Eugenie Scott on Science Friday
Few people anger the creationists more than Eugenie Scott. She actively opposes their efforts to get religion into the schools under whichever euphemism they’re currently peddling.
She was on Science Friday yesterday to give us a summary of the whole Texas School Board science standards fiasco. We’ve discussed that here previously, and it has been covered extensively at other blogs. You should listen to the Science Friday interview. She sums up what happened and where the cracks are that the crackpots managed to make.
You can listen to it online at the NPR website, but I couldn’t figure out how to save a copy to my hard drive for later iPodding.
Theoretically, you can visit the Science Friday website. The strengths and weaknesses of that idea are that you can download MP3s, but they are currently linking to the wrong segment of the show.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:49 am
MP3 available here.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I was able to get it through iTunes.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:17 am
PaulJ and MathMike:
Thank you for your links. The Science Friday website is still linking to an oceanography report, so I don’t think they plan to put up a link to this segment.
April 12th, 2009 at 9:10 am
This reminded me of something slightly OT. Yesterday afternoon I was watching a DVD of Cosmos, the episode about evolution. Now, I thought, the IDers want ID to be taught in schools, and the routinely claim that ID is not religious.
Ok. Let’s have the ID proponents formulate a lesson plan. What the heck would that look like? How could they possibly teach about the origin of life with a ‘designer’ without referencing some religious text? It’s impossible. Forcing them to show a lesson plan for a biology class would show their true colors.
Actually, I’m all FOR teaching ID in school. I mean, in my freshman high school biology class we learned about spontaneous generation. In chemistry, we touched on alchemy. By all means, let’s teach ID, especially if the proponents can’t come up with non-religious lesson plans we can just show that it’s as dumb as SG and alchemy and astrology.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Arkonbey – I remember segments like that too. They were presented in a way though that showed the mistakes of the thought and how it led to the leading scientific theories. If we taught ID that way, the creationists would go apeshit. They want ID taught as a valid alternative. At least in my high school, alchemy, astrology, and spontenaous generation were all taught as archaic and incorrect.
Of course, that’s how creationism and ID should be taught, but doing so would make even more moderate christians join the ID crowd, which would be very, very bad.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
This is brilliant. Eugenie Scott is one of my favorite people at the forefront of this debate.