Friday, January 07, 2011

Jake at Page One KY opposes objective discussion, critical thinking

Jake at Page One Kentucky has come out in opposition to a bill calling for "critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories" on the grounds that doing this things would "keep Kentucky’s kids dumber than rocks, once again, by denying evolution."

This is the language in a bill introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly by State Rep. Tim Moore (R-Elizabethtown), HB 169.

Apparently, Jake thinks that evolution would somehow suffer from the practice of critical thinking skills, logical analysis and objective discussion. We thought he had a higher view of evolution than that.

Alas, the things you have to give up in modern scientism.

The National Center for Science Ignora ..., er, I mean Education (NCSE), which is also on record as opposing critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion, is once again ringing the alarm bells. But we are not surprised. This is, after all, the organization that employs Josh Rosenau, whose opposition to important mental skills is well documented.

21 comments:

Singring said...

'open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories'

Scientific theories and not validated by their 'advantages and disadvantages'. Personally I find the GW Theory to be very disadvantagious, but I have to accept it because it is backed up by evidence.

That is how scientific theories are validated.

I sincerely hope Kentucky passes the bill. More jobs in Biology for us European graduates as the American ones will be too scientifically illiterate.

Singring said...

P.S.:

Apparently those 'critical thinking skills' are really needed in Kentucky judging by how you were misled by that awful graph over at Climategate.com, Martin.

So yeah...please pass that bill.

Art said...

LOL

For Martin (and, I suspect, the filer of the bill), "critical thinking skills" includes "knowing" that 6000 = 4,500,000,000.

Art said...

From the bill:

clarify that provisions do not promote religious doctrine or discrimination

In other words, a teacher cannot mark as incorrect an answer to any question that takes the form "God did it".

Yeah, that's gonna make for some well-trained chemists and physicists. That "A" you received in a KY high school science class - totally meaningless (and competitive colleges will know as much), since one will be able to get an A by repeating "God did it" and clipping a copy of the family lawyer's card to each exam.

That's the Family Foundation's vision for educational excellence.

E.R. Bourne said...

Martin, I do not mean to bother you but for some reason I cannot comment on any posts below you "Best of 2010" post. Do you know why?

One Brow said...

I commented on this bill already. Has it changed?

Are you ready to say what the disadvantages of having a scientific theory would be,and why that is not either vacuous or an attempt to allow teachers to teach scientific theories are unreliable?

Are you reay to explain why the bill would single out four partiuclar items, one of which is not even a theory but a process, that happen to be on the list of scientific theories traditionally opposed by religious groups?

Is there any reason we should not see this bill as a transparent attempt to inject creationism-lite into the classroom without saying so explicitly?

Martin Cothran said...

I think I've figured out Singring's method of refutation: He ignores the point his opponent is clearly arguing for, then pretends his opponent is arguing for something completely different, proves that his opponent has not established the point his opponent is not arguing for, and then does an end zone dance.

Oh, wait: This is the Straw Man Fallacy.

We see this on clear display here. Not only that, but Singring even repeats a previous instance of this from a prior post, saving me the trouble of doing it.

He's just than kinda guy.

Let's take the prior instance first. He refers to a previous post in which I printed a graph showing the correlation between global temperatures and anthropogenic CO2 emissions. What does Singring do? He criticizes the graph for incorrectly depicting all atmospheric CO2. He apparently missed the title of the post: "Is Global Warming Caused by Humans?"

Then, once he's refuted what I didn't say, he does his endzone dance.

And the point of this post (or, rather to the point I didn't make in this post, which is what he criticizes), I referred to a bill which has to do with what goes on in classrooms and the bill's language about "open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories."

So what does Singring attack? What goes on in the "validation" of scientific theories. The bill says nothing about the "validation" of scientific theories, it's talking about the discussion of theories an a science class.

And then he proceeds with his endzone celebration.

I am rather surprised by the brevity of his post and the fact that he only criticized two things I didn't say. There are so many other things I didn't say that he didn't address.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

Where does the bill say anything about young earth creationism? I see you are suffering from Singringism--the tendency to criticize things that no one is asserting.

Martin Cothran said...

E. R. Bourne,

I'm sorry about that. It happens with blogger--not just here but elsewhere. If you can't get it posted, just send it to my e-mail (martincothran@gmail.com) and I will manually post it.

That goes for everyone else as well.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

From the bill:

clarify that provisions do not promote religious doctrine or discrimination

In other words, a teacher cannot mark as incorrect an answer to any question that takes the form "God did it".


It's a good thing you're not a bill drafter because you apparently are not clear on language that is mandatory and permissive. Nothing in the language about religious doctrine or discrimination is either.

And if it were, it would militate in the opposite direction of what you suggest.

Martin Cothran said...

One Brow:

You asked about the intentions of the bill. I can't speak for the bill sponsor, but my own intentions for it were to draw out those who are militant and dogmatic Darwinists to publicly oppose critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion.

The bill will never even get out of the committee it's in because House leadership opposes it. The only purpose from my perspective is to show the kinds of things dogmatists have to ask their adherents to give up.

I put the lure out there, and now the fish are biting hard.

So far, thanks to Art and Singring, who are now officially opposed to these things, my strategy is working perfectly.

Art said...

So, Martin, you don't think that this bill would allow a public school teacher to use the same curricular materials that, say, Highlands Latin uses? Or a school committee to force a teacher to use these materials?

Do you think public school teachers should be permitted to use A Beka in biology class? Do you think school committees should force teachers to use these materials? Do you think parents should ask districts to discipline teachers who refuse to follow parents' and students' demands to teach as they do at Highlands?

(I honestly don't expect answers - Martin dances around this issue, much as do his handlers at the Discovery Institute.)

