Shrimp and Grits

I’ve recently been reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. One criticism of Dawkins is that he doesn’t recognize enough of the good that religion does for society.

For example, here is an example of the good religion does that, as far as I know, is completely omitted from The God Delusion:

“Cleaning the toilet to attract luck” published this month is the latest in a series of books advising readers on how to attract good fortune using a brush and an array of cleaning fluids.

[...]

The books are inspired by Buddhist teachings and feng shui, a traditional Chinese belief that people’s fortunes are determined by their surroundings.

How can Richard Dawkins simply ignore the vast benefit to society that clean toilets provide? Isn’t a holy war now and then a small price to pay for a sparkling, sanitary crapper?

Dawkins fans might retort that this particular article was published well after The God Delusion went to press. Well, that’s no excuse.

The idea that a clean toilet can bring good fortune, or even make you more beautiful, has existed in Japan for many years, according to Yuka Soma of Makino Publishing in Tokyo, editor of one of the toilet books.

Such clear, unmistakable benefit from religion. It amazes me that Dawkins is unable to see it!***

***For the humor impaired, take a close look at the category where this post is filed. Got it? Good.

Good news, everyone!

A new study shows that Americans of 2005 (28%) are much more likely to understand science articles in the news than Americans of 1988 (10%). The study’s author says that the major reason is that more colleges have basic science courses as an entry requirement.

I’ll buy that line of argument. Put more people through basic science courses early, and at least some of it will stick. More people with some scientific knowledge is certainly a good thing. But there’s one little problem - there’s also the issue

that people are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes.

Why?

One problem, [Carol Susan Losh of FSU] said, is that pseudoscience can speak to the meaning of life in ways that science does not.

What, does no one read Carl Sagan anymore?

I’m not sure I buy that belief in pseudoscience is up because of some sort of search for the meaning of life. Wasn’t that need just as real in the past as it is today? I might be inclined to buy into the idea that, since pseudoscience is all over the web, people are more exposed to nonsense than they ever were previously.

As silly as I think astrologers and people who claim to talk to the dead are, I don’t worry about them that much. Why? Mainly because most practitioners of pseudosciences like astrology aren’t seeding school boards with candidates to try to sneak astrology into the science classroom.

But there’s one pseudoscience out there whose practitioners can’t keep their mitts off the science curriculum. Creationism.

Back to the article …

[...] there also has been a drop in the number of people who believe evolution correctly explains the development of life on Earth and an increase in those who believe mankind was created about 10,000 years ago.

(emphasis mine)

To believe that the world / mankind was “created” six to ten thousand years ago, you have to throw away the foundations of almost all the sciences. Fundamental facts and theories in chemistry, physics, geology, biology, etc. are simply incompatible with the young Earth viewpoint.

And the numbers of these people are growing? That’s a frightening thought!

In South Carolina, we might send nutty people to the psychiatric wards for treatment. But the ones who are incurably insane? The ones who have no hope of ever living in reality again? We send them to the State House.

We are not alone in this practice.

Let me introduce you to Georgia representative Ben Bridges.

The Anti-Defamation League is calling on state Rep. Ben Bridges [Republican, of course] to apologize for a memo distributed under his name that says the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools because it is a religious deception stemming from an ancient Jewish sect.

The memo, sent to lawmakers across the country over Bridges’ signature, tells readers to go to fixedearth.com, which is probably the third most insane site on the whole Internet. Here’s a sample (original here) of the content of the site Ben Bridges apparently wanted lawmakers to see. I’ve removed the formatting to save your sanity.

From those years on through Newton’s mathematical inventions and overloaded gravity theory…through lawyer Lyell’s factless Uniformitarian Geology…to Darwin’s mythology (which gave wings to Marx’s and Freud’s and Dewey’s deviltry)…to Einstein’s Cabalistic Relativism and Zionism…to LeMaitre’s and Gamow’s and Penzias’ Big Bangism…to Extraterrestrialist extradinaire Sagan’s programming of NASA’s computers…to Goldin’s controlling philosophy for the Space Program which he officially named the “Origins Program” and defined as “a search for man’s cosmic roots”…

…From all of this and a hundred more examples from Copernicus to Wickramasinghe and back, the “restructuring of mathematics” into an “art form”… the recent fraudulent use of computer-programmed communications technology… the development of near-instantaneous tele-communications worldwide…have all worked together to progressively shrink the world into today’s virtual Global Plantation. In this environment, news, academia, and other media-managed outlets continually bow the knee to the Evolution and Big Bang Idols while simultaneously dumbing-down whole populations with moronic entertainment drivel laced with amoral and sexual perversion themes and punctuated with violence and horror….

