Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here’s a new government of New Zealand statement by Kelvin Davis, the country’s Associate Minister of Education as well as Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti, Minister for Children with responsibility for Oranga Tamariki, and Minister of Corrections.
It announces the building of a school (“wharekura”) that focuses mostly on science, and will be connected to indigenous ways of knowing (mātauranga Māori), which are a combination of practical knowledge, legend and oral tradition, superstition, religion, morality, and tips on how to live better. By now I know most of the Māori words, but only because I read this stuff all the time and look up what I don’t know in a Māori dictionary. Remember, this announcement is supposed to be directed at all the citizens of New Zealand, not just the small percentage who speak Māori.
A new Year 7-13 designated character wharekura will be built in Pāpāmoa, Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis has announced.
The wharekura will focus on science, mathematics and creative technologies while connecting ākonga to the whakapapa of the area. The decision follows an application by the Ngā Pōtiki ā Tamapahore Trust and a consultation process.
“The wharekura will initially have a maximum roll of 72 ākonga. Its establishment recognises the importance of Wairuatanga that is deeply embedded within the marae communities of the Bay of Plenty – Waiariki District,” Kelvin Davis said.
Teaching at the wharekura will be conducted in te reo Māori and will deliver a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) programme supported by mātauranga Māori. This reflects Ngā Pōtiki ki Uta Ngā Pōtiki ki Tai – mai ngā kāhui maunga ki te moana: Tauranga Moana, Tauranga tangata: Te Arawa waka Te Arawa tangata: Mai ngā pae maunga ki te moana.
WHAT?
“Boosting Māori education is a focus for the Chris Hipkins’ Government, as shown in the recent Budget where $225 million went into areas including more classrooms and learning support,” Kelvin Davis said.
“Our goal is to grow the number of Māori learners in Māori Medium and Kaupapa Māori Education to 30% by 2040, and new wharekura like this will help us achieve this.”
“We are pleased to make this announcement in partnership with Ngā Pōtiki ā Tamapahore Trust as we continue to work collaboratively to foster increased participation, engagement and success for Māori through Māori immersion education,” Kelvin Davis said.
The next step is the appointment of an Establishment Board who will be tasked with developing the vision and direction of the wharekura and appointing staff.
A new Year 7-13 designated character wharekura will be built in Pāpāmoa, Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis has announced.
The wharekura will focus on science, mathematics and creative technologies while connecting ākonga to the whakapapa of the area. The decision follows an application by the Ngā Pōtiki ā Tamapahore Trust and a consultation process.
“The wharekura will initially have a maximum roll of 72 ākonga. Its establishment recognises the importance of Wairuatanga that is deeply embedded within the marae communities of the Bay of Plenty – Waiariki District,” Kelvin Davis said.
Teaching at the wharekura will be conducted in te reo Māori and will deliver a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) programme supported by mātauranga Māori. This reflects Ngā Pōtiki ki Uta Ngā Pōtiki ki Tai – mai ngā kāhui maunga ki te moana: Tauranga Moana, Tauranga tangata: Te Arawa waka Te Arawa tangata: Mai ngā pae maunga ki te moana.
“Boosting Māori education is a focus for the Chris Hipkins’ Government, as shown in the recent Budget where $225 million went into areas including more classrooms and learning support,” Kelvin Davis said.
“Our goal is to grow the number of Māori learners in Māori Medium and Kaupapa Māori Education to 30% by 2040, and new wharekura like this will help us achieve this.”
“We are pleased to make this announcement in partnership with Ngā Pōtiki ā Tamapahore Trust as we continue to work collaboratively to foster increased participation, engagement and success for Māori through Māori immersion education,” Kelvin Davis said.
The next step is the appointment of an Establishment Board who will be tasked with developing the vision and direction of the wharekura and appointing staff.
Can you understand that? Even if you’re a Kiwi you probably can’t because, according to N.Z.’s Newshub, only a very tiny fraction of the country’s population speak Māori:
Since only about 16.5% of New Zealanders identify as Māori, that means that about 80% of the indigenous people don’t even speak this language, even in the ability to hold a basic conversation.
Are Māori-laden statements like this, then, a big attempt a virtue signaling, or does the government hope that by issuing them it will drive the whole country to learn the indigenous language? I doubt it, because a paper from the Royal Society suggests that, without intensive intervention, the demographics of the country will doom Māori as a language.
