#42390: Cameron — 10/01  at  01:05 PM
"The reason I walked out of class today is because I have decided arbitrarily that all truth can be contained in 1000 pages. I refuse to entertain any other notions. And after Friday’s performance by “Dr.” Patton I had prepared myself to do just that very thing if my beliefs were once again attacked by logic and reason and scientific claims that can be proven. Sure enough they were, so I left."

I think my version points the part that's actually crazy in this guy's "faith." Per your request, I'll try to speak louder.

#42391: — 10/01  at  01:06 PM
Holy crap, thats actually scary when you think about it..

#42392: Ali — 10/01  at  01:21 PM
Ah Baylor - where they don't let you dance or tell a joke.

#42393: — 10/01  at  01:23 PM
I have quite a few friends attending Baylor, so I'll be sending them this link.

#42394: Jeremy — 10/01  at  01:48 PM
No... I'm sorry... I could have gotten away with that in high school, but if you do that in college, you are a moron and you deserve any discipline that you may or may not receive.

#42396: — 10/01  at  02:51 PM
In general, I found the satire and the tone of the post amusing. This statement, however, was less so: "At first I was told two students–presumably freshman girls who’ve never had an original thought in their quaint, conservative lives [told the police about the email]"

Why should Cody assume that it was freshmen girls who were insular and without irony when it was a boy (Stone) whose lack of irony and original thought was what started the whole thing? Perhaps he should have the thought, original enough at Baylor, that girls are capable of originality and irony as well as boys.

#42401: Cody — 10/01  at  03:49 PM
Because Baylor is populated primarily by conservative females (something like 70% females and 30% males), and the first few negative emails I received were by--you guessed it!--conservative females.

But you are correct, and I shouldn't have automatically assumed it was two females when there were plenty of idiotic conservative males on campus who didn't get the joke either.

Kudos for being the first person to point that out to me, though--now I feel like a jackass, and rightly so.

#42402: Mrs Tilton — 10/01  at  03:52 PM
Dianne:

Quite; but you're being far too optimistic, aren't you? It would be equally nonsexist, and (alas) far likelier accurate, to say that, at Baylor, freshman girls are every bit as capable as senior boys of being quaint conservative unoriginal insular irony-impaired mindless zombies (or, to use Cody's far better phrase, 'Fingers-In-The-Ears-La-La-La-La-I-Can’t-Hear-You Christians').

Fair play to the lad; why is he wasting his time at Baylor to begin with?

#42403: Cody — 10/01  at  03:58 PM
Mrs. Tilton-


My grandfather went to Baylor; my grandmother went to Baylor; my other grandfather was married to my other grandmother while they both went to Baylor; my mother met my father while they both went to Baylor; my great aunt and great uncle both had teaching positions at Baylor; my aunt married my uncle right after they met in Baylor; my brother went to Baylor; my sister went to Baylor; my cousin went to Baylor; my other sister went to Baylor; I wanted to go to UT.

#42405: — 10/01  at  05:11 PM
Lets see. Jeremy, apparently you think making an obvious (if perhaps over the top) joke is OK in high school but not in college... apparently as you grow older and wiser you are allowed less freedom of speech and are less permitted to be opinionated and vociferous about the behavior of others. I see.

Well... going with that and assuming you are beyond college age, I have just notified the FBI that you called Cody a moron.

#42407: — 10/01  at  06:10 PM
Second thought: the student who took offense is a weenie

My thought: the student who took offense is a pharisee - walking out of class in front of everyone, making a public statement, objecting to what is, if you think of it, an innocuous statement. He got what he deserved.

Jeremy - Cody wasn t disciplined, he was subjected to an attempt at intimidation without due process - i.e. bullying.

#42410: donna — 10/01  at  07:09 PM
Jeremy - Cody wasn t disciplined, he was subjected to an attempt at intimidation without due process - i.e. bullying.

Absolutely. And, it's worse than that. I've talked to a teacher in the California State system who has herself been sued by these zealots, along with two other teachers she knows just for certain films she's shown in her classroom in her social science classes. Even if there is no blame found, the lawsuits take time and money and discourage the teachers from teaching their classes.

