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RasperFat posted:That would be nice, but YEC are rarely capable of completely silencing their insanity publicly. The values of our teachers and other authority figures are imprinted on the young generations; a "science" teacher personally being a YEC adds unwarranted validity to the bonkers idea, as well as diminishing the validity of physical sciences in general. School lessons don't happen in a vacuum, that YEC will see a good chunk of their students in church and around town. Agreed, that wasn't my point, but yes.
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Apr 17, 2017 18:05
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RasperFat posted:I think you might be conflating creationist with young earth creationist. I'm not. RasperFat posted:Young Earth creationists believe the universe is less than 10,000 years old, created mostly as is. A college freshman level understanding of either physics or chemistry would show how ragingly stupid this is. Not really, since high school physics and chemistry don't really have a lot to say about how old the earth is. Whether the high school physics/chemistry teacher is a creationist or not is neither here nor there.
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Apr 17, 2017 19:33
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silence_kit posted:Not really, since high school physics and chemistry don't really have a lot to say about how old the earth is. Whether the high school physics/chemistry teacher is a creationist or not is neither here nor there.
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Apr 17, 2017 19:38
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twodot posted:Did they not teach carbon dating in your high school chemistry class? (edit: Like believing "the universe is <10k years old" is just so fundamentally wrong, that it winds up mattering in a bunch of places) You must have gone to a much more advanced high school than mine if you actually studied in detail the technique of carbon dating and as a chemist, actually learned how to apply it to things and interpret the results. What advanced high school chemistry elective was that?
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Apr 17, 2017 19:45
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silence_kit posted:You must have gone to a much more advanced high school than mine if you actually studied in detail the technique of carbon dating and as a chemist, actually learned how to apply it to things and interpret the results. What advanced high school chemistry elective was that? quote:4.4 Explain the benefits and risks of radioactivity. i calculate the initial amount, the fraction remaining, or the halflife of a radioactive isotope, given two of the three variables ii compare and contrast fission and fusion reactions iii complete nuclear equations; predict missing particles from nuclear equations iv identify specific uses of some common radioisotopes, such as I-131 in diagnosing and treating thyroid disorders, C-14 to C-12 ratio in dating once-living organisms, U-238 to Pb-206 ratio in dating geological formations, and Co-60 in treating cancer Bonus here's a book that covers dating in grade 11: http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/fhsstchem.pdf twodot fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Apr 17, 2017 |
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Apr 17, 2017 19:51
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We covered the basics of the early universe in school as well. Big Bang happened, stars and planets condensed out of clouds of disparate matter, that sort of thing. Carbon dating mentioned in brief too as part of radioactivity.
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Apr 17, 2017 19:54
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twodot posted:It's really not advanced or complicated. It's in New York state's core curriculum, sorry you received a substandard education: Lol, I'm getting fishmech-ed. A high school education doesn't actually teach you about how to actually perform carbon dating on a sample and interpret the results, kind of like how taking a high school computer programming class doesn't allow you to walk into a software developer job at Tech Corp XYZ and immediately become productive. To actually be able to counter the claims made by creationists, you need intimate knowledge of the methods. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Apr 17, 2017 |
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Apr 17, 2017 20:00
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silence_kit posted:You must have gone to a much more advanced high school than mine if you actually studied in detail the technique of carbon dating and as a chemist, actually learned how to apply it to things and interpret the results. What advanced high school chemistry elective was that? Basic 10th grade science. silence_kit posted:Lol, I'm getting fishmech-ed. A high school education doesn't actually teach you about how to actually perform carbon dating on a sample and interpret the results, kind of like how taking a high school computer programming class doesn't allow you to walk into a software developer job at Tech Corp XYZ and immediately become productive. To actually be able to counter the claims made by creationists, you need intimate knowledge of the methods. It teaches you what one is and why they are reliable (for a given time range), which is far more knowledge than you need to counter creationist claims about the age of the earth. Where did you go to school where you didn't learn basic science?
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Apr 17, 2017 20:11
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silence_kit posted:Lol, I'm getting fishmech-ed. A high school education doesn't actually teach you about how to actually perform carbon dating on a sample and interpret the results, kind of like how taking a high school computer programming class doesn't allow you to walk into a software developer job at Tech Corp XYZ and immediately become productive. To actually be able to counter the claims made by creationists, you need intimate knowledge of the methods. Actually, I distinctly remember having to do problems with carbon dating in my high school non-AP chem class. Not in the actually get the carbon results, but interpreting them is not the hardest thing in the world. X% C-14 going to Y% allows for an easy calculation that nobody with enough smarts to be taking high school chem should have any problems with.
