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JISHOU, HUNAN — Back when I was a science teacher, I started blogged about an Ohio public school science teacher who got in hot water for (1) allegedly using a Tesla coil on his students, (2) teaching evolution was false and (3) going overboard with his religious proselytizing in the classroom.
Without going into a lot of details, let’s just say that teacher, John Freshwater of Mount Vernon, was removed from classroom teaching pending an administrative hearing about insubordination. After a two-year-long administrative hearing process, Freshwater lost his job earlier this year. He and the Mount Vernon school system were also named in a federal discrimination complaint brought by a student’s family; the school district settled out of court and Freshwater, following an unsuccessful appeal, also had to pay damages to the family. Meanwhile, he filed, and later dropped, his own discrimination complaint in federal court against the school system.
So, after all these proceedings which suggest that Freshwater was to some degree culpable, I learn that he has the nerve to play the victim card on David Barton and Rick Green’s WallBuilders Live radio program.
Here’s a partial transcript, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.
Freshwater: When the 2007/2008 school year came along, there was a new principal, a new Superintendent, and three new school board members and what took place that year was they wanted me to removed my Bible from my desk. And I felt I have academic freedoms and I thought I had the right to have my Bible on my desk, so I left it on my desk in 2007/2008 school year and they told me to remove it and that was when they suspended me – April 16, 2008 – they suspended me without pay and I’ve been in litigation since then, the last four years.
Continue reading John Freshwater: the gift that keeps on giving
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Michele Bachmann, science ignoramus (CNN photo)
JISHOU, HUNAN — CNN reports the not-very-surprising news that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) favors teaching Intelligent Design (religion made science-y) in schools, right alongside evolution (actual science).
It’s not surprising, because Bachmann (and most of the other candidates for the GOP presidential nomination), are stubbornly in the Science (and History) Ignoramus class. Global warming? Liberal nonsense! Evolution? Atheist nonsense! Separation of Church and State? It was never there!
Intelligent Design is religious belief, Creationism with a different label, and the federal courts — most recently in 2005 — have ruled it cannot be taught in public schools, especially in science class. Period.
Yet, Bachmann and others stubbornly insist ID must be taught in public schools. Don’t they read the newspapers?
Here’s what she told CNN.
“I support intelligent design,” Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”
WRONG!!
There is no “reasonable doubt” about evolution, at least among sensible people and especially not among scientists. There are no two sides about evolution, any more than there are two sides about Einstein’s theory of gravity, or the atomic theory, or continental drift. They are all accepted scientific theories, supported by piles of evidence.
She’s repeating the worn-out “teach the controversy” ploy of the ID community. It goes like this:
Assume that evolution is a belief system, not an empirical theory.
Pretend that there is lack of consensus about this belief system.
Couch objections to teaching evolution in school in “Big Brother” or “atheistic government” terms.
Appeal to the
Continue reading Bachmann wants schools to teach religion in science class
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Want to buy a propaganda film really cheap? Now’s your chance. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is now available to the highest bidder.
Expelled was the 2008 embarrassment that tried to prove once and for all there was a vast conspiracy to teach evolution while suppressing Intelligent Design and other “explanations” of life on Earth, and putting Hitler in power. Or something like that. The New York Times called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time.”
Narrated and hosted by the riveting Ben Stein, it tanked at the box office, so badly it seems, that its production company, Premise Media, is in bankruptcy court.
According to a document (PDF) filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, on May 31, 2011, the trustee of the bankruptcy estate is seeking to auction “[t]hat certain feature-length motion picture (‘Picture’) ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto.” The auction is scheduled to take place on-line from June 23 to June 28, 2011.
As awful as the movie was, I reckon somebody will probably bid on it. I hope the winner is a film collector, who will stash it in a vault somewhere, and not some Intelligent Design fanboy, who will try to inflict it on us again.
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POSTSCRIPT: Back in 2008, I did a critique of the Expelled teacher’s guide. The National Center for Science Education also has a more elaborate debunking of
Continue reading Get Ben Stein’s movie
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JISHOU, HUNAN — And I’m not talking about Archie and Jughead, or even Beavis and Butthead.
Amy Myers the Bachmann Slayer (and Scourge of the Right Wing) is not the only high school student making national news. Damon Fowler and Zack Kopplin, both of Louisiana, have made some national waves recently, too.
Fowler is a 2011 graduate of Bastrop High School in Bastrop, La. Earlier this term, he learned that there would be a school-sanctioned official prayer at his graduation ceremony. He objected, and asked that the prayer be scotched. (FYI, the Supreme Court has held that public school-sponsored prayers are verboten under the First Amendment, which Fowler knows but the school apparently didn’t.)
The ACLU followed up with a letter advising the school of the legal requirements and ramifications. School officials agreed to forgo the prayer. As if. In the meantime, the community got wind of Fowler’s objections and the shit hit the fan.
Fowler got threats of violence and death. His fellow students turned on him. One of his teachers publicly berated him. His parents kicked him out of the house, and put his possessions (except his PS3) out on the porch.
