So you think science and religion are compatible? Or that notions of their incompatibility are overblown, and there’s no real problem? Have a gander, then, at this piece from Raw Story. A group called the Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE), as well as several dozen minors, have filed a lawsuit in federal court (copy of complaint here) trying to prevent the state of Kansas from implementing its public-school science standards.
A second lawsuit has apparently been filed by the Pacific Justice Institute, whose webpage gives the suit’s grounds:
Families across Kansas became one step closer, today, to protecting their children from forced atheistic teaching in their public school system. Pacific Justice Institute filed a complaint in Federal District Court challenging the State Board of Education’s (BOE) adoption of certain science standards which would create a hostile learning environment for those of faith. The standards being challenged are the Next Generation Science Standards adopted by the BOE June 11, 2013, and the corresponding Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas.
In addition to citing numerous areas of law that the standards violate, the complaint cites that the standards cause the state “to promote religious beliefs that are inconsistent with the theistic religious beliefs of plaintiffs, thereby depriving them of the right to be free from government that favors one religious view over another.”
This is the old canard that teaching science is offensive to religious people because it pushes a materialistic view of the universe. In other words, teaching evolution, cosmology, or geology is an essentially atheistic act, one hostile to religion. Note what the lawsuit says:
The F&S [Kansas science “framework and standards”] take impressionable children, beginning in Kindergarten, into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe – “where do we come from?”
3. These questions are ultimate religious questions because answers to them
profoundly relate the life of man to the world in which he lives. [“By its nature, religion – in the comprehensive sense in which the Constitution uses that word – is an aspect of human thought and action which profoundly relates the life of man to the world in which he lives.” (McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 461 (1961) (Frankfurter, J. concurring, with Harlan, J.)]
4. These questions are exceedingly important as ancillary religious questions regarding the purpose of life and how it should be lived ethically and morally depend on whether one relates his life to the world through a creator or considers it to be a mere physical occurrence that ends on death per the laws of entropy.
5. However, instead of seeking to objectively inform children of the actual state of our scientific knowledge about these questions in an age appropriate and religiously neutral manner, the Standards use, without adequately disclosing, an Orthodoxy (defined in paragraphs 8 and 9) and a variety of other deceptive methods to lead impressionable children, beginning in Kindergarten, to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic answers.
6. Instead of explaining to students that science has not answered these religious questions, the F&S seek to cause them to accept that controversial materialistic/atheistic answers are valid.
7. The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform.
8. The orthodoxy, called methodological naturalism or scientific materialism, holds that explanations of the cause and nature of natural phenomena may only use natural, material or mechanistic causes, and must assume that, supernatural and teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid (the “Orthodoxy”).
This is straight out of the Wedge document playbook, which lays out an insidious plan to purge materialism and naturalism from schools. Here are some of the goals laid out by the Wedge document:
Both lawsuits are calling for the Kansas standards to be prevented from application, or, alternatively, altered so they don’t erode religious sentiments.
Here are the dire consequences that the PJI paints if the standards are used:
If the complete injunction against implementation of the standards is not granted, the complaint requests an alternative injunction that would stop these standards for grades K-8, and would allow the standards for grades 9-12 as long as the standards are objective “so as to produce a religiously neutral effect with respect to theistic and non-theistic religion.”
Brad Dacus, President of Pacific Justice Institute noted, “it’s an egregious violation of the rights of Americans to subject students—as young as five—to an authoritative figure such as a teacher who essentially tells them that their faith is wrong.” He continued, “it’s one thing to explore alternatives at an appropriate age, but to teach theory that is devoid of any alternative which aligns with the belief of people of faith is just wrong.”
The teacher is not telling students that their faith is wrong. That would violate the First Amendment. What the teacher is telling them are the findings of science. If that has the effect of eroding students’ religious beliefs, well, that’s too damn bad. The purpose of teaching science is a secular one, not meant to push atheism, so it doesn’t violate the Lemon test for the constitutionality of public education. As Steve Brown wrote on The Maddow Blog:
What I find especially fascinating about the argument is its implications. For COPE, the absence of religion is necessarily evidence of a “non-theistic religious worldview,” promoting “materialistic” or “atheistic” views. In other words, from their perspective, anything that’s secular should be seen as a rejection of religion.
By this reasoning, if you have lunch without a prayer, it’s an atheistic lunch. If you play baseball without including religion, it’s a “non-theistic” game. And a school teaches biology, it’s entangling itself in religion by omitting supernatural stories from science classes.
The Baptist Joint Committee says COPE is effectively pushing for “no science at all” in Kansas’ public schools, which I imagine is precisely the point.
