Did they stone the girl?
What sci-fi movie was the most insulting to science?
- Thread starter infinix
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I guess someone must have got stoned -- it was the early 70's.
It didn't hurt the physics class, but for the fact that it was the "elephant in the room". It implicitly told us that he personally didn't believe everything he was teaching.
Which raised the issue, why did he advertise his religious beliefs at all? If he didn't want to undermine the curriculum, he could have kept his personal life completely separated from his professional life, and we never would have known his religious beliefs. It's not the sort of thing that belongs in public school IMAO. Therefore, it smacked of proselytizing.
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Which raised the issue, why did he advertise his religious beliefs at all? If he didn't want to undermine the curriculum, he could have kept his personal life completely separated from his professional life, and we never would have known his religious beliefs. It's not the sort of thing that belongs in public school IMAO. Therefore, it smacked of proselytizing.
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Did he bring it up as a discussion or in any way try to make it a learning experience or was it entirely proselytizing? I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as it doesn't hamper the curriculum and I don't think it should be used as a position to preach from, but I do think there's value in the discussion of it.
Sorry, but I don't understand how physics would be contrary to religious believes. What sort of thing do you suppose he taught that he didn't believe in?
My physics teacher didn't make it known to us that he was a devout Christian until the day before we graduated. As I said, that didn't change our view of his teaching and he made it clear that he doesn't believe any conflicts exist between physics and religion.
I belive it was noted philosopher Robert Zimmerman who said, "Everybody must get stoned."
Not in science class in a public school.
The age of the Earth and the age of the universe, both demonstrably greater than ten thousand years.
Let's get back on topic in this thread. If someone wants to make a thread in the appropriate forum, and if we can discuss it with civility, I'd be happy to contribute. k?
Creationism is not a religious belief. It's an attempt to co-opt both science and religion into a misguided hybrid of both. It's not content to rely on faith and so it seeks to "prove" the Biblical story as a physical fact, thus missing all the spiritual allegory of the Bible, and it does so by distorting and fabricating evidence to fit its predetermined conclusion, in complete opposition to how science works.
My biology teacher did say to the class that he considered evolution to be merely an unproven idea. That is not merely a personal belief, it is a categorical falsehood and a misrepresentation of a fundamental truth of biology. So yes, I'd say he was letting his belief undermine his teaching. It would be like a math teacher telling the class that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter might or might not be pi.
But I don't want people to get the wrong idea about my high school, which overall is just about the best public high school in America. My 11th-grade physics teacher was actually a professor of physics, and he did a fantastic job. He administered this great test that asked really cleverly constructed and eclectic questions that challenged us to figure out how to solve them, do whatever research was necessary to obtain the information we needed (and this was pre-Internet), etc. It wasn't just teaching facts and figures, it was teaching how to think, how to research and solve problems and employ deductive reasoning. And it was teaching how knowledge from all sorts of different fields can be interrelated. If more science teachers administered tests like that, instead of the preprogrammed, standardized, fill-in-the-blank crap that usually passes for testing in schools, then America would be much stronger in the sciences, and maybe our movies would be too.
See, I actually thought what you're describing above was more creation science or intelligent design than true creationism. Not to get too semantic, but I guess I always thought creationists were the people of faith while creation scientists were the loons who insist that the banana was specifically designed in the shape of our hand by God. I think creation science and the creation scientists are a horrible joke that Kirk Cameron is playing on us all (I know he's not really the founder of it, but he does put out some fantastic lol-worthy videos). I wish I weren't typing all this from my phone so I could reply in a longer form, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at here.
Ah... that kind of creationist.
Let's get back on topic in this thread. If someone wants to make a thread in the appropriate forum, and if we can discuss it with civility, I'd be happy to contribute. k?[/QUOTE]
I have no problem with it. Let the thread go where the thread goes.
Interesting, Christopher. My Grandfather on my Dad's side of the family was an evolutionary biologist and taught at Notre Dame in what was formally called the Zoology department. He also co-wrote a book with a creationist in his later years and had the belief that the two could co-exist and learn from each other. Then one of my Dad's brothers became a paleontologist, often considered to be a contemporary of Robert Bakker.
I love 2012. I don't watch movies like that for a science lecture. I watch it for 'splosions and shit.
Anyone who criticizes Emmerich's movies, Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow or 2012, for their wacky science, simply didn't get the point. Emmerich knows very well that these movies are over the top and scientifically ridiculous. He doesn't even believe one bit in aliens or world ending scenarios, he knows that hacking into alien computer systems with a Mac or the continental shift is nonsense. It's pure entertainment.
Actually Jurassic Park had exceptionally good science for a movie. The paleontology research was really good (except for things like inconsistencies in how much noise a T. rex makes when it walks), though of course some of it has been rendered obsolete by subsequent research, always an occupational hazard in SF. But they actually provided a handy fix for that, since the dinosaurs were said to have been recreated from fragmentary DNA by filling in the gaps with frog DNA, so that could explain discrepancies like the theropods not having the feathers it's now believed they would've had.
Actually, at the time, the bird-theropod connection wasn't quite as well established as it is today. And yes, the science WAS good. It wasn't absolutely rigorous, and it did take poetic license here and there, but by Hollywood standards it was exceptionally solid.
Christopher is right. It wasn't established until fairly recently. There were theories back in the early days of paleontology, but they had never been able to prove it until recently. I was doing a bit of volunteering at the local museum for an exhibit on this very subject last summer, and My Uncle who I mentioned upthread was in China to do a documentary about it to be aired on the National Geographic Channel.
http://natgeotv.com/ca/jurassic-csi/about
This is the airtime for the Canadian channel, but at least it gives a gist of it.
http://natgeotv.com/ca/jurassic-csi/about
This is the airtime for the Canadian channel, but at least it gives a gist of it.
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