Can’t get enough ripping into the nonsense De Dora and Pigliucci are peddling? Then go read Ophelia Benson (always good advice) and Jerry Coyne. Coyne points out that if De Dora’s way of thinking were correct, than Darwin’s Origin would be banned from the science classroom. He also brings up this enlightening response to a question by De Dora:
Deen: “Are you saying that it’s OK to teach people that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, but it’s wrong to teach them that the earth isn’t 6000 years old?”
De Dora: Yes. One imparts scientific knowledge. The other denies a religious idea. One is constitutional; the other is not. There is no reason for a high school biology teacher to get into denying specific religious ideas in a high school biology class.
Oh, right. That’s philosophical subtlety: pretend your students are morons who can’t see that those are two equivalent claims. We’re also supposed to pretend that the facts we teach have no implications or meaning: here, please, memorize this data for regurgitation on the tests. Don’t worry about what it all means, don’t look for integrating themes and explanations, don’t let your preconceptions be challenged. We aren’t allowed to do that in science.
That isn’t philosophy. That’s a philosophical abomination.
And some people wonder why I get so aggressive in my condemnations…
Absolutely right, PZ. Teaching people that the earth is 4.5 billion years old discredits the idea that the earth is 6000 years old, so what the hell is De Dora on about? He’s trying to separate the two things, when they’re aspects of the same thing. This is nuts!
“How, how DARE you me NAMES! That destroys the civility of any conversation, and without civility, how can people of differing points of view have any proper dialogue, you motherfucking cocksucking shithead douchebag!” (Said without awareness of either hyprocrisy or irony.)
Sigh. It just does go on, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I read that from De Dora.
If you were unwarranted in calling him a witless wanker initially that comment should have removed any objection.
It is possible to hold logically that the earth is both 4.5 billion years and 6,000 years old. But only if you completely redefine the words.
Who could possibly satisfy De Dora’s weird demands? Is this the logical extreme of accommodationism?
Hey all,
Talking of nonsense, Ben Stein has sounded off about how he resents everything liberal….
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/15/same-old-liberals-then-and-now#comment_275905
I think the comments section deserves some pharyngulating.
Maybe De Dora should look up Lebenswelt in the dictionary.
BdN
Criticize away! As you say, this all degardes the debate. Someday, the debate will be much more efficient…..perhaps not in my lifetime, sadly.
That makes no sense. If I say snow is cold, I’ve already said it’s not hot be default. why not actually put it out in the open? Is this doublethink?
De Dora answer is among the dumbest things ever utter in English. By saying that the world is 4.5 billion years old, you are saying that it isn’t just 6000 years old. Could I say that the world isn’t 6764 years old, since no religion actually claims that? So I can’t say that dinosaurs and people did not co-exists? If I say there were no midgets at the beginning of time, am I breaking the constitution?
So we need to teach science but somehow ignore math.
“Yes little Timmy, if you want to believe that 6,000 = 4,500,000,000 then we won’t deny your specific religious idea.”
Seriously, this kind of argument passes for rationality at the CFI?
“There is no reason for a high school biology teacher to get into denying specific religious ideas in a high school biology class.”
It’s pretty sad that they are reduced to protecting their idiocy through censorship. So much for the Enlightenment.
CBPooh: Oh, my! Didn’t you hear? We aren’t allowed to educate our children in basic logic these days, oh my no! Why, education isn’t what school’s about! It’s there to ‘build character,’ to ‘give them self-esteem,’ and ‘ecnourage them to self-educate’.
We don’t actually teach these days. That’s old-fashioned.
/sarcasm
Seriously, if that kind of ‘logic’ continues, they’ll need to self-educate. Two or three decades of this kind of thinking in our schools and all the smaart people will be home-schooling their kids, not the fundies.
Over at Ophelia Benson’s blog someone has pointed out that not only is the comment by De Dora idiotic in itself, it is also bad teaching.
It seems that if students come to a class with preconceptions the best way to get them to overcome those preconceptions is to challenge them head on.
Someone on another thread claimed that PZ was fighting the same battles as De Dora. This is evidence he is not. De Dora actively opposes good teaching practice, and I am dammed sure PZ one of the battles PZ is passionate about is ensuring schools provide top quality education using teaching methods that have been shown to work.
De Dora’s subtle, nuanced philosophy is that you can’t teach kids concepts like 4.5×10^9 != 6000 and that the truth of one proposition implies the falsity of contrary propositions? Lolwut? Michael De Dora is one stupid mofo. I’m not saying he’s not smart — that would just be rude — but he’s dumber than a sack of what he shovels.
Maybe PZ has the wrong CFI… This sounds like the Center For Inanity.
I am a card-carrying family member of CFI because I thought I could count on them to present a clear, persuasive pro-science message. This is not cutting it.
Well, you were nice in this post, so you can expect letters of apology accompanied by fruit baskets from the tone-deafened like Pigliucci any minute now.
Because nice is all that seems to matter to them.
PZ said:
Uhm – terminology nitpick: No, they are not equivalent. Because there are an infinite number of other numbers to pick besides “6000” and “4.5 billion”. While it is true that “is 4.5 billion” necessarily implies “is not 6000”, the reverse would also have to be true to use the word “equivalent”, and it’s not. “is not 6000” does not necessarily imply “is 4.5 billion”. It could mean “is 3000” or “is 42” or “is 7 billion” and so on.
I understand and agree with what you meant to say PZ, but “X necessarily implies Y”, which is what you should have said, does not mean the same thing as “X and Y are equivalent statements”.
I wonder what DeDora thinks the teacher should do when, after teaching the kids that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, one of them says, but the Bible says it is only 6000! Is the teacher supposed to remain silent? Say, well, I can’t tell you whether that’s true or not? Can you imagine a better way to undermine the teacher’s intellectual authority? Jesus Christ on a Cracker.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston? Sometimes there are four… Sometimes there are five…. Sometimes there are 6000… Sometimes there are all of these at once.”
Here is another example of fundie xian idiocy. They can be so cute when they try to think sometimes.
This is BTW, a standard fundie tactic. Storm into the schools and scream and yell. Sort of the fundie equivalent of a dog barking.
Some fundies think teaching that “hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe” is blashemous.
While this would fit in well with FSTDT, what seems to be happening here is this. The parents are extremely stupid and ignorant. It sounded sciency even though they had no idea what it meant. So they went into full witch hunter mode.
I’d be surprised if they bothered to keep their kids in school and pleasantly surprised if their kids survived their parents idiocy without permanent damage.
Minor nitpick: The two claims are not equivalent. You could for example have a world that was not 4.5 billion years old but wasn’t 6000 years old either. Maybe it was created last thursday.
teaching should train students with correct ideas, and should correct false ideas when possible.
but since all religious ideas are false, and since some people identify very strongly with their religions, and since these same people uphold the education system, to allow that system to explicitly teach that their religions are false seems very dangerous. i mean, dangerous as in violence against schools, teachers, and students. it’s not good territory, whether or not it is philosophically admirable.
so, do scientific ideas have to be taught with religious correctives?
“the earth is 4.5 billion years old. it is not 6000 years old, as some people believe – this is simply a tribal folk tale.”
“humans evolved from non-human predecessors. all life on earth descends from a common ancestor. in case you’re wondering, no, humans, and life in general, were not created by a sky-god over a period of several days. this is just an ancient and basically meaningless tribal folk tale.”
“death is the end of life and consciousness, and is permanent. jesus did not rise from the dead after 3 days, and may not have even existed. if he did exist, he didn’t die for your sins, but probably because he was an insurrectionist cult leader.”
this would be a disaster. church-parents would be storming the schools with torches and pitchforks.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me leery of CFI. I started an atheist group in my area and an active CFI community in a nearby city immediately wanted to cooperate on events and promotions and I was noncommittal for this very reason. Not all CFI members, but at least the prominent ones near the top, are almost entirely morons. I can’t think of a single thing one of the people fitting that description have said on this area that isn’t inane, blathering nonsense of the kind that supports our intellectual adversaries.
“…but it’s wrong to teach them that the earth isn’t 6000 years old?”
Stating the obvious: saying the earth is 6,000 years old is not only a religious claim. It’s also a factual claim, subject to scientific investigation.
Case closed.
You know, I sorta see where De Dora’s driving, but I still think it’s missing the point by 10 miles.
Its really all quite clear. We have a new synthesis of ultimate post modernism and quantum theory.
Postmodernism tries to tell us to respect all views simultaneously, reduced to its all too obvious absurdum it must say therefore that 4.5 billon = 6000, no probs.
Quantum theory, listen up Polkinghorne et al here’s a new take for you, must be telling us that the wave equation has yet to collapse on a 4.5 billon/6000 year superposition. We obviously aren’t observing hard enough to collapse it.
See, its easy this stuff.
I don’t think science teachers/classes should explicitly state that the Earth is not 6,000 years old (any more than they should state that the Earth is not 10,000 years old, is not 50,000 years old etc etc etc) – without some reason to do so.
If asked, if (or told that) the Earth is 6,000 (or anything vastly different than 4.5Bn) years old, then categorically this then becomes a scientific question, and science teachers should be absolutely free to say ‘no, the Earth is not 6,000 years old, and here’s why…’
A science teacher should not get into denying any specific religious belief, unless that specific religious belief is brought up, particularly as a counterarguement to the science – in many cases this may end up being more enlightening than the general fact memorization that I recall science classes being.
Archaneus #24 wrote:
Heh. I’ve been a member for years, and one of the things that’s usually noted by other members is that the ‘people at the top’ often disagree with each other quite a bit. CFI isn’t a good choice to use, if you want to illustrate a harmonious hegemony.
