I got my undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan; an excellent school with a superior scientific reputation.
They can flush that reputation away if State Rep. Moolenaar and Senator Hardiman get their way; they have introduced a bill into the state legislation to allow the teaching of creationism.
Oh, they won’t phrase it that way, of course. They’ll talk about "academic freedom", and "controversial scientific subjects", but what they really mean is that they want to teach fundamentalist religion in school. It’s that simple.
And guess what political party these guys call home? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller*?
Yeah, they’re Republicans.
Remember when that party was all for defending the Constitution, and not for undermining the First Amendment? Incredible.
Are you a Michigan voter? Do you want the next generation to have, y’know, an education? You know what to do. Write letters to these politicians (Mollenaar and Hardiman) and let them know you want reality to stay as it is. Be polite, of course, but be firm. Do your research first, make sure you understand the issue; the links I have here should help. You might also mention that when election time rolls around, this will be a very important issue.
Otherwise, of course:
Hat tip to Fark, which seems to care more about this kind of stuff than the MSM does.
*Yes, I use this quotation ironically.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
BA: “Oh, they won’t phrase it that way, of course. They’ll talk about “academic freedom”, and “controversial scientific subjects”, but what they really mean is that they want to teach fundamentalist religion in school. It’s that simple.”
It’s a shame that the Republicans allowed their cause of parental choice in schools to be so corrupted by people trying to teach Creationism in schools that this statement can be made.
BA: “Remember when that party was all for defending the Constitution, and not for undermining the First Amendment? Incredible.”
I made some pretty strong arguments (I think, of course) on this very blog that teaching Creationism in school doesn’t violate the First Amendment, but you never replied to any of them. They were past comment 100 though so you might not have read them, but I’m probably #1 this time.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Grand Rapids. Figures.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
“Yeah, they’re Repubicans.” – little typo there. =D
Gah, this is all ridiculous. It boggles the mind that the government even considers allowing this to pass.
I’d like to protest, but being both not a resident of Michigan and not a resident of the USA makes my opinion kind of meaningless.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Why don’t we just say that the United States is doomed and get it over with. Seems like every state has politicians that like destroy the constitution any chance they get. Can’t they think of the children and stop using the public school system as there own religious playground. Warning to all creationists: STAY OUT OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OR YOUR GOING TO BE DOOMED! Your god does not exist so get over it and move on to reality and stop subverting the children for goodness sake!
Rant over.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Who needs to worry about alien invasion while we’ve got the Repuglicans!
June 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
That sucks for us Michiganders. I’m gonna look into this. I wish the rantings of a 17-year old meant more to a politician. But, ah well…
June 6th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Joe wrote, “It boggles the mind that the government even considers allowing this to pass.”
Well, the advantage (and disadvantage) of our system of government is that “the government” is us! We can (and do) criticize our elected leaders, but we always remember that WE are the idiots who elected those bozos in the first place.
The answer of course, is education. Educated citizens will (hopefully) make better choices at the ballot box. Republicans are well aware of this, and consider an educated electorate a danger to themselves — which is why they consistently oppose improving education (which usually means more money — but it’s money well spent).
We can fight back by working to educate our fellow citizens. The BA has this excellent blog. My wife and I are both teachers. So what are YOU, the reader of this blog, doing to improve education in your neighborhood???
June 6th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
If this goes through – at some future time…..?
“I’m sorry, even though your interview went very well and you’ve passed our exams, we cannot hire you. It seems you’ve earned your science degree at the University of Michigan, and at this critical time we need doctoral graduates who know what a scientific theory actually is and won’t overlook important research clues or proven data based on superstitious notions.”
June 6th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
OMG!! No more! Those politicians must be really dumb. The laws always get shot down, but they do it again and again. Isn’t that the definition of insanity, by the way? Doing something over and over again even though it doesn’t work.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I discovered your site through Fark, so I get particular enjoyment seeing you poke your head in now and then. ^_^
Cheers, mate!
June 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I find it curious that they’re willing to simultaneously say that there’s a real debate in the scientific community AND that children should decide for themselves. But then, considering the childlike nature of their own views…
June 6th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I wrote to my Michigan buddies and said that I now don’t feel quite as bad about living in Texas.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I wouldn’t want to be a high-school student in the state that finally manages to get one of these bills through. The thought that some bright, hard-working kid could graduate HS with a 4.0 GPA, high honors, and still not be eligible for any college except Liberty University makes my stomach churn. It would basically be a punishment for any student uppity enough to want to go to a prestigious college.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
>>>”teaching Creationism in school doesn’t violate the First Amendment”
Sure, not if you teach EVERY other religion too.
RAmen!
June 6th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
well said. republicans have a tendency to forget that several of our founding fathers were not Christian and the first amendment was written to not only keep religion separate but to protect all religions. it now seems to be that religion is protected as long as you believe in Christianity. I would be all for classes teaching all creation myths to show comparison in a religious type senario but it would be a really long class.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I learned biology at Creston High School (go polar bears!) from a Christian who assured us that as far as evolution was concerned, he believed in the Biblical account of Creation. Public high school biology teacher!
