Yep, Kruse (mind) Kontrol again: "Creationism would be taught in Indiana public schools, indoctrinating students with biblical literalism, if Senate Bill 373 becomes law."

The giant anus to which Dan refers:

The sponsor of the bill, Dennis Kruse (R-District 14), has a long history of sponsoring anti-evolution legislation.

Ah, the joys of Hoosierness.

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INDIANA ANTI-EVOLUTION BILL WOULD INDOCTRINATE STUDENTS IN CREATIONISM (Center for Inquiry)

Creationism would be taught in Indiana public schools, indoctrinating students with biblical literalism, if Senate Bill 373 becomes law. The Center for Inquiry (CFI)—which advocates for reason, science, and secularism—has promised to take all necessary legal measures to oppose the bill’s passage or implementation.

Senate Bill 373 would permit Indiana public schools to teach “creation science” as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution. Creation science is a purely religious teaching that is unsupported by actual science. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause protects public school students from indoctrination in religious ideas such as creation science.

“The children of Indiana deserve a high-quality science education. It is their right to be properly taught the fundamentals of biology,” said Bertha Vazquez, director of CFI’s Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science. “How else will they be able to compete in an increasingly competitive college entrance process and the national job market? The parents of Indiana should be outraged that their own children will be subjected to the willful ignorance of a few legislators.”

SB 373 also requires public schools to display a poster stating “In God We Trust” in each classroom and library.

This is similar to model legislation promoted by the Christian nationalist Project Blitz, an effort by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to impose Christianity on Americans through operation of law. The Project Blitz manual encourages religious Right lobbyists to advocate for Christian nationalist legislation in their home states beginning with symbolic “In God We Trust” bills. Additional legislative initiatives would allow religious discrimination against women seeking reproductive health care, same-sex couples, transgender people, and other marginalized groups. CFI stands with our secular and interfaith partners who oppose the goals and methods of Project Blitz. We see it as a full-on assault on one of the nation’s founding principles: that religion and government shall be separate.

“Secular education promotes critical thinking and religious freedom,” said Robyn Blumner, CFI’s president and CEO. “Students deserve instruction in real science, without taxpayer money being used to proselytize a narrow version of Christianity that subscribes to unscientific notions of how the universe came to be. If parents want to give their children this type of religious instruction, they are certainly free to do so, but they need to do it on their own time and their own dime, not paid for from the public purse.”

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a nonprofit educational, advocacy, and research organization headquartered in Amherst, New York, with executive offices in Washington, D.C. It is also home to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the Council for Secular Humanism. The Center for Inquiry strives to foster a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. Visit CFI on the web at centerforinquiry.org.

"Tuchman's Law", and other reminders of A Distant Mirror.

I was conversing with the Bookseller and commented that the historian Barbara W. Tuchman's The Guns of August, an examination of events leading to the start of World War I, has not maintained the reputation it once enjoyed. This may be overly glib, based as it is on cursory glances at contemporary essays, but it got me thinking about Tuchman, and the book of hers I always enjoyed the most: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.

Kindly permit me to offer two excerpts. First, a reminder that the Creation Museum isn't far away, and neither is the prevalence of superstition -- in the 14th century or the 21st.

“History was finite and contained within comprehensible limits. It began with the Creation and was scheduled to end in a not indefinitely remote future with the Second Coming, which was the hope of afflicted mankind, followed by the Day of Judgment. Within that span, man was not subject to social or moral progress because his goal was the next world, not betterment in this. In this world he was assigned to ceaseless struggle against himself in which he might attain individual progress and even victory, but collective betterment would only come in the final union with God.”

Then, the so-called Tuchman's law, which was formulated long before social media.

“Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening--on a lucky day--without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).”

Occasionally, maybe we all just need to take one, good, deep breath.

Stop the presses: Pat Robertson enticingly close to reasonable in rejecting Ken Ham's 6,000-year-old planet.

There's something almost epochal about Robertson, who has been batshit goofy in so many bizarre pronouncements for so very long, waxing quite near coherence on the topic of dinosaur bones and rock formations.

Of course, it all remains rooted in the doctrine of necessary mover, linked by theists with unverifiable notions of a supreme being. At least Robertson accepts scientific tenets of evolution. The net effect is to render Ken Ham and his drone followers more laughable than before ... and how is that possible?

Pat Robertson implores creationist Ken Ham to shut up: ‘Let’s not make a joke of ourselves’, by Scott Kaufman (The Raw Story)

Pat Robertson responded to the recent debate between Young Earth creationist Ken Ham and Bill Nye, a.k.a. “The Science Guy,” by reiterating his disagreement with Ham’s form of creationism.

“Let’s face it,” Robertson said, “there was a Bishop [Ussher] who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years.”

