Valentine Pontifex

The quacks have won a round in Cobb County:

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/09/26/creationism.evolution/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/09/26/creationism.evolution/index.html</a>

S2Focus

Well over a century ago, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (a.k.a. Mark Twain) penned this little missive:


IN THE FIRST PLACE, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards."


I guess some things never change....

Doubting Didymus

Please tell me that there was nothing stopping this kid from writing his paper.

Surely he would have been allowed to write about problems he sees in the evolutionary theory, provided they were properly researched and wholly scientific?

I just do not understand what the 'victory' in this place has actually done. Science still has to be science, right? So even if creationism is now 'allowed' in the schools, it won't be found in science classes, because it's not scientific.

This kid will still get bad marks if his paper says something like 'radiometric dating is a fraud' and doesn't properly support that. He will also still not be allowed to write that his 'alternate reasons' are miracles from god, because even if creationism is allowed, untestable unscientific mush is still left at the lab door, right?

So what has changed? And more importantly, what was stopping scientific creationism from being taught in the first place, except for its lack of science (which will still disqualify it)?

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: Doubting Didymus ]</p>

KC

One wonders what the odious little brat was able to disprove about evolution.

Cheers,

KC

Aquila ka Hecate

I saw a clip concerning this on CNN this morning.

One of the appalling things was watching some woman (I think she may have been on the schools board)opine that this was 'the will of the people'.

I felt like yelling back that the will of the people still doesn't define what is science, however much they may wish it too.

Also, I noticed that the kids from the class taught by an ID proponent were obscenely parrotting all the old 'it's a theory' objections, while those from the class of the teacher who opposes ID being taught in school were showing correct scientific thinking-patterns.
This in itself is enough for me to want to stay a long, long way away from all American schools, seeing as how I have a son of school-going age.

Ah, America-how I felt like weeping for you this morning.

Camaban

y'know

I dunno if any other aussies have heard of it happening, but I haven't

I have NEVER heard of parents having a say in a school's curriculum. (bar having a whinge when stuff with the wrong rating is showed in school)

Here, we leave it up to professionals, and only step in when things get really bad (IE, the standards those children will be going far past very soon).

(Who was it that said that the best argument against democracy was a 10 minute conversation with the average voter? School curriculums should be decided by people who know what they're talking about, not the average parent)

Wyz_sub10

Today we laugh at how Francis Bacon concluded there must be 8 planets because the body had 8 orifices (not kidding).

We shake our heads at the idea that people once thought witches were made of wood.

We scoff at the notion that bloodletting was once viewed as the essential method of treatment for just about anything.

All I can say is that I'm glad we are not taking the simple pleasure at laughing at society's backwards and nonsensical beliefs away from future generations.

lpetrich

It's actually Francesco Sizzi who had thought something like that. He had claimed that the moons of Jupiter that Galileo had seen could not possibly exist, because they would break this correspondence:

7 moving celestial objects (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)

7 openings of the head (2 ears, 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, mouth)

7 metals (gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, mercury)

Other notable sets of seven

As Rimstalker has suggested, a good response might be that Francesco Sizzi has 8 openings in his head.

Skydancer

You mean Monty Python didn't make that one up for the Holy Grail movie????

Wyz_sub10

No, but I think, *I think*, they made up the Knights who say 'Ni', also know as the ancient order of the Stonecutters.