The harrassment and intimidation of ALL college teachers has to end. The attacks on science in high school have to end. The promotion of ignorance in this country has to end. We can't afford it - socially, politically, economically, or in any other way. It just has to stop.

#42411: — 10/01  at  07:21 PM
cody: Kudos to you for taking my rather cranky comment constructively. I'm afraid my initial assumption was that you'd blow me off with a "who, me, sexist?" comment and I'm very pleased to be wrong.

#42415: Joel — 10/01  at  11:46 PM
When I read stories such as this one, I become very aware how dangerous the Fundamentalist fallacy has become. It's a pet peeve of mine because I saw this splitting off into its first zygotes about thirty years ago. And then, as now, it was led by white boys who were disappointed by the revelation that Science could not prove their racial superiority. So they reinterpreted the Bible to suit them and mocked what they could not disprove.

#42418: Michael Balter — 10/02  at  02:42 AM
For a contrarian view from a science writer, see my commentary in Oct 2 Los Angeles Times

http://www.michaelbalter.com/HominidHighlights/10_02_2005%7CIntelligent_design_and_evolution,_let's_have_a_debate.php

#42424: — 10/02  at  04:56 AM
Michael Balter wrote:

Could it be that the theory of evolution's judicially sanctioned monopoly in the classroom has backfired?

For one thing, the monopoly strengthens claims by intelligent-design proponents that scientists don't want to be challenged. More important, it shields Darwinian theory from challenges that, when properly refuted, might win over adherents to evolutionary views.

Surely, this is an old canard.

As I understand it, there is nothing to prevent students from raising questions in class about the theory of evolution or the evidence which supports it.

What is being objected to is any official requirement that Intelligent Design should be taught as a credible scientific alternative when it is not.

Teachers have a professional and ethical duty not to knowingly mislead their students or to breach the constitutional wall separating church and state.

Finally, neither public debates nor public trials settle questions in science, research in the laboratory and the field does that. Whatever the verdict in the Dover case, it will not change the way the Universe works one whit.

#42425: Joel — 10/02  at  05:36 AM
Well said, Ian. It's more realistic to teach the punctuated evolution controversy.

#42428: — 10/02  at  07:35 AM
Um, and this is after Dembski left Baylor?

#42429: John Emerson — 10/02  at  07:37 AM
Now we know why Tom Delay recommends that good folk not send their kids to Baylor. It's too secular for him. Baylor!!! (Also Texas A&M).

As a student, Tom Delay was expelled from Baylor for drinking, so he probably holds a grudge.

The conservative animosity to education as such knows no bounds. They really only want Bible and tech education. Even if evolution were not an important issue per se, it would be important because it's really just the entering wedge. For example, I'm sure that they're pretty fierce about Bible archaeology, Middle Eastern History, and Philosophy of Mind.

Or here's Christian Anthropology 101: "Anthropology studies the ways of life of accursed, devil-worshipping sinners who have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Anthropology can be useful for missionaries, and also provides us with case histories showing the depravity of those who still live in the darkness of sin."

#42430: — 10/02  at  07:53 AM
Michael Balter raises a good question: Why not a debate?

And the answer is, we DO have a debate. There are rules, of course, this being science and all -- but the rules are loose. The basic rule is this: Anything goes, but only so long as it's backed by evidence.

This debate rages across the pages of three or four dozen journals, through the halls of the National Academy of Sciences, over in the grant-granting department of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, at HHS, EPA, and in the laboratories of Genentech and Pfizer, and even Lucent. The stakes are real. American agriculture depends on it -- the cotton crop, for example, is plagued by boll weevils even after all of these years. Cotton farmers will take anything suggested as a solution and try it. In that particular debate, we are now near the end of a 15-year or so project to carefully apply only enough pesticide to weevil-infested fields to kill them, and not enough to force them to mutate. It's an evolution-based solution, and it's working. Intelligent design advocates, meanwhile, have not entered into the debate.

