[Nemesis6]

How do you like your Establishment Clause now? :/

Sadly this is not the only time this has happened... Happened in Kansas, too. I wonder what you would actually teach, since Creationism is based around lies and falsehoods. All I've seen of it in action is asking small kids "Was your uncle a monkey?"
You guys are losing your first amendment, and without it, you're pretty much doomed. The language of the bill and what it proposes is exactly identical to the non-sense the cdesign proponentsists(yes, that's a pun) try to advocate instead of their failed pseudo-scientific dogma. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... yeah.

[Flipside]

I wonder if Nero was playing a hoedown?

[Kosh]

I concur. So how did this law get passed? I was under the impression that the US was not a dictatorship, and that retarded laws could not be passed by one person alone. I'm just glad that we don't have any crackpots trying to fix our science program here, I'm happy being ignorant and learning about stupid concepts like evolution and space.

It was passed by the state's legislature; the governor merely signed it into law.  (It's essentially the same setup as on the federal scale, where Congress passes bills and the president signs them into law.)  Not that details like that make it any easier to swallow.  It's kind of hard to speak out against Southern stereotypes when they seem so hell-bent on living up to them.

The governor is a total creationist. There's a video somewhere on youtube where he said that, in an interview on tv.

The act merely allows teachers to "objectively evaluate" and analyze scientific theories, as well as include additional materials in their curriculum to do so.  It doesn't mandate anything and doesn't prohibit anything.

"objectively evaluate", "academic freedom", and "teach the controversy" are just buzz words that people pushing creationism in science class use to trick people into believing their doubletalk.

[BlueFlames]

Has anybody actually read the link that BlueFlames provided?  (Including BlueFlames himself?)

Yes, I did read it, or I wouldn't have posted it.

Teachers in the public education system, in my experience (in three states, including Louisiana), have always had a measure of freedom in bringing additional materials into a class to supplement textbooks and existing curricula.  There isn't a need for a law to be established for that purpose; it was put into place, so that should somebody challenge a teacher in the Louisiana education system for teaching theology in lieu of science, the teacher can turn around and say that there is a legal precedent allowing him/her to do so.  It's not a new trick.

[karajorma]

Yep. It's the deliberate injection of a loophole.

Goober seems to expect politicians to add loopholes with a clear indication of what they would be used for. Of course that's not the way things work. If they thought they could get away with simply saying that teachers could teach creationism in school then that's the law they'd pass. But seeing as they can't, this is what we get instead.


Besides even if you really honestly believe that isn't what the law was designed for, that is what it could be used for. If Louisiana passed a law which had a loophole which for instance legalised murder would it really matter what the law was actually designed to do? Or would it have to be struck down, redrafted or quickly amended in order to close that loophole?

Quite simply this is a bad law whichever way you look at it. It need to be fixed or completely removed.

[WMCoolmon]

I don't see anything literally that I object to the bill except
A) It's wording sounds as though the school must provide the additional instruction.
B) The mention of a parish. I'd get rid of that and add 'community leaders' or something like that.
C) (kind of) The list of subjects. But mostly what I dislike about the bill is that it's all topical, so in a few years this bill would become irrelevant.

Still it'd be kind of interesting to start a church of the FSM there dedicated to evolution, etc. and force the schools to provide additional instruction on the subject.

[BlueFlames]

B) The mention of a parish.

In this instance, 'parish' is not refering to a church's jurisdiction.  Louisiana is subdivided into parishes instead of counties.  I personally think it has something to do with Louisiana being backwards.....and French.

[karajorma]

I don't see anything literally that I object to the bill except
A) It's wording sounds as though the school must provide the additional instruction.
B) The mention of a parish. I'd get rid of that and add 'community leaders' or something like that.
C) (kind of) The list of subjects. But mostly what I dislike about the bill is that it's all topical, so in a few years this bill would become irrelevant.

Evidently I'm either more devious than you are or more used to the kinds of tricks the ID people like to get up to.

I think we're all aware of the various nonsense ID proponents like to use to try to discredit evolution. All the need to do now is dress some of these up as critical thinking and they've got their foot in the door. For instance, it's very easy to take that perennial classic - the evolution of the eye - and claim you want to critically examine how likely it is. Since most people have serious trouble grasping the theories involved so once you start going into detail about how the eye is made up of so many parts that need to all work just right for the eye to of any use it's very easy to end up with a classroom of children whose critical thinking results in them thinking that the theory is flawed.

However it doesn't end there. Teaching ID is banned still but that doesn't mean that they can't "Teach the controversy" as they like to call it. As long as the new textbooks no doubt already being drafted don't actually mention ID they can get away with including all the usual arguments against evolution under the guise that they are trying to promote objective discussion and logical analysis. So we won't end up with the kids having a science textbook that teaches everything and supplementary material. We'll have a textbook along with another one that undermines and discredits the first one. The second book obviously can't explain what the "real" answer is cause ID is banned, but I'm sure they'll find a way to get around that outside of the science class once the seeds of doubt have already been sown.

[Nemesis6]

Check the article on "Of Pandas and People", and you'll get some idea of what their next Creationist textbook will be like, or more likely, what words it will not contain.