But more important, what is being proposed, once you translate the announcement into English, is a school that will teach science only in Māori, will use the principles of matauranga Māori, including the “whakapapa of the area” (whakapapa is a Māori-specific term reflecting the privileges and duties of your tribal ancestry), and will involve a lot of money. I may be wrong, but given the paucity of Māori-speakers, and the prevalence of scientific literature and texts in English, not to mention the issue of matauranga Māori not being science but including some practical knowledge—given all this, shouldn’t they just educate the children in English, and reduce the influence of a largely superstition-and-tradition-based knowledge system on a science curriculum?
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “wear,” shows the boys going after the barmaid for using the wrong pronouns. And, as always, it shows the hypocrisy of the Divine Duo.
As I wrote in April, India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), decided to remove evolution—a great unifying theory of biology—from all science classes below “class 11”, , which means that only students who have decided to major in biology will learn about evolution. (Indian students begin specializing younger than do American students.)
. . . . evolution used to be part of science class in “Classes 9 and 10,” which in India are kids 13-15 years old. After that they take exams and have to decide what subjects to specialize in: science (with or without biology), commerce, economics, the arts, and so on. Specialization begins early, before the age at which kids go to college in America.
In India now, only the students who decide to go the Biology route in Classes 11 and 12 will get any exposure to evolution at all! It’s been wiped out of the biology material taught to any kids who don’t choose to major in biology.
The deep-sixing of evolution was originally part of the whittling-down of the Indian school curriculum during the pandemic, but now it appears to be a permanent change, and not just in public schools, but also in many private ones, who follow the same standards set by the ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education).
But it’s gotten worse. NCERT has eliminated not only evolution from most secondary school science classes, but have also deep-sixed the periodic table (!), as well as sources of energy and material about air and water pollution. (One would think those topics would be relevant in a country as crowded as India.)
This is all reported in a new article from Nature (click on screenshot for a free read):
An excerpt:
In India, children under-16 returning to school at the start of the new school year this month, will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements, or sources of energy.
The news that evolution would be cut from the curriculum for students aged 15–16 was widely reported last month, when thousands of people signed a petition in protest. But official guidance has revealed that a chapter on the periodic table will be cut, too, along with other foundational topics such as sources of energy and environmental sustainability. Younger learners will no longer be taught certain pollution- and climate-related topics, and there are cuts to biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics subjects for older school students.
Overall, the changes affect some 134 million 11–18-year-olds in India’s schools. The extent of what has changed became clearer last month when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the public body that develops the Indian school curriculum and textbooks — released textbooks for the new academic year starting in May.
Researchers, including those who study science education, are shocked.
Not only that, but NCERT didn’t get input from parents or teachers, or even respond to Nature‘s request for comment. Here’s what’s gone besides evolution:
Mythili Ramchand, a science-teacher trainer at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, says that “everything related to water, air pollution, resource management has been removed. “I don’t see how conservation of water, and air [pollution], is not relevant for us. It’s all the more so currently,” she adds. A chapter on different sources of energy — from fossil fuels to renewables — has also been removed. “That’s a bit strange, quite honestly, given the relevance in today’s world,” says Osborne.
A chapter on the periodic table of elements has been removed from the syllabus for class-10 students, who are typically 15–16 years old. Whole chapters on sources of energy and the sustainable management of natural resources have also been removed.
They’ve also bowdlerized stuff on politics:
A small section on Michael Faraday’s contributions to the understanding of electricity and magnetism in the nineteenth century has also been stripped from the class-10 syllabus. In non-science content, chapters on democracy and diversity; political parties; and challenges to democracy have been scrapped. And a chapter on the industrial revolution has been removed for older students.
And here’s NCERT’s explanation, which doesn’t make sense at all.
In explaining its changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the content was irrelevant. It also aims to provide opportunities for experiential learning and creativity.
First, evolution is NOT covered elsewhere, nor is it that difficult in principle. You don’t even have to teach natural selection; you can just give people the evidence for evolution, which is hardly rocket science. And the periodic table? That’s hard? How else will students learn about the elements? As I said, only students age 16 and above will even hear about evolution or the elements, and most students in India will not go on to college where they can also learn these things. Remember, only high-school-age (in the U.S.) students who decide to specialize in science will learn about evolution, the periodic table, and energy.
