TN Bill Protects Teaching of Creationism
April 26th, 2011
Tennessee was again shown to be a bastion of ignorance and science illiteracy, this time by its lawmakers. On April 7 the Tennessee House of Representatives passed bill HB0368 by a vote of 70 to 23. The bill is being pushed as necessary to promote “critical thinking” by encouraging students to question the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, specifically about evolution and global warming. The entire bill can be found at the link above and a summary below.
Bill SummaryThis bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting 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, such as evolution and global warming. This bill also requires such persons and entities to endeavor to:
(1) Create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues; and
(2) Assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.
Many are probably wondering how an ass-backwards bill like this could even be proposed in a state legislature much less pass through the house. Clearly these people have not lived in the bible belt and witnessed the gross ignorance and sheer stupidity of many of the people that live here when it comes to separating reality from the nonsense in a 3000 year old book. The debate that occurred on the floor over this bill shown in the video below will illustrate how even legislators in this state know nothing of science and will do anything to push their beliefs into the classroom.
Watching the video it almost seems unreal that these are actually elected officials in a legislative house of government debating that evolution is not a fact and that alternatives should be discussed in a science classroom. It is mind-blowing. They actually equate understanding and accepting well established and factual scientific theories with their irrational beliefs and faith in nonsense. Science doesn’t require belief in something because it has massive amounts of empirical evidence and cold hard facts to back it up. I cannot think of any other way more proven way at arriving at the truth of reality than the scientific method. Religion and Christianity require faith because they provide absolutely no evidence to back up their outlandish claims. These legislators are trying to open up classrooms to the teaching of bogus alternatives. Trying to waste science class time with the teaching of non-science and nonsense does a disservice to children.
Luckily that even though this passed in the House the Senate version SB893 has been stalled in the Senate Education Committee ending its chances at becoming law this year. Bills like this are scary because they do nothing but attempt to facilitate indoctrinating children to turning a blind eye to actual facts and replace them them with irrational nonsense for which their is no evidence. Instead of developing critical thinking this encourages the shackling of school kid’s minds to old dogmatic beliefs and retarding the advancement of humanity instead of teaching them the latest factual information and understanding of our world and reality.
This kind of bill only encourages children to sing songs like this:
If you want to be more educated than the legislators in the video and the general population of TN I encourage you to browse the archive and read all the FAQs on evolution at TalkOrigins.org
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