The reason these ludicrous suits are being filed is, of course, that the religious plaintiffs recognize the incompatibility between their faith and science. They know that exposure to the facts of science will erode the ungrounded but comforting superstitions in they’ve indoctrinated their children. What better evidence could we have for the incompatibility of religion and science? Does the Clergy Letter Project, or the National Center for Science Education think that their accommodationist claims will prevent lawsuits like this? It hasn’t worked so far. The religious understand perfectly well the implications of science.
h/t: NoNamesLeft0102, Diane
I have only one word: Ireland.
It’s time to head the example.
Sorry, I meant to type “heed.”
Subscribe
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Si.
And who is involved in this lawsuit?
Why none other than our old pal from the Kansas Kreationist Kangaroo Kourt follies of 2005 but John Calvert, director of the “Intelligent Design Network.”
Welcome back, John, we’ve missed the entertainment. If Kansas is lucky, Calvert and Co. could cost the state a few million dollars in this trivial pursuit. A good thing ’cause Kansas spends way too much money on education as it is, right Calvert?
I’m sorry to say this, but the more I read about things like this inevitably leads me to the conclusion that a large percentage of Americans are simply batshit crazy!
I came to that realization 40+ years ago.
Well considering we had a President (Reagan) that relied on tarot card readings and constellation placement/alignment to oversee his “leading” of our nation,then that “evolved” into running the likes of S. Palin, M. Bachmann for that same office and the fact that many in America actually voted for these batshite crazy fundies. Leads me to think that an American taliban is not far behind. Both of which claim , as did W. Bush, that god(s) instructed them to run to “save” us all from ??? ourselves?? common sense?? or wingnuts like them?? a bright spot light is very cleansing… bring on the light!!
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Hey, religious people! Listen up! SCIENCE IS NOT ATHEISM.
From their point of view, anything that isn’t explicitly religious (theistic) is implicitly atheistic!
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Yes. I’m going to go have some atheist Cheerios now or my atheist lunch. Then I’m going to go feed my atheist fish.
Aren’t the fish symbolically Christian? 😀
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Yes! Good one! I guess that must really irk the Christians.
Heaven is a plaice* on Earth.
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* Esp. if it’s good enough for Jehovah.
Until the fin at the end.
Oh, good grief! 😉
Yes. “If you’re not for God, you’re against God” is a quote from my past religious education.
Clearly, it’s not the questions that bother them so much. It’s the implicit answers!
The irony is thick in the above quote. Not to mention the hypocrisy.
(That we, of course, do NOT bother kids in Kindergarten with questions about the origin of life is somewhat besides the point)
Absolutely bananas – where do these backwards idiots come from? The spectrum of people truly is diverse.
It’s worrying that morons like this exist, but the fact they try and alter facts with their fantastical nonsense is even worse.
“where do these backwards idiots come from”
A failed education, perhaps? And now they want everyone else to fail too?
Sure a bad education, but you can get a good education in the wrong things. Parental influence, community all play a bigger role than education, unless their educational establishment is teaching BS like creationism as fact, and from a young age so that they have little chance to reject it.
A lack of education or a poor education is certainly a big part of it, but one must also account for the poisoning of children from a very young age in churches and homes. Once children get to teen age, they are then bombarded by peers and coaches and teachers, etc. with intentional lies, irrational fears and wishful thinking in many backward places in the south and mid-west.
Exactly right NEB…. Think about all the songs and poems taught to the small children as they get indoctrinated into the “faith” during their formative years. It amazes me how scared these parents are about teaching their own children, our future, critical thinking…. Sad ain’t it?
It’s scary that they exist in a democracy because they can vote but it’s terrifying that they are organized!
Haha, yeah the organised part is scary. Luckily a larger percentage of people aren’t idiots and this creationist angle isn’t osmotic.
Why are the names of these groups (& related legislations) always the opposite of their true intentions? Citizens for Objective Public Education?? More like Citizens for the Preservation of Public Ignorance!
“Democratic Republic of x”. Neither democratic, nor a republic. That’s a grand classic.
“…5. However, instead of seeking to objectively inform children of the actual state of our scientific knowledge about these questions in an age appropriate and religiously neutral manner…” What is “religiously neutral manner” for these people, and how do you get any more “religiously neutral” than atheism? It seems “religiously neutral” supposed to mean some sort of generic Christianity.
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The case they cite near the top of this entry, McGowan v. Maryland, does not seem to be relevant to this complaint. It was about whether it is ok for businesses to close on Sundays.