Like I said, I want De Dora to loan me $6000, but when he writes the check he needs to write it as $4,500,000,000. Of course, when I pay it back I’ll write the check for $6000. After all, he can’t tell me that one of those numbers is not the other.
So let me get this straight:
De Dora was NOT defending creationism and if you claim he was your obviously an idiot who doesn’t know anything and is just out to attack the poor, misunderstood CFI.
De Dora was NOT defending Creationism by claiming it’s impossible to prove it wrong.
De Dora is NOT defending creationism by saying people’s religion should never be challenged in the classroom.
I know both of those are arguments used constantly by creationists, but its NOT the same when he does it because… um…
*reads De Dora’s answer*
Huh. What a dumbass. How does he intend to stop religious politics from taking over the classroom under that policy?
Don’t like that 2+2=4? No problem. Your god says that 2+2=5. Now De Dora can only teach students that 4-2=2, but dare he add 2 to both sides of the equation? DARE HE???
Got some answers wrong on your test? No problem. Your god says that you were right. Dare De Dora not give you a perfect score on the test? DARE HE???
De Dora’s distinction between scientific knowledge and religious ideas is the sort of nonsense which often comes from philosophic academia.
There is no such special thing as a “religious idea”. There are just ideas. Some ideas accurately represent reality and some do not.
I see where he was trying to go, which is saying teachers shouldn’t just start picking off religious claims with no provocation–no attacks (besides, they might leave one out). But he loses it when he says “there is no reason to”. If a kid asks, the teacher has a reason to answer, and to give a straight answer. But that can be done non-confrontationally.
For instance, my wife recently had to deal with a classroom of 3rd-graders talking about a classmate being missing-and-presumed-drowned. She told me about her day, and how she deflected suggestions that they pray, and questions about whether little Timmy was in Heaven. She didn’t confront or argue, neither did she confirm. She said things like. “You could do that” and “You could say that”, but she didn’t discuss religion in the school.
So a science teacher can teach the facts, and react as needed to questions in the room. There may be no reason to start saying, “So six-thousand years is wrong, the book of Mormon is wrong, Rabbi Hillel is wrong, Chief Wiggum is wrong, your crazy uncle Ned is wrong…”
But if a fundie kid says, “My preacher says … ” The teacher has reason to say, “Science disagrees for these reasons … ” or otherwise disagree and deflect a religious discussion, not just snapping out a “Wrong“.
Keep in mind that the school has rules to follow, but don’t say that there is never a reason for a teacher to deny specific religious ideas.
@23:
I can understand that there is a difference between teaching that the Earth is 4.5 byo, and teaching that the Earth is specifically not 6000 years old.
But this distinction is collapsed all too easily. What are teachers supposed to say when a child asks: “So the Earth isn’t 6000 years old, like my daddy/pastor tells me?” I would assume that it is the right and duty of the educator to clear that up. And once you have shared that information with one child/class, what right have you to keep that information from others?
I think a simple “This class does not discuss the Bible nor its claims” would be sufficient.
Okay, I just read Jerry Coyne and I agree with him. Telling the students that creation “scientists” claim 6000 years is not the same as saying Christianity claims 6000 years. So Duane Gish is definitely wrong, but Jesus isn’t necessarily wrong.
I just want to know, if the Earth isn’t 4.5 billion years old, how does that prove the Biblical claim versus any of the other creation myths societies have created in the last 7,000 years.
And FFS, the Bible does not say the earth is 6,000 years old. Some looney did a simplistic calculation based on poorly translated accounts of peoples ages in the Bible to arrive at that infernal number. There is no good reason to accept that as an accurate number nor as some proclamation in the Bible. It is someone’s interpretation of the Bible, not holy writ.
“some people wonder why I get so aggressive in my condemnations”
For what it’s worth, I don’t.
And posters on Fark mock me for starting with whether (P OR Q) is logically equivalent to (Q OR P)….
@35
once prompted by a student, i don’t see why a teacher shouldn’t state the truth, but i think it would be in his/her interests to do it carefully and then move on. there’s not a single answer to this problem – it would depend on the teacher, his classroom, the school, the town, etc. some teachers might feel safer getting into a detailed refutation of religious anti-science, and others might want to avoid it entirely (per @36).
minus the navel gazing about epistemology and philosophy of science, de dora and pigliucci have good points. pushing back and aggressively countering misconception and simple superstition are totally in the domain of a teacher’s job. but pushing back and countering *religion* is dangerous, and while it may lead to step-by-step legal advances over many years, meanwhile it’s led to the gridlock and collapse of a science class.
in many environments, the best a teacher can do for religious students is to give them everything they could need to figure out the truth for themselves, and otherwise to keep hands off and avoid the most severe conflict. advocating a hardline approach for teachers in these situations is, like i said before, dangerous.
re 42:
My suggested answer was not just to duck the issue but to make it plain that the bible is no more relevant to a science class than discussing different types of wood is to a metalshop class, nor welding in woodshop.
“One imparts scientific knowledge. The other denies a religious idea.”
Well, that’s a little, er, unsmart. If I am 20 years old, then I’m not 5 years old. One logically, automatically implies the other. My guess is people from certain religions just don’t like getting logical and implicational. Actually, they don’t do much with the statements and assertions their book and their priests give them, do they? Instead, they just keep receiving and accepting them as they come, a bit like people with compulsive hoarding.
@23: “this would be a disaster. church-parents would be storming the schools with torches and pitchforks.”
They would be using fear and violence to get people to shut up. That’s a little like terrorism, isn’t it?
If we’ve watched the news for the last couple of years, isn’t it peculiar that atheists are presented as disrespectful, angry, dangerous-to-society people with no morals because they set posters and ads, while religious people go around showing off their guns, killing doctors, spraying gas into another religion’s buildings with people inside, discriminating against gays, and raping children in the sacristy, and yet they are the decent, loving people?
Then by that standard you would need to remove the entire two page section that includes this verbiage.
As has been pointed out already, the comment in question deals with the history of the ToE as it relates to challenges to its status as the only theory that sufficiently scientifically explains the evidence we have in the fossil record.
It is a critical part of the history of the theory, and in other disciplines, we deem the history of the acquisition of knowledge for that particular discipline relevant and necessary… I see no reason to make an exception with Biology. And given that context, I don’t see how any rational, clear thinking person should be offended by the specific word usage as long as it is accurate and factual.
The attitude De Dora advocates is just an invitation for the AiG freaks to bring all their “Awkward Questions for Darwinists” to class. That’s exactly why groups like AiG and the DI publish those sorts of articles. Teachers have to either explain why the creationist claims are wrong or avoid the subject completely for fear of challenging somebody’s religious beliefs.
Claims about how the Grand Canyon was formed or how shellfish fossils got on mountain tops or what processes and time spans are involved in the formation of fossil fuels are claims of fact that are either supported by evidence or not. How can one demonstrate why one explanation is true or well supported without exposing other explanations as false or unlikely?
Fundie reasoning is innately insane so I am insufficiently surprised to comment, but I signed on to call the attention of those who might care that cjonline.com (the web page of the Topeka, Kansas daily paper), has a more than usually foolish poll about the governor’s veto of an abortion-impediment bill. While not the ordinary target of this horde, it does need a bit of adjusting.
Sounds easy to get an A is any class De Dora teaches: Everything’s true! Nothing’s false!
“I think a simple “This class does not discuss the Bible nor its claims” would be sufficient.”
You know, therE’s something bugging me about this answer. Basically it’s that someone can say all kinds of random crap and you can’t say “THAT’S WRONG.” the minute they claim it’s their religion.
Hey, you can use this for pretty much anything!
Deen: “Are you saying that it’s OK to teach people that influenza is caused by a virus, but not OK to teach them that influenza isn’t caused by an evil demon summoned by a witch’s curse?”
De Dora: Yes. One imparts scientific knowledge. The other denies a religious idea. One is constitutional; the other is not.
Deen: “Are you saying that it’s OK to teach people that human babies are conceived by sexual reproduction when an ovum is fertilised by a sperm cell, but not OK to teach them that human babies are therefore not delivered by magic storks to their parents’ doorstep?”
De Dora: Yes. One imparts scientific knowledge. The other denies a religious idea. One is constitutional; the other is not.
PZ: here, please, memorize this data for regurgitation on the tests.
Nail. Head.
They are specifically expected NOT to understand the material — it slows down perfect regurgitation.
This is No Child Left Behind — an intellectual abomination that reduces children to recording devices, one that our friend Obama is normalizing.
This is the philosophical mainstream of the US. Knowledge is a “resource”, people are “resources” — just economic machines to be accounted for in the same way that hammers and nails are.
The US makes me sad.
April 21, 2010 is the 100th anniversary of the death of Mark Twain:
“Man’s mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little trivialities together and gets a result – such as it is. My mind creates! Do you get the force of that? Creates anything it desires – and in a moment. Creates without material. Creates fluids, solids, colors – anything, everything – out of the airy nothing which is called Thought. A man imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine to make it, imagines a picture, then by weeks of labor embroiders it on canvas with the thread. I think the whole thing, and in a moment it is before you – created. I think a poem, music, the record of a game of chess – anything – and it is there. This is the immortal mind – nothing is beyond its reach. Nothing can obstruct my vision: the rocks are transparent to me, and darkness is daylight. I do not need to open a book; I take the whole of its contents into my mind at a single glance, through the cover; and in a million years I could not forget a single word of it, or its place in the volume. Nothing goes on in the skull of man, bird, fish, insect, or other creature which can be hidden from me. I pierce the learned man’s brain with a single glance, and the treasures which cost him threescore years to accumulate are mine; he can forget, and he does forget, but I retain.” – from “The Mysterious Stranger”
It’s important to give kids a choice in what they want to believe. If for example, they choose sensibly that the world is 4.5 billion whatever… they obviously will reject the YEH and perhaps all the religious trappings around it so much the better. They’ll have a better economic life and perhaps a richer and fuller life as well. If they reject the old earth, and embrace the the loser theory, then they’ll be destined to a much more difficult life of underachievement, closed off within their cultural niche. 80 or 90 years ago the world was full of quaint ideas, little cultural groups that kept to themselves. We’ve lost that to the homogeneity of the modern world.