And these cuts may well be permanent:
NCERT announced the cuts last year, saying that they would ease pressures on students studying online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, India, says that science teachers and researchers expected that the content would be reinstated once students returned to classrooms. Instead, the NCERT shocked everyone by printing textbooks for the new academic year with a statement that the changes will remain for the next two academic years, in line with India’s revised education policy approved by government in July 2020.
At first I thought the dropping of evolution reflected the Hindu-centric policies of Modi, somewhat of a theocrat, but an Indian biologist (see earlier post) told me this was unlikely, as Hindus aren’t particularly offended by evolution. The reasons must lie elsewhere, but they’re a mystery to all of us. However, Joshi does that the dumping of evolution reflect in part some religious beliefs:
Science educators are particularly concerned about the removal of evolution. A chapter on diversity in living organisms and one called ‘Why do we fall ill’ has been removed from the syllabus for class-9 students, who are typically 14–15 years old. Darwin’s contributions to evolution, how fossils form and human evolution have all been removed from the chapter on heredity and evolution for class-10 pupils. That chapter is now called just ‘Heredity’. Evolution, says Joshi, is essential to understanding human diversity and “our place in the world”.
In India, class 10 is the last year in which science is taught to every student. Only students who elect to study biology in the final two years of education (before university) will learn about the topic.
Joshi says that the curriculum revision process has lacked transparency. But in the case of evolution, “more religious groups in India are beginning to take anti-evolution stances”, he says. Some members of the public also think that evolution lacks relevance outside academic institutions.
And here’s one more suggestion: that some of these ideas are “Western”—truly the dumbest reason ever not to teach them. So what if Darwin was British?
“There is a movement away from rational thinking, against the enlightenment and Western ideas” in India, adds Sucheta Mahajan, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University who collaborates with Mukherjee on studies of RSS influence on school texts. Evolution conflicts with creation stories, adds Mukherjee. History is the main target, but “science is one of the victims”, she adds.
So here we have the world’s largest democracy dumbing down its curriculum, making some of the greatest ideas in science unavailable to its citizens. This is unconscionable, but there’s little those outside of India can do about this. The only thing I can think of is to is tell Richard Dawkins, who can at least embarrass the government by tweeting about this. Otherwise, there are no petitions to sign, nobody to protest to. And millions of Indian kids will be deprived of the greatest idea in biology.
Thanks to all who sent in photos; we’re good for a short while, but please don’t forget the site!
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Tony Eales, who recently moved to Canberra, but he sent us a diverse batch of photos. His narrative is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
So, we had a long weekend for Reconciliation Day and despite it being bitterly cold, the wife and I decided to go camping. We went to the Southern Forest National Park, three hours away, because in my investigations these are the temperate rainforests closest to my new home in Canberra.
This area was also ground zero for some of the worst of the unprecedented 2019-2020 bushfire season, and the damage to giant swathes of forest was still in evidence. Where we camped was completely destroyed in those bushfires and while the rainforest plants were back along the streams, the same could not be said for the canopy, and most of the understory was a mix of packed wattle and invasive fireweed. Very different to the sparser and fern-heavy understory that would have existed before the fires.
But despite the cold and the damage there was a lot of life around to be seen and heard. I heard Superb Lyrebirds calling every day and briefly saw one dash into the understory from the side of the road as I was driving past.
Other birds were more friendly like this beautiful Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang). The Austro-Papuan Robins are not closely related to northern hemisphere robins but they come in a variety of shades of red, orange, pink, yellow and white:
In the mountains closer to Canberra, I saw Flame Robins (Petroica phoenicea), close cousins of the Scarlet Robins:
There were also flocks of the tiny Brown Thornbills (Acanthiza pusilla) foraging through the leaves for small insects:
We saw many signs of wombats but no actual wombats themselves but there were plenty of Swamp Wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) around:
At night, in among the leaves I found more than enough invertebrates to keep me photographing for a couple of hours each evening.
There was the impressive Badge Huntsman (Neosparassus cf diana):
Several large ant species out hunting including this impressive Inchman Bulldog Ant (Myrmecia forficata):
And on the way home we stopped at Black Lake and photographed a couple of duck species that are new to me because they are more common in Southern Australia. Unfortunately, I am much more set up for close up photography than distance photography.
Welcome to the last Hump Day in May (“Көн” in Tatar): May 31, 2023, and National Macaroon Day. And yet the photo they show is not of macaroons but macarons. Learn the difference:
A macaron is a sandwich-like cookie that’s filled with jam, ganache, or buttercream. A macaroon is a drop cookie made using shredded coconut. The preparation for each of these cookies is incredibly different, even though they start out with many of the same ingredients.
