It just never stops with these religious fanatics:
“The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories,” the Knoxville News-Sentinel (March 19, 2012) reported, adding, “Critics call it a ‘monkey bill’ that promotes creationism in classrooms.” The bill in question is Senate Bill 893, which, if enacted, would encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”
Among those expressing opposition to the bill are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, whose president Becky Ashe described (PDF) the legislation as “unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional.”
In favor of the bill is every bible humping semi-literate god-bothering douchebag in the Tennessee Senate. I can’t wait to see how Mr. Robot Sex “Heh Indeedy” contorts himself to make this seem appropriate.
cbear
Monkey See, Monkey Douchebag
That has to be the best title of the year.
Pure comedy gold
JerryJohn, pure gold I’m telling you.MobiusKlein
why is human cloning in that list of controversial science?
The facts of human cloning are not a point of debate – just the ethics of it.
Or are they also claiming that the ethics of evolution are what make it controversial, rather than the facts of evolution?
Linnaeus
Of course, I have no problem with teaching people to think critically about these issues, but somehow I think my view on that and the views of the bill’s authors differ considerably.
cbear
@MobiusKlein: Hey Mr. Scientisty Guy, just shut up, that’s why.
PeakVT
I don’t get why they’re pushing back on this so hard. Not only is there a fairly easy to reconcile with the data (God works in mysterious ways), the data is just so overwhelming. Unlike AGW (for which the data is also whelming) there’s no large scale extrapolation or prediction going on. I guess it’s needed to preserve the idea that the Bible can be read literally that is driving them. And also, too: tribalism.
Martin
@MobiusKlein:
Because you don’t have a soul until the moment God comes down and put it into you at the moment of conception. All of this shit about ‘personhood’ – this is part of it. A clone isn’t a person – they were not touched by the noodly appendage. Even if they’re walking around, they’re less of a person than a zygote.
Narcissus
Which is to say the entire Tennessee Senate
Bnut
Sometimes it’s amazing to live in Nashville. The heart of where music comes to start, beautiful scenery near me, an exploding food scene, lovely people for the most part. And then I realize that 1 mile from my house there are troglodytes pulling this shit. Can’t win.
Clark Stooksbury
“I can’t wait to see how Mr. Robot Sex “Heh Indeedy” contorts himself to make this seem appropriate”
He typically ignores things that don’t fit his narrative.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
what we need is a bill whereby people opt out of coverage for antibiotics, and every other associated treatment by proclaiming their belief in creationism even if it only applies to public officials, its a start.
Narcissus
The problem with people who opt out of things like the heritage of the age of reason and the enlightenment and social contract theory is that then what do you do with them?
I say make them go live on a butte but that’s just me
Hob
Oh how this country has changed. When I was in high school in the ’80s, we were lucky if we even got half a dozen lessons about human cloning. Nowadays it’s nothing but cloning this and cloning that, even in trigonometry class.
Joey Maloney
“Bible humping semi-literate god-bothering douchebag” is the name of my new Creed tribute band.
David Koch
O.T.
ROMNEY ACCOSTS REPORTER
can you imagine if a Democrat had did that.
gene108
Sigh…word press seems to be eating my posts…
gene108
Since the scientific community doesn’t question evolution as a viable theory for explaining the changes in life on Earth, I’m assuming the proponents of this bill would just want teachers to try to have kids discuss the issues and conflicts of punctuated equilibrium versus classical Darwinian evolution, where evolution happened in a slow steady pace.
Of course to to have a lively debate, in an informed manner, between punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinian evolution, you’d have to explain things like plate tectonics, how the Earth’s 4.5 billion years old and the evidence of the fossil record that has influenced changes about how evolution occurs.
That’s a lot of material to ask a biology teacher, who probably isn’t that familiar with geology and paleontology to cram into a section of part of a general biology class.
I really do wonder, if these folks realize that the “weaknesses” and “debates” in the scientific community, over the last 200+ years, on evolution hasn’t so much centered around fitting it to Biblical scripture but actually trying to explain how things fit into the evidence they have observed about the natural world. For example, despite Lamarck’s incorrect hypothesis about the inheritance of traits, when no one knew anything about genetics (well before Mendel’s time), he did a lot of research on the natural world and tried to get the a theory that best fit to the evidence he observed.
For example, despite Michelson’s failure to prove existence of Luminiferous aether, which he supported as a theory on how light travels, his experiments did prove how fast light travels, there is no aether, which opened the door for Einstein’s theory of relativity and provided valuable information to the scientific community about the nature of light. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work.
To the anti-evolution crowd, people like Lamarck and Michelson should’ve been discredited and savaged for being wrong and the entire fields of scientific study they helped develop be held in contempt for not being right, rather than acknowledge their contributions in broadening our understanding of the natural world.
I really think the anti-evolution crowd are mini-Sith Lords. As Obi Wan Kenobi pointed out to Anakin/Darth Vader, only a Sith thinks in absolutes and the anti-evolution folks think in absolutes. They really don’t handle subtle, nuanced, not-clear-cut-right-or-wrong very well.
They really do think, if something isn’t 100% right, it must be 100% wrong.
EDIT: Had to take out a lot of links to get this to post. FYWP.
asiangrrlMN
@Joey Maloney: You win, which is more than I can see for the Tennessee Senate.