That’s just silly. My mum found me in a cabbage patch.
somnolent: if they reject the old earth, and embrace the the loser theory, then they’ll be destined to a much more difficult life of underachievement
Like Bush or Pat Robertson? Yeah, they’re crying all the way to the bank.
The truth does not make you rich. On the other hand, lies can — if you’re a dom.
This is all supposed to be about the law and the ruling of the courts. On that level, I sympathize a little with #36 and #42.
But only a little.
The fact of the matter is that if we want to know what it’s reasonable to say in context, we must — at minimum — appeal to trivial logical inference. If the courts say that you can’t do this, then the word “reasonable” is utterly meaningless.
So it doesn’t matter whether the teacher makes a logical inference in the spirit of testy, impromptu villainy. If X necessarily follows from Y, and Y is okay, then so is X — full stop. Appeals to context can be fine in some cases with respect to some kinds of questions, but this is a bare minimum standard that we’re dealing with here. For courts that fail to recognise this bare minimum standard of rationality undermine their own rational legitimacy, and must be held in contempt.
re 45:
First my answer was to the question “But the bible says…”. It was not meant to be an absolute standard that all reference to the bible in any context is to be forbidden. Just that it is not the purpose or scope of the class to discuss the truth or falsehood of the bible, but to teach science as currently understood.
Would a history teacher spend as much time explaining all the inaccuracies in “Cleopatra” (with Elizabeth Taylor) when trying to teach ancient Egypt? Well maybe she would, but only as a way to engage the students, the difference being that everyone already accepts it as fiction only loosely tied to history, but what if someone adamantly insisted it was true? Should the teacher spend a lot of time trying to disprove it or just move along saying the movie is not part of the syllabus?
If a teacher says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and Little Johnny says “my pastor says the Earth is only 6000 years old because God said so in the Bible” then what does De Dora think the teacher’s response should be?
a. Maybe your pastor is right.
b. Your pastor is wrong because [scientific explanation].
c. I’m not allowed to comment on that.
d. All of the above.
re 58:
e. the history of the earth as described in the bible can be interpreted to be about 6000 years, but this class is about science’s understanding of the universe which shows the earth to be about 4.5 billion years old.
@’Tis
I asked De Dora, giving him Sastra’s theoretical dialogue from a previous thread. Here is his proposed teacher/student interaction:
Student: “How old is the earth?”
Teacher: “Science tells us it is 4.5 billion years old.”
Student: “You mean it’s not 6,000 years old?”
Teacher: “Not according to the scientific evidence.”
Student: “But my religion tells me the earth is 6,000 years old.”
Teacher: “Well, that’s your religion, and this is the science classroom.”
Student: “But it can’t be both.”
Teacher: “That’s for you to decide.”
When they get God off the money and out of the pledge of allegiance, I might give a listen to this accomodationist hair-splitting crap. The leeway around church-state separation is always all on their side.
And something about beams in your own eye and motes in other people’s.
I’ll note explicitly that the interaction De Dora comes up with straight out tells the student that they have to choose between religion and science. I suppose it’s not accurate to call him an accomodationist, since they’re generally all about telling religious people they don’t have to choose. But doesn’t it sure look like he’s weighing science and religion as equivalent ways of knowing?
I mean, I know he doesn’t consider them as such. But when the best approach he can come up with has that end result, perhaps you’d think he would rethink it?
I suppose this validates the maxim that ‘philosophy is to scholarship as pornography is to sex’. Oh, and ‘flanneur’ must be French for ‘fluffer’.
Huh. I always thought it was the parents and institutions that wished to remove evolution, big bang theory, and deep-time geology from the classroom that were leading to the gridlock and collapse of the science class.
It seems pretty hard to collapse a science class when you can’t teach, you know, science.
What’s a “hardline approach?” Is it answering questions honestly? Is it trying to clear up misconceptions, as they arise, about the nature of reality, which impede the understanding of biology, cosmology, or geology?
Why should a science teacher, merely trying to teach actual science, be responsible for the reactions of the parents or students? It seems patently absurd to avoid discussing science simply because it conflicts with old books of myth.
de Dora: “science classrooms should teach science.”
Pz: “witless wanker peddles pablum for CFI”
As Pigliucci says, this is a ad hominem fallacy -regarless of the issue, abouth which I happen to agree with Jerry Coyne and Pz.
Folks, I think most of you have been deflected from the primary issue in this instance. Everyone is talking about the 6000 year issue while the real issue here is with the use of “Judeo-Christian bible!
The last time I checked, most of those of the Jewish persuasion don’t normally avail themselves of use of the Judeo-Christian bible as the term has come to mean the Christian Bible.
If the language in the subject textbook were something on the order of: “The best current scientific evidence leads us to the conclusion that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old not, 6000, 600,000 or 600,000,000 years old”, the current issue wouldn’t exist, IMHO. Most truly knowledgeable people would certainly realize why this particular number series was used without the resultant circumstances that now exist.
The authors of the text and the textbook selection group just didn’t think far enough ahead given our current cultural situation. I just don’t see why it is at all necessary to give the fundies a leg up when it can so easily be avoided. Of course this case is an exception as it is usually the fundies that are trying to get “positive” language of their particular beliefs into our public school science classrooms.
I have to strongly disagree with pz, jerry and anyone else who thinks that talking about (in any form or format) the “mythology” of the Judeo-Christian bible in a biology classroom is appropriate or necessary. While that language is factual (as any knowledgeable person has to agree) it is a rather direct criticism of Christianity and I rather suspect that a court of competent jurisdiction might agree and rule that the language is in violation of the 1st A.
And by no stretch of the imagination am I an “accomodationist”. My concern is in good tax money being spent on ridiculous law suits instead of providing the services that it should.
#19: it is relatively simple to say something on the order of, “We don’t discuss religious beliefs in this classroom; that is a discussion that belongs in some form of social studies classroom or a comparative religion classroom.” Then the learning facilitator could repeat the fact that the best current scientific evidence leads us to believe that the earth is . . ..
#36: Yes!
#39: Yes!
I did not read all 64 comments; my post is based on the fact that “Judeo” is nowhere to be found in the first 64 comments.
Even Pigliucci has by now copped to improperly using ad hominem (I sure hope his students don’t read his blog, that’s embarassing). The funny part is he’s now calling “poisoning the well”, which may be true. But it seems what was most important to him was pinning “logical fallacy” somewhere to PZ’s post so he wouldn’t have to address the substance.
By the way, Pigliucci posted another comment in his thread:
Tone trolling pablum. And he still insists that the “myth” phrase in the textbook is unconstitutional, even though anyone with any grounding in law has already disagreed on that point. But holding a degree in philosophy seems to mean he can tell the scientists how to do science, and the J.D.’s how to do law.
#65: Pz: “witless wanker peddles pablum for CFI”
As Pigliucci says, this is a ad hominem fallacy -regarless of the issue, abouth which I happen to agree with Jerry Coyne and Pz.
Okay — nothing unimportant pisses me off more than the internet misuse of the term “ad hominem”. That’s absolute proof that Congress is just about to pass a law keeping your spouse from pulling your life-support.
Look, kid, “ad hominem” refers to the use of an irrelevant personal attack as the basis of a logical refutations. Aka, “incredu is wrong about ad hominem because she eats children for breakfast”.
It doesn’t refer to gratuitous insults. It doesn’t refer to attacks on credibility, or discussions of agendas. It’s not a rule of rhetoric — it’s an ancient term generally misused, which is strictly unnecessary since we learned to separate logic from rhetoric.
In short — it should almost never be used as an argument itself. It’s sufficient to say “irrelevant” — and avoid the pseudo-intellectualism of using Latinate terms for a particular form of irrelevancy; this error would be generally avoided if folks stopped using Latinate terms at all, a particular failing of Anglophonic pseudo-intellectualism.
In my view, worse than Godwinning a thread.
It’s much simpler to say that young earth creationism has been proven false by the evidence in the same way the geocentrism and the firmament have been proven false. If someone complains that this is about religion, point out that religion has nothing to do with it. It is about the facts that scientists have discovered.
BradW:
I’m a bit confused. You cite SteveM (#39) approvingly, but he noted that the contentious statement is *not* a direct statement about Christianity (in the sense of a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian bible). That is, you won’t find the 6-to-10-thousand-years figure in the Bible anywhere. So it isn’t a direct criticism of Christianity. It’s just something that some fool extrapolated… and which has been taken as a religious claim by a loosely defined movement of American post-Protestants.
@Paul:
Wow, he’s really a philosopher, and doesn’t play one on TV? The standards sure must be low nowadays to get a Ph.D. in philosophy.
This isn’t a court-room, where you’re acting as an agent of another, and you’re personal standing is irrelevant to the content of your message.
There are agendas and process at work. Things do need to be contextualized. This BS kindergarten rules of argumentation are just a way of protecting oneself from the implications of your systematic arguments. It’s such complete bullshit, appropriate for “Intro to Law” courses and high-school philosophy semesters.
Pathetic.
