2 May 2009 (pm)

Run notes: 8 miles on the East Peoria trail 39:50 out, 39:30 back. Breezy; headwind on the way back, and the locals were burning leaves (cough, cough). I wish that I had remembered that; I love community “no burn” laws. It was sunny.

Mathematics notes There was an interesting talk on centenarian studies (study of people living to 100 years); I’ll have to read a bit on this. Evidently the thing that most affects longevity at that age is having proper assistance for day to day tasks. Note: there is a huge variability among those who live this long; no one trait stands out.

Tattoos: Check out Millard Fillmore’s bathtub to see equations which are tattooed on someone’s back. One equation is the entropy equation, one is the hydrostatic equation, and one is for the Mandelbrot set. Can you tell which is which? (hint: it is easy if you remember calculus and what entropy is)

Science education A teacher got in trouble with the courts:

John Pieret is a pain in the lawyer. He has something to say about a recent court case [Accommodating the Law].

The latest ruling on the religion-science front is by a Federal judge in California holding that a public school teacher who called creationism “religious, superstitious nonsense,” violated a creationist student’s First Amendment rights.

Of course, the teacher is correct: creationism is religious, superstitious nonsense. But as one commenter pointed out, in public schools, the teaching must have a valid secular purpose and can’t have the purpose of attacking a religion.

Hence, saying “well, life evolved over x billion years” is ok. Saying that “the teachings this religion are wrong” isn’t, even if the science (which can be taught) does imply that the religious teaching is wrong: (from the comments)

John Pieret said…

It’s a little tricky but I’ll try to explain. Teaching science is a legitimate secular purpose of government. If, incidental to that — i.e. not as the purpose of the lesson — something is taught that some religion finds contradicts its dogma, the secular purpose controls. But, if the intent of the lesson is to show that some religion or belief is false, that means that the purpose is not secular, but religious / theological / philosophical. For example, if a lesson on geology teaches the age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years and that the geological history of the last 6,000 years does not include a global flood, the purpose is secular. If the lesson is that science disproves the biblical account, that is a religious purpose. As you can imagine, this can be difficult to determine in practice, which is why accommodationist statements by scientific organizations can be legally helpful in the US.

It is not necessary to a science lesson to teach that science and religion are in conflict and the purpose of including such a statement could only be to attack the students’ religious beliefs, which is most definitely not a secular purpose.

Eamon:

The real issue (on the first prong of the Lemon test) is the government intent. The more blatant the nature of the attack on a religious belief, the easier it is to determine the intent. But subtle attacks are also prohibited.

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