Macarons are an overpriced fad; real macaroons are good.
At least eight drones targeted Moscow early Tuesday, according to the Russian authorities, the first attack to hit civilian areas in the Russian capital and a potent sign that the war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia.
The dueling strikes reflected the dialed-up tension and shifting priorities ahead of Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive. Ukraine has increasingly been reaching far into Russia-held territory, while Moscow has been adjusting its tactics in an effort to inflict significant damage on Kyiv.
Tuesday’s aerial assault on Moscow — in which at least three residential buildings sustained minor damage — comes weeks after a pair of explosions over the Kremlin, a bold strike aimed at President Vladimir V. Putin’s seat of power. U.S. officials said the attack was most likely orchestrated by one of Ukraine’s special military or intelligence units.
The Russian Defense Ministry blamed Ukraine for Tuesday’s assault, describing the strike as a “terrorist attack” and saying that the drones had been intercepted. Mr. Putin briefly commented on the attack, telling a reporter that Russia’s air defenses had proved adequate. “We have stuff to do,” he said in a video clip published by state news media. “We know what needs to be done.”
I sure hope Ukraine is not deliberately targeting civilians in these drone strikes (if they ARE Ukrainian drone strikes), for they would lose considerable moral capital if they did that. I doubt that Zelensky would want to deliberately strike civilian targets, which is a war crime.
For millions of Americans with federal student loan debt, the payment holiday is about to end.
Legislation to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending includes a provision that would require borrowers to begin repaying their loans again by the end of the summer after a yearslong pause imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.
President Biden had already warned that the pause would end around the same time, but the legislation, if it passes in the coming days, would prevent him from issuing another last-minute extension, as he has already done several times.
The end of the pause will affect millions of Americans who have taken out federal student loans to pay for college. Across the United States, 45 million people owe $1.6 trillion for such loans — more than Americans owe for any kind of consumer debt other than mortgages.
The lesson: don’t borrow money if you don’t think you can pay it back. The other part of the equation:
Even with the pause ending, some borrowers may still see some relief if the Supreme Court allows Mr. Biden to move forward with a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in debt for some people with outstanding balances.
Mr. Biden’s plan would cancel $10,000 of federal student loan debt for those who make under $125,000 a year. People who received Pell grants for low-income families could qualify for an additional $10,000 in debt cancellation.
But the plan was challenged in court as an illegal use of executive authority, and during oral arguments in February, several justices appeared skeptical of the program. A ruling from the court could come at any time but is expected next month.
Same lesson, but with another nagging question: why do these people get relief, while the others who already paid off their debts get no relief? Aren’t they due some reparations? At any rate, I have NO idea how the Court will rule on this one. Note, though, that this debt relief is not part of the debt-ceiling agreement.
*This is one reason why we shouldn’t live so long. Now, while Jimmy Carter, 98, is in his third month of hospice care with metastasized brain cancer, his wife Rosalynn, 95, has been diagnosed with dementia. You can imagine the blows that have struck that family (I always thought that Jimmy was a model ex-President).
In a news release, the Carter Center said that Rosalynn Carter, 95, was comfortable and spending time with her 98-year-old husband at home in Plains, Ga.
“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the organization said in a statement.
Carter, who was hailed by the organization as “the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life,” frequently talked about caregiving before, during and after her time with her husband in the White House.
“The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey,” the Carter Center said. “We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”
If we live that long, we’ll all face things like this; as a friend said when I sent her the news, “Ageing sucks.” I suppose it’s better than the alternative, and one good thing is that Jimmy and Rosalynn had a lot of good years together.
*Lawrence Krauss seems to be producing WSJ op-eds (antiwoke, of course, but good ones) at a steady clip. His latest, “A scientist’s sexuality shouldn’t matter,” He’s talking about a new survey being conducted by the National Science Foundation:
A pilot project was announced last week to track “sexual orientation and gender identity.” In addition to being asked about their sex—now qualified as the sex “assigned at birth”—they will be asked if they “currently describe” themselves as male, female, “transgender” or “a different term”; whether they consider themselves a “gender minority,” a “sexual minority” and “LGBT+”; and whether they accept one of a dizzying list of labels: “Non-binary, Gender nonconforming, Genderfluid, Genderqueer . . . Gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer or another orientation.”