Sigh. I moved to California after graduating from Michigan (go wolverines!). Texas had recently demanded that textbook publishers remove the term “evolution” from textbooks to be sold in the Lone Star State. California slapped Texas down with the ultimatum that the Golden State would not purchase books that been so “cleansed” of evolution. I decided I could work in a state like California.
Back then, there was usually just one version of a textbook, so I’m sure more publishers went with the California-friendly model. Texas was the 4th largest market; California was number 1.
As far as the current doomedness is concerned, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Michigan has been in a one-state recession for the past several years. The people have been pretty beat up by the economy. These legislative geniuses should be plying their talents to the state’s economy rather than to turning the Great Lake State into an intellectual backwater.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Well, I don’t know that it matters much. Given the state of the economy in MI (the only state to not recover from the last recession) there won’t be many young minds left to mis-educate. This state does have things going for it, alas the intelligence of our elected officials isn’t one of them. Republican or Democrat, they’ve proven to be generally incompetent at all levels of gov’t. We’ve got some serious problems in this state, and it’s sad to see legislators wasting peoples time and money with dumb laws like this. Do they even have a constitutional standing on which they can legislate this stuff? If so… Maybe they shouldn’t?
Take it for what it’s worth from a Christian, Libertarian leaning, U of M (Go Blue!) educated engineer living in Holland, MI…
June 6th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
You all realize that some politicians drop bills knowing full well they’ll either be overturned or they’ll never see the light of day…
June 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Gibsy, obviously you don’t know the power of the Dark Side!
>:-(
June 6th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Ugh. I don’t vote in those parts any more, but I can still flinch at my home state. I’ll rally the family – of course, they enjoy a sarcastic approach, and will probably organize protests to rally support for teaching Intelligent Falling. I hope they realize that IDiots will probably welcome that as an additional challenge to silly old fact-based, non-magical Sciencey stuff.
Wolverines? Bah! Badgers rule.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Nah Michigan isn’t doomed. Yes there are a lot of fundies in the state congress (actually in my opinion it is more [non fundy] Catholic than anything else). There is a lot and I mean a lot of crack pot legislation that get proposed and never makes it very far.
June 7th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Did I hear someone say badgers?
(sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
June 7th, 2008 at 12:22 am
“Moolenaar?”
I’m gonna roll a Tauren shaman right now! Awesome name.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:36 am
I think students applying for a place anywhere should get a contract signed by the university ensuring that any degree earned by the student will not be made worthless by a piece of nonsense legislation like this one being adopted. In such a litigeous country as America surely a student could sue!
June 7th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I’m not American but I wish I could do something to help…. I am just afraid this could spread up here, like an aggressive cancer. Michigan is right on the border!
June 7th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Remember that, like lawsuits, anyone can introduce a bad bill. Michigan isn’t doomed unless it passes. This is awake up call to the people in that state.
I guess Jeff Daniels will have to update his Michigan commercial if this passes.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Good post. The best part was your ironical jab at Stein!
June 7th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Is suppose it’s telling that (almost!) all of us Michiganders who have taken the time to register our horror with this bill are ex-pats. Frightening thing, guys, is that my family back home probably agrees with the legislation (that is, if they even know it’s been proposed — it was introduced quite quietly and I wouldn’t have even known about it if a friend of mine hadn’t sent me a link a few weeks ago).
I hadn’t realized how abysmal the state of intellectual affairs was until I was home on vacation last month and actually had to argue against my family — each and every one of them — for the existence of climate change.
“I’ll have you remember,” they said, “about 1000 years ago we had a mini ice age. And do you know what happened when it was over? ‘Global warming.’”
“Are any of you familiar with the term ’statistical significance’?”
-born Grand Rapids, MI, graduate Grandville H.S. now living in Washington, D.C.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Oh, great. Hardiman’s MY state senator.
Well, maybe he’ll actually listen to me that way. (But probably not.)
June 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
On June 6, Robbie said:
“I made some pretty strong arguments (I think, of course) on this very blog that teaching Creationism in school doesn’t violate the First Amendment, but you never replied to any of them.”
Phil, allow me:
Robbie, I don’t know what your earlier contention was, but the teaching of Creationism in PUBLIC school does not violate the first amendment PROVIDED it’s in a class on “Bible as Literature” or “Comparative Religion” or “Mythology,” or the like.
Teaching Creationism in public school as IN ANY WAY DESCRIPTIVE OF SCIENTIFIC REALITY (e.g. in a biology class), IS in fact a violation of the separation clause of the First Amendment, and has been so declared repeatedly by US courts at all levels.
Worse than that however, it is monumentally stupid. You can change a law, but stupid tends to persist.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Badgers?