I struggle to see the relevance of this for the complaint, except maybe for the quote.
I don’t think my children should be taught any so-called “history” that supposedly “happened” after 1763, because it conflicts with George Bell’s end times prophecy.
Or any history prior, since it conflicts with the Babble.
So now that we’ve eliminated science and history, let’s go after math and English.
Good idea! The number zero needs to go because it’s too eastern & all the French has to come out of English. Here’s to you Harold!
One has to wonder what these people would accept as neutral.
Neutrality is not a hard concept to grasp.
People can be so disappointing.
I live in Kansas and am embarrassed by that fact. I wish my husband had not felt the need to move here 12 years ago. If I were not 61 and had more money, I’d get the hell out of this state. My granddaughter moved away because she didn’t want to have children who would then be put in the Kansas school system. Not everybody in Kansas is an idiot. Why can’t people understand that religion is for churches and education based on science if for schools? I guess people with any sense get out of this state.
Oh, cheer up.
Idiocy is EVERYWHERE!
Idiocy is everywhere, no doubt about it. And I’m cheery enough most of the time. At least I don’t live in Texas.
Actually brain drains can be a real problem. The US benefited enormously when Jewish intellectuals were chased out of Europe in the Nazi era. I live in central Maine which has been losing the cream of the crop for at least five generations, and it hurts. Kansas may be experiencing a brain drain now. Maybe someone closer to Kansas can help us out with some facts.
Kansas is where I was born and raised. I don’t know if there is information available about the kind of brain drain you refer to, but look no further than who occupies the governor’s seat, the Ks sec state, and the majority in the legislature, as well as the plurality that voted them into office, and it is clear some sort of brain drain is responsible.
You have, however, reminded me of an old joke.
(mostly for the benefit of the international readers, so I apologize if you’ve heard this)
Q: Do you know why it is so windy in Oklahoma?
A: Because Texas sucks, and Kansas blows.
Add a little Coriolis, and that explains the whole tornado thing too.
+1
Indeed. I’d be more depressed about it but then I think, what should I expect from a planet of chimp relatives? 😉 It’s a wonder we’ve not destroyed ourselves already, and if I think about that wonder for a moment, I almost find it a source of cheer that seemingly against all odds we’ve mostly moved a little bit beyond the burning heretics stage. Who would have bet on that five hundred years ago? So while it often seems hopeless to me, I remind myself that at every point in history it has seemed hopeless and yet, here we are, chatting away about it online now.
I just don’t get it. If you don’t like or don’t agree with the standards then home school your kid and teach them what you want. Sure you have to teach them the standards but you can add other stuff in. Or get a voucher and send them to a religious leaning charter school! Or just a religious private school. Why make EVERY student learn about whatever fairy tale you favor? Or how about this.. Go crawl back into your cave and STFU! I am so sick of these people!
Kansas?
Again?
I think I prefer this Kansas, thankyouverymuch.
Cheers,
b&
thats my kind of kansas………….
Kansas should be proud of that cultural contribution. The FSM is here to stay. Who knows, maybe they’ll make another indelible cultural mark this time around as well? They might be inadvertently advancing the cause of unbelief with their shenanigans. Someone should warn the believers that a dollar sent to COPE is, quite possibly, a dollar spent for the opposition.
To be frank, I’m glad to see this fight happening in Kansas because it means that Kansas managed to jump on board with the standards in the first place. My home state, Alabama? My current state, Louisiana? NO WAY. I hope the state comes out on top, poopoos the naysayers who don’t believe Kansas could overcome its religious redness, and sets an example for those of us fighting the good fight down here in the Deep[er] South.
(To clarify, in case my comment was dumb — lawsuits: bad thing, sad news. Kansas BOE: caring about the education of children the way I wish every state would.)
So if you are deeply convinced that the Earth is flat, you have to rewrite the geography syllabus and make everyone learn your version of things? I thought this was finished with the Scopes Trial, but then I remember that Scopes lost the case. I really expected better of Kansas. As Carol @16 says, not everyone in Kansas is ignorant but they have some spokespeople who are. This is very sad.
What was lost in Scopes was gained in Dover. Too bad the christians haven’t heard the good news yet.
We have them squirming now! Before this I haven’t seen religionists acknowledge that they are using brainwashing (“indoctrination”) on children.
The strawman that science is dependent on “naturalism” to work is of course reversing causality. By studying nature, it was first found that physical laws are successful in predicting observations (e.g. mechanics and gravity) and later that magic is excluded (thermodynamics of closed systems).