The list of reasons why this is a bad idea is almost as long. For one, asking about sexual preferences is a violation of privacy. Will the NSF next be asking how many sexual partners each degree recipient had during graduate school, in case promiscuous students are underrepresented?
Such personal matters are irrelevant to science and essentially invisible. In my 40 years in academia, I have worked with all sorts of colleagues and students. Many were highly eccentric, but that didn’t matter if they were good scientists. As one colleague put it: “You are teaching a chemistry or physics course. Your lectures describe concepts and present equations. ‘Suppose a magnet is moving relative to a loop of wire.’ You barely know any of your students. You give tests and grade them. You have no idea, nor care about, the ‘sexual orientation’ of any of your students. . . . What career barriers are there?”
Identity divisions make the world more divisive, not less. Some of my colleagues and students have been gay. Unless they made a point of discussing it, it wasn’t important. If someone publishes a report claiming that gays are underrepresented in STEM, will diversity offices require that job candidates add information about their sexual preferences to applications, as they now require them to pledge to promote racial “diversity” and describe past activities that demonstrate such a commitment?
Guess why they’re doing this. It’s a six letter word that begins with “e” and ends with “y”:
What’s the purpose of all this? Nature magazine paraphrases a statement from the NSF’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Charles Barber: “Collecting these data will help the NSF and other agencies to analyse employers’ policies and procedures for addressing unintended barriers to employment, advancement and inclusion.” The magazine then quotes Mr. Barber: “This gives us an opportunity to create more opportunities and broaden participation to yield equitable outcomes for the LGBTQIA+ community and others.”
Does that mean quotas? If so, how would one even go about determining the “correct” proportion of “queer” or “genderqueer” scientists? The percentage of the population that espouses these labels is so small that any data the NSF gathers will be statistically useless. Australia’s National Medical and Health Research Council recently announced plans to award half of its research grants for researchers at the midcareer and senior level to women and “nonbinary” applicants. That sounds like a loophole: Men could get special treatment by declaring themselves nonbinary.
It goes on, ,but Krauss is right: this is divisive, intrusive, and irrelevant. It’s a pity that places like the NYT or other liberal mainstream media won’t discuss palpably ridiculous initiatives like this.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes arrived at the Bryan facility Tuesday afternoon local time.
Since The Wall Street Journal began publishing its findings about Theranos in 2015, Holmes has been convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court and settled separate civil securities-fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the settlement, she paid a $500,000 fine and was banned from being an officer or director of any public company for 10 years.
. . . Inmates at the Bryan facility have been talking about Holmes’s possible arrival for months. Some want to be her friend while others think she deserves a longer prison sentence, said current inmate Tasha Wade.
FPC Bryan sits in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood lined with trees. Vehicles have been driving into the facility throughout the morning, with drivers scanning cards on a reader that lifts a slim bar up allowing them to enter. A black fence and trees encircle the prison, which has a large field of grass and benches in the front.
Another WSJ article describes the prison, which, as a minimum-security federal prison for white-collar criminals, is pretty cushy:
Food Hall
The food hall offers a standard national prison menu, which includes oatmeal, pancakes, hamburgers, tacos, burritos and more. A no-flesh option at each meal could help Holmes, a vegetarian, stick to that diet. Inmates also cook for themselves using commissary ingredients and inventive cooking methods, inmates said.
Oatmeal! Burritos! Pancakes! She’ll eat better than I do!
Recreation Area
The prison offers inmates a jogging track and outdoor television sets in a recreation pavilion. Inmates can also participate in arts and hobby programs or read books from the library, where earlier this year an inmate spotted a copy of “Bad Blood,” the bestseller documenting the rise and fall of Holmes’s Theranos. The BOP spokesman said the book had been checked out and not returned.
And here’s what is likely to be a diagram of her cell. She’ll have roommates!
(from the NYT): In the room, there typically are also lockers to store personal belongings, a folding chair for each inmate, a table and no doors. The chairs must be folded and stacked against the wall when not in use, inmates said. Bathrooms are down the hall. Inmates said they often form close relationships with cellmates.
Why do I pay so much attention to Holmes’ fate? (This will be the last post about this unless I’m still alive when she gets out.) One reason, I suppose, is that if she gets off easy, while others get stiffer sentences for similar crimes, it would show that Americans aren’t equal under the law: if you’re eloquent, attractive, and educated, you get less punishment, which seems unfair. Further, this seems to me a worse crime than simply a pyramid scheme, for she was duping not only investors, but patients as well, people who counted on her stupid blood machine to diagnose their illnesses. I don’t see this as retribution, but rather as deterrence, though some determinists, like Gregg Caruso, don’t favor imprisonment for deterrence because it violates their moral principle of using people as tools to affect the behavior of others. I don’t agree.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili doesn’t like molehills:
Hili: I’m going to restore order.
