Once in a while, we should to take the time to remind ourselves how beautiful our home is. Check out the Northern Lights about three minutes in.
NASA Expedition travels our shrinking...but beautiful globe.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
HIstory May Repeat Itself, but Science Simply Presses On
Tennessee decided to repeat history recently by equating evolution with intelligent design and other nonsensical religious theories. Tennessee also decided to ignore scientific reality by forcing teachers to make a mockery of global warming.
Encouraging students to think critically about the world around them is public school's main responsibility. There is a wide gulf between critical thinking, and being fooled into believing that a theory that has been more subject to the rigors of the scientific method than any other is only as plausible as a strict, narrow, and politically motivated interpretation of one particular bible.
The global implication of this thinking, promulgated by Christian Dominionists, is that the world will no longer look to the United States for scientific leadership, as it started to when JFK challenged us to go the moon. As we tumble back towards the stone-age, other nations will make the breakthroughs that will cure cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. Students will leave, instead of come to, America in order to explore the cosmos and the cell. In short, banning science in America will only result in the export of science, and all its wonder to the rest of the world. Hopefully our neighbors will treat this responsibility better than we have. The true crime is that science and religion can coexist. See this Huffington Post article describing the lengths religious groups went to to preserve evolution's place in the classroom. For a movement hell-bent (pun intended) on ridding the nation of non-believers, however, coexistence itself is the enemy of the "righteous".
Encouraging students to think critically about the world around them is public school's main responsibility. There is a wide gulf between critical thinking, and being fooled into believing that a theory that has been more subject to the rigors of the scientific method than any other is only as plausible as a strict, narrow, and politically motivated interpretation of one particular bible.
The global implication of this thinking, promulgated by Christian Dominionists, is that the world will no longer look to the United States for scientific leadership, as it started to when JFK challenged us to go the moon. As we tumble back towards the stone-age, other nations will make the breakthroughs that will cure cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. Students will leave, instead of come to, America in order to explore the cosmos and the cell. In short, banning science in America will only result in the export of science, and all its wonder to the rest of the world. Hopefully our neighbors will treat this responsibility better than we have. The true crime is that science and religion can coexist. See this Huffington Post article describing the lengths religious groups went to to preserve evolution's place in the classroom. For a movement hell-bent (pun intended) on ridding the nation of non-believers, however, coexistence itself is the enemy of the "righteous".
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