“Naturalism” is an observation, not a hypothesis. And FWIW, the theory it leads to is called “physicalism”. It is rather successful IMO, starting with the (inadvertent) thermodynamics test and on.
As always, if creationists have useful alternatives to “naturalism” (or today, physicalism) they have only to make them pass peer review.
Nitpick, but entropy isn’t the cause of individual or collective death. It will eventually be the end of habitability (heat death), but that is a different process.
It is evolution that causes deaths. Even bacteria has evolved to die after some few hundred cell divisions.
Interestingly, and related, unless I’m mistaken I read somewhere that they have now discovered species that are individually immortal as well. Those cells are somehow capable of full break down and reuse of all proteins regardless of chemical damage, or at least ejection of any dross.
I dunno why that would be, but if it is so it is then apparent that life can beat entropy and instead is a law unto itself. Which of course creationists can’t abide by acknowledging, hence the usual creationist entropy flim-flam.
There aren’t two lawsuits, just one, filed by two firms in Kansas AND the Pacific Justice Institute. If you look at PJI’s website, it has a link to the complaint, and it’s the COPE one.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/09/now-and-venn-60-how-internet-will.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PictorialTheology+%28Pictorial+Theology%29
Haven’t figured out how to do a lot of things with iPad yet. Sorry this isn’t a simple link.
Whaddayaknow. It did what I wanted.
I’m pretty sure we’re not teaching 5 year olds about entropy.
I think kids have a good understanding of chaos already – just look at any kids room!
What total disrespect to their the minds of their children, they want them to be backward looking and as archaic as they. As much as they wish to turn back the clock, it can’t be done; the mythology that informs their thinking about the world will serve to reduce the fitness of their children to live in the world. Further it cheats them out of many chances of success and fulfillment. This while they daily enjoy the benefits of the kind of thinking they wish to suppress. It’s almost insanity.
Seems that based on this way of thinking, the plaintiffs could also sue to stop the promotion of health in schools – such as encouraging hand washing, covering up when coughing, staying home when you have a fever and such. The Germ Theory does not acknowledge the possibility of supernatural forces at work.
Indeed, ex falso quodlibet.
Cheers,
b&
Santa?!?… Yay!
It’d actually be a great setup for a children’s story / musical / whatever: The Land of Contradiction. All it takes is one little contradiction, and everything is possible!
Cheers,
b&
Quote
3. These questions are ultimate religious questions because answers to them
profoundly relate the life of man to the world in which he lives. [“By its nature, religion – in the comprehensive sense in which the Constitution uses that word – is an aspect of human thought and action which profoundly relates the life of man to the world in which he lives.” (McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 461 (1961) (Frankfurter, J. concurring, with Harlan, J.)]
Unquote
Logic fail. Just because J. Frankfurter observes that
“religion … is an aspect of human thought and action which profoundly relates the life of man to the world in which he lives”
it doesn’t follow that ANY aspect of human thought and action which profoundly yadah yadah yadah, is necessarily religious.
As has been said elsewhere, universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan.
Click my name for the full low-down.
Bob(Big)
I am Socrates.
b&
No, I’m Socrates!
Oh, sorry, wrong movie.
Playing atheistic baseball or eating atheistic lunch are perhaps not our best examples; many religious people do want prayers embedded in such activities. I much prefer to talk about atheistic auto mechanics and atheistic plumbing (not sure who first suggested these); thinking Kansans, including the judge in this lawsuit, might respond well to these analogies.
Paragraphs 123-125 of the complaint show an astounding lack of self-awareness. For instance, in 123:
a. causes the state to promote religious beliefs that are inconsistent with the theistic religious beliefs of plaintiffs, thereby depriving them of the right to be free from government that favors one religious view over another;
b. sends a message that they, being theists, are outsiders within the community and that
non-theists and materialists are insiders within the community;
c. denies them the right to be treated equally with non-theists; and
d. causes them to pay taxes to fund the state’s endorsement of the tenets of non- theistic religions which conflict with their theistic beliefs.
Gosh, it’s good that those things never happen to the non-religious…
Asshats.
Having taught high school biology in Kansas during the early 1980s, I am not surprised. I had students bringing Bibles to class everyday and a local church created a creationist Sunday school course for my students. The favorite line of the year was from the Social Studies teacher – he started an unit on the evolution of governments and a student proudly raised her hand and proclaimed, “I don’t believe in evolution, so I am not taking notes.”
Good thing I’m not a schoolteacher. I’d have offered her the opportunity to be flunked on the spot so she didn’t have to have attend any more classes and thus have her sensibilities offended by reality.