I propose a simple mental experiment, just for fun. Suppose a bunch of scrolls were discovered, the oldest yet version of the book of Genesis, and it were proven to be 20.000 years old. Or 40.000.
Or 4.5 billion years…
– Carl Sagan
andrew h (#42)
Except De Dora isn’t just talking about this being legally dangerous. He’s got a personal beef with anyone addressing religious beliefs in the science classroom. Here are his own words from the original article:
I even asked him directly if he was trying to paraphrase the government in his reply to Deen (and did he understand himself how both statements deny the religious claim) and this was his reply to me:
He also added a postscript to his article which contains this: “we do not need to deny religious ideas to teach our children about biology.” So he’s really not just saying what the government allows or doesn’t allow. He really does seem to think that “it is one thing to teach biology; it is another to deny religious ideas.”
– Carl Sagan
Organic materials such as papyrus, vellum, and parchment don’t last that long, even in the desert. But supposing it was inscribed in stone or on metal plates or something?
Then the entire disciplines of archaeology, cultural anthropology, historical linguistics, and ancient history, just for starters, would need to be rewritten from scratch. Pretty much everything we (thought) we know would be wrong.
Never mind a copy of Genesis. Any artifact shown to be even within orders of magnitude of that old would force us to reconsider the entire history of the Earth.
What is the point of such an exercise?
i should have said “Lets posit a young earth creationist confronted with a 4.5 billion year old bible, would (s)he believe what the bible supposedly says about the age of the earth/universe, or would (s)he believe the actual age of that bible/word of God?”
Why don’t “tone” people ever seem to actually respond to these points?
Maybe because they’re the tone people… sigh.
I have not called Pigliucci an idiot, and I don’t think he is.
I have called De Dora an idiot, and I do think he is.
re 78:
since they seem to have rejected all our methods of dating stuff, what makes you think you could convince them it is 4.5billion years old to begin with?
Andyo:
That would require paying attention to the substance of a discussion, including answering direct questions. The tone trolls almost always exhibit a failure to engage. It’s beyond annoying.
re 81:
I’m sorry, “what makes you think …” was just rhetoric, not any kind of assumption of what you think. I should have said, “I doubt you could convince them it was that old to begin with”
Ah. I see, a bible older than the bible says the universe is.
They’d just deny it, like everything else.
it´s still a Gedankenexperiment. You have to imagine “the young earth creationist” must believe the book to be as old as it is because it´s the bible…
I’ve never heard of De Dora, but it sounds to me like PZ hears “don’t criticize religion” and automatically ignores the rest of the idea.
Not criticizing religion in a science classroom makes perfect sense. There are all sorts of crazy things that people could possibly believe, and rather than going out of your way to specifically deny them, why not just give people the actual scientific truth and the explanations for it and have confidence that students aren’t morons and can grasp the consequences without you spelling it out for them.
No, the problem is how do you get them to accept that it is actually older than what what it says in the text of the bible? How would they know that it is supposed to be 50,000 years old since they reject all the methods science uses to date things like that?
Actually, a better summary would be De Dora sees Fox News (did you know he used to be a news writer and editor for foxnews.com?), hears “biology class” and “creation myth”, and automatically ignores the entire context. I applaud PZ for calling him out on it.
PZ stratagem can be called ad hominem as well as ad personam /may we all be pedantic.
And Pigliucci does address the issue -if any one cares to read.
Myth is an acceptable term to refer to the christian doctrine of creation precisely because it is the academic term and thus neutral with respect to church/state separation, ie, it doesn’t favour any particular religious doctrine. Not because it is deliberately adversarial, but because it’s anthropology.
Now the issue: I genuinely don’t understand how can PZ hold both that creationism is nonsense and that it is empirically testable; that creationism is bullshit and nevertheless science can and has nothing better to do than try to take supernaturalist bullshit seriously and then falsify it.
Creationism is not even wrong, that’s because science has nothing to say about it.
Seems like you’ve also never heard of what De Dora said, or what PZ did, for that matter.
Did you even read the dumb, shallow, masturbatory, “philosophical” quote in the original post here? If I’m going to masturbate, mentally or otherwise, it’s not going to be to something so unbelievably lame.
As if “nonsense” and “empirically testable” are mutually exclusive. Human babies being delivered exclusively by storks is nonsense. It’s still empirically testable.
Nostrum:
If you were actually capable of reading and comprehending, you’d find that is what the discussion is about. Since you came to this conclusion:
You’ve shown you can’t handle reading about the situation, from either PZ’s or De Dora’s point of view, let alone the commenters here. You obviously didn’t bother to read Ophelia Benson or Jerry Coyne on this matter. Go away and learn something. Then, perhaps, you can manage an actual contribution to the discussion.
Do I really have to spell it out. My original post was meant to be obvious… I´m sorry. Imagine the coexisting truths “earth 6000” “earth 4.5 billion” (which is what this thread is about) crammed into a young earth creationist´s head, with the authority of the bible, not science, behind it.
Yeah as I said I had no idea who De Dora is and what he (?) has done. Your summary could be true but I wasn’t talking about the person, just the quote.
Nonsense (=bullshit) and empirically testable ARE mutually exclusive.
BradW #66
Refuting a religious-based factual statement is appropriate for a science class. “The Flat Earthers say the Earth is flat, this belief is shown false by [facts denying flat earthism]” would hardly be condemned by anyone (except the Flat Earthers, of course). So why do accommodationists like you whine about “Creationists say the Earth is 6000 years old, this is show false by [facts denying creationism]”? You accommodationists just don’t want to get the goddists annoyed. That’s just too bad. Nobody has the right not to feel insulted.
By the way, you insufferable asshole, the term isn’t “learning facilitator.” it’s “teacher.”
Jan:
We get it. Really. Thing is, it wouldn’t work. The 6,000 years old business isn’t biblical. Archbishop James Ussher, in 1650, studied the bible and historical sources and concluded, in Annals of the Old Testament, that the earth had been created at midday on October 23, 4004 B.C. If that weren’t bad enough, some books claim Ussher made his pronouncement in 1650, others in 1654, and yet others in 1664.
Creationists treat that as if it were biblical though. If you could hold up ancient scrolls and pronounce them to be X amount of years old, it wouldn’t change anything. They would find some way to twist it to fit their views. They do that now.
You’re an idiot. Especially with the “bullshit” equivalence. Whatever you may think of Penn and Teller, they’ve had a successful television show with an emphasis on empirically testing bullshit. If you’re going to continue, please address my previous comment, instead of simply asserting.
lol I like your fixation on masturbation, and how you assume that if I am disagreeing with you I must have a worse understanding of the quote.
This is what I would call a masturbatory comment, or at least having an arrogant/sneering tone.
But for your point, you’re right. I saw most of the comments were “good job” and was more putting myself on the negative side rather than trying to offer anything people wouldn’t have thought of… but if I put it that way, it does sound a bit stupid. I apologize.
Sorry, I was confused by your use of the phrase “old as it actually is”. The bible has many contradictory statements in it and it doesn’t stop them them from declaring the whole thing to be irrently true, why would contradictory ages of the earth be any different?
I thought you were asking about if the text contradicted some other evidence that they would accept as dating the book to be older than the text says. My point being there probably can not be any other evidence they would accept.
I think #95 means that bullshit claims are necessarily never offered in a way that they might be empirically tested (or falsified, or whatever).
But that doesn’t make any difference. Bullshit claims are often empirically testable. You just can’t rely on the honest intentions and plain speaking of the bullshitter to help you go through with the testing.
Part of teaching science is explaining away common misconceptions. Since over 60% of Americans don’t accept evolution, I’d say that qualifies creationism as a common misconception.
re 100: “irrently” –> inerrently
That’s not even true. “Believers” in all sorts of bullshit are more than willing to offer them in ways that lend themselves towards empirical testing, unless you point out that they can be falsified. Then they move the goalposts. But it’s trivial to find people asserting bullshit in ways that leave it open to empirical testing (see: skepchick testing whether saying nice things to a cut apple will keep it fresh longer).
Well as long as you admit you’re a pedant, it’s OK to misrepresent. Ad hominem is not ad hominem if there is substance within the insults. The “tone” people seem to always miss this.
That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that someone used the word (and probably in the “academic” manner you’re yourself suggesting), and some lunatic complained.
You don’t? What others here don’t understand is exactly how those two propositions are mutually exclusive, as I’m sure others will have already pointed out by the time this post goes up, cause it’s so obvious bullshit.
Because saying the earth is 6000 years old is unfalsifiable?
This should have been blockquoted too in my above post:
Often claims are determined to be bullshit after they’ve been falsified by empirical testing.
Dammit this too should have been blockquoted:
Damn blockquote breaks on 2nd paragraphs.
Reality check time… despite the desire of many here (myself included a some posts) to stomp on anyone who seems to disagree with PZ, perhaps we should consider what’s actually allowed, de facto, in public schools? I’m not certain how it might work in MN, but in NC there’s no way that I’m going to get away with bringing up and then criticising a popular religious point of view in a biology class, which is what it seems that is being advocated. If a student brings it up I can address it, within the bounds of civility. “Tone trolls” may be annoying on the internet, but parents of public school children and the administrators who will happily tie me to the stake so the parents can set it alight are tone trolls all day, every day. It’s not that we can’t deny that the creationist account is accurate, but we need to do that by presenting the evidence to the contrary and supporting the scientific view rather than belittling someone’s views. Sorry, folks, but a classroom is not the Internet, and there are standards of conduct we can’t get around until you manage to get the Xians out of power first. Hopefully a little less tact is required in some of the more progressive ststes, but it certainly doesn’t work that way here.
