The House voted 70-23 today for a bill backers say shields teachers from being disciplined if they discuss alternatives to evolution and global warming theories with students.
... Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the bill?s intent is to promote ?critical thinking? in science classrooms.
Critics contend it?s a shield to allow the teaching of evolution alternatives such as intelligent design and creationism.
Bill supporter Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, said that ?since the late ?50s, early ?60s when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we?ve been on a slippery slope.?
__________________
__________________
I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
Sooooo, it's "better" if the Tennessee House OK'd a bill shielding teachers who insist on teaching evolution as the only opinion, or that global warming is the only opinion with factual data? Why can't they both be taught?...and then allow the brain matter of the one being taught come to it's own conclusions? Additionally, it speaks volumes when there has to be a bill passed to protect those who have different opinions from the elitist left leaning pseudo-intellectuals!!
Why is it that those who insist on free speech find it (free speech) acceptable only when they agree with it?
__________________
__________________
A nobody telling everybody about Somebody.
A creation myth or creation story is a symbolic narrative of a culture, tradition or people that describes their earliest beginnings, how the world they know began and how they first came into it.[1][2][3] Creation myths develop in oral traditions,[2] and are the most common form of myth, found throughout human culture.[4][5] In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, although not necessarily in a historical or literal sense.[4] They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths?that is they describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness.[6] They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions.[7][8]
Several features are found in all creation myths. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily.[9] They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past, what historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore.[8][10] And all creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society that shares them, revealing of their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.[11]
Mythologists have applied various schemes to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Eliade and his student, Charles H. Long, developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over.
Meaning and function
All creation myths are in one sense etiological because they attempt to explain how the world was formed and where humanity came from.[3] While in popular usage the term "myth" is often thought to refer to false or fanciful stories, creation myths are by definition those stories which a culture accepts as both a true and foundational account of their human identity. Ethnologists and anthropologists who study these myths point out that in the modern context theologians try to discern humanity's meaning from revealed truths and scientists investigate cosmology with the tools of empiricism and rationality, but creation myths define human reality in very different terms. In the past historians of religion and other students of myth thought of them as forms of primitive or early stage science or religion and analyzed them in a literal or logical sense. However they are today seen as symbolic narratives which must be understood in terms of their own cultural context. Charles H. Long writes, "The beings referred to in the myth -- gods, animals, plants -- are forms of power grasped existentially. The myths should not be understood as attempts to work out a rational explanation of deity."[13]
While creation myths are not literal explications they do serve to define an orientation of humanity in the world in terms of a birth story. They are the basis of a worldview that reaffirms and guides how people relate to both the spiritual and natural world as well as to each other. The creation myth acts as a cornerstone for distinguishing primary reality from relative reality, the origin and nature of being from non-being.[14] In this sense they serve as a philosophy of life but one expressed and conveyed through symbol rather than systematic reason. And in this sense they go beyond etiological myths which mean to explain specific features in religious rites, natural phenomena or cultural life. Creation myths also serve as a framework for humanity's sense of self in terms of ultimate origins, shaping concepts of place, time and purpose in the world.[7]
Sooooo, it's "better" if the Tennessee House OK'd a bill shielding teachers who insist on teaching evolution as the only opinion, or that global warming is the only opinion with factual data? Why can't they both be taught?...and then allow the brain matter of the one being taught come to it's own conclusions? Additionally, it speaks volumes when there has to be a bill passed to protect those who have different opinions from the elitist left leaning pseudo-intellectuals!!
Why is it that those who insist on free speech find it (free speech) acceptable only when they agree with it?
It's up to parents to indoctrinate their kids not our schools.
It's up to parents to indoctrinate their kids not our schools.
Absolutely, we agree! But there is a huge difference between "teaching" & "indoctrination".
* Parents should be the most important teachers in a young person's life.
* Parents are rarely the most important teachers in a young person's life.
Genuine teaching will lead to an understanding of genuine learning as a development of the mind, not a formation of memories, and as a acquisition of knowledge and understanding, not an adoption of indoctrinated opinions.
__________________
A nobody telling everybody about Somebody.
It's amazing, almost 90 years since the scopes trial and the people of tennessee are still this stupid, any biologist knows that evolution is not some minor detail that can be debated, but the basis on which almost everything of biology is based on. If someone does not understand evolution they cannot understand biology, it is that simple.
As for the theory people, just remind them that gravity is also a theory, but I am sure glad structural engineers account for that theory....
Linear Mode
