Thoughts in a Haystack

Sen. Bo Watson (R-Hixson), says SB 893 encourages the discussion of challenges to current scientific thought, such as global warming and the theory of evolution. It does not, however, replace the state-approved curriculum for science classes or mandate the teaching of creation science.

"It makes the small caveat that says ... teachers should be comfortable having these discussions, but they need to be sure that they are directing the discussions back towards the curriculum established by the state board of education," Watson details.

The lawmaker says he does not know of any specific incidents in the past in which Tennessee teachers have had problems discussing creation and intelligent design when students asked.

"But there has been a[n] underlying tone that when these issues come up in the classroom, where students are challenging conventional scientific theories, that teachers aren't really sure how to respond to that," the senator explains.

Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

This section only protects the teaching of scientific information ...

While many people have written interesting blog posts, here, here, here and here about the ape-hood of Richard Dawkins, I humbly suggest there's one more important point to be made. This episode has helped confirm my suspicion that you humans are embarrassed by your relatives. You don't like other apes very much. You think they're ugly and you imagine they're smelly even though most of you have never sniffed a gorilla.

HB 3616 - SB 3632
February 29, 2012

SUMMARY OF BILL: Requires local education agencies (LEAs) to treat a student's voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint in the same manner that the LEA treats a student's voluntary expression of a secular viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject. Prohibits LEAs from discriminating against a student on the basis of the expression of a religious viewpoint.

Requires LEAs to adopt a policy that includes the establishment of a limited public forum for student speakers at all school events where a student will speak publicly. This disclaimer shall be provided at all events where the LEA feels there is a need to dispel confusion over the LEA's sponsorship of a student's speech. Prohibits student expression on an otherwise permissible subject from being excluded from the limited public forum because the expression is based on a religious viewpoint.

Authorizes students to express their beliefs about religion in assignments and requires such expression to be free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submission. Requires homework and classroom assignments to be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the LEA. Prohibits students from being rewarded or penalized on the basis of the religious content of their work.

Authorizes students to organize prayer groups, religious clubs, or other such gatherings before, during, and after school to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other noncurricular student activities and groups. Requires religious student groups to be given equal access to the school facilities for assembling as those given to other non-curricular groups. Requires religious student groups that meet for prayer or other religious speech to be allowed to advertise or announce their meetings in the same manner that the LEA authorizes other nonreligious student groups. Authorizes LEAs to disclaim school sponsorship of non-curricular groups and events in a manner that does not favor or disfavors groups that meet to engage in prayer or other religious speech.

Model Policy Articles I and II: Sets forth a model policy that LEAs may use and adopt in order to implement a policy establishing a limited public forum and voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints. Requires any LEA that voluntarily adopts the model policy to be in compliance with it. The model policy establishes the limited public forum for the voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints applicable to certain students.

The model policy also requires the LEA to create a limited public forum for certain other speakers and to treat a student's voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner that it treats a student's voluntary expression of a secular or other viewpoint.

Model Policy Article III: The model policy sets forth requirements for student speakers at graduation events.

Model Policy Article IV: The model policy that is adopted by the LEA shall authorize a student to express their belief in homework, artwork, and other assignments and requires such expression to be free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submission.

Model Policy V: The model policy that is adopted by the LEA shall authorize students to organize prayer groups, religious clubs, or other religious gatherings before, during, or after school to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other non-curricular student activities and groups.

The model policy authorizes school authorities to disclaim sponsorship of non-curricular groups and events; as long as they administer the disclaimer in a manner that does not favor or disfavor groups that meet to engage in prayer or other religious activity.

God's humility appears to us as modesty or shyness, almost. I've tried to explain this to my kids in terms they can understand, referring them to the deer that sometimes browse in the blackberry bushes at the edge of our driveway. If we want to enjoy watching them, we have to be careful not to scare away our silent, beautiful deer with loud voices or sudden movements.

This observation about God's personality may explain why the evidence of design in the world is elusive to many people. What my colleague Dr. Stephen Meyer calls the "signature in the cell" in the genetic code, in protein synthesis, in what biochemist Michael Behe calls irreducibly complex features of biology, in the Cambrian explosion and the rest of the fossil record, in cosmology, in individual types of creatures—from butterfly metamorphosis to the history of whale evolution—whatever piece of the argument for intelligent design that you think of, it is all very lightly imprinted. It takes patience and study to see.

I construe free will the way I think most people do: At the moment when you have to decide among alternatives, you have free will if you could have chosen otherwise. To put it more technically, if you could rerun the tape of your life up to the moment you make a choice, with every aspect of the universe configured identically, free will means that your choice could have been different.

In the sense that any of these thinkers agree that our will is "free," they mean that some of our decisions appear to be made after conscious processes of deliberation—after thinking about them. Of course, that's a result of evolution, and many animals probably do the same thing. Perhaps these folks will agree that humans aren't unique in having this form of "free will," for all beasts are evolved to absorb and process input before producing a behavioral output. But where is the "freedom" in all this? What, exactly, are we free to do? We're not free to think—that's a result of evolution—and we're not free in how our thought processes operate, or in what "decision" they produce.