That doesn’t include not being able to refer to creationism as a myth, because that’s a defensible position. Personally, I find it more effective to present the evidence, and perhaps shred some religious creation story with which the students aren’t inherently familiar (and emotionally attached to), and just watch the light dawn when they realise that their own beliefs are subject to the same criticism.
The problem here is that the establishment clause prevents the government (and someone like a teacher who is an employee thereof) from promoting one religion over another. Attacking a common religious point of view in the classroom is probably more a grey area than a direct violation of this, but if the teacher likes sleeping indoors and eating meals, they’re not likely to take that risk.
@ Matt Penfold> The ed. literature is somewhat divided on how to address misconceptions, but this is a devoutly held belief, not a poorly understood concept. While directly confronting the idea that heavier objects fall faster might have some effect, attacking the religious position automatically sends students into shutdown rather than leaving them open to listen to the evidence and actually consider the inanity of their beliefs.
@ Tis Himself>
Not bringing up religion in a course where it isn’t part of the curriculum isn’t accomodationism, it’s politics. Step out of those prescribed boundaries, and whether or not they have a right not to feel insulted, you’re at the mercy of whichever administrator and parent is the greatest fundie twit.
We have. The example that started this whole fucking thing, and that Pigliucci is still calling unconstitutional, is well within what is allowed in public schools. I’ve yet to see a single person with a strong legal background that has bothered to review the case to say otherwise, and the only J.D’s I’ve seen chip in (Russell Blackford and Ron Lindsay, CEO of CFI) agree that it is not an unconstitutional statement.
The only reason the argument is broader than that is people keep ignoring the actual issue. It’s a shitton of wasted words, that resulted simply because De Dora assumed Fox News was fair and balanced and Pigliucci likes to throw invective at PZ while complaining about his tone.
incredulidadracional,
Look, I’m not interested in arguing the definitions of words.
First of all, creationism claims the Earth is ~6,000 years, animals are not closely related, and a worldwide flood happened. All this is contradicted by a massive amount of evidence from geology, physics, astrophysics, and biology. It makes empirical claims and those claims have been falsified.
Secondly, as I’ve mentioning today, science is more just looking at the evidence. The evidence certainly plays a vital role, but it’s not the only part. Occam’s razor (aka, the principle of parsimony) also plays an important part. When given two hypotheses that equally fit the data the simpler one is more likely to be right. Having been their prediction completely falsified some creationists make the claim that God made the world look really old to deceive humanity. Contrast this with the idea that the world looks that way because it really is that old. Now, scientists have nearly universally accepted the former and rejected the latters. Why? Occam’s razor. The creationist explanation is unparsimonious. Is this absolute proof that they’re wrong? No, but science rarely (if ever) deals with absolute proof. Saying something is extremely unlikely is enough to dismisss it.
The trend of some scientists not taking on religious claims seems much more like a political compromise than a rational conclusion on the limitations of science.
@110
Sorry, Russell does not have a J.D., his second doctorate is English Lit. I get confused because he writes a good bit about legal issues.
Nostrum:
I was being seriously snippy, we’ve had an influx of idiots lately. I did jump too quickly, I’m sorry for that.
Welcome to Pharyngula, where reading pays off! ;D Pull your gloves off and make yourself at home.
@ Paul> thus de facto, and not de jure. Unfortunately, whether or not something is constitutional is in the hands of whatever judge hears the case. Are you confident that a judge in NC isn’t going to side with the fundies on this one?
As I don’t have legal background, I’ll leave all that aside. The statement I’m making is that in a number of locales, mine included, a teacher who directly confronts creationism on their own, rather than in response to a student or simply offering positive evidence, is going to be without a job shortly after that lesson.
One question only tangentially related to the topic: is it just me, or is everyone in an exceptionally shitty mood with each other here today?
Usually any dissagreements on Phyrangula are handled politely and maturely, even when they’re fucking stupid, but it seems people are losing tempers left and right.
Or is it just me?
Paul, I happily accept your correction. :)
Infuriated, alright — but what does “If a student brings it up I can address it within the bounds of civility” mean? Are you barred from saying “The Earth is not 6K years old” or not? If yes, then you’re not De Dora.
Probably you’ll give a qualified “no”, or “no depending on context”. Still, what do the consequences matter? The question is whether or not it would be reasonable to assert “The Earth is not 6K years old”. It’s obviously not expedient to assert it — fine. But that’s not the same as being unreasonable to assert.
InfuriatedSciTeacher (#109) speaks wisdom.
Me, I’m not infuriated at anything….well, at least not today. But this is what I was getting at previously in emphasizing that there is no need to bloody any particular sectarian noses in order to teach biology well, and uncompromisingly.
I don’t really think much of the De Dora quotes I’ve read here and would certainly not follow his advice on pedagogy. But I suspect the insipidity of his remarks is largely attributable to clumsiness, rather than any desire to repress scientific inquiry. Maybe he’ll learn from this experience.
@ lucidish> I’m not expressly forbidden from uttering those words, no. The consequences are the “reality check” portion of this… noone’s going to risk there job to bloody the nose of Xians when the science can be taught just as well without dealing with that. It would likely be an issue if I were to address creationist ideas without prompting from a student… I can answer questions but not hop on my atheist/scientific soapbox.
As for the semantics about reasonable/expedient, I’ll cede that I chose my wording poorly on that.
Deen: “Are you saying that it’s OK to teach people that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, but it’s wrong to teach them that the earth isn’t 6000 years old?”
De Dora: Yes.
Logic: ur doin’ it rong.
That’s philosophical subtlety: pretend your students are morons who can’t see that those are two equivalent claims.
Hmm … apparently the fact that entailment is not the same as equivalence is excessively subtle. [I see from comments above that I’m late to that party.]
And some people wonder why I get so aggressive in my condemnations…
Yeah, same here.
That was humor, right? I don’t see a smiley and I don’t know you well enough to tell when you’re joking, so it’s hard to tell.
That’s true.
I guess the reason why I am motivated to insist on this line is that we now live in a world where these people are going to try to get you fired no matter what you do. So in a sense, we’re pre-effed, no matter what happens. And if you know that there’s no way to win, then you have to draw your own personal line in the sand, and take the small comforts that come with calling yourself a follower of reason and integrity, and try to balance those against the inevitable personal costs.
Or at least that’s another way of looking at the same situation. My two cents.
lucidish> I do see your reasoning… and pre-effed isn’t a bad way to summarise it. The difference is that many of the attempts don’t/won’t stick, and that, at least in my district, would. There are more insidious ways of getting the point across and sticking around to keep doing it.
As I said in the last thread, it’s a self-performing reductio ad absurdum. And it’s vapid rhetoric like that which is why this question continually keeps popping up…
Even if you try and stay away from religion, religion will find a way to come to you. It will come up, whether you like it or not.
No, its not criticizing Christianity at all to show that the earth is not 6000 years old. At the very least you’ll have to admit its not criticizing all of Christianity by far.
The claim that the earth is 6000 years old is a statement of fact that can be empirically tested, which brings it into the purview of science. Of course this claim is usually made from religious motivation, and its truth or falsehood will have religious implications for some people.
However, as long as the teacher doesn’t discuss the religious motivation, or the theological implications, he can use scientific evidence to show the claim is false – the same evidence that was already cleared for inclusion in the curriculum as religiously neutral enough to teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
You basically say that a science teacher can’t address a claim that has religious implications, because otherwise he’s breaking the First Amendment. If that’s a reasonable summary of your views, I wonder if you can answer this for me, as I have yet to hear an objection:
If a science teacher is supposed to be neutral on matters of theology, how come you want her to decide whether to address a claim based on the presence or absence of theological implications? Doesn’t that decision in itself violate the Establishment clause, by treating non-religious claims differently from religious claims? If it doesn’t violate the Establishment Clause, what would the secular purpose of such a policy be?
I would propose a different general rule: if a claim is scientifically testable, and relevant to the subject, it’s fair game for discussion in a science class. If not, the teacher can explain why it’s not suitable for science class (teaching kids about the principles and limits of science in the process, which should make people like De Dora and Pigliucci very happy), and move on. No special treatment for religion is necessary, and the secular purpose is crystal clear.
I don’t think science teachers/classes should explicitly state that the Earth is not 6,000 years old (any more than they should state that the Earth is not 10,000 years old, is not 50,000 years old etc etc etc) – without some reason to do so.
Like, say, the fact that there are widespread claims, from self-proclaimed authorities, to that effect, and that these claims are believed by a large fraction of the population.
The Supreme Court said that Creationism, being religion, cannot be taught in public school. It did not say that science — even if it contradicts some religious dogma — cannot be taught in the public school.
@KOPD
Nah, serious. Why, do you think Phyrangulites have a habit of smashing verbal heads when disagreeing?
I’ve seen them be nice and polite when discussing things amongst themselves, although as a totall n00b I’ll cheeriliy admit you probably know them better.
Believe me, it does get hard to tell if I’m being sarcastic or not. Usually, when I’m not being ridiculous or angry, just imagine Edmund Blackadder was speaking my comments; that’ll give you an idea.
While that language is factual (as any knowledgeable person has to agree) it is a rather direct criticism of Christianity and I rather suspect that a court of competent jurisdiction might agree and rule that the language is in violation of the 1st A.
Your suspicions are uninformed. School texts refer to the “creation myths” of various peoples; to single out Christianity as not a myth is to violate the 1st A.
I’d also like to add that nobody is saying that a teacher should be allowed to run his own “Errors of religion 101” class in public school, or go on a personal crusade to debunk as many religious claims over the course of a semester as she can. Having that out of the way, can we please focus on a more realistic scenario? Like where a student brings it up? Or when evolution is to be placed in a social and historic context?