Similarly, there is debate in the cancer wards of U.S. hospitals, about how to treat the mutations known as cancers and how to prevent them. Intelligent design advocates are also absent from that debate.

And in dramatic ways, evolution science is being used both to track downt he culprits who murdered five Americans with anthrax-in-the-mail, and to devise ways to prevent such deaths in the future. Intelligent design, once again, has refused to offer any rebuttal, or even an echo of agreement.

We have a debate, Michael. Scientists would love it if intelligent design advocates would join, especially if they have anything useful to add.

We have a debate, and intelligent design refuses to participate.

Now they ask for a blue-ribbon for winning the debate tournament they didn't even participate in. Do you think we should award it to them?

#42440: — 10/02  at  09:59 AM
Perhaps the most revealing line in the superchristian student's original complaint:

This may be crazy or irrational, but it is the only recourse I have.

When one's religion puts one in such a situation, isn't it time to reconsider the religion?

Of course, he could have revealed more, such as precisely what pushed his theological buttons, but that would have entailed an exercise in critical thinking, something rarely if ever endorsed by religious texts or authorities. Maybe that requirement in itself was what ran him out of this class?

Cody worries during his police interrogation:

.: The whole time I thought to myself, “Are these guys eventually going to arrive at some kind of a point in the near future? I can’t believe I’m missing Economics for this.”

Don't worry, Cody: Economics never arrives at any kind of point either.

#42451: Edward Braun — 10/02  at  11:40 AM
The amazing part of the original portion of the lecture is that it doesn't strike me as particularly negative regarding the Bible. It is not like the Prof. was saying the Bible is useless or wrong, just that it doesn't contain science.

Holding up the Bible: “This is not a science book.”
Holding up the Origin of Species: “This is.”
Holding up the Bible again: “This is a book about relationships with God.”
Holding up the Origin of Species again: “This isn’t.”

It is not like the prof even criticized the Bible. He just said it wasn't a science text!

C'mon folks, as an undergrad I took a couse on the Bible as literature. If I had criticized the Bible based upon its conflict with science and held up a text on evolutionary biology, the prof and the rest of the students would have laughed me out of the course. That course was based upon understanding parts of the Bible as works of literature and understanding their social context, not on evaluating the truth claims of the Bible.

There are several different things that one might believe about the Bible:

1. It is a work of literature and mythology no different from (for instance) the Iliad, with the obvious and important difference that a large number of people believe it to be true (the view I would adhere to).
2. It is true (either largely or completely) in a metaphorical manner.
3. It is true in a literal manner, but parts of that literal truth were distorted by the limited understanding of the peoples to whom the Bible was revealed.
4. It is absolutely and completely true in a literal manner.

It would seem to me that only a person whose beliefs fell into the fourth category - which is pretty unbelievable - would have a problem with the assertion that the Bible is not a science book. Most mainstream Christians fall into the second category, and they should have no problem with that idea. Even folks who take the somewhat stronger thirds position shouldn't have a problem with it.

It is really hard to be respectful of those who fall into the fourth category, esp. when they take courses where they know the vast majority of scientists assert that the vast majority of the data contradicts that interpretation of the Bible.

Sometimes I wonder what century we are living in!

#42458: — 10/02  at  12:52 PM
OK, let's change books:

Holding up the Bible: “This is not a car repair manual.”
Holding up a Chilton's: “This is.”
Holding up the Bible again: “This is a book about relationships with God.”
Holding up the Chilton's again: “This isn’t.”

Will the kid still be offended? Probably.

#42459: Kagehi — 10/02  at  12:56 PM
We are living in the year 2005 AD, they are probably living in 2005 BC...

#42469: decrepitoldfool — 10/02  at  04:54 PM
"We've got Columbines and 9/11's all over the place..."

Hogwash. Even on the day of the Columbine attacks, that was only one out of eighty-eight thousand public schools. Such attacks, while spectacular, are rare. The notion that they're "all over the place" makes it harder to spot them - searching for a needle in a needle-stack instead of a haystack.