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Apr 17, 2017 20:15
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I would think that a rudimentary understanding of what a half life is and how that can be used to tell how old a thing is, would be sufficient to put you at odds with young earth creationism. "The atmosphere has radioactive carbon in it, and we know how much there should be in anything alive that's taking carbon in from the atmosphere. When stuff dies, it stops taking in new carbon, so we can use the half life of the radioactive carbon to figure out how much we would expect to be left in any given thing after a given time." That's certainly within the curriculum for standard science where I went to school.
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Apr 17, 2017 20:15
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Yeah I learned about carbon dating, radioactivity, gravity and how it's integral in planet, solar system, and galaxy forming in 10th and 11th grade. Of course students aren't qualified to do accurate lab testing for radioactive dating, but you learn the principles of it. You learn about basic concepts that tie into all of these sciences when your are like 10 years old with the water cycle and plate tectonics. Of course we don't expect elementary schoolers to know the complex math and mechanics behind these processes, but they learn what they are at least and that they are real. Young Earth creationism is a blight on education and requires dismissing foundational blocks of out current understanding of how the universe functions. It's irreconcilable with even the lower levels of science, and a teacher espousing that belief in any science class should not continue teaching.
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Apr 17, 2017 20:44
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Radiocarbon dating with half life and exponents was something I did in high school in physics in the loving 70s.
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Apr 17, 2017 22:48
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Potato Salad posted:Radiocarbon dating with half life and exponents was something I did in high school in physics in the loving 70s. Thank you for making me feel less old.
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Apr 18, 2017 03:06
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America is ripe for some Christian-based lefty politics, but socialists are contemptuous of religion in general and liberals are contemptuous of the religious individually as white trash rubes, so I guess its GOP domination forever. 
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Apr 18, 2017 03:17
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Agag posted:America is ripe for some Christian-based lefty politics, but socialists are contemptuous of religion in general and liberals are contemptuous of the religious individually as white trash rubes, so I guess its GOP domination forever. Is it really? American Christianity has become more pro-capitalism over the centuries, not more lefty. The lovely reactionary churches are all the ones that are growing most rapidly, both within the United States and the world abroad.
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Apr 18, 2017 03:27
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RasperFat posted:Is it really? American Christianity has become more pro-capitalism over the centuries, not more lefty. The lovely reactionary churches are all the ones that are growing most rapidly, both within the United States and the world abroad. There is some debate as to why this is in the Christianity thread and I believe there is an argument that liberal churches have also liberalized the practice of faith, and that the lack of adherence to liturgical tradition and churchgoing as an integral part of practice, does not satisfy the spiritual desires of many people, which is why you go to church, after all. Which, well, is the same problem the left faces having been co-opted by liberalism, middle of the road wishy washy half assed noncommital nonensense just doesn't appeal to people whose lots are not already pretty good.
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Apr 18, 2017 03:43
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Who What Now posted:Basic 10th grade science. rkajdi posted:Actually, I distinctly remember having to do problems with carbon dating in my high school non-AP chem class. Not in the actually get the carbon results, but interpreting them is not the hardest thing in the world. X% C-14 going to Y% allows for an easy calculation that nobody with enough smarts to be taking high school chem should have any problems with. I'm seriously getting fishmech-ed here. If this thread is to be believed, carbon-14 dating of fossils is the most important application of chemistry and high school chemistry classes spend half of a semester studying the topic in great detail. Also, high school physics isn't about learning how to apply Newton's laws to idealized mechanics problems involving inclined planes and pulleys, actually it is all about studying advanced theories of gravitation and applying them to the Big Bang. In actuality, the stuff you actually study in high school physics & chemistry is almost totally unrelated to creationism. I'm sure there are a ton of creationist high school physics and chemistry teachers who do great jobs. RasperFat posted:Young Earth creationism is a blight on education and requires dismissing foundational blocks of out current understanding of how the universe functions. It's irreconcilable with even the lower levels of science, and a teacher espousing that belief in any science class should not continue teaching. I'm not really seeing how creationism is this great menace that you are making it out to be. It is pretty innocuous actually. Who cares if the guy in accounting or the woman in HR might have a wrong idea about something that happened a bazillion years ago? There aren't a lot of things which are more irrelevant to daily life in modern society than someone's personal opinion on how the world came to be.
