Newsweek has an article about the future of abstinence only education now that the liberals are in charge and injected a dose of reality into the situation.Aka, they decided not to fund a flawed program of lies and disinformation.Well, not entirely true, they can still promote abstinence if they also include a more comprehensive program.After all, can you really call it a comprehensive program if you don’t mention that not doing it is one of the safest methods around, even if that’s not all that realistic? It’s a three page article and it’s somewhat interesting.What I’d like to highlight comes from the bottom of the second page.
But many of the abstinence advocates NEWSWEEK talked to thought such compromises were untenable, that they could not teach students to remain abstinent until marriage while demonstrating how to use condoms. “If the funding is for a different worldview, one that says you should give condoms to kids, that’s not my belief system,” says Unruh. “I think it’s very harmful.” She and others say it’s a question of morals and values, which is not an area for compromise.
In other words, we can’t compromise because our religious beliefs are what we’re really advocating in our program.If there’s any wonder why abstinence education doesn’t work, and the article does point to some reason, consider the approach being taken here.Kids?Are we really going to assume that teenagers are the same as children? Does she honestly think that treating teenagers the same way she’d treat a ten year old is going to be affective in any way? “No, bad,” might work for dogs, but teenagers generally only piss on the carpet when they’re drunk.
Plus, she’s teaching a morality system, not sexual education.Thus, if the teenagers she’s preaching, and/or proselytizing to don’t share the same morality system she’s simply wasting everybody’s time.Worse yet, she’s denying the students a proper education, which is much, much worse than promoting her particular brand of Jesus.
Furthermore, morals and values should never be above compromise or question.Slavery used to be moral.The treatment of women as property used to be moral.One should always question what they believe, especially something as subjective and created as morality: even more so, when the evidence points to your beliefs being wrong and dangerous.
But some lawmakers, apparently allied with radical clerics pushed for its inclusion at the last minute, former and current lawmakers said. Afraid of being branded bad Muslims, even lawmakers with reservations endorsed the law, lawmakers said. Six of the seven parties represented in Parliament voted for the law. The holdout — the Democratic Party, which is also President Yudhoyono’s — merely abstained.
“We never openly said that we were opposed to stoning,” said Yusrizal Ibrahim, 49, a Democratic Party member who served as a lawmaker until last month. “Stoning is part of Shariah, and by voting ‘No,’ it would have made it look as though we were against Islam.”
Isn’t it nice to see politicians caving to radicals because they don’t want to be seen by moderates as being anti-religious?It’s like the fact that faith is being legitimized and given a privileged status that the radical elements of the religion aren’t opposed.It’s not like stoning is a human rights issue and that the politicians recognize that…
He added he believed that “stoning was against human rights.” But he said he would have never “dared to say so explicitly in Parliament” for fear of being labeled an “infidel.”
Oh.Well shit then.Religious beliefs, now more important than a politician’s dedication to human rights.
I bought another book of essays by Stephen J. Gould the other day.I’m rather a fan of his work and if you ever get the chance to read some of his essays you most certainly should.Some of them are better than others, but they’re all better than any creationist screed (even if it’s being mocked).Plus, this particular book has a dinosaur on the cover.This adds yet an extra layer of awesome, especially since I need more bookshelf space and as such, forced to display books around like they were objects of art—which they are.
People often make a big deal about the declining intellectual output of America.The basics of math, science, and literacy come up a lot. Novel new ways, which are quite ineffective (here’s looking at you whole word and new new math), to teach them are invented.Yes, America is falling behind.We’re producing less academians and barely funding our education system.There’s a likely correlation between capital and achieving higher education beyond a bachelors degree.When you’re swamped in debt, more potential debt and delayed earnings for a low paying job don’t look too exciting.As much as people would make out professorships to be a glorious position, entry level isn’t exactly all that well paid, assuming you can even get a tenure track position.
The point I’m slowly working towards is that the discussion often doesn’t include the growing animosity towards intellectuals/ivory tower elitists. The distrust in this country has risen to the point that Stephen Colbert does extremely well for himself satirizing the anti-intellectual crowd.The very fact that a comedian coined the phrase by which to define the anti-intellectual movement should be enough to shock us out of our complacency.To return to Stephen J. Gould, I’d like to comment on how his essay “Dousing Diminutive Dennis’s Debate” fits into the decline in American intellectualism.