Cheers,
b&
I would have gone into an uncontrollable rant about vocabulary, semantics and scientific truth that would have culminated in a detailed illustration of her future as an uneducated buffoon unworthy of the hard won cultural inheritance that started with age of enlightenment.
This is why I am a terrible teacher.
You know, you might not be so bad, after all….
b&
Yep, you would have lost them completely at about the tenth word… 😉
Aye, there’s the signature.
That one never did make sense to me, either.
If one has no gods, no miracles, no saints, no dogma, no holy texts, no priests, no congregations, no afterlife, no rituals, no holy days, no ceremonies…how, exactly does one have a religion, again?
Unless, of course, they’re referring to a very small subset of Unitarians and Buddhists. But somehow I don’t think so….
b&
Atheism is a religion, like abstinence is a sex position. My favourite Bill Maher quote and the easiest way of explaining atheism vis à vis religion.
My only problem with that analogy is that it makes atheism seem like abstinence while the religious people get all the fun….
b&
… like bald is a hair color.
Better?
Not really…I’ve got long hair….
b&
Nah, they are two separate equations not numbers on the other side of an equal sign.
In the abstract, sure…but it’s set up in the form of:
I’m having an hard time coming up with a sex-related analogy that gets the point across, though….
Cheers,
b&
This has little to do with idiots. It rather has to do with analytical thinking and lack thereof. Creation is a story which is easily grasped with lower level thinking skills. Evolution, on the other hand, is not well grasped w/o a reasonable scientific background and fluency in higher level thinking skills. Those who lack appropriate background have no way of apprehending their deficiency.
You don’t have to be an analytical genius to understand that we are cousins to everything else alive on the planet.
That’s really all that the Fact of Evolution boils down to. And the Theory is easy enough to extrapolate at that. Look at how more alike you are to your closest relatives than to your farthest ones. Look at how some branches of your family tree don’t have any descendants. Now, just extrapolate to thousands and millions and billions of years: only those families that didn’t die out have descendants today.
Any child old enough to understand who’s a cousin and and aunt and and uncle and a great-aunt and so on is more than capable of understanding Evolution.
Cheers,
b&
If you don’t grasp the science behind evolution it’s just a story. I suspect that (sadly) most people understand evolution as a story rather than as science.
Yep, just ask science journalist Virginia Hefferman.
As Ben wrote, the basic principles of evolution aren’t difficult to understand. You don’t have to be a genius to get it.
What you do have to be is willing to leave the comfort of the worldview with which you were brought up, or perhaps in which you were strongly indoctrinated. This can be scary for a variety of reasons, prominent among which is fear of change.
That writ, I do think intelligence plays a role in being able to see that adjusting your worldview to comport with reality is not necessarily scary and often required. But it’s more complicated than simply “getting” evolution.
The philosophical challenge posed by science to religion is that the more we learn about causality the less and less there is for God to do. Furthermore, the findings of science show no signs of a purpose-driven, ie teleological univers.
Religion can then do one of two things
1) Go for a rarified form of religion focused on ethical codes of conduct and very generalized religious feelings and sentiments with little or nothing in the way of a definite creed.
or
2) Go for a lot of Roman Catholic fancy-schmantzy stuff about primary causes (God) vs. secondary causes or metaphysical causes vs. scientific causes, which the more one examines it seems to be a bit of sleight of hand.
The problem with the second option is that there is no way to test these hypotheses, thus they are for practical purposes entirely meaningless to any scientist.
Finally, in classical Christianity you have to posit some sort of “Fall” however allegorized and nothing we know of human ancestry vindicates this. Even some of the BioLogos folk have conceded this.
That’s why such a large segment of the religious population adopts:
3) Put your fingers in your ears and say, “Na na na na na na na I can’t year you, science na na na na…”
That’s basically the strategy of my entire family (sigh). Why learn about and grapple with reality when it’s so much easier to just assume the world is whatever way fits your pre-existing prejudices and causes you the least personal mental discomfort? After all, as long as the electricity is on, the TV works, there is gas in the car, and the pharmacy fills your prescriptions what do you care about reality? All the hard won products of science work whether you have any respect for it or not. Just suckle at the teat of of the post-enlightenment while pissing on it’s values until sweet baby Jesus takes you home to heaven. It’s a great plan if you are an unprincipled ingrate.
Nicely put I must say.
+1
This may not be completely appropriate here, but I’d like to ask someone(s) who actually hold the position that evolution is true.
It struck me some years ago that virtually no one I knew, or read, or who wrote in magazines or newspapers, actually thought that ‘people’ are animals and that evolution had anything to say about our everyday behavior. If they did, it didn’t seem to affect anything they said or wrote.