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Apr 18, 2017 04:39
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OwlFancier posted:There is some debate as to why this is in the Christianity thread and I believe there is an argument that liberal churches have also liberalized the practice of faith, and that the lack of adherence to liturgical tradition and churchgoing as an integral part of practice, does not satisfy the spiritual desires of many people, which is why you go to church, after all. The problem is the overarching history of Christianity, and religion in general, skews conservative. Things like Liberation Theology are an exception, not the norm. Even during times of progressive religious movements, the societal wide effect of religion still trends conservative. It might be possible to change this, but thousands of years of impetus, tradition, political alliances, etc. trend conservative, and the holy texts themselves are explicitly conservative (to an absurd degree) by modern standards. If a Christian church is lefty, it is avant guarde ignoring large swaths of explicitly conservative teachings that are unambiguously proscriptive in both the Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible is terrible with slavery, gender equality, family structure, education, violence, and racial equality, among other issues. It's difficult to maintain the aura of tradition and invoke "Christian Values" when using such a slanted perspective on what Christ and the Bible actually proscribed. You have it backwards, the left tried to co-op Christianity but it is an endeavor doomed to fail because Abrahamic religions are intrinsically conservative. A better position would be trying to develop a modern philosophy devoid of magic that satisfies "spiritual desires", whatever those are. But that requires abandoning the current established religions wholesale and admitting that Christianity is inherently flawed and damaging to societies. Which is difficult for America because it is decidedly majority Christian.
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Apr 18, 2017 06:54
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silence_kit posted:I'm seriously getting fishmech-ed here. If this thread is to be believed, carbon-14 dating of fossils is the most important application of chemistry and high school chemistry classes spend half of a semester studying the topic in great detail. Also, high school physics isn't about learning how to apply Newton's laws to idealized mechanics problems involving inclined planes and pulleys, actually it is all about studying advanced theories of gravitation and applying them to the Big Bang. I never said people in accounting or HR can't do their jobs if they are YE creationists. I said if they teach science they are wholly unqualified if they ascribe to such nonsense. These are the people making new discoveries and instilling the foundations of scientific reasoning and understanding in the new generations. Nobody was saying carbon dating is the focal point of chemistry classes in high school. We said that it is a commonly taught, basic level principle that ties into multiple fields of study. If you are trying to reconcile YEC with science, you run into major problems in introductory classes, much less when you get to college or graduate level study. If you can't see why someone using such a demonstrably wrong lens when teaching these concepts creates serious issues in the science classroom, then you're ignoring multiple obvious red flags.
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Apr 18, 2017 07:04
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It certainly can but yeah I can't really think of a single thing from MY high school chemistry/physics classes that would have been particularly contradictory to young earth creation.
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Apr 18, 2017 07:31
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Agag posted:America is ripe for some Christian-based lefty politics, but socialists are contemptuous of religion in general and liberals are contemptuous of the religious individually as white trash rubes, so I guess its GOP domination forever. Based on what?
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Apr 18, 2017 07:52
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Wrt the earlier discussion: having YECs teach young children is dangerous, but restricting people from teaching on ideological grounds is probably more dangerous.
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Apr 18, 2017 08:46
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RasperFat posted:The problem is the overarching history of Christianity, and religion in general, skews conservative. I mean, that is kind of what the practice of Christianity is wherever you go, ignoring large sections of the bible. Even the sects that allege to love the thing don't actually follow all of it. And liturgical traditions put far more stock in their rules of practice developed since the bible was formalized anyway. The argument is there really isn't a reason why churches can't uphold more modern ideas where they are important without sacrificing the practicing traditions. It's just that for some reason they don't, they trend instead towards liberalizing both practice and theology and lose appeal. Again this isn't a uniquely religious thing, the left as a whole does a similar thing which is part of the reason it loses ground to the right.