On the other hand, near total censorship of information and entertainment upholding Christian values and Biblical teachings is in effect in the schools and everywhere else where belief systems are molded and were once reinforced in once Christian nations. This combination of forces that has nearly destroyed the Biblical foundation of the best parts of Western civilization is rooted and grounded in the mythical evolutionary Origins fundamentals imposed upon the world by “science falsely so called” (e.g., “Hitler, Stalin…”). This false science Idol has birthed and now nurtures the Kabbalist mythology a 15 billion year evolution of the universe, the earth, and all life forms including mankind. This Idol has almost succeeded in making its “creation scenario” the foundation of all “knowledge” which determines modern man’s behavior in all areas of life.

On second thought, it’s probably not enough to remove just the formatting to save your sanity. I apologize; the text alone is enough to induce migraines.

Bridges, after he was caught distributing this hateful nonsense, denied having anything to do with the memo. Of course, it came from his office - over his signature.

• Timecube
• jesus-is-savior.com

Enjoy!

It really is extremely hard to tell parody from serious “efforts” to find scientific evidence for the biblical literalists. So, you make the call. Parody, or not?

From WorldNetDaily, here’s a Kentucky “science student” who claims to have scientific evidence for creation.

“If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound,” Samuel J. Hunt writes

(emphasis mine)

Behold your all-powerful and mighty god!

God

I’ve talked about Kent Hovind on this blog before. He’s the guy who calls himself “Dr. Dino” and fancies himself able to disprove not only biological evolution but also most of modern science by citing Bible verses.

Well, there’s one Bible verse he apparently forgot. Matthew 22:21

Then saith He unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

The word around the web is that Hovind has been convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison for tax fraud.

Good luck on the prison ministry, “Doctor” D!

Kellie suggested a better sentence: ten years of forcing Hovind to learn real science. But that might be considered cruel and unusual punishment to someone like Hovind. Plus, once his head exploded there would be an awful mess to clean off the walls.

An old blog post of mine looked at an apparently minor issue that comes up from time to time in science education: the problem of language. I asked students to simply tell me - before I went over this sort of thing in class - what they thought scientists meant when they use the word “theory”.

Here are the results of the same question asked to a group of students in 2006.

1. Theory: is what you think the outcome will be. Theory: Guessing on what you think will happen in a situation.
2. Theory is an idea that has not been proven.
3. The best educated answer or solution.
4. It’s something that you will use during the experiment to help you get the results of the experiment.
5. The closest knowledge as you can get on the subject you are working on.
6. Theory - an explanation that is not proven yet.
7. Any scientific experiment that has not been proven.
8. A theory is what you believe will happen.
9. Theory - scientific study of how something works using a formula.
10. A theory is formed when you have a hypothesis that has been tested and retested.
11. Something happening over time.
12. Theory is a belief. It is not a proven fact.
13. A theory is an idea of what may be going on.
14. A theory is something thought to be true without scientific proof.
15. The definition of the term theory is science is your judgement of experiments.
16. Theory - is an assumption of how something works.
17. Theory is used as an idea in an experiment, that has not yet been proven as fact.
18. You have to test things to prove a theory.
19. The definition of theory is something we think is going to happen.
20. A theory is a speculation about the result of experiments or laws prior to conclusive test evidence.
21. Beliefs tested as the cause and effect of an experiment.
22. The meaning behind things. Why things react and work the way they do.
23. A theory is a supposition that is backed up with evidence or experimental support as opposed to a hypothesis which has not as much experimental support but is an educated guess.
24. A theory is a belief of something like "The Creation Theory" or "The Big Bang Theory" of how the earth came to being. A theory hasn’t been proven, it’s a explanation that makes sense unless proven otherwise.

While there are glimmers of understanding in there, I’ll still have to conclude that your average person just doesn’t know what science is about. You can certainly see the signs of religious anti-science indoctrination, too. (Look at the bolded answers.)

Same as it ever was?

Dan Holden teaches middle-school socal studies class, and burned a small American flag to get his students to think and write about the flag-burning issue. The story’s here.

As this story takes place in Kentucy, you can imagine what happened. Kentucky has a law against flag desecration, but it’s likely unenforcable due to the Supreme Court ruling that flag desecration is protected speech. So how are the reactionaries going to try to punish Mr. Holden’s brazen attempt to … get students to think about an issue?

The district also alerted city fire officials, who are conducting their own investigation.

“Certainly we’re concerned about the safety aspect,”

Another article says, thankfully, that

… the evidence doesn’t warrant filing a charge of criminal wanton endangerment — causing significant risk of serious injury or death.

So, they were going to try to bust Mr. Holden for “safety” reasons. That’s pretty pathetic, in my book. But there’s a lesson to be learned from this:

If you’re going to burn a small American flag in an effort to get students to think about the flag-burning issue, then make sure to burn said American flag under a properly-functioning fume hood.