I recently came across the following from “The Descent of Man…the Concise Edition, selections & commentary by Carl Zimmer”, 2007, from the Foreword by Frans De Waal:
“The noble human mind hints at intervention, Wallace suggested, by some higher being. Echoes of his position can still be found today in the social sciences and humanities, where it is quite common to hear academics adhere to evolutionary logic while at the same time stressing a radical break between humans and other animals in the cognitive domain. Even the up-and-coming field of evolutionary psychology cannot resist this temptation, and manages to keep its textbooks mostly free of hairy cousins. Inasmuch as this approach tries to dissociate human evolution from continuity among all life forms, it is dramatically at odds with Darwin’s message in Descent, which is that humans are animals in both body and mind.” Pages vii-viii
Humans are animals in both body and mind. Our minds aren’t spirits or ghosts or extensions of Cosmic Consciousness somehow embedded into matter, and virtually no one is including that in their thought processes.
Agreement? Disagreement? Comments?
Yeah. Humans are animals, period. Wallace was confused and wrong about the human mind.
Yeah, humans are animals. In the wider social context, you’ll find the separation and I think this is mostly a conventional one among non believers.
Our society and our laws treat ‘humans’ and ‘animals’ differently.
Doubtless, you would like this to continue, correct?
So what is the point of claiming ‘humans are animals’ if you are unwilling to actually live according to your stated belief?
The law makes a distinction between human animals and non-human animals. So what? You no doubt make a distinction between chickens and tapirs. What’ the point of that?
gbjames wrote: “So what? You no doubt make a distinction between chickens and tapirs.”
No, not insofar as the law is concerned I dont. They have the same level of legal rights.
Neither have the legal rights that a human being does.
Deny a dog or cat proper medical care and its called abuse, deny millions of humans proper medical care and its called ” a good conservative business plan” and applauded as a good political policy.
Franklin, cite a case where someone was denied the right to purchase medical care (not insurance, MEDICAL CARE)
In many cases the 2 are identical… I had a friend denied the chemo he needed because his insurance didn’t cover it, there are many that miss one payment and thus lose their insurance in turn losing the care they need, many with preexisting conditions denied care because their insurance doesn’t cover it… There are many many cases like this.. Where have you been the past 30 years? in all these cases no dr no insurance bean counter has been jailed for denying care, but like i said do the same to a dog or cat and see where you end up…
Franklin wrote: “In many cases the 2 are identical…”
Not so. Any hospital or doctor will accept cash. No one is denied the right to purchase medical care.
You can go buy a bottle of aspirin. You may have no money to buy it, but that doesnt mean that someone has denied you the right to buy it. The same applies to any other medical care.
Tim, Franklin was talking about people being denied actual medical care. NOT ‘the right to purchase medical care if they’re rich enough’, nobody’s denying them that. If you’re rich enough you can buy anything including your local Congressman. If you have no money then the ‘right’ to buy medical care – or any other necessity of life – is simply irrelevant.
But then I guess you know this perfectly well and are simply missing the point deliberately, like most of your posts. This may be considered a very sophisticated tactic in fundie circles but it won’t wash on this site.
Tim, two points. 1) I’m not sure I understand why legal rights are relevant to the matter. And 2) if they are, does the law distinguish between horses and cattle in the US? Yes. Between the treatment of dogs and cicadas? Yes. The law makes distinctions between different kinds of animals to the extent that we humans chose to distinguish them.
Which, as mentioned in 1, is irrelevant in any case.
Legal rights are relevant because they are the most obvious example of how , in practice, we do not treat humans ‘as animals’ despite the professed belief of many that they are.
There is a word used to describe believing one way and acting contrary to it. What was it?
Legal rights are irrelevant to recognizing that humans are animals. The fact that law distinguishes human animals from non-human animals for some purposes is as irrelevant as the fact that law distinguishes different kinds of animals for purposes of managing wild animal populations. You shoot deer only some times of the year here in my state. It is governed by law. The law makes no statement about what may be done to mice.
You can’t use the law as a reasonable argument to say “humans aren’t animals” in the context that Chukar asked his questions, assuming that is what you are trying to do. If you are not trying to say that then you’re simply derailing the thread.
But, dear, dear Tim, not all animals are treating equally under the law. Vertebrates have more legal protection than invertebrates in UK law, for example (with octopodes being given the legal status of vertebrates!).
As Napoleon* might have said, all animals are equal under the law but some are more equal than others — and humans most equal of all.
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The pig, not the Emperor of France, in case you were in any doubt.
