
New Florida law lets any resident challenge what's taught in science classes - anigbrowl
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/01/new-florida-law-lets-any-resident-challenge-whats-taught-in-science-classes/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.4f4a60711b11
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jernfrost
Interesting how the US is following Turkey here in phasing out evolution.

This is how the great Islamic empires of the past fell. They were open minded
towards science and then there was a backlash from religious conservatives who
started blaming all their problems on liberals.

The very same thing happening in the US. Religious conservatives pushing that
the source of all American problems is liberalism and liberals.

There is not just an attack on science going on but liberal ideas like a free
press. Increasingly conservatives see regular free press as fake news trying
to undermine America itself. You see increasing calls for shutting up the
media.

I believe America is a victim of its own success. The American dominance in so
manu areas has bred complacency. One takes being a scientific powerhouse for
granted.

~~~
ableton
Your comment is so ironic. You complain about conservatives wanting to "shut
up" the media. And yet here you are advocating shutting up conservative ideas
about creation in school. How hypocritical.

As for science, macro evolutionary theory isn't even science. The scientific
method requires testing and 200 years isn't long enough to verify something
that takes tens of thousands of years to occur.

Secondly, the fossil record shows all kinds of stuff that just doesn't jive
with evolution. Darwin said if he was right the ground would be full of
innumerable transitional fossils. But what we find is that as soon as
something appears in the fossil record, it stays very similar. The Cambrian
explosion is another thing that just doesn't make sense evolutionary speaking.

And all this is made worse by the fact that somehow evolution spent billions
of years unable to move past unicellular organisms, and yet was able to jump
from a monkey to a human in 10k years? Monkeys have the intelligence according
to tests of a 2 and 1/2 years old. The difference is astonishing and yet
supposedly happened in an exceedingly short period of time, when life couldn't
get out of the bacteria stage for a billion years?

There are a lot of holes in evolutionary theory. What is unscientific, and all
to common among liberals is ignoring those who point out inconvenient facts

~~~
david38
Not hypocritical.

Religion isn't science. It's fantasy. Physicists vs chemists would be be a
scientific debate.

A proper conservative creationist debate would be vs Roman paganism.

X isn't perfect so Y must be the answer is the oldest false choice gimmick
going. I can easily point to how shitty everyone practices their religion and
prove it's fake that way too.

Seriously, how many people are reading the Bible? Some. The best available
translation? Fewer. The original untranslated text? Very few. It's the actual
word of God and you don't think it's important enough to read in the original?
Please. Give me a break.

Let's set that aside though. Let's just go for the big stuff. Is Jesus
cosubstancial with the father? You would figure something that profound would
be easy to ask God himself. How this question was resolved is proof of the
popularity contest that was / is the Christian church.

Science keeps chipping away at the Bible. The reverse doesn't happen. Just
because X doesn't solve everything perfectly (and doesn't claim to) doesn't
mean Y is anything less than fantasy.

~~~
ableton
Great question about translation. I read "Youngs literal translation" which is
much more accurate. And I frequently use the Blue Letter Bible website which
has an amazing resource to help you understand the Greek/Hebrew meaning of any
word!

Science doesn't "chip away at the Bible". Bad science does though. Anecdotally
I think what happens is that people want to have sex outside of marriage so
they accept bad science to validate their choices. Sex hormones make people do
really irrational things.

~~~
Xoros
Isn't irrational the base of the religion (in opposition to rational : "based
on facts and reason, not emotion" according to Cambridge dictionary) ?

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CiPHPerCoder
The only logical course of action is to file complaints demanding the
_inclusion_ of controversial topics and the removal of anything the anti-
science crowd campaigns for.

I'm a Florida resident, but not a parent. I don't know what kids are being
taught these days. I'd like to help, if I can.

~~~
secstate
Advocate for the inclusion of the FSM theory of creation. It's only fair.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster)

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koenigdavidmj
Might be a fun system upon which to use Alinsky's fourth rule: "Make the enemy
live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a
reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can
possibly obey all of their own rules.

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cbanek
I soon wonder if facts will be tools only of the elite (again?). Facts and
science allow you to understand the world and produce things of lasting value,
which everyone buys/uses. But instead, we teach kids nonsense, mostly because
their parents don't remember things from school, or didn't go to school
themselves. Most people don't know enough science to explain how the seasons
work, let alone climate change, but everyone has an opinion that must be
treated respectfully.

Yet we keep talking about how people need marketable STEM skills to stay
relevant in today and tomorrow's economy.

The cognitive dissonance is blinding.

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xbmcuser
All empires fall and we are witnessing the beginning of the fall of the US
empire. Destroying the major thing US leads in science and education while
destroying relationships with a lot of it's allies.

~~~
qubex
Empires usually last centuries, and get off to various shaky starts. I think
these are just teething problems at the start of a long reign. (I am not
American.) High debt, mass unrest, controversy, and factionalism all coexist
to some degree at the start of what later became very long-lived empires.

~~~
dawnerd
I think people forget just how young the US is. When you look at the big
picture, it's actually pretty amazing how far it's come in such a short amount
of time.