CNN’s offbeat news has this article about water leaking from a tree in San Antonio. Several causes for the water were listed (a well, a burst pipe, etc. Nobody’s sure what is causing the water to come out, because that would likely require either damaging the tree or digging big holes in the yard.

But what makes this article strange is at the very end.

[The owner of the tree] has started to wonder if the water has special properties.

Her insurance agent dabbed drops of the water on a spider bite and the welt went away, she said.

Now I’ve had a few bug bites iin my time (I’m from South Carolina, after all), and one thing I’ve noticed about most bug bites is that the welt goes away after a short time. This is, of course, without the application of mysterious water from leaking trees.

“I just want to know if it is a healing tree or blessed water,” she said. “That’s God’s water. Nobody knows but God.”

I was in Arby’s the other day, taking part in an unholy ritual involving the consumption of a large roast beef combo. I noticed this in my box of curly fries.

The Jesus fry

This curly fry digested extremely well in spite of its unusual shape and extreme greasiness. In fact, the whole meal associated with the curly fry digested well.

When you eat as much grease as there is in one of those large boxes of curly fries … and you don’t have indigestion afterwards … that must mean that divine intervention is at work!

I just want to know if that was a healing fry or it had been fried in blessed grease. That’s God’s grease. Nobody knows but God.

Kellie sent me a link to this site, which features movie reviews from the fndamentalist Christian perspective. This certainly isn’t the only site like this on the net, but it’s good for some amusement value.

Let’s look at those reviews!

Here’s Jurassic Park, which the reviewer finds Very Offensive:

[...] perverted by the movie’s unceasing barrage of evolutionist propaganda, including casual references to man and dinosaurs being separated by 65 million years, and other theories hopelessly unsubstantiated yet dressed as undeniable scientific

You know, there’s a reason that the movie treats evolution as a generally accepted scientific theory. That’s because evolution is a generally accpeted scientific theory. But wait, there’s more!

[...] Christian parents should be warned of the intensity with which the dinosaur attacks are depicted (primarily against the pre-teen grandchildren of the park’s owner).

So, the reviewer is one of those who believes man and dinosaurs lived at the same time, but is offended by the depiction of what might happen if man and dinosaurs actually did live together.

The site also reviews Sin City, finding it Extremely Offensive. The only question I have to ask is this - why would anyone think that Sin City would be anything other than offensive to fundamentalists? So what’s the point of the review?

The reviewers find Carl Sagan’s Contact Very Offensive. Why? Profanity? Violence? While there might have been a little profanity in the movie, the real thing that caused offense here was an idea:

Christian’s are, once again portrayed, many times throughout the movie, as not having answers. A young Ellie was kicked out of Sunday School when the teacher couldn’t tell her where Cain got his wife.

… the idea that fundamentalists might not have all the answers. I guess all the parts about humility have been struck from the christiananswers.net Bible.

Still, the site’s a fun read. Look up your favorite movies and try to guess how offended you should have been while watching them!

I mentioned in a previous post that, in my unvarnished opinion, the ACE curriculum was “bad pedagogy and bad science”. I have my reasons for saying this - not the least of which is the fact that I went, for several of my childhood years, to an ACE school.

Let me briefly describe life in the ACE school. The school I attended was a small school, and what passed for learning in that school was to sit in a desk facing a white wall. On the sides of the desk were red and blue dividers to prevent you from looking to the sides. The day consisted mainly of sitting in that little isolated desk and working through workbooks, called PACEs.

If you had questions or needed to take the test at the end of each workbook, you were to raise a flag (either an American or a Christian flag - depending on what you needed), and one of the “supervisors” would come by and attempt to help you. Help was often rather limited, as the supervisors weren’t necessarily experts in any particular area of the curriculum. The supervisors meant well, I suppose, but they were far more concerned with keeping an appearance of order than they were about scholarship.

If sitting at a desk most of the day working through bland workbooks and staring at a blue, a white, and a red wall sounds to you like a lot like an inquisitive child’s vision of hell …. that’s exactly how it felt to me. I would not wish this type of education on my worst enemy or his children. Thankfully, I was eventually sent to a more sane school after four years of this - but I’ve always felt that my four years at an ACE school stunted my intellectual growth. It takes a long time to deprogram yourself of all that nonsense …

At the risk of bringing on some nasty flashbacks to my ACE days, I’ve dug up some samples of the ACE curriculum - so you can judge for yourselves how awful this stuff is.

The lessons start off looking mostly harmless.

Here’s an early sample of Math, for first graders. Counting money is, of course, something you’d want kids to pick up. But the curriculum rapidly goes downhill from there.