Ha! You wrote “octopodes”, very nice!
“Humans are animals” does not imply “animals are humans.”
I think human behavior is much more like “animal” behavior than humans are willing to admit. I for one don’t mind being classified as an animal. As for human laws being different for people and other animals, well, that’s really sad.
The categories “human” and “animal” kind of miss the point so far as ethics is concerned. I think the relevant dimension is the mental life of the animal. While we don’t know for sure what the mental life of specific animals is like, but we do know with fairly high confidence that an ant has less mental life than a fish, a fish less than a bird, a bird probably less than a dog, etc. At one end we have what are almost certainly like machines with no mental life, on the other with something that probably shares many subjective experiences with us. We are a long way from fully grappling with the ethical implications of our continuity with the animal kingdom, but we are beginning to incorporate these ideas into our ethics and to question the assumption that there is some categorical divide. For example, acknowledging our close kinship with chimpanzees, and the likely similarity of their mental life to ours, experimentation on chimpanzees is being severely curtailed in the U.S. and is already banned in many countries.
On the flip side, there is nothing about our literal relatedness with the rest of the life on earth that entails denial of our special qualities. T-rex is related to birds, but they are vastly different creatures. Birds can fly! That’s a pretty notable difference, a difference you need to take into account if you are building a cage for each of them, but these sharp differences in ecology do not diminish the literal truth of their relatedness in any way. Similarly, we are an animal, but an animal that has radically departed from other animals with our own special tricks such as social knowledge, highly abstract thought, and tool use.
gluonspring wrote: “we are beginning to incorporate these ideas into our ethics and to question the assumption that there is some categorical divide.”
thats a very small we
The overwhelming majority of humans do not doubt the fact that we are not in the same category as animals.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by different category. If you mean that we are going to give dogs the vote, no. We are not that much in the same category. If you mean that we are going to treat animals as though they have no rights at all, well, the we is perhaps not quite so small. You’d be hard pressed to find a store that did not sell at least some cage free eggs, for example. What is that but expanding our ethical sphere to include chickens? And animal cruelty is treated much harsher now than when I was growing up.
But in any case, what does it matter how large the “we” is? Large majorities are wrong about all sorts of things. If large majorities think that animals can not have inner experiences, suffer, and otherwise have some claim on our ethics, that only shows how horribly wrong majorities can be.
You want to pretend that you ‘question the categorical divide’ but by your actions you support it.
There is no comparison between what we hold as human rights and those of the animals. The chasm is so broad as to be uncrossable.
To use another metaphor it is like holding a red smoldering matchhead up to the sun.
You’re not listening to any of the other animals posting in this thread. (Are you the same animal as Chukar, by the way?)
I can’t tell from your hyperbole whether you want to argue that prokaryotes should have human rights, or that a legal fiction refutes the fact of evolution. Which is it?
I guess there will be no more medical professionals coming out of Kansas.
Why would you make that unwarranted assumption?
3/4 of US doctors believe in God.
There is nothing incompatible between being a medical doctor and one’s faith.
Perhaps MaryL suggests that teaching mythology as reality in science classes may result in high school graduates unable to meet requirements for entrance to medical school. I think she is wrong. I expect that every once in a while a particularly bright person will, through self-study/mentoring/tutoring, manage to overcome the impediment of indoctrination in Iron Age mystery beliefs and succeed in med school. Long odds against, to be sure, but the right combination of gifted mind, dogged determination, and the human spirit is capable of beating them.
not real sure what is so hard to understand about not allowing religion into our public schools, government, or laws… if you want your child to be undereducated and lacking the needed skills to get ahead in todays world, if you want them to rely on myths instead of science, send them, at your expense, to a religious school… its that easy…. religion poisons everything !!
Do you agree that science can draw no conclusion regarding the existence of the supernatural or regarding the existence of God?
Why would anybody agree to such a silly proposition? Are we supposed to think that gods and other beasties sprinkle magical faery dust around them that lets them influence the world without their influences being even theoretically detectable?
Either your gods are real and detectable, or, because they’re not detectable we know they’re not real.
Furthermore, we know that they’re not real because we’ve investigated everywhere they could possibly hide and found no evidence of them. We should have as much certainty that the gods are imaginary as you should be certain that you’re not currently being stabbed to death by The Invisible Pink Unicorn as you read these words.
For a quick overview of the search that’s been performed and its results, see here:
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
Cheers,
b&
I must be hungry. I read your “detectable” as “delectable”. 😀
Also, to further emphasize your good points, science CAN help us say with great probability that there are no gods, because as you point, out there is no evidence even though we’ve searched high and low. We look for evidence and make conclusions using the scientific method.