BADGERS?
WE DON’ NEED NO STEENKEEN’ BADGERS!
Anyway.
Remember what Saint Obama said (honestly and accurately) about all those bitter people? Well, here’s your proof in the pudding. The last recession was probably seen as a failure of technology and modernity, and so a large portion of the population is looking back to better times. Why was it better back then than it is today? Ignore all variables too complex to understand. Oh, we were more religious back then. More pious. Must be what happened; we’re being punished, etc. etc. etc.
Which is, in the end, a rationalization that they share in common with the hard-line Wahhabist sect of Islam.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
pcarini:
I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. That video is probably what The Wiggles would sound like on drugs – lots of drugs…
June 7th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Well, okay, but only if we can teach science in churches too.
Seriously, I really wish that people would be more open to different ideas and viewpoints. It’s okay to have maybe a 10 minute discussion in a science class about controversial science topics (i.e., my Biology class last year had an anonymous survey question about the ethics of GMOs during a quiz), but I think science classes are dedicated to teaching the current scientific theories with the most evidence. Creationism / ID is not a scientific theory (as far as I know, which actually isn’t much), so non-scientific theories don’t get taught.
I’m Christian, but really I just skip over most of the Bible and focus on the “love everyone and don’t be a jerk” parts. What comes first for me is knowledge. Tests in classes are ways of measuring how well you have learned the knowledge taught, so being allowed to refuse to learn ticks me off.
If teachers had to teach creationism, I’d hope they’d teach it abusively so as to create a negative correlation in the student’s minds. (I love that xkcd, that’s all)
June 7th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Recently Jack Lessenberry, a well known Michigan Journalist for Michigan Public Radio, did a piece on this. You can read about it over at his column http://jackshow.blogs.com/jack/2008/06/essay-evolution.html
Although it hurts that this kind of legislation has finally been presented in my home state I am quite confident that it will not pass. Michigan may falling down an economic downward spiral right now, but I don’t think that our legislators are dumb enough to vote for something like this. I certainly know that mine isn’t.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
If you look here:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(ag2zyzetcrbshl55lvwmdxvd))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=2008-HB-6027
You can see that the bill hasn’t been touched in over a month. Hopefully, that means they aren’t fond of it.
Either way, we have a decent amount of opposition here in Michigan. I have contacted the governor and my reps to let them know how I feel. This won’t survive.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Long story; please bear with me.
A few years back, I worked for a small trade association that, being pro-business, tended to lean heavily republican in its politics and values.
I, a democrat (more than anything else, at any rate), found the experience to be quite enlightening. I got a good look at some viewpoints I was previously unaware of, and was able to learn much about the other side of the coin, so to speak.
I didn’t necesarily agree with everything that I learned, but my mind was changed on a couple things. And, for sure, I could understand why the Republicans thought the way they did on certain points–because they put a higher value on some things than other things.
The Republicans, right now, in Michigan (where I reside) and elsewhere, are so very focused on the religious aspect, to the detriment of the rest of their platform. The Democrats don’t have nearly the problem with this that Republicans do. They go out of their way to brand themselves as the religously extreme party.
It’s frustrating, because moderate Republicans, the ones who are not blinded by religion, have proposed some intriguing policies. But when a bunch of people (including some good friends of mine) seriously believe that teaching science, or letting two people of the same sex marry, is going to destroy the fabric of society and the entire United States, there’s no arguing against them. There’s only voting, and sending letters to or having discussions with more moderate individuals.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
CarrieP I agree with you very much about your point and I would make a small edit to something I said earlier to agree with you.
“It’s a shame that the Republicans allowed their cause of parental choice in schools to be so corrupted by people trying to teach Creationism in schools that this statement can be made.”
I change it to this: “It’s a shame that the Republicans allowed their cause of X to be so corrupted by people trying to do Y that this statement can be made.”
“It’s a shame that the Democrats allowed their cause of X to be so corrupted by people trying to do Y that this statement can be made.”
That is also an entirely true statement in my mind, unfortunately for all of us in the American public.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I just emailed my local Michigan state representative, Steve Tobocman (D-Detroit), to express my opposition to this bill. Thank you for bringing it to my attention! I haven’t even seen this mentioned in the local papers yet…
June 16th, 2008 at 11:45 am
This is a little late but I hope someone will respond.
I read this bill and think, if this bill strives to protect only scientific theories, then by exclusion it does not protect non-scientific theories, such as I.D. That gives biologists legal leverage against I.D. where today it has none.
I know that isn’t the intent of the bill, but isn’t it better, indirectly, than not having the bill? Given that the desire to teach I.D. won’t go away with or without it, I mean.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Why do some people insist on demeaning the Bible by considering it a science book? The Bible has lots of good things going for it, but I doubt, if you could speak to its writers, that they would consider themselves experts on science. The message they were trying to convey had to do with human behavior and morality, not with the natural sciences.