“There ain’t no way that’s possible,” he continued. “To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”

Creationism, its museum, and Idiot America.

You may have heard the news.

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” will debate founder of Creation Museum in Kentucky, by Irving DeJohn (New York Daily News)

Nye will argue merits of evolution with Ken Ham, museum’s founder. Ham argued once in a YouTube video that Nye ‘really doesn’t understand science.’

Coincidentally, many thanks to my pen pal DE, who has chimed in at precisely the right moment with a link to a snippet from the righteous and inimitable Charles P. Pierce's book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

I've discovered a book which purports to define the American mind (there's only one?) or mindset, whatever.

In this excerpt, a visit to the Creation Museum is described.

These were impolite questions. Nobody asked them here by the cool pond tucked into the gentle hillside. Increasingly, amazingly, nobody asked them outside the gates, either. It was impolite to wonder why our parents had sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants had sweated and bled so that their children could be educated, if not so that one day we would feel confident enough to look at a museum full of dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Aqueduct and make the not unreasonable point that it was batshit crazy, and that anyone who believed this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and their own money. Instead, people go to court over this kind of thing.

Orwell doing graveside hand stands as Sen. Kruse pursues "truth" in creationist indoctr ... er, education.

Last year Senator Dennis Kruse, an auctioneer by trade, pushed for overt creationism in the public schools, and presumably had the Florida-bound Tony Bennett spit shining his shoes just prior to seeing the effort ditched owing to pesky, minor problems like constitutionality.

Now Kruse is back, and Rick Howlett's coverage (below) at 89.3 FM simply doesn't do justice to the sheer grandeur of this session's Kruse class project, dubiously entitled "truth in education."

For added detail we turn to Dan Carden at NWI Politics.

Kruse said he's "working on a different approach to the subject" focused on "truth in education."

Specifically, Kruse wants to empower students to challenge their teachers "to make sure what is being taught is true."

"If a student thinks something isn't true then they could question the teacher, and the teacher would have to come up with some better research to support what they're teaching is true or not true," said Kruse, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Kruse said under his plan, each school corporation would be allowed to determine the topics of questions students could ask and the types of evidence considered truth.

"It's going to be written in a kind of a broad way," Kruse said.

Yes, this guy has a college degree and was once a licensed teacher.

No, you weren't drugged and transported to the Middle Ages via the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

It's still 2012 ... in most of the state.

Indiana Lawmaker Proposes "Truth In Education" Measure

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By RICK HOWLETT AND ASSOCIATED PRESS

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The lead sponsor of last year's effort to allow the teaching of creationism in Indiana schools is altering his efforts this year in favor of a so-called "truth in education" measure.

Senate Education Committee chairman Dennis Kruse says the proposal would encourage students to question a broad range of topics in the classroom. Lawmakers approved such a measure over the governor's objections in Tennessee, where that has translated into questioning evolution.

Kruse led an effort during the 2012 session to allow teaching of creationism in Indiana's public schools.

The Ayatollah Kruse on creationism -- at Facebook.

At Facebook, there's a spirited discussion underway about State Senator Kruse's "my personal belief as school curriculum" approach to legislation. Come join the fun:

According to Dennis Kruse, the Indiana state senator sponsoring creationism in schools, "I believe in creation, and I believe it deserves to be taught in our public schools." Well, I believe in sado-masochism. Shall we teach it, too? But wait -- I'm in no position to force my beliefs on schoolchildren. Those "believing" like Sen. Kruse have turned Indiana into a Danielstock.

Indiana Senate bows to superstition, but at least Ron Grooms votes no.

The best comment at the newspaper's site was from Wut:

"Teach the flying spaghetti monster! We are truly blessed by his Noodly Appendages."

Yet again we see state Republicans mass to advance legislation that isn't only irrelevant, but harmful to educational standards, and serves the side purpose of making Hoosiers look like buffoons. But thanks to Sen. Grooms for answering the question promptly and not clereting it from his FB page.

Meanwhile, originator Kruse's explanation astounds. What other of his personal beliefs need to be transformed into holy writ? What if he's into sado-masochism? Scourging? Lite beer?

This is what it means to be Republican?

Indiana Senate passes bill on teaching creationism; If measure becomes law, opponents wonder if suit versus state will follow, by Scott Elliott (Indy Star)

"I believe in creation," (Senate author Dennis) Kruse said, "and I believe it deserves to be taught in our public schools."

Also: Senate broadens teaching creationism proposal (The Associated Press)

Nutjobbery off the legislative agenda in Kentucky, at least for now.

Thanks to the Louisville Area Skeptics for this timely notice.

Antievolution bill in Kentucky dies, from the web site of the National Center for Science Education.

When the Kentucky legislature adjourned sine die on April 15, 2010, House Bill 397, the Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act, died in committee.