P.S. There’s a lot of discussion of this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Genesis_creation_myth
Note, for instance
The universe is 3 years old, obviously. Anyone who is familiar with my goddess would know this.
Sure there is. And that reason would be when a religious idea (idea used loosely) is making a scientific claim, and it is wrong.
InfuriatedSciTeacher #109
This is a legitimate argument. Considering the politico-religious climate in many parts of the country, it would be foolhardy to piss people off by refuting religious arguments.
On the other hand, I resigned from a high level civil service job because I disagreed with the actions of a Department Secretary. There are some people willing to put their jobs on the line for the sake of what they believe to be right.
And by the way, all those First Amendment claims are just so far off base it’s sad. It’s sad that we continue to put up with those claims. You have to stretch past the breaking point to say a biology teacher who says “No, Larry, the earth is significantly more than 6000 years old” is violating the First Amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
To the point of when it is brought up by a student, as cited by the NSTA.
That’s our (science educators’) professional organisation speaking, and the one most likely to support on an issue of that type. Whether or not you agree with the relativist reasoning involved, that’s what we’re supposed to use as a guide.
Outside the classroom, I’m in full agreement with aggressively challenging creationist views, rather than just presenting the evidence for evolution. In the classroom, my job is to teach, not proselytise or deconvert. If the evidence in favour of evolution is as strong an conclusive as we all agree it is, what purpose apart from pissing someone off does telling them flatly that their views are absurd serve?
@Tis Himself>
I’m glad there are people who have the integrity, and moreso the other employment prospects to be able to do that. The majority of my colleagues are qualified to teach K-12, or …um… teach K-12. I don’t teach biology this semester, which is my last, or I might have been a little more aggressive with it personally. It doesn’t help that the NC standards, while highly rated by the NCSE, don’t have a strong emphasis on evolution as the curriculum is tested, and thus it isn’t covered in much depth. Shit, most things in biology aren’t covered in much depth, as the entire general bio class, from biochem to ecology, in order of increasing complexity of interactions, is expected to be covered in 18 weeks with time out of that for exams.
Sounds good to me. Now please explain: How does pointing out that the earth is not 6000 years old “assert that religious interpretations of this fact are not possible”? It does nothing of the sort. And if it did, wouldn’t teaching that the age of the earth is 4.5 billion years do so as well?
You don’t have to tell them their views are absurd, you just need to show them the scientific evidence that shows that they are wrong. Anything less is not doing the students a service. How they adjust their beliefs or not is their own responsibility.
I sympathize with your situation.
But I think the approach should be not to tell them that their view is absurd (although it is). A science teacher should be able to simply state that they are making a scientific claim, and that the evidence says they are wrong.
And in the example given in PZ’s post, which is about the age of the earth, it’s not even evolution. It’s just dating.
Steven Mading:
In the context, it’s clear PZ means that both claims equivalently state that Earth is not 6000 years old, rather than that they are numerically equivalent. Sheesh.
—
Joshua Zelinsky:
See above.
—
Ewan R:
Um, see above! Saying Earth is 4.5 Byo explicitly says it’s not 6000 yo.
@ Deen and Kirk>
If the only example is the age of the earth, then stating that it isn’t 6k years old, but 4.5 bil, there shouldn’t be much issue with that. Am I to assume that the entire argument was based on that example, because that doesn’t mesh with PZ’s position.
We’re in complete agreement on that. The difference appears to be that I think that can be done without having to mention their views at all. Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted you. From Coyne and Benson’s posts however, I’m not attacking a strawman of the argument PZ is supporting. I do probably fall somewhere between them and De Dora, however, for reasons of practicality more than anything else.
@Kieranfoy
Well, I’m new here as well, just not as new as you. And I guess it’s a matter of how you define polite. I may have been conflating definitions a bit, but my comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Here honesty is considered polite and dishonesty is rude. No concern is really given to tone. So regulars here have no problem with name-calling or other insult, as long as the content is intellectually honest (and as long as the epithets are not racist, sexist, etc). That said, the regulars do have a rapport among each other and don’t often call each other things like “septic fuckstick” or whatever may be popular that day. But it’s certainly not unheard of. Some more than others.
Telling them the truth?
@ InfuriatedSciTeacher
What I’m trying to say is that we should stop allowing false scientific claims to be made using the first amendment or other protections of religion as an excuse.
I wouldn’t even mention religion. I would simply note that they are making a scientific claim, regardless of the source of their claim, and that it is not supported by the evidence.
If a student claimed that the world rests on the back of a tortoise, you could patiently state that the evidence, and physics, does not support that view. There are even pictures that show there is no tortoise supporting the earth. And most people in NC would agree with you, because that’s a different damned religion.
This is not a case of science intruding on religion, but of religion intruding on science.
Dawkins covers this very well in The God Delusion.
But I’m not trying to imply your life is easy.
negentropyeater> As if they can’t figure it out for themselves from all the evidence?
There are at least three somewhat distinct reasons to mention (young Earth-)Creationism in a science class:
1. It is a common misconcemption (as #102 pointed out)
2. It is being actively pushed by authority figures surrounding the students (parents/priests/other teachers/media/…)
3. It was historically the most belivable explanaition for a large part of our history, even the greater part of our history since science came along.
Moreover there are reasons to have it in a textbook. If a teacher brings up the point, (s)he is in for trouble, but if (s)he skippes those pages in the book as somewhat usual with background, interested students will read the pages and then ask the teacher. Language courses aside, teachers tend to use only parts of the literature, and supplement it with other material.
As for the civility issue, I find that while mocking ideas mercilessly is generally both effective and not percieved as particularly hostile, mocking their host is not so. If, say, my friend wants to drive to the next town to buy cheap stuff i might say “That’s stupid” on the grounds that gas costs money but if I said that it made him/her an idiot, I would lose a friend.
So, while namecalling isn’t logically disqualifying, it generally turns the discussion into trench digging.
Lastly, PZ has yet to accnowledge the “equality error”. Please do. Last thursdayists are feeling left out. (Or perhaps last thursday happened 6000 years ago (or even 4.5 billion years ago)). (This erronous claim is idiotic but neither implies nor is implied by the erronous claim that PZ is an idiot.)
Love F:
What error?
Kirk> we’re in agreement, for the most part… and I’ve read TGD several times. Maybe I’m reading more into the suggestions from PZ Et. al. than is warranted, but I don’t think they were simply saying that teachers should present the evidence that shows the earth is significantly more than 6K years old.
“Science doesn’t support that view, we know that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old because (insert mounds of evidence here)” is a perfectly acceptable response, which I have used. That can be easily defended within the bounds of what should be taught and how something should be addressed. It’s also pretty much what De Dora is supporting, idiot that he might be.
@ InfuriatedSciTeacher
That’s not how I read De Dora.
I think the science teacher should say, “Your claim that the earth is 6000 years old is not supported by the evidence.”
The child could have made that claim due to his religious beliefs, or because he read it on a bathroom stall. Regardless, he’s making a scientific claim, and the science teacher is not attacking his religion, simply pointing out that his scientific claim is false.
@KOPD: Frankly, I’m saddened to hear that. While I may be tempermental, I happen to think tht common courtesy and civility and valuable traits, and shouldn’t be sneeringly cast aside as ‘nothing but tone.’
But, I do realize that such things are less valued on the internet. Hopeful most Phyrangulites are better mannered in real life.
I know I am.
And there is the only difference in our viewpoint, then. I don’t agree with De Dora on the whole ‘myth’ argument, however. The difference between his statement and the scenario we’re discussing is that in his, the teacher presents this information as part of the lesson (unfuckingnecessary, if it’s 4.5 bil, then we know it isn’t 6K and we don’t need to make that statement unless we’re out to antagonise), and ours is in response to a student question. The line moves in what is acceptable between the situations.
What De Dora grasps with that statement, and others who have criticised him appear not to, is that tone does matter in the classroom, whatever we think of it elsewhere. Does De Dora have a lousy opinion of new atheists in general? Probably. Is he advocated accomodationism beyond that particular example? Almost certainly. But neither of those things make that particular example incorrect in light of how things need to be dealt with in a classroom, pragmatically.
@Kieranfoy
Civility isn’t useless, but I’ve seen too many people who think that the person who wins an argument is the one who uses nicer words. It’s the “oh you’re just a mean atheist” response that completely ignores the content of the posts they are responding (more like reacting) to. That focus on style over substance is reviled here.
I agree.
And patience is a virtue, and not so easy.
But I think the tone should continue to be, “Johnny, you have made a scientific claim, and your claim is not supported by the evidence.” There is no need to mention his idiotic religious beliefs.
And if he continues to disagree, you call him a septic fuckstick (sorry, mixing post themes), walk to the principals office, and wait for the parents to call.
@InfuriatedSciTeacher: yes, De Dora’s position appeared to be that you can’t refute a religious idea, under any circumstance. His answer to my question confirmed this. According to him, you really can’t teach that the earth is not 6000 years old, because that happens to be believed by certain Christians, but you can teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, even if it implies the very same thing.
I can understand the concern about a teacher singling out a single religion for criticism. I can understand the concern about teachers lecturing on their own theology. But there are still cases where it should clearly be possible to explicitly declare that certain claims have been falsified by science, even if these claims were religiously motivated. De Dora made no such distinctions. For him, any religious idea is off limits, and that just goes way too far.
Kieranfoy,
Indeed; perhaps you should bear in mind that what constitutes courtesy and civility is culturally-dependent — this is Pharyngula.