A: Order where?
Hili: With this mole which made a molehill again.
In Polish:
Hili: Idę zrobić porządek.
Ja: Z czym?
Hili: Z tym kretem, który znowu zrobił kretowisko.
. . . and a lovely picture of Szaron:
********************
From Peter via reddit: a cat defends his d*g friend:
From Masih, more women risking imprisonment in Iran over not wearing the hijab. If there’s going to be a revolution there (and the prospects don’t look good), it will have started with the headscarf:
The totalitarian Islamic regime has no idea of what to do about the millions of women who protest the compulsory wearing of the hijab. They challenge that law daily. Their demand is clear: the anti women, autocratic government and its barbaric laws must go.#WomanLifeFreedompic.twitter.com/N0JHRQtMHI
J. K. Rowling attacks the stupid accusation that a feminist rally in Australia gave the Nazi salute:
As @PatrickStrud has blocked me on here (we've never, to my knowledge, interacted on Twitter or anywhere else) I can't challenge him directly about the claim he published in iNews (see below) that a Let Women Speak event in Australia 'staged a mass Nazi salute'. This is a lie so… pic.twitter.com/X6nAA3xxNH
From Barry. Yes, there are flat-Earthers in the U.S.: I’ve met some. One even got into politics.
Kandiss Taylor, who ran for governor in 2022 and recently became a Georgia GOP district chair, is a flat earther: "Everywhere there's globes … and that's what they do to brainwash." pic.twitter.com/PEz1sqOTvA
News is slow today, and I’m not feeling great, as my insomnia has returned. Let’s look at a new reader’s comment, which was meant to be put up after the post below but of course was trashed by moi. If you reply, though, I’ll alert the religious Paul Polster to your comments.
Think about this, and pass it along to all your fellow atheists: if you are right, you die, it is all over, no harm, but if God does exist, and the Bible is true, when you die, you will appear at the great white throne as a lost soul. You will hear a list of sins that you have committed since you were aware of right and wrong, you will bow a knee to Jesus Christ, however, it will be too late to repent and you will be cast into Hell for eternity. You evolutionists are thinkers, think that one through in your quiet time and add this to it: have I lied? stolen?looked at the opposite sex with lust? Cheated on a test? Give some thought as to why these things happen as well as why good and evil exist. Evolution has no answer to these questions. One final thought: are you willing to risk possibly going to hell in order to hold to your faith in evolution? (it requires faith to believe it). Or are you willing to give true science ( discovery of the truth) a chance with an open mind? I hope you can ,your eternity depends on it.
Well, we’re all going to hell, including Jimmy Carter, who has looked on women with lust. He’s close to the end, and I bet he can feel the flames now. . .
A few comments:
Why is “believing in evolution” a sin? Did God put the evidence for evolution everywhere to deceive us? (And if you think it takes “faith” to believe in evolution, read my article dispelling that bit of stupidity.)
Which moral dictates are we supposed to believe? If we’re Jews, we can’t mix meat and milk in one meal. If we’re Catholics, we have to go to confession. If we’re Muslims, we have to observe Ramadan. I presume that Mr. Polster somehow knows that the Christian god is the REAL god. But how does he know?
What kind of God would send someone to hell who has lived a good life even if he didn’t accept the existence of God.’
The absolute certainty of Polster—about the falsity of evolution, about God being the Christian god, and about liars and the lustful going to hell—is breathtaking.
The kind of God that Polster paints is the ruler, as Hitchens used to say, of a celestial North Korea. He’ll toss into the fire anybody who doesn’t accept Jesus Christ (even those who were faithful before the time of Jesus Christ), he burn anybody who accept the evidence for evolution that God supposedly put all around us, and he’s not in the least merciful. Why did he design our bodies to lust after members of the opposite sex if you’re going to hell for it?
Judging from this video lecture and Q&A session below by a Māori climate scientist, the answer to the title question is “no”.
