Slick? Are you kidding? That looks tacky and stupid as fuck
Jesus the ID types are slick as fuck
xConorx wrote:
Yeah but people seem to be pretty taken-in by this shit.
Tacky in the way that every single major movie is tacky John.
No, because movie trailer websites are good. That's a nerdy old man with glasses wearing a school uniform doing fake graffiti, it's laughably awful. The only people taken in by it will be morons who believed it anyway; most other people it will push them further away from it.
John. wrote:
xConorx wrote:
Yeah but people seem to be pretty taken-in by this shit.
Tacky in the way that every single major movie is tacky John.No, because movie trailer websites are good. That's a nerdy old man with glasses wearing a school uniform doing fake graffiti, it's laughably awful. The only people taken in by it will be morons who believed it anyway; most other people it will push them further away from it.
You couldn't be more wrong on this one. I wish you were right though!
It's all the people in the middle who get taken in by this stuff. The majority of student teachers I surveyed responded positively to shit like this, said they thought this stuff should be taught in science, and thought it was fancy "new" science. of course it isn't; it's in no biology textbooks they'd have seen at undergrad, isn't on the secondary syllabus, and appears in no peer-reviewed biology journals - yet, new biology teachers still think there's a legitimate scientific controversy to be had. This type of thing convinces people that there is, which means more biology teachers will have to deal with complaints from parents about "why isn't ID being taught in schools".
Grace - yeah the whole "new ideas" thing is particularly frustrating. Of course it's Paley's Watchmaker all over again!
Well not quite Refused. 59 schools in the UK have reported using ID resources secondary science class, after a pack was distributed to every head of science in the UK.
And it looks as though new teachers are particularly susceptible to the tactics employed by IDists - fancy graphics, appeals to fairness, illusion of "new" science etc etc
Plus over here the DUP set-up a committee with parents to try to get ID into schools, and organised a petition, plus a house of commons approach.
Joseph K. wrote:
i'm pretty sure it's happening already with academy schools. the teaching ID, not the punching in the face, sadly.
yeah the academy schools have been doing it, but then they've been teaching traditional creationism and are pretty much a law unto themselves!
Over here the private christian schools, like the Free Presbyterian ones, are teaching young-earth creationism willy-nilly, but then, in those schools every class is taught from a biblical perspective!
If it was me I'd show the kids the creationist bollocks and tell them "this is how not to attempt science", underlining every lie, innaccuracy and failure of logic with detailed notes in the addendum. Or possibly get them to explain why it's a load of shite for homework.
Depends how it's done, but to even waste time on it is conceding some sort of victory for the creationists - they've repeatedly been demolished in public debates, but for them, that the debate is even being had is seen to be a victory, regardless of how rediculous they look, because rational and critical enquiry doesn't really interest them, they're just glad to be getting airtime.
I personally am sympathetic to the approach you suggest, unfortunately, given that creationism/ID appeals to kids intuitive leaning toward teleological explanation for both biological and non-biological phenomenon, as well as "backing up" aspects of religious beliefs it catches on regardless of how daft it looks.
Of course there should be room for debate, but there has to be some legitimate basis for debate. There are lots of areas for debate within evolutionary biology alone; gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium, units of selection, whether sociobiology is shite etc
we don't "debate" whether the earth is flat anymore, but we might hold flat-earthers up as an example of something once widely-held but cast-aside once the weight of evidence showed it was very wrong.