~~~
Lev1a
I just recently remembered again that my home town is almost 600 years older
than the US. So yeah, the US is pretty young in comparison to most other
nations.

~~~
pluma
The town I live in was originally founded in 785 CE but always feels young to
me -- the town I grew up in was originally founded in 38 BCE.

Then I remember how much of the US didn't even exist two centuries ago.

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a_imho
Whenever she was asked how does she feel about being stuck in a perpetual
educational reform fueled by politics she said: That is what I like about
math, I've been teaching the Pythagorean theorem for 20 years and it is still
the same.

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babyrainbow
I like this.

Let us encourage people everywhere to ask more questions. We need it badly.

~~~
ableton
I agree. There are a lot of very smart people on both sides of the issue. It
is better to be exposed to both sides.

Also, I think it is good that they are trying to limit nudity in textbooks.
Even Steve jobs, who was by no means traditional, prohibited nudity from the
App Store because he thought it was bad for young people.

~~~
jopsen
No Steve thought nudity was bad business for a high-end brand like Apple.

~~~
ableton
No I read somewhere reputable, I think in his biography that he though this.

~~~
qb45
Is Techcrunch reputable enough for you guys?

[https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-
porn/](https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/)

 _We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.
Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.

You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn.
You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t
want to go – so we’re not going to go there._

~~~
eesmith
Porn isn't the same as nudity. Nick Ut's famous "The Terror of War", showing
children fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam war, includes a naked girl
screaming as the napalm melts layers off her skin.

There is nothing pornographic about that nudity.

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jopsen
So anyone can file a complaint for "in appropriate" material to be removed..

I guess kids in Florida won't be taught anything. The right will ask for
evolution not be taught, and the left will ask for the Bible to be removed
from the library on grounds that it has pornographic sections in appropriate
for kids.

\- just kidding the left won't fire back :)

On-topic: it's very sad when people wants to debate basic science. I might be
religious, but I see no conflicts between my religion, the theory of evolution
or the laws thermodynamics.. faith is not about evidence.

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zkms
As people on /b/ used to say, "oh, exploitable".

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rabboRubble
The Church of Satan will have a merry time challenging this stupidity. Here is
how I would attack the law, if I were involved with CoS. As per this quote
from the law:

"is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material
presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group."

... I would challenge any overly religious materials claiming that it is
inappropriate for the grade level, religious materials being better suited to
a college level course. I would challenge poor scientific textbooks for being
too low level for the grade. I would challenge a textbook for being too
outdated with since-overturned theories or facts.

There is no end to the mischief this law could make for schools.

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flukus
Finally we can challenge so called "science" teachers about gravity:
[http://www.theonion.com/article/evangelical-scientists-
refut...](http://www.theonion.com/article/evangelical-scientists-refute-
gravity-with-new-int-1778)

/s

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Upvoter33
This is actually good news if you're a (selfish) parent who does not live in
Florida - your kids now have less competition. Ironically, Florida will evolve
itself out of the future - and smart parents won't move there.

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Oletros
Let's make Science teaching great again /s

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cristianpascu
The title! It's not only about science, but anything taught in classrooms. As
a parent myself, I don't want to live in a world where public education is
compulsory and I, as a parent, have nothing to say about what the public
school teaches my kid.

People are angry that some parents will object teaching evolution or global
warming, the subjects so dear to many, hence the 'science' in the title. Let's
not kid ourselves, for most people these two subjects are merely topics to
discuss on the internet or over a drink.

But if I'd had a girl and a teacher, man or a woman, would come to the
classroom teaching her how many pills she had to take, or what things to put
in her body so her boyfriend doesn't have to use a condom, than I'd object. Of
course, I can teach her at home about all things relationships. And of course,
it's important for teenagers to be exposed to ideas different from the one
taught at home (something that US campuses seem to abhor more and more these
days). But relationships are so much more than the simple mechanics of
penetration.

It's one thing for parents to have to fight what's taught in school, and
entirely different thing when schools present alternative views and also
provide best arguments for those views. The simple fact that there's
creationism, global warming denials and anti-vaccine people, should not
determine us to the give up the fundamental principle which moves knowledge
(science included) forward. Dialogue!

~~~
moomin
You've already got a say: it's called the ballot box. What you're asking for
is bespoke, micro-managed education. Once you've given up on the idea of
consensual reality, you've pretty much abandoned society. Pretending that
views are "alternative" when in fact they're just wrong isn't moving knowledge
along, it's holding it back.

To give an extreme example: do you think American secular education should be
given equal footing in Florida with a madrassa run by a Saudi-educated iman?
What if that's what most of the parents in the local area want?

~~~
icebraining
The idea that democracy is just showing up to vote every few years should be
mocked for the travesty it is, not lauded. Not that I like this particular law
(filling a complaint as if school was a fast food joint is not my view of
democratic participation either).

~~~
moomin
True, but democracy isn't micromanaging teachers either.

