Strollerderby : creationism

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Guess who's 200 today? Yes, yes, Abraham Lincoln. But down to the year, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. One put down a revolution. One started one.

I am a big fan of Charles Darwin and always sad to see him maligned by creation "science" types claiming that evolution, being "only a theory" is therefore not worthy of being taught in school science classes. I wonder if those folks are willing to jump out a window, since, after all, gravity is only a theory.

Darwin's latest attackers, in the form of Seattle's Discovery Institute planned to usurp the usual Darwin Day celebrations in schools interested in participating instead in what they call "Academic Freedom Day." They planned to promote "debate of evidence for and against evolution."

When roughly 100% of the professional scientific community is in agreement on something, it seems a bit beyond debate to me. You?

If you'd like to celebrate Darwin with your kids at home, my favorite kid-friendly book on the subject of his life and work is The Tree of Life by Peter Sis. Sis's beautifully, intricately illustrated story of the Life of Charles Darwin is a captivating choice for older children (8 and up--up to you, in fact!)

Happy Darwin Day. May we all evolve a little this year.

image: an illustration from Peter Sis's The Tree of Life

Palin Claimed Dinosaurs and People Coexisted

SunnyChanel — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:47:00 GMT

You know when little Johnny is playing with his dinosaurs and he starts to have them attack little Sally’s Barbies? While Sally starts to cry hysterically, you calmly explain that dinosaurs existed before people and that this run-in would have never actually happened. But in Sarah Palin’s house? Barbie isn’t safe at all. Palin once claimed that men and dinosaurs coexisted and that Earth was created 6000 years ago even though scientists say that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.

According to Wasilla resident and educator Philip Munger, he asked Mayor Palin in 1997 about her religious beliefs in a casual conversation.

"Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,". When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

The idea of a "young Earth"—that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on—is a popular strain of creationism.

Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.

In a widely-circulated interview, Matt Damon said of Palin, "I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she's gonna have the nuclear codes." "

Barbie better hide.

Via Huffington Post

Let There Be Science in Science Class

LilySea — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:36:00 GMT

According to the Wilmington Star-News the school board of Brunswick North Carolina is considering putting creationism in the science curriculum. Says board member, Jimmy Hobbs, "It's really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism. The law says we can't have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists."

Though declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1987, as well as plenty of lesser courts, teaching creationism—especially in its new, not-so-secret identity of “Intelligent Design”—as some kind of gesture towards intellectual “balance” is a horse some folks seem determined to just keep beating.

How I wish I could be sure that horse was dead. But with creationist, Sarah Palin, on the Republican presidential ticket, a parent can never be too sure. As someone who is neither an atheist nor a creationist, the insistance on either-or rhetoric in public discussions of this topic drives me insane. Everybody I know "believes" in evolution. If "belief" is indeed the right word to apply to something as scientifically certain as gravity. Ninety-nine percent of the people I know believe in a higher power. Of those, 75% at least are Christians. The fundamentalist theocrats trying to claim that creationism is the Christian "side" of this debate are falsely representing pretty much every Christian I know. And it's a lie that kids can't have Bibles in schools. That would be as unconstitutional as teaching creationism.

Teaching Evolution as Theory not fact

Brett Singer — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

An article in last week's New York Times discussed a major hot-button issue in schools across the country: evolution vs. creationism, or its offshoot, intelligent design.

It's a long article, and certainly worth reading. I won't try to summarize the whole piece in this post, but the big surprise for me was that it was less about two competing theories/beliefs, or even about science versus religion. It was about a teacher who, in my opinion, has the patience of Job.

That teacher is David Campbell, who teaches Biology in Orange Park, Florida. The story the article tells is not of him fighting with parents, the school board, or local churches. Actually, he's not fighting with anyone. This quote sums up his attitude nicely:

"He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

"'If I do this wrong,' Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, 'I’ll lose him.'"

His main concern is not "proving" anything one way or the other. It's teaching.

"'Faith is not based on science,' Mr. Campbell said. 'And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks. But I do expect you to understand it.'"

That, to me, is the bottom line. Campbell's students, although they probably don't think so, are incredibly lucky to have him.

image/source: NYTimes

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Ask for Evidence and The Lord Will Provide

Adrienne Martini — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:00 GMT

Earlier this week, Redsy pondered the bias against homeschool. While her idea for a money-making video with a mudpit and provocative questions is pure genius, she also discussed why public-schoolers and home-schoolers have a hard time getting along.

Personally, I couldn't care less how you choose to educate your children, as long as you actually teach them stuff. But this post about the Creationist Homeschool Science Fair by the Utne Reader's Bennett Gordon goes a long way toward explaining why all homeschoolers are viewed with suspicion.

"The children’s gangly limbs and bad acne reminded me how vulnerable I was at their age and how easily someone could have brainwashed me," Gordon writes. It's that vulnerability that makes most parents a little leery of educational systems that don't expose kids to a multitude of ideas and contain some oversight.

Yes, yes, most folks who choose to nontraditional educational methods aren't "weird right-wing Christian types whose children lack social skills." Still, many of them are. More than anything else, that image problem may be what makes nonhomeschoolers raise their eyebrows clean off of their heads.

Photo credit: Bennett Gordon