Xenos
@Martin:
I would then ask what their theory of the ensoulment of identical twins is, but then this is the same crowd that thinks that obvious cultivars like apples and bananas are proof that God invented them in Eden. So I doubt they have even started to work out the implications of their fantasies.
Warren Terra
I await the inevitable story about this asinine bill filed by a national reporter, datelined Dayton, Tennessee.
Martin
@Xenos: Yeah. But bottom line, these folks are pissed the they can’t hang the 10 commandments in the gym, and so they’re going to have to take something from us in order for it to be even. So they’re gonna take science.
dead existentialist
Paging Mr. Scopes . . . .
dead existentialist
Tomorrow’s headline: Tennessee Legislature Disproves Law of Gravity by Pissing Up a Rope.
TenguPhule
A clear majority sad to say.
Its like they’re determined to prove the old theory that humans are all bastards at heart true.
Joey Maloney
@dead existentialist: win
Yevgraf
I’m OK with this, so long as the compendium of the oral tribal myths of semiliterate bronze age goatherds gets subjected to similar treatment.
Schlemizel
@gene108:
Very well said – thanks!
Elizabelle
WordPress isn’t letting me post.
Here’s The Guardian (UK paper) on the Tennessee bill.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/21/tennessee-bill-teachers-evolution-climate-change
THE
If you take cloning to its logical conclusion, then every cell is a potential human being.
So every time I scratch myself, I am causing a million abortions of potential twin-me-people.
Elizabelle
@gene108:
Terrific comment.
It’s terrible when political ideology and faith in an inerrant book (2,000 years old) trumps learning and building on previous work, constantly testing and refining, and always looking at our world anew.
kindness
OK. So I as a liberal do think we humans as a species evolved from a common ancestor to modern apes to get to this point. I also firmly believe the modern American conservative evolved from the slime off a cesspool.
Can we get Tennessee to teach that even though it isn’t controversial at all to me?
Tennessee….what happened? Makes me shiver when I hear Tennessee Jed now. Lord knows Jerry would be shakin’ his head.
Omnes Omnibus
@MobiusKlein: A little from column A, a little from column B.
El Cid
If global warming is real then how come there are still monkeys?
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Monkeys like warm weather. We’ll be overrun by the banana-eating little bastards.
Schlemizel
@THE:
Yeah . . . scratching yourself causes millions of unnecessary deaths. Thats why my mom said if I kept scratching myself I’d go blind 8-{D
I guess, following in the footsteps of my commander, General JC Christian, I have to get more mason jars to store dead skin cells too along with the storage I have to prevent the tube sock holocaust.
Hawes
@cbear: Seconded.
Roger the Cabin Boy
So, how many jobs did this bill create?
greennotGreen
@Bnut: Dude, I work at a major research university in Nashville that shall remain unnamed. Every day I work with bright to brilliant people (and a few who slipped through the cracks.) It astounds me that our legislature is composed of such out and out dumbfux. Who votes for these people? Sure, the rich members of the Church of I’ve Got Mine, Screw You in Williamson County, but the rest of Tennessee? What is in their water? Or is it just that the public schools I attended in Tennessee were exceptions and in general they aren’t teaching kids to think or passing on any knowledge, and they haven’t been for years? It really makes me sad.
Chris
@MobiusKlein:
The facts of evolution and global warming aren’t in debate either, but that’s not stopping them.
300baud
I was thinking that it was too late to get one of the awesome “Teach the Controversy” shirts:
http://controversy.wearscience.com/
Good to see that there’s still an opportunity.
daveNYC
@300baud: I want all of those.
The Malfunctioning Glenn Reynolds Robot
Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing.
redshirt
Let the market decide in the laboratory of the states! If Tennessee wants to ensure their children are not able to go to good schools and get the only good jobs available to Americans in the future, I’m sure other states would be happy to take up the slack.
Brachiator
@MobiusKlein:
Clones will lead to the Clone Wars, which will lead to the Great Jedi Purge and teh triumph of the Galactic Empire.
@Xenos: RE: A clone isn’t a person – they were not touched by the noodly appendage. Even if they’re walking around, they’re less of a person than a zygote.
One of the twins is evil. And don’t get me started on triplets.
Tone In DC
@dead existentialist:
LULz.
Tone In DC
@Omnes Omnibus:
LULz.
No, these damn mosquitoes will get us first. Living here in GW’s swamp, the monkeys will be a distant second on this count.
kuvasz
liberal
@gene108:
Good comment.
Mark
The major public & private colleges & universities in this country need to state unequivocally that states that adopt anti-science curricula will render students from that state unequipped to handle college level science courses and therefore ineligible for admission.
Citizen_X
@daveNYC: I do, too, but I think people wouldn’t get half of them. And then I would have to grab them, saying, “It’s the TIME CUBE! Why are they hiding the truth?”
They still need a Santa shirt.
Brachiator
@Mark:
When President Santorum outlaws all colleges and universities except for Bible colleges, this will not be an issue.
Ken
What is this, a form of the Butler Act?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
The bill in question is Senate Bill 893, which, if enacted, would encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”
Pardon me, but isn’t “the existence of God” a controversial topic? It seems to me that forcing every Sunday school or religious studies group to include “And, of course, there are those who say God is as likely to exists as Santa Claus or fairies” would be a good thing…