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Apr 18, 2017 09:40
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Cingulate posted:Wrt the earlier discussion: having YECs teach young children is dangerous, but restricting people from teaching on ideological grounds is probably more dangerous. You're right and that's why we should let the neo Nazis teach history
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Apr 18, 2017 09:41
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Piell posted:You're right and that's why we should let the neo Nazis teach history But no. Somebody who's secretly a neo nazi - I don't think there could be a law in the world to stop him from teaching under. Somebody who actively teaches his ideas to the children - well, he's obviously out, but that's something he shares not just with the YEC teacher who does the same, but with everyone who doesn't teach the material. Somebody who's a neo nazi in public, but never in the class room - well, that's probably the more interesting question, but in the end, it says little about religion because religion isn't inherently a call for oppression of minorities.
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Apr 18, 2017 10:21
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Cingulate posted:Wrt the earlier discussion: having YECs teach young children is dangerous, but restricting people from teaching on ideological grounds is probably more dangerous. You don't have to have a religious test. An atheist believing the universe is only 20,000 years old for whatever crazy reason is also unfit to teach science. A history teacher being a Holocaust denier should warrant their excusal from a teaching position, even if they aren't an antisemite. They could just be a conspiracy nut who also thinks the moon landing was faked and reptilians have taken the place of the our leaders and CHEMTRAILS, etc. Even without the bigotry such an outrageously stupid belief does not belong in a classroom, and is especially problematic when coming from the supposed intellectual authority. YEC are the science teacher equivalent of conspiracy nuts for history teacher. They are fundamentally wrong on so many things that it's impossible for problems not to come up when teaching a whole year/semester worth of lessons. OwlFancier posted:I mean, that is kind of what the practice of Christianity is wherever you go, ignoring large sections of the bible. Even the sects that allege to love the thing don't actually follow all of it. And liturgical traditions put far more stock in their rules of practice developed since the bible was formalized anyway. Of course every church ignores parts of the Bible, it's a whole bunch of contradictory nonsense with some moralizing and time tested narratives woven in. The issue is how much of the Bible can be twisted to maybe be progressive by modern standards and how much is Bronze Age garbage. Unfortunately, it's mostly garbage. Reading the Bible cover to cover, the overwhelming majority of its explicit directives, laws, morals, and values do not line up with modern society. It's not some nebulous neutral cloud that is shaped into will by whatever sect happens to be interpreting it. At it's core, Christianity is a flawed basis for both reality and morality. No matter how progressive a church might be, it is still based fundamentally on a patriarchal text that exhibits the virtues of a strict vertical power structure. It's difficult to get around gender issues even if you ignore the monstrous parts of Leviticus. Jesus's mother needed to be "pure" to host the Lord's body. Jesus was a man, and God is referred to as the father. Only men were called to abandon their families and possessions and follow Jesus. All of the apostles were men. There's also the issue of generally focusing on the afterlife, instead of changing our power structures to better help everyone. This also bleeds into outlandish concepts of the soul that have zero evidence and catalyzes other unscientific beliefs. Modern ideas don't mesh well with religions in general. It has little to do with "liberalizing" and much more to do with the fact that religions are being challenged by modernization on multiple fronts. As we continue to learn exponentially more about the natural world, the possibility of supernatural things continuously drops. Couple this with the ease of access to information (in developed countries) and it's a bad long term trend for religion. As a cherry on top the fact the the knowledge preservation, phenomenon explanations, and power structures are all horribly outdated makes them unpopular to younger generations.
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Apr 18, 2017 10:29
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RasperFat posted:A history teacher being a Holocaust denier should warrant their excusal from a teaching position, even if they aren't an antisemite
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Apr 18, 2017 11:51
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silence_kit posted:I'm seriously getting fishmech-ed here. If this thread is to be believed, carbon-14 dating of fossils is the most important application of chemistry and high school chemistry classes spend half of a semester studying the topic in great detail. Also, high school physics isn't about learning how to apply Newton's laws to idealized mechanics problems involving inclined planes and pulleys, actually it is all about studying advanced theories of gravitation and applying them to the Big Bang. You arent getting fishmech'd, you just had an exceptionally poor education (or didn't pay any attention in class). And you are giving creationists far too much credit. They have literally no understanding of basic science, so you dont need dual-PhDs in chemistry and physics to debunk their claims, you only need basic, rudimentary understandings of the subjects. You know, the kind you would get in a high school science class.
