As an exercise in measuring how quickly they rear their heads, take a look at this posting over at the HMS Beagle Science Blog, where I occasionally do an entry or two... If you want the quick précis, here it is:
Several students (who understandably wish to remain anonymous for the time being) apparently report that a science teacher in the local school district had been espousing overtly creationist views during the teaching of a unit on evolution. The post on this subject, which includes the letter sent to this teacher, offering them something of a lifeline, has attracted - unsurprisingly - members of the Anonymous Troll Brigade.
You might want to drop in and take a look, before someone among the admins gets bored and shuts the whole thing down... (might well be me)...
More as events warrant.
3 comments:
I'm just not patient enough to deal with that much willful ignorance.
There's no arguing with the true believer. The only differences between cults and religions are the number of members and the tax exempt status. There is some low level brainwashing that goes on in organized religion. It's nothing sinister or planned, but it happens none the less.
The one thing you can't question when you have a religious upbringing is the word of God. Believe me, that's some programming that's hard to get out of your noggin. Until you get it into your head that it's OK to question it, you can't really consider an alternative.
The trolls are on the loose!
Let us hope that they are not employed as science teachers.
As far as the willful ignorance goes, and the closing off of minds by religion, I couldn't agree more, anty. You're absolutely right (and speaking from experience, as we've discussed many times); religion effectively ossifies the neural pathways, and makes it actually more difficult to conceive of something outside of your purview (all right, I just made that up, but it seems like I've read a synopsis of a study to that effect somewhere recently).
Kevin... welcome and thanks for dropping in from the Beagle blog... we can only hope that there are no trolls who are walking into a science class the next day, but somehow, I have a suspicion that the outrage sparked whenever this comes up must at least in part come from creationists who have wormed their way into science teaching jobs, like our friend in Platte County.
The only thing that you can do in these cases is keep shining the lights, banging on drums, and doing your best to move them into a field where they will do less damage. Phys Ed, possibly.
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