOT be taught in school. Two very, very, different things.
alternatively, they should be entitled to skip that aspect of the curriculum
Schools are run by local commuities, by towns and school districts. They should get to DECIDE the curriculum, by the tenets of democracy.
This is, however, all the protection to which they are entitled to preserve their freedom of conscience and religion - they are *not* entitled to deny that freedom to anyone else in their community.
Sure they are, if they are the majority. If you want to learn about evolution but the majority says it won't be taught in school, you have the right to learn it on your
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Thomas Paine would disagree. I'm going to state - I believe it is self-evident that, in a democratic society, a basic education is a natural right. You also have a natural right to *refuse* such an education.
You obviously do not agree but there's not much of an argument here.
Nothing about evolutionary study is required to sensibly participate in a democratic society.
Regulations on the use of antibiot
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Thomas Paine would disagree.
And Thomas Paine also accused George Washington of treason. Big deal.
I'm going to state - I believe it is self-evident that, in a democratic society, a basic education is a natural right.
And I am going to state that it is both not self-evident, and not true.
You obviously do not agree but there's not much of an argument here.
Exactly, you don't have much of an argument. You merely state it, without supporting it.
Nothing about evolutionary study is required to sensibly participate in a democratic society.
Regulations on the use of antibiotics.
Fisheries management.
Adoption, by farmers in particular, of genetically modified organisms (generally safe, but not always, and you need to understand evolution to understand when and why).
And? By the same token, I could then argue that you need to have understanding of nuclear physics, all sorts of armaments, illegal drugs, and so on in order to sensibly participate in a democratic society. Obviously, that's not true.
I could go on
As could I. And I doubt it would be long
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Are we discussing a fantasy world or the real world? Are we discussing what they *can* do, or what they *should* do, and whether it is right and legitimate for them to do it?
- A legislative body *can* choose not to teach certain subjects at all; they can do so on whatever grounds they want, they need not offer an explanation if the voters are satisfied with no explanati
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The argument is laid out in Democracy and Education by John Dewey. I see little chance that we'd say anything novel on the subject.
Well sure. And I'd have disagreed with Dewey at the time, too, I imagine (along with many of his, and his fellow progressives', ideas). Not in whole, of course. I believe education is very important, and that the state (not the federal government, as that would be unconstitutional) should provide it (though not mandate it). I just don't believe it is a natural right (though I am not opposed to it being an enumerated one).
A legislative body *can* choose not to teach certain subjects at all; they can do so on whatever grounds they want, they need not offer an explanation if the voters are satisfied with no explanation or know why without being told.
Of course.
To teach a subject at all, and then shape the curriculum on religious grounds, by comission or omission, is obviously a religious endorsement on the part of the legislature, is unconstitutional, and is a violation of the natural rights of religious minorities.
I disagree that it is unconstitutional. If that were true then religi
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I assume that you are no longer contesting that evolution is a requisite for a working biologist?
I'm assuming you said this because you were conflating my stance and pudge's, and if so, let me say that that overstates what I'm contending, although just slightly.
I'm contending that evolution is not a requisite for technological progress, in ways that are meaningful for most people. In the biological sciences, I'm not yet aware of any advances that required belief in the evolutionary hypothesis of the origin of life and species in order to come about, although I've not yet read the paper you linked
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Again this word "believe". You don't have to "believe" things, any more than you have to "believe" in a spherical earth. Believing is for religion, this is not a religious thing just because it violates someone's religious teachings. It's an object of utility, which you need to understand and use.
Every single genetically modified crop depends on
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Anyway, the way you do rational drug design is that you compare the human protein target to related proteins in other organisms, and then, guided by the evolutionary relationships among the organisms, you can design a drug.
There are dozens of drugs on the market that were designed this way - generally in combination with other methods.
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This is an example of the broader community (the state government) protecting the right to an education of religious minorities (mainline protestants, most Jews, most Catholics, as well as secularists of various stripes).
This is going off on a tangent so I'm putting it in another post. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you seem to be saying mainline Protestants don't agree with the fundamentalist anti-evolution stance. But then you're identifying mainline Protestants as a minority.
How can mainline Protestants be a minority? If they are a minority, they're not mainline, right? You're saying the majority is the fundamentalist/literalist group, but if so then the fundamentalists are the "mainline." In which case maybe a
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Anyway, you're not the only person to raise this objection to the terminology, but it's established so I use it.
It should be noted that although mainline *churches* have lower total membership than evangelical churches, the great mass of the American population who call themselves Christians but do not, it is clear, actually go to church, hold religious ideas that would be characterized as mainline. If you count such people, mainline christians