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Apr 18, 2017 13:58
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Cingulate posted:The question is, what does the "being" mean? Does it mean, privately holds these opinions? Does it mean, acts on these opinions constantly? Obviously they would have to state it. Doesn't matter if it was in the classroom or on Facebook. There's probably a frightening amount of people that hold crazy beliefs but never let others know. Not much we can do about that. Also if they are a science teacher, a simple "approximately how old is the Earth/universe" with a multiple choice answer like <100,000, <1,000,000, <1,000,000,000, >1,000,000,000. Similarly if there was a simply knowledge test and a history teacher answered in the Spicer "Hitler did nothing wrong" style, it's solid grounds to not hire that person.
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Apr 18, 2017 14:52
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RasperFat posted:Obviously they would have to state it. Doesn't matter if it was in the classroom or on Facebook. So I believe - as an article of faith - in the possibility of, and the necessity of, teaching against one's beliefs. Now this again doesn't so readily extend to the neo nazi, because "I am a nazi" is not just a statement about what you believe about history and politics, but it's essentially a threat and an insult, too. (E.g., if you're a Jew and I calmly state, "how interesting! I'm a nazi!", then that's not simply a neutral statement of a fact.) But the creationist? I personally essentially believe Chomskians are epistemically on grounds about as strong as ID proponents, but not sociologically. They do not inherently oppose the entirety of the scientific consensus, they're not obviously, clearly vacuous**. They're just (probably) wrong. They're not obviously wrong - it is possible for a reasonable person to be a Chomskian allthewile believing themselves in agreement with a substantial majority of researchers in their field. But it is also possible for a creationist to believe themselves in agreement with a substantial minority of rational people. And it is hopefully possible for them to teach a classroom about mainstream science. Maybe one out of every 50 kids will be fooled into sympathizing with their views. Well, that is a price I am willing to pay in order to not go down a certain route: that of suppressing people over nothing but their beliefs. Maybe even one out of every 10. So be it. I believe if you draw the line in a way that excludes creationists willing to teach near-exclusively mainstream science, you'll be drawing a very bad line. Try it. E.g., if you ask me to fill in a questionnaire about what I believe to be the correct parse of an English main clause, the Chomskian way or some other way, the answer to that is not very important. What's important is that if asked to, I will be able and willing to explain to a student the Chomskian one. A believer in the Chomskian approach can fail this test, and a non-believer can pass it. It works the same with creationists: their own beliefs are of little consequence, what matters is their willingness and ability to teach actual science. Ok, think of it like that. Most muslims have some pretty out-there ideas about the history and reality of the world (probably even most muslims in the west). Many even have some ethically very problematic views. You want to outright ban the vast majority of muslims from teaching? * In fact, one of the faults I see with the other side is they don't do that - they are convinced their view is correct, and they'll often simply not teach the other view. ** A lot of very intelligent and honest folks are in the Chomskian camp, including some of my best friends, and they're sometimes even producing very interesting and valuable research insights, particularly to the (sadly often limited) extent their ideas can be reformulated in a theory-neutral way. *** The time this never works is when I have to argue for Daniel Dennett. I simply cannot put up a reasonable defense of his views, probably because they're absolutely, one hundred percent worthless and dumb. Who What Now posted:creationists ... have literally no understanding of basic science ... you only need basic, rudimentary understandings of the subjects. (While I don't want to present them as actual creationists, consider two extremely intelligent (although selective) critics of Darwinism/natural selection: Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky. Raymond Vahan Damadian, the inventor of MRI, is a creationist, and he has a much better understanding of physics than you. Alvin Plantinga is smarter than you. Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project, is a mild creationist. I'm not claiming there's a substantial number of creationists who're good scientists - they're very rare, especially the extreme kind, but what WWN is saying here is wrong and dangerously naive.)