Since I’m a teacher of science, I’m going to focus on the science part of the curriculum for now.

Here’s a page from first grade science that describes the taste buds. You’ll notice that the page is as much about thanking God for taste buds as it is about the taste buds themselves. Also notice that the kids are asked to fill in the blanks, with answers that are trivially easy to find in the preceding few paragraphs. While this might not be much of an issue in first grade, the entire curriculum is based on “read and regurgitate” - little if any critical thought is involved.

Here’s another page from first grade science. This page highlights one of the severe failings of the ACE curriculum - it’s more about making kids into fundamentalists than it is about educating kids. Can anyone tell me what this has to do with science, and why it is in the science workbook?

God made all things.
So, all things belong to Him.
All things tell us that God is good.
All things tell us that He is wise and kind.
All things we see tell us that God loves us.
He helps us all day and all night.
He will help us all the time.
God is wise, good, and kind.
The Bible tells us so.

This might be a fine Bible lesson (provided you don’t let the kids hear about Katrina or that tsunami in Asia that killed 200000+ just after Christmas), but it’s in the wrong place.

Let’s move on to third grade science. Here’s what passes for the history of the Earth in the ACE curriculum. The most obvious criticism of this material is that it isn’t science at all - it’s simply part of Genesis in simpler words.

Another criticism of this material is that, again, no thought is involved. For instance, the text says that

There is a band of air which God placed around the earth on the second day.

It then asks the kids to select the best completion to this sentence.

There is a (creation, sand, band) of air around the earth.

Whether you know the real answer or not, only one answer can fit! Lots of ACE questions are this way - even on their end-of-workbook tests. It’s like this at the higher levels, too.

If you have the stomach for it, continue reading the sample third grade science book: here, here, here, here, and here. You’ll find no science, of course. You’ll find only fundamentalism - in big print.

Moving on into the fourth grade, you’ll find that the science ACE is peddling doesn’t get any better.

We use measurement to compare one object with another.

If we want to check or measure our own lives, we compare ourselves only to God. We do not measure up to God because we are sinners.

The curriculum is short on science, and long on fundamentalism. And, like the other pages we’ve looked at, the ACE curriculum relies almost entirely on rote memorization. Science is not viewed as a process of discovery - it’s viewed as a laundry list of facts to memorize. Facts are important, but they’re only part of science.

One thing that I noticed while I was in the ACE school was that the later science PACEs seemed afraid of presenting science. The curriculum was careful to dismiss well-established scientific ideas as “what scientists believe” and cast doubt on established science that might not agree with the ACE authors’ take on the Bible. Take a look at this sample.

Have you ever wondered how many kinds of plants there are? Even scientists do not know for sure. They think there are about 350,000 varieties; however, no one but God knows exactly how many kinds of plants exist in the world.

Sounds innocent (for a religious school) so far, right? Read on, in the ninth grade ACE materials.

Most scientists classify man as a mammal in the phylum Chordata since he has characteristics similar to those of mammals. Man, however, is a unique being with characteristics that he alone possesses. For this reason, we will not classify man as a mammal. Man is not an animal - he is a unique being who was created in God’s image.

Obviously, the ACE curriculum doesn’t teach evolution - the theory that binds biology together. So biology is simply presented as a big dump of largely unrelated information. Much of ACE biology revolves around the classification of organisms. But ACE can’t even give the kids that without screwing it up with fundamentalism!

Finally, we come to tenth grade science. The site I’ve been pulling this material from doesn’t have much in the way of actual content from the science part of the curriculum at this grade level, but what they do provide supports the points I’ve made above. Just take a look at this tenth grade science quiz. For reference, in the tenth grade at the normal high school I went to after escaping from the ACE school, I was taking laboratory-based chemistry and biology courses. The poor ACE kids at that level sit in their cubicles and regurgitate stuff like this:

Special revelation ______________________.
A) reveals God in natural laws
B) is the Word of God
C) teaches man how to know God
D) reveals Who God is
E) B, C, and D
F) A, B, and C
G) all the above

It goes without saying that special revelation is not a scientific concept at all, and has no place in a decent science curriculum. If you click the link above, you can see that the other questions on the page are worded in such a way as to overstate the uncertainties in science. While it’s true that in science all knowledge is provisional, this point isn’t what the ACE curriculum tries to drive home. The ACE point is, plainly put, don’t trust science.

In summary, here’s why i think the ACE curriculum should be put “in the hole”.

• It relies on rote memorization - and only rote memorization - in most areas except some parts of math.
• The assessments are simplistic and don’t involve any sort of critical thought.
• The content is so steeped in fundamentalism that important topics are either left out or distorted. This is especially apparent in science, where the curriculum spends much of its time on theology instead of science.