A New Zealand biologist and teacher sent me the 46-minute video, angered at its intellectual vacuity, as you can detect from his/her email. (By the way, the scientists I quote are different people, not just one disaffected person. Plenty of Kiwi scientists are fed up with the nation’s drive to indigenize science, as well as its handing over tons of grant money to Māori researchers for dubious projects. But they dare not reveal their names for fear of losing their jobs and reputations. This is a country where academia is deeply involved in self-censoring). Anyway, the email:
“Yesterday I came across a teachers’ newsletter referencing a webinar titled “What te aro Maori can teach us about climate change?” It’s 45 minutes long long and fellow bio teacher [NAME REDACTED] and I could only stomach the first 17 mins, with references to the “sky god”. Readers might be able to get further, but I can’t take this garbage.”
I had trouble getting through it, too, as it’s pretty much anodyne gobbledygook with the ultimate message “we need to talk to each other”. But I managed to listen to the whole thing, though it took me two sessions.
Although I had trouble deciphering some of the Māori language (the use of which is imperative to establish your credibility), I believe the words “te aro Māori” in the title simply mean “Māori-centered focus.” The question at hand is clearly what using that focus, or using mātauranga Māori (Māori “ways of knowing”, henceforth “MM”) can tell us about climate change, and how to ameliorate its effects.
Sadly, nowhere in the entire presentation and question session could I find a single contribution that a Māori perspective contributes to our understanding of and work on climate change. Listen for yourself and tell me if you find anything substantive.
That’s not surprising: after all, it was modern (not “Western”) science that discovered the issue of anthropogenic climate change and is now working on how to ameliorate it, though that will involve not just science but politics. And if the Māori perspective can contribute to the political solution at least, or provide useful scientific viewpoints, we’d like to know. But the effort here comes up dry, with the climate scientist spouting bromides that you’ll see below. In the end, I felt as if I had given up 45 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. All I can do with that lost time is show the readers what the Māori themselves present as their best case for contributing to science. And the case is pitiful.
Here are the YouTube notes:
In our first Climate Conversation, Akuhata Bailey-Winiata (University of Waikato) will speak specifically about his work on the relevance and application of mātauranga and te ao Māori in climate change. The session will be facilitated by Glen Cornelius (Chief Executive, Harrison Grierson and Deputy President, Te Ao Rangahau). Bailey-Winiata is a climate change scientist.
Click to watch. The take-home lesson is in a series of slides, some of which I’ve put below, but there’s not much to take home:
In lieu of his inability to really nail down proposals and solutions that differ between Māori and “Western” viewpoints, Bailey-Wineata simply discusses the differences in between Māori and “Western” worldviews, and then makes up reasons why they’re relevant. One of the differences is said to involve the “Western” concept of linear time and the Māori concept of “Indigenous time” (slide below). This turns out to be irrelevant because of the false suggestion that while Westerners have linear time, and don’t really look back much, the Māori view of time sees it as “event based” and “nonlinear”, with the “past and future just as important as the present.” Since climate change is really a problem for the future, but is detected by comparing past with the present, and solved by extrapolating into the future, this is a distinction without a difference, and not a contribution of MM to science. The slide:
When asked how MM-based scientific methods differ form those of modern science, Māori tend to emphasize the “interconnectedness of everything”, as opposed to the supposedly “Western” view that things aren’t much interconnected. Here’s the slide that emphasizes that supposed difference, but I see nothing relevant between this Māoriview and the way modern science tackles climate change, which of course involves thinking about both past and future generations (cf. Greta Thunberg):
Below a slide meant to emphasize how Māori “long term views” can contribute to the climate change problem. Note that the lecturer brings in storytelling and water spirits, but again, this leads at best to only a week and unenlightening analogy between the dangers of water spirits and the dangers of climate change. I won’t get into the tail-flicking of the water spirit, supposedly a metaphor for a river changing course and causing flood damage (see here).
The lesson from the above: don’t put houses where they can be affected by climate change. But that’s just common sense, not a unique Māori-centric conclusion. Every insurance company in the US knows this.
Here’s a slide that again relies on weak metaphor: just as rivers in NZ can be “braided,” so, says Bailey-Winiata, so we need both Māori and “Western” approaches to science. (The constant use of the words “Western science” to refer to “modern science” irks me, but I use the term because the lecturer does.) At any rate, he says over and over again that both approaches are needed, but never says one tangible thing about what the Māori approach can add to how science is presently addressing climate change.
The Māori answer to the question “what can you add to how science is currently done?” invariably involves simply emphasizing the difference between Māori and non-Māori world views, but never translates these into tangible actions, much less telling us how they add to science in general.