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Apr 18, 2017 18:20
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Cingulate posted:This is false, you're very naive about this. Most creationists are very uneducated, but so are most atheists. Some creationists are very well-educated and smart. Oh for fucks sake, I'm very sorry I wasn't pedantic enough for you. Yes, there are technically some creationists that are educated about these things. They do exist. But I was pretty obviously talking about the creationists you are likely to meet and talk to at your local school board meeting and not a professional apologist.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:32
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To be frank, the notion that THE LEFT (tm) is hostile to religion sounds more like a right-wing talking point that's been readily gobbled up by "but both sides are bad"-ers. The left isn't hostile to religion, young people are. The right wing has just as many atheists and anti-Christians who suck it up for their own pet issues, they all tend to be young and libertarian.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:36
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It's just that religion is traditionally hostile to the left. See France (revolutions of 1789, 1848, 1870, secularism in the 20th century), Mexico (where the church picked the reactionary side in almost every war from independence to the cristero war), Spain (where they literally spied for fascists and the pope was praising Franco and Mussolini), every catholic puppet regime on the axis side, Argentina, Brazil and Chile during the dictatorships, etc. And before we think I'm forgetting protestants, southern baptists kind of have a history, as do the various lutheran churches, of siding with reactionary power and their worst excesses. And in the muslim world the islamists systematically betrayed the left in Iran and often sided with imperial powers in the arab world because secular socialists was scary to the Reaganites. So yeah at some point the left, even individual religious leftists like Tolstoy, are going to stop giving lip service to the religious powers that be. Tl;dr the only church that illuminates is one that is on fire. Also no, statistically the right doesn't have "as many atheists" edit: I know it's repetition but whatever, apologetics about christology are loving meaningless as history. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 19:08
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Covok posted:To be frank, the notion that THE LEFT (tm) is hostile to religion sounds more like a right-wing talking point that's been readily gobbled up by "but both sides are bad"-ers. This thread, which is full of leftists who are hostile to religion? Agnosticnixie posted:It's just that religion is traditionally hostile to the left. Who What Now posted:Oh for fucks sake, I'm very sorry I wasn't pedantic enough for you. Yes, there are technically some creationists that are educated about these things. They do exist. But I was pretty obviously talking about the creationists you are likely to meet and talk to at your local school board meeting and not a professional apologist.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:13
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Cingulate posted:If you're too arrogant to even make a precise statement, how should I have any faith in you being able to offer a challenge to even a mid-level apologist? Why should I give a poo poo whether or not you have faith in me?
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Apr 18, 2017 19:30
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Agnosticnixie posted:Tl;dr the only church that illuminates is one that is on fire. Funny, we take that same approach to leftist heretics. 
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Apr 18, 2017 20:23
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RasperFat posted:Is it really? American Christianity has become more pro-capitalism over the centuries, not more lefty. The lovely reactionary churches are all the ones that are growing most rapidly, both within the United States and the world abroad. [CITATION NEEDED]
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Apr 18, 2017 20:33
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CountFosco posted:[CITATION NEEDED] I should clarify this point because it was on oversimplification of the complex religious history of the U.S. The founding Pilgrims and Puritans were hardcore conservatives. It's difficult for modern religions to come close to their level of zealotry. But they came here in the 17th century before capitalism was really a thing. The world was still in the process of transitioning out of mercantilism. This was the beginning of the "Protestant work ethic" bullshit, and Puritans were not friends to the poor or the outcast. It was almost exclusively in group goodwill. However, Puritans were a minority after a few short decades of various European countries colonizing and bringing a variety of faiths ranging from similarly hardcore conservative (Calvinist) to surprisingly progressive for the time (Quakers). Over the centuries, the pro-capital reactionary sects have been out competing the liberal sects. There are a few short bursts of progressivism that are quickly swallowed or co-opted by the far more powerful conservative sects. The most recent two attempts that were anywhere close to successful in making religion progressive in America came at the turn of and in the middle of the 20th century. From the 1890s until the 1920s the Social Gospel almost became popular. It was quickly drowned out by neo-orthodoxy, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. MLK's group with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference once again started to push Christianity in a progressive way in the 1950s and 60s during the Civil Rights Movement, but once again the progressive sects were overwhelmed and overtaken by an even stronger resurgence of Evangelism in the 1950s combined with a fervent revival of Prosperity Gospel. There has no been no effective national effort to liberalize American Christianity now for the last 50 years. The overwhelming majority of American churches, regardless of origin, buy into capitalism wholesale and espouse "work ethics" as a virtue. I've actually studied this poo poo I'm not just an rear end in a top hat trying to poo poo on religion to be edgy. The long history that religion has with progressivism is hosed up for the most part; there was a good reason why real communism encourages the dismantling of religious institutions. They are consistently on the side of loving things up. tl;dr: American Christian history is a long arc that bends towards economic injustice