The graduation went on without him, since he reckoned attending put him at some risk. And a prayer was said by a student, supposedly against the wishes of the administration but basically within the letter of the law.
On the bright side, Fowler is living with his sister in Texas, and an atheist website has raised more than $30,000 for him to attend college, since his parents cut him off.
Kopplin is a Baton Rouge high school senior who objects to his state’s so-called science education law, which encourages, nay requires teaches in Louisiana to explain that evolution is only one possible explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, creationism/Intelligent Design being another.
He
Continue reading More pesky high school students
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WULINGYUAN, HUNAN — One of my last stops before classes resume was Yellow Dragon Cave (Huang Long Cave) here, near Zhangjiajie. The cave itself is stupendous. The tour includes a short boat ride on the underground river and a lot of stair climbing.
For me the highlight was this stalagmite, the “Sacred Needle for Stabilizing the Sea,” which rises 19.2 meters from the cave floor.
Sacred Needle for Stabilizing the Sea
The tour guide rattled off two impressive figures relating to this structure. One is that it is insured for several million dollars. The other is that the Sacred Needle is about two million years old.
This blog has highlighted the sheer silliness of creationism over the last four years, especially the ludicrous claims of Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Ham (among others) figures the world was created in exactly six days about 6,000 years ago.
To bolster their claims that the Bible accurately describes the creation of Life, the Universe and Everything, Ham and Co. try all kinds of hand-waving arguments to counter reams of contradictory evidence from astronomy, geology, paleontology and biology, like
The flood in the story of Noah created the Grand Canyon, aided in the dispersion of humans across the planet, and buried all known dinosaur fossils at about the same time, 2348 BC.
Radioisotope dating is flawed, because in ancient times radioactive minerals decayed at faster rates than they do now.
Consider this stalagmite. [Mnemonic device: stalacTites are on Top, stalagMites are on the bottoM.] It has been formed over many years by the slow drop drip drip of water through the limestone above the cave. Each drop of water contains dissolved minerals, which are left behind as the water slowly evaporates (very slowly — caves are
Continue reading Science thoughts from underground
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JISHOU, HUNAN — A Christian group plans to hand out 1,000 copies of “The Charles Darwin Bible” to teachers attending the National Education Association (NEA) convention in San Diego this week.
The Charles Darwin Bible is a copy of the New Testament, with annotations referring to Christian and creationist beliefs. It’s the latest attempt by creationists to wiggle their religious non-science into the public schools.
There is also a creationist edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species available. Since the original text of 150 years ago is not copyrighted, evangelist Ray Comfort slapped a 50-page “special introduction” onto the work and is selling it for a mere 99 cents. Comfort’s plan is for fellow believers to hand the bastardized copies of Origin of Species to their teacher and professor friends.
The Charles Darwin Bible is another brainchild of Comfort’s. It’s being distributed by Holman Bible Outreach, which is selling the curiously named book for $3.99 (or $1.75 by the case). Someone ponied up the money to hand a thousand of them out to NEA members.
The NEA is one of two professional organizations that represent public school teachers. Its annual convention began June 26 and runs through Friday.
Here’s a description of the CDB:
Released in response to “Darwin Day” on Feb. 12th – observed worldwide by a growing number of people – this publication by best-selling author Ray Comfort is designed to help “pull the plug on the rising tide of atheism.” With both the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in February and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in October, 2009 promises to be a battleground year for evolution – and Christians need to be equipped to refute it.
Countless people have been deceived into dismissing God, believing that evolution is a proven scientific fact and
Continue reading Forget subterfuge, how about creationist chutzpah?
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JISHOU, HUNAN — It takes a certain amount of nerve, and intellectual dishonesty, to appropriate the text of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, write a creationist “special introduction” to it, then reissue the mangled tome as a legitimate copy of Darwin’s work.
The creationist outfit, Bridge Logos Foundation, of Alachua, Florida, has published an abridged 150th anniversary edition of Origin of Species, complete with a 50-page introduction calling into question practically every conclusion Darwin makes in the rest of the book. Living Waters Publications, is peddling the book as a way to undermine the teaching of evolution in schools and universities.
Both organizations are masterminded by Ray Comfort, a noted anti-evolution, fundamentalist writer.
 Here is the squib describing the book:
This special 280-page edition not only contains an abridged Origin of Species but also has a 50-page Introduction that reveals the dangerous fruit of evolution, Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his disdain for women. It counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe—scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler. It has many original graphics and (as it says on the back cover) is designed for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions. The back cover lists the above information as well as saying the book contains “Information on Intelligent Design vs Evolution.” We want to get one million copies into the hands of students and professors in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Let’s see if they try to ban Darwin’s Origin of Species. That would be interesting.
The front cover of the book is suitably nondescript, camouflaging the creationist nonsense contained in the introduction, which Comfort himself wrote. The unwary would never suspect the book is actually anti-Darwin.
Isn’t
Continue reading And speaking of thought control … how about creationist subterfuge?
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