hmmm.

[electricland]

fairoriana, funny coincidence after your post today:

No, I think the environmental costs of a religious worldview have to do with the habits of mind it encourages. Consider the tragicomic fiasco currently taking place in Kansas.

The hearings in Topeka, scheduled to last several days, are focusing on two proposals. The first recommends that students continue to be taught the theory of evolution because it is key to understanding biology. The other proposes that Kansas alter the definition of science, not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations.

"Not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations." This, my friends, is not "changing the definition" of science, it is abandoning science.

This is an extreme case, but once you start thinking of processes in the natural world as issuing from supernatural causes, you have left science behind. (The Kansas board, unlike many of their critics, if forthright about this.) And once you leave science behind -- along with the mental habits of rigor, constant testing and retesting, comparison against empirical evidence, openness to new explanations -- you don't get it back.

-- http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/5/16/163641/438

Comments

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

On the bright side though, if you aren't going to limit "science" to the natural world, it makes it a lot easier to get that pet werewolf you've always wanted.

And you can start selling wizard's licenses. Open up a unicorn pound. It'll be fabulous!

Seriously, I blame Santa Claus for all of this. We teach kids to believe in one little impossible thing before we spring the bigger impossible thing of religion on them. By the time they're done with that impossible belief, they're ready to believe anything.

Anyway, I love the new license plates they've got now, "Kansas, National Embarrassment" Sure it's a blatant ripoff from Florida but it's still mighty catchy.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I was only partly joking about whispering the secrets of evolution to my children in a dimly lit attick room in the darkest night....

[electricland.livejournal.com]

*whimper*