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Two Items on Buttars
The Deseret News has two recent articles on Utah Senator Chris Buttars' education bill, here and here. (hat-tip to Justin B.)
There's not much new in these so I won't add it to the collection on the sidebar. I noticed this passage:
In an attempt to rally support for SB96 from the Eagle Forum, Buttars shared an anecdote about a mother who said her two daughters were told by a teacher that they evolved from animals.Not sure what to say about that, so I'll leave it alone.
"It totally destroyed their faith," Buttars said.
He accused scientists of overstepping the truth by putting forward evolution as the only explanation for how humans came to exist as they do today."
I also noticed this poll.
Buttars might want to focus his efforts on math class first.
6 comments:
I don't get the math class crack.
The numbers in the poll add up to 101%.
The problem is that Butters is completely avoiding the fundamental issue. Why on earth should evolution shake people's faith? Rather than dealing with that he simply attempts the ostrich principle of not teaching evolution.
not teaching evolution
Or more technically, pretending like scientists are fighting among themselves on fundamental issues.
And since when is it the state's job to prop up people's faith? If Buttars sees that as a role of government he's really got to clean house at the U of U.
Regarding the math joke and the poll numbers: welcome to rounding.
Regarding Clark's question "Why on earth should evolution shake people's faith?", there are certainly a lot of prominent scientists and philosophers who assert that it should (with the same apparent conviction that they make assertions in their areas of professional expertise).
Buttars simple arguments will not survive the attack of sophistry. I don't know if this is good or bad. He apparently feels justified in raising the issues to the level of public forum, anyway. Perhaps he felt this approach would be more effective than hosting a blog discussion.
The notion of judging the merits of an issue based on public opinon polls is truly lame, mistaking it for some kind of democratic approach is just wrong, but journalists and politicians always seem to love it. Associating Buttars with this foolishness misses the mark.
And the idea that science peers are one happy community of collegial accord and uniformity is indeed ludicrous.
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