In passing the bill out of the Senate Education Committee yesterday, legislators claim they have fixed the language so it is no longer problematic, but a simple comparison of last year's bill and the current measure shows that all the bill's sponsors have done is consulted a thesaurus. Instead of characterizing evolution as a "scientific controversy" that requires further critical analysis, the bill now deems evolution a "scientific subject[] that may cause debate and disputation," and that, therefore, requires further critical analysis. That's right — the grand legislative "fix" merely replaces the word "controversy" with its synonyms, "debate" and "disputation." There are no other substantive changes to the proposed law and it would have the same disastrous consequences for science education as the measure defeated last year.

... We can't help but wonder what it will take to make state legislators understand that undermining the teaching of evolution in order to promote religious beliefs like creationism and intelligent design in public schools is simply unconstitutional.

And then it hit us: Maybe we just aren't using the right word to explain it. So, in case any confusion remains, Tennessee legislators take note: Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, your repeated attacks on evolution education are unlawful, illegal, illicit, impermissible, unauthorized, improper, prohibited, barred, lawless, banned, illegitimate, forbidden, unsanctioned, proscribed, and (something to always keep in mind) actionable. See, we have a thesaurus too, and we are not fooled when the legislature plays semantics with constitutional violations.

So here's one more thing to encode in our neurons: a theistic god is indeed a god that can be examined with the tools of science and reason. Every good theologian knows that—the people who don't are the scientific organizations who have made the "god-is not-testable" statements: the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Center for Science Education.

Marriage is almost as old as dirt, and it was defined in the Garden between Adam and Eve. One man, one woman for life till death do you part. ...

I think that [gay marriage is] unnatural. I think that it's detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization. ...

[Asked what he would say to one of his sons if he told him he was gay:] I wouldn't say 'That's great, son, as long as you're happy.' I'm going to say, There are all sorts of issues we need to wrestle through in our life. Just because you feel one way doesn't mean we should act on everything we feel.

"I believe that freedom of speech and freedom of religion go hand-in-hand in America," he continues. "I should be able to express moral views on social issues – especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years – without being slandered, accused of hate speech and told from those who preach 'tolerance' that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when I'm in the public square.

Alan Thicke: "I'll address kirk's comments as soon as I recover from rush limbaugh's... I'm getting him some new books. The Old Testament simply can't be expected to explain everything."

Craig Ferguson: "Rush makes me ashamed to be a middleaged white man and Kirk Cameron makes me ashamed to be a failed actor. We don't all think like that NoH8."

Jesse Tyler Ferguson: "The only unnatural thing about me being gay is that I had a crush on Kirk Cameron until about 24 hours ago."

Debra Messing: "I want to thank Piers Morgan for his response to what he wud say to HIS child if (s)he came out: 'Great, as long as you're happy.'"

Roseanne: "Kirk or kurt or whatever Cameron is an accomplice to murder with his hate speech. So is rick warren. Their peers r killing gays in Uganda."

Dave Holmes: "Remember yesterday afternoon, when Kirk Cameron's views were none of our concern? Let's restore America to that golden age." [Okay, that was my favorite!]

Michael Showalter: "Idea for movie: Human Centipede 3 starring Kirk Cameron and Rush Limbaugh."

Martha Plimpton: "The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way. #usethe19th #equalitynow."

"It's a very closed-minded, very homophobic view point," said Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson. "It's also surprising coming from someone who was probably brought up in the business among many gay people. It's just very sad."

"He was a such a cute little boy," said Jane Lynch, who played anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher in the play. "He was a such a little sweetheart."

"In this interview, Kirk Cameron sounds even more dated than his 1980s TV character," said Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs at GLAAD.

"Cameron is out of step with a growing majority of Americans ... with an increasing number of states recognizing marriage equality, Americans are seeing that marriage is about committed couples who want to make a lifelong promise to take care of and be responsible for each other and that gay and lesbian couples need equal security and legal protections. That's not 'redefining' anything."

Not a single Catholic who reads this ad will be impelled to leave the Church. That is not the issue (Catholicism, unlike many other religions, is actually growing in the U.S., and worldwide). The issue is the increase in hate speech directed at Catholics.

The great secret of delivering oneself from the importunity of many people is to speak reasonably to them. This language, which they do not understand, gets rid of them forever, without their having reason to complain.

- Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion VI.viii (Jolley-Scott 102)

The lecture series will address the history, the case for, and frequently asked questions about "Intelligent Design."

Thaxton is considered the "grandfather of the intelligent design movement." He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Iowa State University and completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard University and Brandeis University.

He is co-author of The Mystery of Life's Origin and The Soul of Science, and academic editor of Of Pandas and People.

Of all the scientific fields, evolutionary biology has become fiefdom [sic] where academic freedom is dead and detractors are thrown out and publicly lambasted. And they protect their mandatory orthodoxy with vigor. It's no wonder so many people refuse to buy into it.

Has someone at your university criticized your Christian beliefs about human origins? Let us know by commenting below.