Oklahoma senator promises to cripple teaching of science in Oklahoma schools:

[theweaselking]

Senator Josh Brecheen stressed that the final wording of the bill is not complete but says the issues the bill deals with are vital to our children. Senator Brecheen says children should be given all the facts when it comes to evolution.

"If we really are going to use science in the classroom, let's use the full science, let's not just be selective in our science. Duh, I eat poop."

For bonus points: He wrote an op-ed explaining it, and plagiarised heavily. Including the same typos as the original.

Comments

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

I'm annoyed about this, because this kind of crap tends to filter to my corner of the world with a couple of year delay. For fuck's sake, some of the bigger tabloids managed to import "War on Christmas" shit this year! (Read: the scary brown people and godless atheists are gonna get 'em! Noooooo!)

[fearmeforiampink]

Good point by point rebuttal here.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

I think that rebuttal can be summarised:

Senator Josh Brecheen has the literacy skills of a third-grader and the scientific education of a cabbage. Oklahoma should be ashamed of itself.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I approve of this rebuttal

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Why bother? "I am a creationist. Duh, I eat poop" is self-rebutting.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

In some ways I think this is a better rebuttal - because by continually arguing with nonsense peddlers rather than ridiculoing the nonsense you are giving the impression that they are presenting a legitimate point worthy of detailed counter-action

The creationist movement thrives on the idea that there is a "controversy" about the "theory" of evolution. And by treating them as a reasoned position to rebut and argue we're feeding into the fact.

You don't have a reasoned debate with flat earthers.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Ah, but then you fall into the trap of ad hominem.

I mean, sure, "I am a creationist. Duh, I eat poop" is obvious and self-evident, but that speaks to the speaker, not the ‘argument’, so to leave your rebuttal there makes the mistake of refuting the argument on the basis that the arguer is an idiot. Which he is, and of course that makes the likelihood that his argument is evident twaddle asymptotically close to 1.0, but you have to dispute the argument separately.

In a massive coincidence, the argument is “my delusions trump your puny science”, which is a stupid argument, and implies, without further evidence needed, that the person making that argument with a straight face is therefore an idiot.

So we're back where we started, in a way, but we now have some logical rigour behind our position.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Except not only has the argument[1] been addressed, over and over, many times, and the creationists simply ignore it and start over as if nothing had ever been said in the first place, but their own argument[1] isn't even *wrong*. It's incoherent and nonsensical, to the point where a comparable theological argument would be "Yeah? Well wibble wibble thorp blue graaaagh Deutoronomy spacecraft! Prove I'm wrong!"

Seriously, there's only so many times you can point out that nothing they're saying makes *any sense whatsoever* before correctly concluding that addressing their "arguments"[1] is a waste of everyone's time.


[1]: I use the term under protest.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

“An argument is a collected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.”

Under that definition, it is an argument. It's not a comprehensible argument, as you say, but it fits the strict definition of the term.


The point being that to say that the person is an idiot and therefore their argument is wrong is a logical fallacy. That the argument is so wrong it proves that its proponent is an idiot, on the other hand, is logically impeccable.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Is not.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Is too!

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

to the point where a comparable theological argument would be "Yeah? Well wibble wibble thorp blue graaaagh Deutoronomy spacecraft! Prove I'm wrong!"
can't...stop...giggling....

[sbloyd.livejournal.com]

> "Yeah? Well wibble wibble thorp blue graaaagh Deutoronomy spacecraft! Prove I'm wrong!"

Yeah, well, bah weep grahnah weep ninibong to you, pal!

[ashbet]

As for his claim that he hasn't seen "a monkey jumping out of a tree and putting on a business suit"... how the hell otherwise did he get elected??!?

-- A ;P

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in his theory that some roguish individual transitioned from a monkey into a business suit. Not only have I never seen any information that indicates that the ancestors of monkeys were all of low moral character, I haven't seen any that says that monkeys turn into articles of clothing either.

Learn something new ever...I mean DUH, I EAT POOP.

hurp durp

[anktastic.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to Larmarckian evolution? Is there nobody backing it up now?

When I was in high school I was taught the whole she-bang: religious views, spontaneous generation, Lamarckian evolution; culminating in Darwinian Evolution, hence showing us how ignorance disappeared as science gained ground... and for some reason, Lamarckian evolution and the spontaneous generation of life stuck a chord with me.

WHY IS NOBODY FIGHTING FOR MY RIGHTS TO BE AN IGNORANT FOOL?