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The young journalists at The Southerner, the student newspaper at Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia, recently broke the news that creationism and other Christian religious views are incorporated into the Biology curriculum used by the City of Atlanta Public Schools.
A PowerPoint shown to a freshman biology class featured a cartoon depicting dueling castles, one labeled "Creation (Christ)" and the other labeled "Evolution (Satan)." Balloons attached to the evolution castle were labeled euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, divorce, racism and abortion
The PowerPoint, which has more than 50 slides largely consisting of material about evolution, was downloaded from SharePoint, an APS file-sharing database for teachers. It was uploaded by Mary E. King, a project manager at APS who has also uploaded more than 2,000 other documents. Phone calls and emails to King have not been returned. Tommy Molden, science coordinator for APS, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Students were offended by the cartoon:
"[I] have gay parents, and [the cartoon] said that evolution caused homosexuality and it implied that to be negative, so I was pretty offended by it," [freshman Seraphina Cooley] said.
Cooley said that another student emailed the administration complaining about the PowerPoint.
Freshman Griffin Ricker, who is also in Jones' class, said [Biology class teacher Anquinette Jones] got angry with the class when she found out students had notified the administration.
"She had a 10-minute rant," Ricker said. "She yelled and said, 'This is on the APS website, and it was certified.'"
In case of soylentnewsing, the student reporting is also posted on a local Atlanta newspaper blog.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Friday July 04 2014, @02:25AM
And we don't give a flying hockey stick about hypocrisy, or your feelings. Give us our guns and shut up about your fag home stuff. We will shove our beliefs down your throat whether you or Christ like it or not. Remember, it was CERTIFIED.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Friday July 04 2014, @02:29AM
Oh, and for the mods with an ax to grind, that is tongue in cheek (sarcasm for the dense).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bziman on Friday July 04 2014, @03:01AM
Um, please don't associate right-wing nutbags who believe in imaginary deities with people who keep and bear arms. Some of us keep and bear arms to protect ourselves from the nutbags and for other reasonable reality-based reasons.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Friday July 04 2014, @03:13AM
Some of us also believe in deities but don't believe homosexuality is wrong or that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. For everybody's sake it's best to keep the scope appropriately narrow.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RobotLove on Friday July 04 2014, @02:59PM
This is my favorite Christian misdirection. Allow me to translate:
"I too am crazy, but not in this one particular way. Therefore I'm a normal person."
Cognitive dissonance much?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday July 04 2014, @07:32PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Monday July 07 2014, @06:06PM
I don't like the word "believe". I think the evidence suggests aliens are probable.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday July 07 2014, @06:18PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Monday July 07 2014, @06:30PM
I have not seen any footprints. :) I should have used the word "probability" instead of evidence. The evidence for how many stars are in our universe, and how many of those stars have planets, and how many might be suitable for life leads me to think the probability for life existing somewhere else is greater than 0.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday July 05 2014, @06:16AM
This is rather hostile of you, and if you don't mind, I'm going to call you out on it. Friendly as I can be.
After some rereading I can only take your argument to be the following:
1) Christians are crazy.
2) Non-Christians are also crazy.
3) Non-Christians and Christians are not normal people.
4) Non-Christians don't understand they are not as bad as Christians.
This is offensive to whole groups of people simultaneously. I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.
What your argument represents is not a strong condemnation of that which does not squarely fit into empiricism as much as it's thought censorship. You view even the admittance of such thoughts to be a sign of intellectual inferiority and subject to scorn.
This is not fair for several reasons. I can perform my own thought experiments and come to my own conclusions without you. As long as I can distinguish between faith and evidence based conclusions, and maintain a healthy and reasonable balance between them, it's unfair to excise me from the domain of rational and reasonable people. By reasonable, I mean that declining to eat meat (or being forced to) may be faith based and reasonable despite a lack of evidence and reasoning. So what? Unreasonable would be supporting anti-abortion for instance.
One can have faith, but I agree that empiricism must very strongly play a leadership role in our collective decision making process. It is to me a self-evident statement. You can stop worrying about me. Faith plays a very strong role in my life, but I promise you, when it comes time to decide how to deal with others fairly I do employ empiricism. A large number of people do all the time but go unnoticed.
Stop caring what other people think and if it's pure science. Until they actually vote in a decision solely based on faith, I think you owe the dude an apology.
You don't owe me one. I could be an asshole :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Monday July 07 2014, @06:24PM
Thanks for your reply.
I almost certainly could have been more polite, and for not doing so I apologize.
However, the issue at hand is deadly serious. In the modern era, faith (pretending to know something you can't possibly know) is an extinction-level threat (Disagree? Imagine what would happen if Al Quaeda, a faith-based organization, got their hands on 20 easy-to-use nuclear weapons). And saying someone else's faith makes them crazy but my faith is fine is dangerous. Faith is the problem.
Hopefully that's clearer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @03:33AM
> Um, please don't associate right-wing nutbags who believe in imaginary deities with people who keep and bear arms.
And then there are people like these: "We called it Shooters and started throwing guns and Jesus all over the place." [oregonlive.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Friday July 04 2014, @03:47AM
When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve. Thank God I'm an atheist.