Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

It used to be called teaching …

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An unbylined news feature in Raw Story (January 30th, 2011) tells us “Oklahoma bill would mandate educators question evolution in classes”

Educators in Oklahoma would be forced to openly question in their classes the legitimacy of the scientific theory of evolution should a new bill become state law.

“It’s a simple fact that the presentation of some issues in science classes can lead to controversy, which can discourage teachers from engaging students in an open discussion of the issues,” state Rep. Sally Kern, a Republican, said in defense of the bill she filed recently.

That used to be called teaching. Or a part of it anyway. Put another way: Any fact-based proposition that can be true can, alternatively, be false. Learning to hold intelligent opinions means considering reasonable arguments for adn against a proposition.

But, to get some idea how Darwinism is probably taught today, among Raw Story’s readers, note this:

The legislation (HB 1551) titled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act” singled out “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” as topics that are controversial and thus questionable.It is the second of such anti-evolution proposals in Oklahoma and the fourth filed nationwide so far this year.

So Raw Story has got evolution on the brain, I guess, as that’s all Unbylined seems able to think about.

Reality check: Many people who are not in the least interested in the intelligent design controversy do care about global warming, and take great exception to nonsense marketed to schoolchildren as “saving the planet” by scaring them.* The same could be said for human cloning, in an age when Kermit Gosnell is probably a hero to the elite culture that protected him for so long.

* I’ll be sixty-one next month, and have lived through the Cold War, the Population Doom, Planet AIDS, Nuclear Winter (brought to you by noted skeptic Carl Sagan), and now Global Warming. Either I’m one incredibly tough old bird or else …

Comments
"Learning to hold intelligent opinions means considering reasonable arguments for and against a proposition." Except that would lead to students becoming critical thinkers, and we can't criticize the holy writ of Darwin.Barb
February 17, 2011
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Happy Birthday, you wonderfully TOB!Ilion
February 15, 2011
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