Kitty having a party!

You're Sixteen!	You're Beautiful!

And You're Mine!

Happy sweet 16, Maxandra!

ID simply shouldn't be taught...

In Evolution, ID and the LawI left the following comment on the continued "compromise" that ID could be taught in humanities or philosophy since it certainly ain't science...:

Dave S.:Of course students don't "have to" agree with what the teacher says. They don't have to believe in atoms if they don't want to. That doesn't mean thier beliefs should be taken into account when grading their papers.

On the other hand, if a pro-ID teacher teaches a class covering ID and the student's paper or test essay rips ID to shreds, should the teachers' beliefs THEN be taken into account? Certainly that Virginia community college biology teacher gives me the impression she would have graded an anti-ID paper down.

Where is education when a student potentially has to regurgitate a total lie in order to pass a class?

There is a point where somebody has to decide what is and isn't true for a passing grade. Otherwise, education and grades merely become a war between the teacher's and the students' belief systems, each claiming their right to be taken into account.

With evolution, the definition of required factual learning is generally in the hands of the science committees (whether they are ignored by their school boards as in Kansas or not).

Where is the definition of fact when it comes to ID? Dembski's version (and the lies that go with it)? Behe's version (and the lies that go with it)? Johnson's version( and its attendent lies)? Flying Spaghetti Monster (and its associated truths)? Or are the facts of ID those that have pointed out so many times on pro-science websites throughout the world and to report any ID "claim" as being factual gets the kid a failing grade?

A pro-ID teacher could ignore the logical fallacies in a student's pro-ID paper (thus, the student learns nothing to fix their incorrect arguments), merely because the same logical fallacies exist inside his/her own head.

This is just not Aristotle vs. Democratus and "do we include the supernatural in our quest for answers". Hand in hand with ID are the lies about evolution that have been thoroughly debunked time and time again (and 3 more debunkings were published this past week alone). When those lies show up on a test and the teacher and student have differing views because of religion, whose is the mark that matters?

As long as ID requires acknowledging the claims of flaws of evolution that it currently does, it should be best left out of schools entirely. And if you take out those claims of evolution's downfalls, ID is an idea that only takes about 10 minutes to talk about.

oh good grief...do they even bother to really watch their own shows?

Appearantly, South Park did this episode this week where the kids actually tell FOX that they shouldn't be afraid of picturing Muhammed (specifically, Muhammed was going to give a football helmet to Family Guy), because that would be giving in to the terrorists.

And so it worked, and the episode was going to show the fictional Family Guy scene as described.  Only it didn't - it was replaced with a black screen describing what was going to be seen.  And at first it was thought that it was just a multi-layered satire (which would have been brilliant). 

However, it turned out that Comedy Central itself actually cut the scene out, saying today: "In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision." (Parker and Stone were notified a few weeks ago that it was going to be cut.)

So the CC execs completely missed the point of the episode, or completely failed to realize that they themselves were the target of that episode.  To make matters worse, they displayed great hypocricy in their great concern for sensitivity to the Muslim community, as they completely ignored the Christian community because that very same episode has "Jesus" being rather disgusting.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Comedy Central Censors South Park:

But the rest of us should condemn them for their cowardice and their hypocrisy. They've allowed South Park to make brutal fun of anything and everything except this, and that sends one and only one message: threats of violence work. Threaten us with violence and we'll cave in and do whatever you want.

Oh, and to confuse matters more, Comedy Central has shown Muhammad on screen before, on South Park, in the episode titled, "Super Best Friends" (various prophets and sages become Justice League-style superheroes). And apperantly THAT went without any public reponse or outcry at all...