Courtesy and civility, here, are best served by honestly engaging your interlocutors, having a point to your comments, and avoidance of obfuscation and sophistry.
NB: This doesn’t mean that tone is unimportant.
You are mistaken; see my above.
Because there’s only one standard for manners, regardless of milieu? :)
Your self-righteous, culturally-insensitive, boastful and snobby vanity is noted.
Kirk> agreed.
Deen> Fair enough, De Dora’s as much of a dolt as he came off then. As for cases, the discussion between Kirk and me would constitute one of the few where declarations of that type would be accepted by the people to whom teachers have to answer.
The “I know I am” was supposed to be self-deprecating, acknowledging that I’ve been rude here.
InfuriatedSciTeacher:
Yeah, as if… ha, heh, uh…. Hmm. Then why are there any creationists who passed their science classes in public school? People are very good at compartmentalization and not taking evidence to its logical conclusion.
The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The earth is not 6000 years old.
The earth is round. The earth is not flat.
The Bible is not science. The Bible is a myth.
Why limit yourself to teaching one fact when you could teach two? /rhetorical question
“Why limit yourself to teaching one fact when you could teach two?”
Lawsuits?
Ethically, no reason, but practically is a whole different story.
As pointed out above, the bible does NOT state ANY value for the Earth’s age. Of course the Earth is 6,000 years old; it necessarily passed that point long ago along the way to is current age, widely supported by innumerable data as just about 4.5 billion years. Plus or minus a few weeks. *wink*
Much of the basis for confrontational confusions such as insupportable claims for the Earth’s age lie not so much in the bible itself (where not a few contradictions and errors can be found) as in the sometimes mistaken but more often abysmally delusional wish-fulfilling statements most fundamentalists make ABOUT the bible. Fundamentalists to a great extent are insufficiently aware of the bible’s contents (this gets mentioned often in these threads), their context, and their significance at the of writing which more often than not are at wide variance with the “interpretations” of modern apologists.
Some several centuries ago, Augustine (a nitwit in his own right but basically on course in this present matter) admonished strongly against literalism when reading the bible. He specifically stated, in somewhat convoluted manner, that it was impossible to accurately estimate the Earth’s age based upon lineages in the Pentateuch. Those able to read the original Hebrew and Aramaic will note certain non-translatable characters which, in effect, point to various spots in the lineages with the meaning “insufficient data here” or “there is a gap here.” As inexact (to our eyes) as the Pentateuch’s historians were, they clearly indicated they did not have all the data.
A final point: the fundies frequently trumpet the bible’s coherence, flow, unity and inerrancy. We all have seen small bits which poke holes in those delusions; any serious study time at, say, Princeton Theological Seminary will boil the fundies’ arguments down to “some interesting words were written down.” The bible is not a book in our sense of the word but an anthology – and a terribly flawed one at that.
Mr T> There’re a whole mass of comments addressing that in detail above. Kiernafoy gave the short version.
Kieranfoy, please note that strange word-shaped stuff in bold:
If a science teacher can’t say, “The earth is not 6000 years old” for fear of a lawsuit, then I say bring on the lawsuit. Both sides can bring their evidence to the table.
Better yet, we could just settle it with a trial by ordeal, in which the punishment is attending some Bible-Belt Sunday School service where they teach fucking creationism and having to sing along to “Jesus Loves Me”.
@Mr. T: Ah, my mistake. Feel free to ‘pity da fool.’
@Peter H: while your mini-lecture seems accurate enough, dealing with the question about the age of the earth by analyzing the Bible is something that I think does not belong in the science classroom.
[meta]
Kieranfoy,
I believe you, hence I amend my opinion and retract my statement that you exhibited boastfulness and vanity thereby.
(Perhaps using an emoticon such as a wink would’ve helped to make your meaning clearer.)
@John Morales: I hate emoticons. Maybe it’s vanity, but I do entertain the delusion that I write clearly enough to express my meaning without sylized faces to express my emotions for me.
Also, does Phyrangula really operate on such a vastly different idea of common courtesy from the IRL Western World? Makes it a fascinating socialogical study.
Sort of like blue and orange morality, except for manners. Simply fascinating.
You can picture me saying this with one arched brow, a la Spock.
1) High school teachers don’t know why scientists believe the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, any more than they know that nostoc is on the roof. But they can find out. It could be a wonderful teachable moment to say, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” And see how wrong Kelvin was.
2) Children are apt to scapegoat each other. The teacher must be careful, he must legitimize the questions. If the student insists on being an asshole, the teacher must look for who needs protection and encouragement, and it may be the asshole.
3) Some teachers can say things that others could not, for multitudinous reasons. It is important to back the teacher up if possible, keeping truth and accuracy close at hand. We could not, in advance, tell a teacher what to do or say without a lengthy interview with that particular teacher first.
Is there no general advice? The teacher can’t teach the students Wigmore on evidence any more than they could have Lizzie Borden’s lawyers. The goal is to get the question, get the evidence in answer, and if the student says, “I don’t believe it” it’s his right.
And look, religious types are not the only ones who can be obtuse. Look at the recent stupidity by doctors over H. Pilori. Look at the fairly recent stupidity over the chemist Pasteur and the doctors who claimed traditional spontaneous generation. What do you know Pasteur, you’re not a doctor! And fairly recently Wegner and continental drift. That those continents fit together is just a coincidence, Wegner! And you will know more. These were all conveniently omitted in the blog history of science, a catechism given instead, quite religious. Scientists are not immune to holding delusions.
DeDora seems to be an idiot. I’m glad he’s not the teacher, for in the end these definition arguments don’t amount to crap, like theological arguments. They are about nothing. Let’s stick closer to the evidence for what scientists think they know.
It would be a good time to present the Monty Hall problem to the students and show them that a pigeon understands it better. Like all of us, kids want some fun.
Kieranfoy:
I don’t think it’s so vastly different. It would be better to first compare Pharyngula to the rest of the internet (or blogs specifically, or science blogs even more specifically) before we made a leap straight to “real life”. Pick any random blog, and I think it compares favorably in terms of honest, substantive dialogue.
We’re in a completely different situation than “real life”, so it’s not surprising that things like manners play out differently here. I, for one, don’t find nearly the concentration of stupidity and trollishness in my everyday personal interactions. I also have little opportunity to discuss science, religion, philosophy, etc., at length with other people I’ve never met, with only have a vague sense of their backgrounds and personality. I also have the opportunity to use vocal cues and body language to convey what I mean and interpret others. Altogether that changes a lot about how we have to communicate with one another.
Kieranfoy @164, interesting question, but well out-of-topic on this thread.
You can follow it up on the Thread, here.
I’m pretty sure my HS sophomore chemistry book explicitly states that Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are not the basic elements of everything.
InfuriatedSciTeacher (#149)
No one’s saying tone doesn’t matter in the classroom. That would be absurd. But that’s not what most of us are on De Dora’s case for, either. He’s saying that tone makes the two statements different not just in the legal ramifications they might have, but in whether they logically serve to deny a religious claim. See my quotes of him at #75.
The only reason this would antagonize anyone is if they’ve been encouraged to personalize their beliefs and take offense at statements that explicitly say a particular belief they hold is untrue. I think we do need to make statements like “the earth is not 6000 years old” and make those who would take issue show that it’s antagonistic. We should demand they show any qualitative difference between the two statements. We really can’t just capitulate to the philosophy that it’s antagonistic to say a particular belief is factually wrong, otherwise we restrict ourselves in what facts we can express based on what people decide to take offense over.
It’s not just Pharyngula. Internet discussions tend to be less courteous. Lack of face-to-face communication and anomnity probably have much to do with it. At least here you’ll also get good substance and wittier insults than elsewhere.
Kieranfoy @ 164:
Just how difficult is it, Kieranfoy, to spell Pharyngula correctly, when it’s in big, convenient letters at the top of the page? Also, it’s sociological. Try using a spellchecker, so these things won’t be what stands out when you write.
What makes you think Pharyngula operates on a vastly different idea of common courtesy from the Western world at large? First, please provide the accepted definition of courtesy for the whole Western world.
If you bothered to read much here, you’d find a great deal of courtesy. Those who show up who are confused by certain issues and exhibit an honest desire to understand get a wealth of help. People who are in trouble in some way find a depth of compassion and willingness to help here.
What you won’t find at Pharyngula is any need or desire to suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. Talk is straightforward, blunt, if you prefer that word. People will cuss. If you’re a Pearl Clutcher&trade, you aren’t likely to find your experience here delightful. If you pay attention to substance, and don’t demonstrate consistent idiocy, you’ll get along fine.
Thank you, Caine, for explaining Pharyngulaic courtesy. Most fascinating.
No, Deem, #162, that particular line of approach need not necessarily be but still it might be well-presented tangentially in a public classroom; else the students may never get a glimpse of rational thought and empiricism through quantifiable analysis. (Consider there are current restraining aspects, large and small, on most current educational systems.) But the voice of rationality must arise somewhere/somewhen. And the fundies are clamoring for their distortions [lies] to be presented whenever and wherever possible. The task would be, then, to show such delusional prattle as belonging in NO proper classroom, and no logical train of thought can support their wild imaginings. Ya’s gotta attack (and never back down) whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.
I repeat my early comment above: De Dora’s chief crime is likely clumsiness.
As a corollary, I have to say that the only person who seems really well-informed on this topic is “InfuriatedSciTeacher.” Sir or madam, my compliments.
For many of the rest of you….much of your comments are reflexive and serve your interests, rather than those of teachers or students. High school science classrooms are poor fora for debating the merits of belief systems, especially public high school science classrooms. Our job is difficult enough without leading direct frontal assaults on particular sectarian takes on Genesis.