Diana MacPherson wrote: “science CAN help us say with great probability that there are no gods”
You are implying that such a probability has been calculated. Cite the data that was used to produce your mathematical conclusion.
Diana MacPherson wrote: “even though we’ve searched high and low. We look for evidence and make conclusions using the scientific method”
Cite the scientific experiments that you are referring to which had as their stated purpose to search for God.
Include the methodology which would show us how this search was conducted both within our own universe and outside of it.
No. Show me yours first!
So, no “searching for evidence”, no experimentation of your conclusion that you claimed was scientific, no testing, no probabilities calculated after all, eh? Just an assertion without anything to back it up?
I already told you how there had been no sign of gods in all the time humans have been on the earth. There has been no prayers answered when studies have been performed. But the onus isn’t on me to prove there are no gods. I’m just assuming the null hypothesis until evidence shows it should be rejected. The onus is on you to show me with evidence that I should reject the null. So go ahead. Show me. My acceptance of the null I’d provisional.
Or are you just trolling?
Bingo.
I already have. Multiple times. Sean Carroll and the physics of the everyday world are completely understood, yada yada.
But you’re ignoring everything anybody here types and just replying like a dain-brammaged bot with your same appeals to non-authoritative authorities, regardless of the irrelevance of your appeals.
Cheers,
b&
See also Sean Carroll’s talk at Skepticon 5.
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Ben Goren replied: “Why would anybody agree to such a silly proposition? ”
You can mislabel it ‘silly’, but here is what mainstream science organisms have to say about it as they agree with me:
“science is precluded from making statements about supernatural forces because these are outside its provenance. ” National Science Teachers Association http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5787&page=124
““Supernatural entities, by definition, operate outside of natural laws and so cannot be
investigated using scientific methods” (American Association for the Advancement of
Science [AAAS] http://www.scienceeducationreview.com/open_access/eastwell-supernatural.pdf
“Questions that deal with supernatural explanations are, by definition, beyond the realm of nature — and hence, also beyond the realm of what can be studied by science.”
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
Jeebus, I tire of people citing bad political statements as if they were something authoritative.
“bad political statements”
So, is the AAAS simply LYING?
Is the science dept of UC Berkeley LYING?
Is the NSTA also LYING?
I don’t know if they are lying or are simply mistaken, but I’d wager they are lying through their teeth in order to kiss the asses of those who hold many purse strings.
Yes. You haven’t been paying attention if you don’t know that some organisations take contrafactual positions for political/public-relations purposes.
Lying? Well, I guess you could say so, yes. Some might prefer the word “spinning”, which is a form of lying.
That’s nice. But it’s also not how science works, regardless of the titles of the institutions involved.
If you’d like us to take you seriously, then you should tell us of something that the gods do (or might do) and why it’s not possible, even in principle, to make rational empirical observations of at least the consequences of those actions.
Otherwise, all you’re doing is playing a childish game of, “IS TOO! My <insert favorite authority figure here /> said so, so neener neener!”
b&
Ben Goren wrote: “That’s nice. But it’s also not how science works”
Sooooo…..
Ben Goren knows how science works…..
….but the National Science Teachers Association doesnt?
….but the American Association for the Advancement of Science doesnt?
….but the science dept at UC Berkeley doesnt?
lol
You think you’re laughing, but to me it looks like you’re holding up your arms in surrender!
Either you’re being deliberately obtuse or … well, it would break Jerry’s roolz to suggest that you have the mental capacity of a couple of small pieces of lumber, so I won’t.
In any case, further discourse (what you’re offering is hardly an “argument”) with you is clearly futile.
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Well, clearly Tim doesn’t.
Since you didn’t tell us what it is that you think gods are capable of that science can’t observe, I can only conclude that you don’t wish us to take you seriously.
Which is a good thing, because I’m pretty sure nobody here does.
Cheers,
b&
Ben – I just saw a great tweet from Peter Boghossian: We can clean up our thinking & avoid confusion simply by assigning confidence values to beliefs/claims. Jesus resurrection: .000000000000001
Not enough zeroes…but I’ll take it as sufficient for a Baysean initial approximation!
b&
You do realize you called evolution a myth on a site called, “evolution is true” right? Damn, that’s just rude.
I think the paw of the celestial cat has stuck.
Ah, so it has. Tim’s comment has been banished to the luminiferous æther.
Shame. I was about to ask him if he was still a mewling infant…
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Probably just as well. That particular squeaky toy was getting a bit boring, anyway.
b&