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Apr 18, 2017 21:56
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Cingulate posted:I teach - linguistics, philosophy of science and methods, mostly. In methods, I teach contemporary methods and open source software instead of the mainstream because it's objectively better. But when I teach the other stuff, here's the situation: I firmly hold a few beliefs, e.g. that Chomskian syntax is very bad. But I know around 49% of my field subscribes to the (in my view insane) Chomskian take, and you can't really take part in most of the debates if you don't know it. So when I teach, I try to do my best effort of representing the field, not so much my belief.* Like, sometimes I will be very open about what I personally believe: I will say, "ok, and I personally believe all of this is simply wrong. But that's not the point here; let's go back to how the actual argument goes", and I'll try to make the most persuasive account of it I can do. (And then, if it's part of the syllabus, I'll do the most persuasive argument for the other side.) Sometimes I'll be less open: I'll put two sides before the class (e.g. two texts as homework assignments), and then I'll check whatever side they pick and I will argue the other side, which often results in me arguing against my own beliefs, as hard as I can***. (I'll still usually at least once state where my personal sympathies are to make students aware of potential biases on my part - .e.g, I'll say, "ok, and here I should be open about the fact that I personally don't subscribe to view A".) I appreciate the effort post, but linguistics =/= physical sciences. I was a communication studies major, so I feel you in well educated people using theories I disagree with in large groups. Muted Group Theory is popular among feminist crowds, but I find that language is probably more effectively used by women and minorities and societal structures are entirely what is responsible for language not being as effective for those groups. But the problem here is social science theories are nowhere near the equivalent of physical science theories. They are closer than the colloquial use of "I have a theory", but are still nowhere near the equivalent of a physical science theory like gravity. We eventually found Newton's theory wasn't quite right and left out relativity. Then we found out Einstein's theory of relativity wasn't quite right either and we are trying to explain quantum mechanics now. But those men weren't "wrong", you could repeatedly use their models to get predictable results with practical application. When we were still Earthbound, for all intents and purposes plug in 9.8m/s^2 plus wind resistance and you can calculate trajectories on Earth like a motherfucker. Add in Einstein's additions when leaving Earth's gravity to actively map the forces required to get to other celestial bodies, like the Moon and Mars which we have successfully done. Who knows what we can figure out once we get quantum mechanics down. These theories have practical applications that are tested over and over and over again in lab settings and in the field. Linguistic theories don't have the same history or verifiability behind them. We can teach beliefs and theories as part of history, but it should be framed correctly. If Chomskian and ID are both popular theories that haven't been fully flushed out and accepted, than you should teach both and try to be more objective. When we discuss the breaking edge of research in science classes there are multiple competing theories presented as well. Is String Theory, Superstring Theory, or M-Theory accurate? We're not sure! Here's what the modern experts think might be likely. The science teacher shouldn't take a strong position if there isn't a consensus in the field. Being a moderate creationist or whatever is fine, even if I wouldn't prefer it. YEC is crazytown nonsense. The equivalent in the field of linguistics would be accepting a new linguistics teacher who believes that God created every language as is currently exists a few thousand years ago, no exceptions. It's something so outrageously wrong on a fundamental level that the person saying that has no business trying to teach linguistics to others. I'm sure there are plenty of creationist who are smarter than me, intelligence is a strange and varied thing. In fact the exceedingly rare genius YEC might be able to compartmentalize their inane belief in a science setting and make contributions, but the overwhelming effect of spreading and normalizing this belief is anti-science. It should be clarified again that I am exclusively talking about YEC, not creationists in general. While I'd still argue against the idea itself, if a teacher thinks God started the Big Bang and gently guided evolution to allow for humans then whatever. It wouldn't interfere with any of the actual science.
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Apr 18, 2017 22:58
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OwlFancier posted:There is some debate as to why this is in the Christianity thread and I believe there is an argument that liberal churches have also liberalized the practice of faith, and that the lack of adherence to liturgical tradition and churchgoing as an integral part of practice, does not satisfy the spiritual desires of many people, which is why you go to church, after all. You've mentioned this before : so what? As the modern musical version of an anticlerical tract rightly points out: "Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it's bound to be bad for the pitcher."
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Apr 19, 2017 06:06
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