Scott Hatfield, OM:
Yeah, we wouldn’t want to “antagonize” people with facts, especially not in a public school classroom.
Think of other times you’ve been told something is false. Do you always consider it an assault on a belief system? Does it only matter if somehow, someone can find something in it that contradicts Christianity?
A psychology teacher can confront mistaken conceptions coming from folk psychology. (Does it matter if it’s Christian folk psychology?)
A history teacher can debunk the myth that the Civil War was “not about slavery”. (Does someone’s belief system or Proud Southern Heritage make any difference whatsoever?)
A math teacher can explain how your incorrect answer — which only says “2+2= MATH DROOLZ, JESUS RULEZ” — is wrong, and advise you to show your work next time. (What’s more important in a classroom: learning stuff, or making people feel content and satisfied in their willful ignorance?)
Scott, do you even listen to yourself – do you even proofread what you’ve written – before you hit the “enter” key? Do you?
I have said so often that I do not teach atheism, do not endorse using science class to teach atheism, and do not even consider appropriate to discuss religion in my biology classes that I’m a bit exasperated to see people implying that I want to use science classes to bash religion.
I’m also a bit surprised to see people speculating that I’m saying 6000=4,500,000,000. What are you guys smoking?
This thread is obviously about a matter of principle, rather than practice. But since many of us have strayed into the realm of “what is convenient for a teacher to do in a classroom”, I would like to offer these practical considerations:
It is unfair for biology teachers (or science teachers in general) to have to bear the brunt of the consecuences of obtuse parent´s objections. So look for safety in numbers: “Earth 6000 years old? You should address that issue with your history / geography teacher.” Involve the rest of the faculty, this will reduce the risk of being scapegoated. Even the English department should be dragged into the fray: evidence from historical linguistics points to a much longer EVOLUTION of human languages than 6000 years. The linguistic evidence of biblical texts as such, point to a time span way before the Tower of Babel. Art, math, everyone should be drawn to the discussion. Enjoy
I note that the catshark has weighed in: he likes PZ, but takes issue with PZ’s tone because De Dora and Pigliucci are “reasonable and honest (but possibly wrong) people” who therefore don’t deserve it.
So it’s right for someone to teach that the object on which my computer rests is a desk, but it’s wrong for them to teach that it is not a small Czechoslovakian policeman named Boris because that impinges on my religion.*
Gotcha. Well it’s nice to see that we’re not fucking up kids’ education by bending over backwards in order to accomodate religious privilege.
Louis
* The religion of Boris the small Czechoslovakian policeman is very important. Find something uncontroversial in a religious/woo argument, substitute for Boris at the appopriate places, follow the form of the argument and see if it still seems plausible. If not, Boris gets another convert. If it remains plausible, then you have killed Boris. Boris lives still.
I have to say that it’s the double standard here that really pisses me off, maybe it’s just because I’m in a mood. ;-)
If kid A smacks kid B in the face and it’s captured on school CCTV, the claim by kid A that being filmed violates/impinges on his religious beliefs is not going to be treated with the same “philosophical nicety” that seems to be applied to creationism. If kid A further claims that kid B’s testimony is preducial based on persecution of people of A’s religion, it’s only marginally less likely that B’s testimony will be treated with the same “philosophical nicety” as creationism. I doubt a Hindu kid in school gets his/her reigious beliefs dealt with so “sensitively”.
This type of appeal to relativist philosophies and epistemologies is the very hallmark of bullshit (a la Harry Frankfurt), confusion or outright intellectual dishonesty. It’s bad relativism, bad philosophy.
Sure, a K-12 classroom is not the place to abuse the teacher-student power relationship and tear the pupil a new arsehole for espousing creationist claptrap. But equally it is not the place to retreat to waffly, and erroneous, relativistic nonsense in order to make some inoffensive-as-possible faux epistemological claim and thus “be nice”. Simply pointing out that a) this is a science class, the science is unequivocal* on the matter of X (e.g. X = age of earth) and b) that not all religions, or all interpretations of a specific religion think a particular way about X is sufficient. From point a) an appropriate level explanation of the science is an excellent object lesson, no more needs to be said about b).
What you absolutely don’t do is pretend that “the world is ~4.5 billion years old” is somehow not equivalent to “the world is not merely 6000 years old”. The two are mutually exclusive claims. If A, then not B. This really isn’t that hard.
Louis
*And yes, I’m more than aware of the limits of observation etc. The sort of bloviating wankery regarding this issue belongs on the internet when mental masturbation is de rigeur. Keep it out of my lab and out of people’s classrooms where it isn’t appropriate. It always leads to claims of “other ways of knowing” and no one has yet demonstrated one of these “other ways of knowing” works beyond “because I believe it/said so”. It annoys the piss out of me. Maybe this is due to my haircut. Hmmmmm.
I was thinking about this the other day. We could no longer teach that it was a Norse myth that Thor threw thunderbolts and caused thunder; we’d have to teach that in the Norse way of thinking, Thor causes thunder. Right?
Maybe we, or teachers, could just remind everyone that Archbishop Ussher was calculating a minimum and telling his contemporaries that the world must be at least 6,000 years old. And in that, he was correct even if his method was flawed. And that it took a certain amount of interpolating and guessing even to arrive at that figure.
I’m not smiling easily these days, but I really liked this a lot–thanks. If I wasn’t already publicly painted into the corner of my brains-in-vats-since-last-Tuesday way-of-knowing, I’d quibble with the precise age.
@King Uber: Heathen. The IPU has assured me personally the universe is seventy 2 days old, and will REMAIN seventy two days old forever.
PZ writes:
I have said so often that I do not teach atheism, do not endorse using science class to teach atheism, and do not even consider appropriate to discuss religion in my biology classes that I’m a bit exasperated to see people implying that I want to use science classes to bash religion.
Hey, I feel for you. As an advocate for evolution, I pretty much have to issue the same disclaimers from time to time….and I’m a theist. Just yesterday some charming person left a Chick pamphlet in my teacher’s box, anonymously. The ‘message’ of that pamphlet? That teachers like me are doing the will of the Devil, preaching a ‘religion’ of evolution while bashing belief in God, all with the aim of cheating my innocent young charges of any hope of heaven.
So, yeah, I get that and I hope you know that I wasn’t implying anything about your pedagogy. I know better.
My comments were directed at some of the other commenters here, who (like so many other people) think that having been through high school makes them an expert on how to teach at the high school level. Sorry, it doesn’t. A lot of the ‘advice’ here is ham-fisted and clueless.
Josh, Official SpokesGay (#176) writes:
“Scott, do you even listen to yourself – do you even proofread what you’ve written – before you hit the “enter” key? Do you?”
(amused) I try to read, out loud, every thing I write before I send it. Perhaps you should try this, because your comment seems to express the conviction that something I’ve written is incredibly, obviously wrong. But you fail, utterly, to identify what that something is, much less explain why it’s wrong.
Is that any way to communicate? Pretty ironic, since you appear to berate me for a lack of skills in this area. I invite you to address your shortcomings in future correspondence. I’m not a mind reader, you know.
I think Scott Hatfield (and IST above) ought to be listened to here. Public school teachers in the USA really do have to deal with that “public” thing. And their priority has to be effective education, not some other Cause. Many of them depend on their skilled job for food, shelter, and health insurance for their families. For them, the politically and ethically optimum approach is to say “science answers questions with observation and logic; using this demonstrably effective method shows clearly that the planet is billions of years old, and here’s some of the evidence” instead of the bald assertion that “the planet is not 6000 years old.” Those statements are not different to me, but they are different to to some of the public for whom teachers work.
About the original issue, suppose the textbook editors inserted an asterisked footnote after ‘myth’ to the effect that the term is used in an academic sense and does not necessarily imply falsehood. Could taxpayers like Mr. Zimmerman get pissed off about that? How about anti-accomodationist atheists?
Those statements are not different to me, but they are different to to some of the public for whom teachers work.
Exactly!
If De Dora really believes such statements are different as matters of fact, he’s delusional.
If he understands that they are functionally different, but asserts that one is necessarily unconstitutional, he may not be delusional but he’s still incorrect. It certainly is permissible to point out that the Earth is not 6,000 years old!
But….if (as I would prefer to believe), he understands all that but is (clumsily) arguing that teachers should avoid giving the impression that they are specifically targeting a certain belief system for dressing-down, then I sympathize. I feel that I am successful in teaching evolution precisely because I know how to negotiate these pitfalls. This actually allows me to spend far more time on the topic than the average public school science teacher gives the material.
@Sven DiMilo:
As far as I can tell, nobody here has advocated that a teacher should just baldly assert that “the planet is not 6000 years old.” We all want the teacher to use science to refute it, not refute it by assertion (and even less want them to refute it by appealing to theology).
Actually, a teacher may want to turn it into a teaching moment and point out that it is much easier to prove that the earth is not 6000 years old, than it is to prove that it is 4.5 billion years old. A single artifact that is known to be older than 6000 years would do it. Or ten thousand years of tree ring records.
My apologies for contributing to your exasperation by conflating your position with some of the comments above. I’ll stick to things you clearly did say:
No, in fact it’s pretending they’re morons to have to spell out a claim that’s logically consistent with the one we’re all comfortable with presenting. If students are going to compartmentalise, they’re going to do that regardless of how the evidence is presented (see Anderson, Lepper, and Ross, ‘Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,’ J. Per. Soc. Psy. 39. 6 (1980), among others for research on false beliefs).
Most professional philosophy is puerile mental-masturbation that seeks to impede & restrain true intellectual & scientific progress.