Thursday 31 December 2009

The Pledge

I am a strong supporter of the movement to make the pledge obsolete, or at least secular. There are many different problems with this seemingly patriotic, time-honored tradition;


1. It's often portrayed as a historical tradition of the US to say the pledge, although it's just over 100 years old. Now as old as that sounds, keep in mind that the current phrasing is about 50 years old, and that the most recent addition is the phrase 'under god'. This was added by a congressional council during the red scare, so one may say it wasn't thought through as much as should have been.  The origin of the idea of placing those words in the pledge comes from a Catholic organization in the 1950s. They added it, and soon after it was brought to the president's attention as a way to individualize the nation, as if we are the only country with a majority of Christians...


2. Attempts to edit or eradicate the pledge have been struck down as unpatriotic, or avoided using loopholes, as is the case  Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, a trial in which a father of a girl who was being taught the pledge sued the school for unjustly promoting exclusive monotheism in a public school, and his attempt was rejected because he wan't the custodial parent of the child, completely side-stepping the issue of whether or not the practice is constitutional.


 The idea of having schoolchildren recite the pledge, in my mind, is largely detrimental to the meaning of these word. Many children and teens don't say it at all, or say it half-assed, because it's like a daily chore to them, a short, boring sentence that means very little to them and is certainly in no way important or patriotic. I am a freshman in high school, and when they announce the pledge, maybe four or five actually say it, more just stand up and mumble. Me?, I stand up and think about what the country means to me, and as sappy as that sounds, I really wouldn't want to live anywhere else

Wednesday 30 December 2009

Creation Wins?

I've had a bunch of friends email me this story about an 8th grader disproving evolution in a science fair project in which he built stalactites using paper towels and Epsom salts. This is complete nonsense for a number of ways; as described in this post at http://greensboring.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5414;

1. Evolution has nothing to do with stalactites; it deals with the diversity of life as we see it.

2. Epsom salt isn't made of limestone, and therefore would, obviously without experimentation, form faster. This is immeasurable difference, it's like building an elephant out of paper mache and claiming that you reenacted creation.

3. We know, irrefutably, the age of many stalactites, and they sure aren't 6000 years old. This kid isn't testing science, he's building fake stalactites and these teachers that approved this should be reentered into basic earth science classes and have their teaching licenses revoked.

Comment and tell me what you think!

Sunday 27 December 2009

Theory?

I've always held strong feelings about this, and one of the commenters brought it up again. I'll state this very clearly; A theory is a hypothesis based on data gathered from experiments, not a random guess or ejaculation.

1. This is most often abused by intelligent design advocates when stating that their alternate "theory" should be taught alongside a legitimate scientific theory. Their claim has no clear basis in fact or data to directly support their opinion. Any evidence they show is not to support their thought, but to undermine a tested theory. Much more experimentation must be done and much much more data must be gathered for their thoughts to be anything more than a creation myth.

2. The nebulous nature of the definition of the word is also used against evolution, as many use the fact that is considered a theory to suggest that scientists are unsure about its legitimacy. The heliocentric view of the universe is a theory, and so is the theory of relativity and Newton's gravitational laws. This argument is based on the modern use of the word, discussed in #3, and has little to no validity, as it tries to induce doubt in the uncertain, and does nothing to support their claims.

3. I think that the main problem with this situation is the modern use of this word by media and local science representatives, such as teachers in middle schools. The media damages the specific meaning of the word by describing baseless, random thoughts like creationism and panspermia (The thought that aliens created the Earth) as "radical theories", a phrase that reinforces the thought that any idea thrown out from purely irrational beliefs will be considered a theory by the public. Another thing is science projects.They show people, especially children, that any guess, regardless of presence of data, can be shown as a theory, and that if a test matches that guess, that guess is true. The layout of science projects is totally different from the true scientific method. A real theory starts as a hypothesis based on observation, and goes through rigorous testing, and then a theory can be made from that data, only to be tested even more thoroughly to even keep that status.

I, no matter how strongly I feel about this, still find myself using the word in the wrong way, and that really isn't the point. The point is to advise people to respect the significance of the word and the truth it implies, and to think twice before tossing it around.

Thursday 24 December 2009

Bill O'Reilly 1

I've decided to enclose a quote by a prominent illogical figure, and then present my evidence and let the readers rip me a new one.

To Richard Dawkins, in his point that Intelligent Design should be presented in classrooms,(paraphrased) There are more believers than non-believers, and therefore we should teach alternatives to evolution because it doesn't explain the origin of life completely.

Okay, where do I begin...

1. You've committed a blatant ad populum fallacy, in that you say that just because a majority of people believe it, it is correct. For thousands of years people believed that the sun revolved around the Earth, and guess what, that's wrong! It is so clear to any logical mind that science is not a democracy, and nor should it be.

2. Evolution doesn't claim to explain life, it explains the species diversity we see today, and although many evolutionists believe in the Big Bang Theory, it doesn't contain itself inside of evolution.

3. As said by Dawkins, just because a scientific theory doesn't explain a certain thing, it doesn't mean that you can throw out the textbook and pull out your bibles. In science, we must always assume a natural explanation  and unless decisive proof is put forth by the other side favoring their idea (NOT attacking a rival idea) we can't go jump on the God boat, because when the day comes that science is opened to supernatural activity, I'm moving to Canada and letting this whole holy war business settle itself.

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Hi, I'm just a logical thinker who has no life and enjoys debunking pseudoscientific nonsense. I encourage all thoughts to be posted in the comments, or you can send me one to debunk publicly or privately. All the science and knowledge for this blog is provided by real scientists and not me, most responses will be cited.