Martin Cothran said...

Why would I want anyone else to do what Highlands Latin School does? That would risk knocking HLS off its perch as having among the highest test scores in Jefferson County. Why would I want to do that?

Art said...

So, Martin, how does HL stack up against public school programs that administer tests to prospective students, that ask parents to make tangible commitments (like signed contracts) to their children's education, and whose families are on relatively equal economic grounds?

Sort of an apples to apples comparison.

(I know, I know - Martin has proven that he has absolutely no use for or comprehension of statistics and math. So the question is probably going to fly past this discussion.)

Singring said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Singring said...

'He apparently missed the title of the post: "Is Global Warming Caused by Humans?" '

I did not miss the title of the post. Everyone who wants to see whether you are right in your characterization of my critique is welcome to check out the relevant posts on the 'best of 2010' thread.

Martin - the more you post on the subject, the more illiterate you seem.

Let's do this one more time, really slow, just for you:

1.) Before humans ever existed, there was C02 in the atmosphere.

2.) If we want to test the hyopthesis that humans are causing recent GW, we need to compare the CHANGE in C02 in the atmosphere against temperature.

3.) If you want to do that, you do one of two things:

a) you plot C02 in the atmosphere against global temperatures. You get this graph:

http://www.london.gov.uk/trccg/images/chart1.jpg

and a highly significant correlation (P < 0.001), indicating that the CHANGE in atmospheric C02 is driving the CHANGE in temperatures - most likely because of human emissions.

b) you plot human C02 emissions against the global temperature anomaly (i.e. how global average temp is different from the mean before emissions started).

What did you post?

You posted a graph of English mean temperatures (from option a) against raw C02 emissions )from option b) that was expressly designed to 'convert GW believers' by lying to them (someone on the climategate.com webiste even points this out!).

Why did you post it? Supposedly to show that humans are not causing GW.

As a teacher, you did not have the critical thinking skills (and still don't, apparently) to reralize this massive gaffe. It is an embarassment, Martin, nothing else. Anyone interested in 'crirtical thinking' would be complaining about being misled be deniers instead of misrepresenting what his critics are saying to get out of this fix.

Pass that bill. European and Asian graduates will celebrate as the US keeps merrily plummeting in the rankings.

Singring said...

'I printed a graph showing the correlation between global temperatures and anthropogenic CO2 emissions.'

So you didn't even check the legend of the graph before posting, Martin? Figures. Go read it. Martin. It was a graph with temperatures from middle England. Sheesh.

'What does Singring do? He criticizes the graph for incorrectly depicting all atmospheric CO2.'

No. I criticized it for NOT depicting all Co2. At this point I cannot tell whether you just can't read, or are so scientifically illiterate that you can't tell what the diference between C02 emissions and C02 atmospheric concentration is.

To heap further embarassment upon embarassment: see option (b) that I gave above for testing the hypothesis that C02 emissions are correlated to temperature rise (i.e. plotting the temperature anomalies against C02 emissions)? Well, I took data on temperature anomalies for the last century from this graph:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/global-jan-dec-error-bar.gif

And plotted it against raw C02 emissions from your graph for teh same time period. The above anomalies are based on the base period 1950-1980, so they are actually weaker than the ones we wopuld see if we took the time before human C02 emissions kicked into gear as a reference!

But even using this weaker data set, guess what I found:

http://tinyurl.com/36bufdh

A highly significant correlation (P < 0.001)!

No matter which way you turn it, Martin, you are just wrong, wrong, wrong and refuse to admit it.

You really do need more of those critical thinking skills.

Singring said...

'So what does Singring attack? What goes on in the "validation" of scientific theories. The bill says nothing about the "validation" of scientific theories, it's talking about the discussion of theories an a science class.'

In a science class, the 'advantages and disadvantages' of a theory are about as relevant as the advantages and disadvantages of getting an electrical lawnmower.

I science class, theories should be critically discussed based on the evidence that support them.

What this bill will do is encourage teachers to have discussions along the lines we see so often from Creationists like Ken Ham (adopted son of Kentucky, no less):

Teacher: 'Hey kids, who can tell me what a 'disadvantage' of evolution is?'

Kid: 'I can, Ma'am! It contradicts the Bible and if the Bible ain't rue, we've got no morals!'

Teacher: 'Very good Jedediah! Anyone else?'

Other kid: 'If evolution is true that means I cam from a stinkin' monkey! I don't like that!'

Teacher: 'Excellent point, Isiah! So what does that tell us?'

Kids: 'Evolution is a bad theory!'

Go ahead. Pass it.

I can't wait to work in the US.

One Brow said...

Martin Cothran said...
One Brow:

You asked about the intentions of the bill. I can't speak for the bill sponsor, but my own intentions for it were to draw out those who are militant and dogmatic Darwinists to publicly oppose critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion.


Scientific theories are the product of critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion. To support such theories,and explain why they came about, is to support critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion.

You still have not commented on what the disadvantage of a scientifictheory could be. YOU have not commented on why four subjects in particular were singled out (one not een being a theory). That behavior lends a feeling of dishonesty to your rhetoric.

One Brow said...

Martin,

Spam comments are not deleted.

When you are logged in, click on "Design" in the upper right.

Select the tab "Comments".

Below that tab, Select "Spam".

You can select all or some of the comments to publish or delete.

Art said...

One Brow:

You still have not commented on what the disadvantage of a scientifictheory could be.

One problem may be with Martin's idea of what a scientific theory is:

When a hypothesis has passed the test of many well-designed experiments and has the support of other scientists, it is referred to as a theory.

That's wrong, but it's what he teaches his students. This may be where the disconnect, here and on some other threads, comes from.