Grace wrote:
"Smart new ideas"?!
as h. allen orr says,
Quote:
Unlike many recent discussions, Living with Darwin surveys all the historical phases of creationism—from the biblical accounts in Genesis to contemporary claims of intelligent design in nature. This approach is useful for two reasons. First, some people seem to believe that creationism represents a more or less coherent body of thought. It does not. Instead, the history of creationism is characterized by cycles involving the elaboration of a theory, its wholesale collapse, a lull of decades, and, ultimately, the elaboration of a radically different theory—one that, without quite saying so, rejects all earlier varieties of creationism. Invariably, this newer theory makes claims that are considerably less ambitious than those of its predecessors. Seen historically, then, creationism looks less like a continuous body of thought and more like an extended exercise in backpedaling.Second, it's not widely appreciated just how devastating the attacks on early creationist claims were. These were not episodes in which a theory met with mild difficulties, but ones in which theories imploded spectacularly. Kitcher draws an important conclusion from this fact. The problem with creationism, he insists, is not that it's not a science (because, for example, it is untestable); the problem is that it's a dead science. Creationist claims have been tested repeatedly against the facts of nature and they have failed badly. Unfortunately, this has not prevented the attempted resurrection of these claims by religiously motivated individuals or groups, often many decades after the ideas were falsified by scientists.
NYRB, august 16 2007 (fnn removed)
xConorx wrote:
...given that creationism/ID appeals to kids intuitive leaning toward teleological explanation for both biological and non-biological phenomenon...
And Marxism isn't teleological?
Anyway, one thing I'm missing is, again, why we should take part in this bourgeois faction fight. Real proletarian kids know that school is just a prison designed to indoctrinate them. Moreover, if school curricula become even sillier and more absurd, this can only heighten class consciousness among youths and bring the revolution closer.
I don't know, eh, maybe there's some science teachers out there who despite all the other shite that have to do as part of their job, would actually like to get on with teaching actual science without having to be worried about offending the nutter christians in their school or getting parents breathing down their necks for "telling my kids they came from a goddamn monkey!"
[that God made into the shape of a fossel].How about conceiving of this struggle from the students` point of view, as opposed to the liberal teachers? You know, like you conceive of the class struggle from the workers` point of view, not liberal democrats? The way you people deal with it is akin to voting and appealing to Parliament as opposed to looking to fomenting strikes and workplace actions.
Yeah back in the day I was a science student and I'd have been pretty pissed off at being taught supernatural causation as an explanation for anything in science, like I was pissed off that I had to learn religion at all.
Plus the fact that many teachers, like other workers are just trying to get on with doing their jobs and would rather not have to deal with this stuff.
Also Treeofjudas, in the UK, given that this stuff isn't yet being introduced into the classroom and is not on the syllabus at all, it's kinda hard for any organic student opposition to it to be created, unless of course you're up for manufacturing a cause which doesn't yet exist for students. Whereas every secondary science department has been sent the ID pack and so it happens to be more of an issue for teachers at the moment.
treeofjudas wrote:
xConorx wrote:
...given that creationism/ID appeals to kids intuitive leaning toward teleological explanation for both biological and non-biological phenomenon...And Marxism isn't teleological?
Anyway, one thing I'm missing is, again, why we should take part in this bourgeois faction fight. Real proletarian kids know that school is just a prison designed to indoctrinate them. Moreover, if school curricula become even sillier and more absurd, this can only heighten class consciousness among youths and bring the revolution closer.
jesus just when i thought I couldn't have anymore contempt for you.
and what the fuck would you know about real proletarian kids you middle class hippy fuck?
treeofjudas wrote:
xConorx wrote:
...given that creationism/ID appeals to kids intuitive leaning toward teleological explanation for both biological and non-biological phenomenon...And Marxism isn't teleological?
This is besides the point - one can invoke a directionality, purpose or a designer as an explanation for lots of things, my TV, the laptop I'm writing on now etc. But to do so for the natural world is absurd, as they can be explained in naturalistic terms without invoking teleological explanations.
Whether you think society is "designed" or has a "purpose" has absolutely fuck all to do with this, and I'm not quite sure what it has to do with the argument over ID/creationism at all.
.jpg "Wages raft is drowned in inflation wave")
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
Some new cool-style documentary in support of Intelligent Design is coming out, fuckin hell. They're making it seem like they're the rebel bad-boys of science, when they're mainly just considered mentalists.
Here's the deceptive methods they used to recruit biologist PZ Myers