I’ll be teaching cell biology next fall. Should I be worried?
Little girl: Sings "Jesus loves me"
Teacher: "Uh, no Sally. That's…uh, that's wrong. The powerhouse of the cell is actually the mitochondria."
Little girl looks stunned.
Cut to teacher being burned at the stake.
Good thing Christianity is based on love of your fellow man. Or else we would be in a world of hurt.
Next: Some douchenozzle in a relativity class yells “Jew science!” and hops on the Reichgrifter bandwagon.
Pretty much my read of the Oklahoma situation.
…And I get unpleasant flashbacks to some grade school teacher who electro-branded crosses into his students to prove electricity comes from Jesus or something. And forced a Muslim student to eat pork in class. And all the fundies defending him trying to play it down as “They just kicked him out for the bible on his desk!”
I suggest using this jingle when it comes up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHWEGsic1Q4
Recursive Rabbit, student causes a TA to be removed, and that reminds you of teachers mistreating children??
(Interesting inversion)
John @5: Arsehole ideologues are arsehole ideologues, no matter which end of the classroom they face.
Glad my teaching days are long behind me. This crap is coming to Australia soon. Science (especially, but not only, Biology) is going down the tubes.
Rob, spurious, unsourced vaguely recollected apocrypha are also spurious, unsourced anecdotes.
On the science vs religion axes, the alleged cross-branding is hardly religion rather than science.
Power differencial aspect not inconsiderable (student::teacher), legality, outcomes… all those clash.
But sure, both are about religious people pushing their religion via religious theatrel the one misuses a scientific artefact, the other ignores science altogether.
(Gotta wish they’d get the same treatment as Sovereign Citizens, no?)
—
PS ‘interesting’ ≠ ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. Can’t dispute perceptions.
[oops] ‘theatrel’ → ‘theatre:’, and also I was too oblique, I think. To clarify:
religious entitlement : sovereign‑cit entitlement :: socially sanctioned : socially rejected]
That was the John Freshwater case that I reported here. It’s more than “alleged,” Freshwater lost a hearing, was fired, and lost multiple appeals.
Exactly, PZ. The inverse of it.
One student, Zachary, got the cross. Others did get burned, but not so overtly:
https://religiondispatches.org/the-evolving-story-of-teacher-who-burned-cross-into-students-arm/
As I noted, when I think of a teacher being sacked for being religious, I don’t think of a teacher being sacked for not placating the religious. In one case, the teacher was the victim, in the other, the student.
(Freshwater was never charged or convicted, he just lost his job)
This seems to be a good time to remind people just how violent and vicious fundie xians can be.
When they were trying to force creationism into public schools, they also simultaneously went on a witch hunt and purged all the evolutionary biologists from their private schools and colleges.
I long ago lost track of how many death threats I got from them. It was over a 100 at least.
This is an old post from 2011,
FWIW, fundie xians can and occasionally are violent. This vandalism in Florida is just more xian terrorism.
Below is an old list of their other victims. It is long and getting longer all the time.
The real story is the persecution of scientists by Fundie Xian Death cultists, who have fired, harassed, beaten up, and killed evolutionary biologists and their supporters whenever they can.
http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=626 [link goes to Blake Stacey’s blog which has a must read essay with documentation of the cases below.]
Posting the list of who is really being beaten up, threatened, fired, attempted to be fired, and killed. Not surprisingly, it is scientists and science supporters by Death Cultists.
If anyone has more info add it. Also feel free to borrow or steal the list.
I thought I’d post all the firings of professors and state officials for teaching or accepting evolution.
2 professors fired, Bitterman (SW CC Iowa) and Bolyanatz (Wheaton)
1 persecuted unmercifully Richard Colling (Olivet) Now resigned under pressure.
1 persecuted unmercifully for 4 years Van Till (Calvin)
1 attempted firing Murphy (Fuller Theological by Phillip Johnson IDist)
1 successful death threats, assaults harrasment Gwen Pearson (UT Permian)
1 state official fired Chris Comer (Texas)
1 assault, fired from dept. Chair Paul Mirecki (U. of Kansas)
1 killed, Rudi Boa, Biomedical Student (Scotland)
1 fired Brucke Waltke noted biblical scholar
Biology Department fired, La Sierra SDA University
1 attempted persecution Richard Dawkins by the Oklahoma state legislature
Vandalism Florida Museum of Natural History
Death Threats Eric Pianka UT Austin and the Texas
Academy of Science engineered by a hostile, bizarre IDist named Bill Dembski
Death Threats Michael Korn, fugitive from justice, towards the UC Boulder biology department and miscellaneous evolutionary biologists.
Death Threats Judge Jones Dover trial. He was under federal marshall protection for a while
Up to 16 with little effort. Probably there are more. I turned up a new one with a simple internet search. Haven’t even gotten to the secondary science school teachers.
And the Liars of Expelled, the movie have the nerve to scream persecution. On body counts the creos are way ahead.
These days, fundie xian is synonymous with liar, ignorant, stupid, and sometimes killer.