Let us return back to the year 1999, Bush was still governor of Texas and the media was gearing up for the new millennium.They were of course, wrong.There was no year zero, and thus (unless you add in an ad hoc assumption that the first decade was nine years, etc…) the real new millennium started in 2001.Gould, in his research, discovered that there is also a trend between who goes with years ending in zero and years ending in one.Intellectuals and elites overwhelmingly supported years ending in one over the years, while Joe citizen supported the zero.While this stat isn’t that surprising or useful on its own, in context with historical events we can gain insights into trends over the years. Back in December of 1900, despite Kaiser Wilhelm and the King of Sweden’s attempts to the contrary, the Ivy League intellectuals held sway and the new millennium was started in 1901. The same for 1701, though Samuel Sewall did get the whole there be witches thing wrong, but we did get a play out of that.
The most interesting part of the whole debate for me is that nobody has a problem with properly adjusting what century we’re in by one to correct for their being no century zero.The same logic applies, yet we don’t have debates about whether we’re in the 20th or 21st century. That alone should be enough to QED, Bitches the argument.
Missouri State University has a pretty good track record of managing to bring kooks with no relevant degrees to campus, be it global warming denialist and liar John Coleman (who despite what he claims does not have a meteorological degree) or this week’s Rosemary Ellen Guiley whose BA is in communications and has a PhD from a fake university.She’s the kind of dumbshit you find on Ghost Hunters.Forget spending any kind of time conducting scientific experiments to verify that the results can’t be the product of a natural occurrence. Truthfully, it’s a lot like professional wrestling.Except less people realize it’s bullshit.
Anyways, we all know that she’s full of shit and belongs nowhere near a college campus.It’s the kind of bogus shit that should be considered entertainment, except that she’s being totally serious about the subject.My real concern is with the copy that was used to promote the event.
This 2-hour presentation will make the biggest skeptics into believers. Rosemary is the leading authority in the field of Vampires, Werewolves, Angels and Ghosts. After spending the majority of her life investigating and researching the paranormal, she shares a unique and fresh perspective of first-hand experiences of strange phenomena. Come all you Twilight and Trueblood fans to the PSU Theater from 7-9P.
The first problem is that I know the biggest skeptics on campus, not only did we not even bother to go to this tripe, but our two day event is bringing in even bigger skeptics like Rebecca Watson, P.Z. Meyers, Richard Carrier, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.The difference, unlike this copy, we don’t make the pretense that anything we say will turn the biggest believers into skeptics.Certainly Skepticon will present the case for skepticism.Unlike Ms. Rosemary, the speakers at Skepticon have critically examined their beliefs and those beliefs conform with the evidence.
The real audacity of the above copy is the first sentence.It speaks to the privileged position of belief in America. Skepticism is declared a negative, something easily swayed with the crappiest, or indeed complete absence of evidence.Skepticism is not considered a serious position, as is belief.Can one honestly admit that the alternative, ‘biggest believers into skeptics,’ would ever get published in a college bulletin? Belief is treated as the positive and a condition that ideology says one should strive to have.Meanwhile, skepticism is treated as a lack of belief rather than a valid viewpoint.
Besides, the biggest skeptics realize that Twilight is a piece of shit.
On this the day of our planet’s birth, I think we should all reflect on just what we’ve done to the poor girl. We’ve poked her, prodded her, raped her resources, and all so that we could pollute her even more. Then you’ve got those scientists going around asserting she’s even older than she claims? Is that the kind of relationship you want to have with her? Try that with any other women. I dare you to assert your wife, girlfriend, or any other female acquaintance is a few thousand times older than she is. See if she doesn’t smack you.
So get the world a present this year. Start listening to those evil scientists going on about how we need to do better by Earth. Sure, they may be massive jerks, but at least they’re not telling our beloved girl to slap on a bunch of makeup to look pretty. Oh, and punch Ray Comfort. Even ol’e Gaia doesn’t like him and he just won’t leave her alone.
*A note about the dates. Back in times, especially preceding the 17th century, days would often be started at nightfall. While there is no extensive record on just how this system was practice or how much, we do know that it was done at times. Ussher fixed the creation of the Earth at the nightfall preceding the 23rd of October, which would make the 22nd the actual date of creation per our system. And really, it doesn’t matter because the whole date is bullshit anyways.
Really North Point Church? You know I have even bigger idiots following me to keep tabs on my godless commie ways, right?07:02:45 AM September 01, 2010from Echofon
On this the day of our planet’s birth, I think we should all reflect on just what we’ve done to the poor girl. We’ve poked her, prodded her, raped her resources, and all so that we could pollute her even more. Then you’ve got those scientists going around asserting she’s even older than she claims? Is that the kind of relationship you want to have with her? Try that with any other women. I dare you to assert your wife, girlfriend, or any other female acquaintance is a few thousand times older than she is. See if she doesn’t smack you.