Should the NSTA be called the NDSTA?
The National Science Teachers Association should rename itself "National Darwinist Science Teachers Association." The NSTA has issued an official hardline pro-Darwinist, anti-anti-Darwinist position statement on the teaching of Darwinism. The NSTA also gave an unprecedented "Presidential Citation" award to the "Dover Eight," the teachers who refused to read the ID statement to science classes. Certainly there must be a lot of science teachers out there -- and they are not all fundies -- who believe that the weaknesses as well as the strengths of Darwinism should be taught, and IMO the NSTA should not presume to speak for those teachers. These winner-take-all position statements are unfair -- this isn't the electoral college. I feel that it is certainly OK for professional societies to debate controversial issues but I feel that in general they should not take official positions on them.
I didn't belong to engineering societies because I often disagreed with their positions on professional issues. I did strongly agree with the National Society of Professional Engineers' opposition to the practice of suspending professional engineering licenses of fathers who are behind in child support payments.
I didn't belong to engineering societies because I often disagreed with their positions on professional issues. I did strongly agree with the National Society of Professional Engineers' opposition to the practice of suspending professional engineering licenses of fathers who are behind in child support payments.
Labels: Evolution controversy (1 of 4)
posted by Larry Fafarman | 3/07/2007 10:04:00 AM
8 Comments:
Shouldn't that be NDEFGKLMNRSTA (watto)?
(National Darwinist Einsteinist Faradayist Galeleist Keplerist Leeuwenhoekist Mendeleevist Newtonist Rutherfordist Science Teachers' Association? (With apologies to those omitted.)
BTW, I am astonished that you fell behind in your child support payments.
Maybe you should take Rutherfordist out of the list. Lord Rutherford once said, "all science is either physics or stamp collecting."
>>>> BTW, I am astonished that you fell behind in your child support payments. <<<<<
BTW, when did I say that? My support for the NSPE's position was just based on general principles. One or both houses of Congress even passed a law to withhold federal AFDC (aid to families with dependent children) funds from states that did not have a policy of suspending the professional and occupational licenses of deadbeat dads.
Apparently the NSTA is so spooked by increased questioning of 19th-Century Darwinism in many quarters, that it has adopted the position of Judge Jones:
"I'm John Jones, His Ruling Grace,
Who keeps all the 'low' in their place:
Should they doubt any word
From a Darwinist nerd
My riding-crop snaps in their face!"
It should be called the National Dogma Preachers in Science Association.
Over the last three decades Darwinism has been rejected thoroughly and at length by such great scientists as zoologist and evolutionary biologist Pierre Grasse; and Fred Hoyle. Not to mention geneticist Michael Denton in 1985; and of course Michael Behe, who has been listed in American Men and Women of Science for 12 years. (Behe's detractor, biologist Jerry Coyne, hasn't yet made it into AMWS; although both men published their doctoral theses in the same year, 1978.)
Grasse, who thought that unknown natural laws must account for evolution, rejected Darwinism as "pseudoscience" and "daydreaming."
Do the Dogma Preachers really think that no scientific controversy exists?
Jim, I'm thinking of creating a post just for limericks, with its own post label in the left sidebar.
Here is another one:
There once was a critic named Jim,
whose view of Judge Jones was quite dim.
When John Jones the Third
said something absurd,
Jim thought very little of him.
Larry is talking to himself again. If there is anyone who doesn't realize that Larry Fafarman and Jim Sherwood are one and the same, your latest efforts should put that to rest.
I am sure that Larry is not subject to child support payments. He has never had sex (where there was a second party involved).
< I am sure that Larry is not subject to child support payments. >
I was pulling his leg. :-}
If "Historian" will read the writings of Dawkins etc. he will quickly discover many of these guys describing themselves as "Darwinists" who believe in "Darwinism." See my comment on the March 11 Egnor post.
But as far as I know, no scientists have ever called themselves Einsteinists who believe in Einsteinism; or Rutherfordists, etc.
Where do these Darwinists who comment here get these misconceptions? From Pandas Thumb? OR the NCSE?
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