In New Zealand, they are having a problem with “The Maori Way Of Knowing” being held equal to Western science and being jammed into NZ science classes. Legends of times long ago when whales walked among their brothers the trees New Zealand is having troubles with some trees suffering from fungal blights Maori cure for this is to play recorded whale songs to cure the trees. In Australia, Aborigine tribes are now beginning to demand Aborigine lore be held as equal to Western science. Muslim fanatics tell us all modern science can be found in the Quran. Meanwhile, American freshmen college students are often not capable of sixth grade basic math. Devo was right, we are devolving.
cheerfulcharlie, rather slanted and distorted is your comment.
I can provide actual facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listener_letter_on_science (the origin);
https://www.deakin.edu.au/research/research-news-and-publications/articles/why-are-first-nations-perspectives-sidelined-in-our-science-curriculum (aussie side);
I also get dogwhistles:
“Muslim fanatics tell us all modern science can be found in the Quran. Meanwhile, American freshmen college students are often not capable of sixth grade basic math”.
—
BTW: “We are not men, we are Devo” was never a diagnosis of evolution/devolution, rather it was a piece of art‑punk satire. Flowerpots for hats kinda gave that away.
—
Just remember, those societies were around long before the ‘Enlightenment’.
@14,
John, it sounds as though you have only a superficial knowledge of what Devo was all about. Having read/watched numerous interviews with Gerry Casale and Bob Mothersbaugh, I’d say you’re missing the truth behind the “satire”. But this is just a side note to the main post, and not worth much…
As far as the original cartoon is concerned, yes, “little ones to him belong”. Especially the little ones with cancer. They all belong to him because apparently he has the power to cure them but refuses to do so in spite of the entreaties of their parents and families, or general ethical questions regarding the treatment of suffering innocents.
@3. Recursive Rabbit :
What. The. Fuck!?
That’s sick – and literally criminal. (Assault, hate crime.)
jimf: “John, it sounds as though you have only a superficial knowledge of what Devo was all about.”
I don’t doubt it does to you.
Yes. All I did is listen to their stuff, thanks to a flatmate, during the period they were active.
But I am not a scholar of music, so yeah. I for sure lack academic knowledge.
Please, do tell me where I fall short, since you position yourself as more knowledgeable than I.
—
I take it your second paragraph is not addressed to me.
(Is it?)
—
No. Words mean things.
I do get what you intend to express, but it’s rather flawed.
For you:
because apparently he has the power
↓
because allegedly he has the power
(See? that does not concede ‘he’ APPARENTLY has that power thereby, unlike your formulation)
StevoR @16, cf. my #11.
I quote therefrom:
well it is too bad that there are such people pushing against truth and reality over belief they also are picky about history and economics as well as science. As for science not everybody is forging their way back toward ignorance some other nations are going right ahead without us.
With the LGBTQI rainbow behind that sweet little Christian zealot-in-training, Joe Flanders, the cartoonist might end up on the stake alongside the teacher.
And for cheerfulcharlie “In Australia, Aborigine tribes are now beginning to demand Aborigine lore be held as equal to Western science.” It was western science that was used to justify attempts to exterminate aborigines. Aboriginal lore relates to their cultural practices. They had a sophisticated astronomy, constructing observatories to observe the positions of the solstices and equinox several thousand years before Stonehenge. Their practice of cultural burning is now use to regulate build up of fuel to prevent or minimise the effects of the bushfires which the application of Western technology in the form of fossil fuels have made much more frequent and extreme.
@cheerfulcharlie
It’s Aboriginal, and there are far more success stories about the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into land management practices than failures. Your selective citations are the equivalent of me citing LLM BS to prove failure of “Western science”
[OT]
Not surprising that British settlers in Australia encountered areas shaped by Aboriginal bushtucker practices, but didn’t recognise they were a natural landscape shaped by tens of thousands of years of magagement.
I’ve in the past noted how, best as I can tell, songlines function as mnemonic systems not limited to geography, water, seasonal movement, law, kinship, ceremony, and (rather importantly) spatial–narrative systems that embed fine‑grained ecological knowledge, including the habitual ranges, seasonal shifts, breeding cycles, and predictable movement corridors of animals.
They’ve been around for literally tens of thousands of years, literally shaped the landscape in the inhabitable regions. And that was not by accident.
Put it this way; not writing, more like people remembering dance steps or lyrics to songs. Just makes it easy. Living knowledge.
—
Sheesh, I am Spanish-born and Aussie-naturalised and I still get that.
Gotta give it due respect, not derision.
[those funny dance patterns? Lines on the sand?
It’s what the tracks of various animals look like, how to track’em]
Crossposted from the infinite thread.
I just want to show a relaxed and very cool bishop they have in Britain.
The ambient culture does not favor the religious kooks that unfortuna-tely thrive on your side of the ocean.
“Have I Got News for You S70E9 | Hannah Fry”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YBozFhDKvq8
birgerjohansson @ 24. Alas that video in not viewable in the UK: note says:-
“Video unavailable: This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds”
Wow, these mormons are sure getting tech savvy!