Finally, here are Bailey-Winiata’s “take home messages”. Again, they emphasize the difference in world view, but never tell us how those differences promote fruitful cultural interaction when it comes to scientific problems that affect society.
If you think I’m deliberately distorting what the lecturer says, and leaving out valuable contributions that a Māori view can bring to climate change, then by all means watch the video for yourself.
Bailey-Winiata‘s presentation is finished in 25 minutes, and in the rest of the video he answers listeners’ questions fed to him by moderator Grierson. Here are a few questions and answers. I’ll paraphrase some of them, and give quotes (using quotation marks) when I had time to write them down.
Question: “Are there difficulties matching the timelines from the event-based sense of time [hundreds of years] to a Western sense of time?”?
Answer: Yes, for Māori culture gives us a long-term view, so this changes “how policies and industry has been done.” The Māori view tells us that “building the capacity to do these things within that spaces of change and policy is going to be crucial heading into the future, but yeah. . . it’s a hard question to answer in terms of. . .yeah.”
In other words, it’s gobbledygook.
Question: “What challenges could you give us as engineers and as climate-change practitioners to embrace teo Māori and empower the use of MM amd mauri in the work we do?”
Answer: “The challenge is just to be open to new ideas to new concepts and new ways of knowing, of being, of doing. . . . we need to open ourselves up to these different knowledge systems. . .have conversations with your Maori colleagues, have a cup of tea with them, and just talk.” Answer: “be openminded and understanding. . see the other side.
There’s a strong smell of kumbaya in such answers.
At one point, when asked what kind of new Māori-centric institutions we need to promote indigenous world views, Bailey-Winiata says that the Māori need “safe spaces” for discussion.
“Be openminded, be aware of time, everything is interconnected. . . “: this is what we hear over and over again. What we don’t hear is how MM adds to modern science.
Question: How can we use the past to inform how we deal with climate change (emphasis on the past is part of the Māori “nonlinear” view of time)?
Answer: We can “use history to understand how we can look forward in the future.” Māori tradition tells us “what can we draw resilience and inspiration from.”
Of course using the past to inform the future is already an integral part of climate-change solutions.
Question: Is there existing literature in Maori available on climate change for the general public?”
Answer:”It’s very sparse. . . . . there’s a lot about Māori natural hazards that you can draw parallels with, but not much historical work has been done.”
Short answer, “no.” Bailey-Winiata then lists several Māori people who are “pushing the boundaries of this area of climate change in Maori, and the literature is bound to come out”. But where is that literature? I look forward to it.
Finally,
Question: “Do you think that Pākehā [the Māori word for European descendants] need to get on board with accepting some of the Māori values when planning projects, especially when accepting climate change.”
Answer; Bailey Winiata mentions the famous Listener letter of 2021, in which seven University of Auckland academics argue that MM should not be taught as if it were equivalent to modern science, and then claims that this misguided viewpoint is spreading. Instead, he says, we need to “be open to the idea of new ways of knowing and new ways of doing”. and “we need to move forward because climate change is happening.” The moderator, of course agrees, as he has with everything that Bailey-Winiata says.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends: a presentation of the value of Māori ways of knowing in addressing anthropogenic climate change—and from a Māori climate-change scientist with a Ph.D. Either he’s totally unable to express the values he sees in using MM to address the problem, or there is no value of using MM to address the problem. I tend toward the latter view, for MM was developed before “Western” scientists raised the problem of climate change, and MM is a worldview that contains a bit of practical knowledge but nothing that bears on climate change unless you think that the “long view,” supposedly contributed by Māori lore, has something to add. In fact, that could even be deleterious, for at one point Bailey-Winiata mentions even bigger climate change in the past—something that climate-change denialists often cite when arguing that today’s changes are simply part of the historical cycle of climate change on Earth.
Since this is a half-hour lecture by a credentialed Māori climate-change scientist, I take it to be the best case that can be made for infusing MM into modern science, at least in terms of climate change. And the case is not only weak, but nonexistent. There is no “there” there.
Let me emphasize that by criticizing MM as a valuable contribution to modern science, I am not criticizing the Māori people themselves, who had a rough time of it, but are now reaping reparations in the form of affirmative action, jobs, grants, and the like. But I will argue that their “way of knowing” is way overemphasized, and that the government and academic powers of New Zealand, in a desire to cater to “the sacred victim,” are being sold a bill of goods.
