You can watch CNN's coverage of the Ray Comfort-modified Origin giveaway going on this week on a video right here, featuring NCSE member Ken Miller doing what he does best, which is to say defending the science of evolution from the ignorami:
One of these days, maybe Kirk Cameron will actually experience some intellectual 'Growing Pains', but right now he's nothing more or less than the poster boy for faith-based ignorance:
Watch the opener of this video on Kirk and Ray's 'Way of the Master' YouTube channel. Kirk makes the following claims:
"Our kids can no longer pray in public."
"They (kids) can no longer freely open a Bible in school."
"The 10 Commandments are no longer allowed to be displayed in public places."
"The Gideons are no longer allowed to give away Bibles in schools."
All of these are false or misleading statements! Let's take the first two out for a test spin:
"Our kids can no longer pray in public."
"They (kids) can no longer freely open a Bible in school."
What? Kids can certainly pray in public, even in public schools. How could you keep them from doing it? They have more freedom to exercise their religious beliefs than either teachers or administrators do, in fact...which is the way it should be, given that the latter (including myself) are de facto agents of government. The state has no legal mandate to prevent students from praying silently in class, or reading their Bibles, or writing essays that touch on their beliefs, or publicly discussing their beliefs in an appropriate manner.
At the same time, the state must not endorse any particular student's exercise of their religious freedom, or allow anyone (teachers, administrators or students) to hijack the legitimate purpose of education to serve a sectarian agenda. Many Christians have a hard time understanding this, but if you give instructional time or extracurricular time on campus to present a student's beliefs without a clearly-stated and legitimate secular purpose, you are effectively privileging that student's beliefs in an educational setting. Not only does this risk alienating or offending others, not to mention the triggering of legal action, it also places a burden on that student which, in most cases, they would not seek on their own, and do not want.
How about this one:
"The 10 Commandments are no longer allowed to be displayed in public places."
Nuts. SOTUS has never issued a blanket ruling to that effect. Some government displays of the 10 Commandments have been ruled to have a legitimate purpose, and others have not. You can read about that here.
And, finally:
"The Gideons are no longer allowed to give away Bibles in schools."
This is deeply misleading, to the point of being disingenuous. It is true that giveaways during instructional time have been subject to legal challenges, as that practice constitutes a de facto endorsement of sectarian religion by agents of government. But the Circuit Court of Appeals in the most publicized of these cases (Lonney Roark v. South Iron R-1 School District) ruled that while said district could not give Bibles away during instructional time, that there would be nothing unconstitutional about preventing 'any printed material' approved the District Superintendent to be distributed to students on campus outside classroom time.
And, indeed, on my campus (and pretty much every high school campus in Fresno County), Campus Youth for Christ and Fellowship of Christian Athletes routinely hold meetings at lunch or after school, often giving away printed materials or showing faith-themed media on-campus. This is routine. If the Gideons wished to give away Bibles to students outside of class in Fresno County, they could certainly do so.
So, Kirk's claims are wildly inaccurate, sorry. As a Christian, as a parent, he can be expected to know a little something about this, so he's without excuse. The best we can say about this is that Kirk may not be deliberately lying, that he may be simply repeating 'facts' drummed into him by his fellow evangelicals.
But if I can't trust the statements of a Christian parent about the freedom of religious expression kids enjoy in the public schools---something he can be reasonably expected to know something about---why should I, or anyone trust anything he says about a scientific theory? The guy earned a high school diploma between takes on a sitcom. How much can he know about learning laboratory science in a public school setting, much less what should or shouldn't be taught? I'm sorry, but being pretty and personable (as aging child stars tend to be) does not qualify you to speak on science education.
11/20/2009
SOME SMALL COMFORT: MILLER'S ON THE CASE
11/11/2009
MEDIA 'MINI-BLITZ'
Prior to appearing on the program, Central Valley Cafe Scientifique will have produced a press release for general distribution to the media talking up their organizing committee member's good fortune in winning a contest from a national magazine.
This will be a good opportunity to say some good things about my student, my school site and various ways the community can support science education. I will be talking up Cafe Scientifique, 'Darwin's Bulldogs' and the impending December visit of NCSE's Eugenie Scott, a coup for CSU Fresno's College of Math and Sciences. Funny how opportunities arise to 'spread the word' when you put yourself out there . . .
BUT, if you don't catch the program live, there will be a podcast posted on this page. Thanks to everyone for supporting science in the Central Valley!
11/09/2009
A MAJOR AWARD!
In 1983, Bob Clark (previously best known for a series of low-budget exploitation films) made the film for which he will doubtless be remembered long after offerings like 'Deathdream' or 'Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things' go by the wayside. That film was 'A Christmas Story', an instant holiday classic based on the humorous memoirs of Jean Shepherd, about growing up in northwest Indiana.
The story revolves around the scheming of the 9-year-old protagonist, Ralphie Parker, to obtain the most fabulous of Christmas presents: "an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time."
A major sub-plot though, is another obsession, that of Ralphie's father, with entering newspaper contests to win "a Major Award". Mr. Parker (referred to in the film simply as 'the old man') eventually wins a risque lamp in the shape of woman's leg. The mother objects to its prominent display in the living room window, and eventually the 'Major Award' is ('accidentally?')destroyed and 'the old man' humiliated. Pride goeth before a fall of a lamp!
Well, I am tickled to say that I have also won a 'Major Award' whose cash value is virtually nil, but like 'the old man', its symbolic value is high: Discover magazine sponsored a contest, many moons back, as to who could make a video that explains evolution in two minutes or less. The contest was judged by PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame, and you can listen to his explanation of why he chose my entry here. 
You can also view my 'Major Award'-winning video here!
Having seen the other four runners-up, I have to say that I lucked out a bit. The other four films are pretty good, and they did a far better job of presenting some of the details of evolutionary theory than my offering. Interestingly enough, Discover magazine had sponsored a similar contest in the past on string theory, and my initial attempts to make a video was much more like these past entries and the four runner-ups in this year's contest. I had begun work assembling stills and making animations along with some kind of narration to present the important concepts: variation, heritability, the struggle for existence, differential reproductive survival, etc. As you can tell by that thumbnail sketch of my first idea, my original scheme was rich in content and vocabulary.
But I ran into a problem. I knew that I could just squeeze in everything if I wanted to present a 'just the facts' approach, but that it would lack a certain warmth and accessibility. On the other hand, if I added some user-friendly asides for the audience, I seemed to always end up either talking at a breakneck pace or being 6-8 seconds too long. Since it was a cardinal rule of the affair that it be no more than 2 minutes, and since I was determined to produce something that stood out, I began to rethink my approach. Finally, it occurred to me that since I am an amateur musician with some talent and a lot of recording equipment, perhaps the best thing to do would be to take advantage of a skill set that most of the other entrymakers probably didn't possess. I wrote an original song, the (self-referential) lyrics of which are below:
expression, occassioned
genetic variation,
population selection!
EVOLUTION (it'll change the world)
EVOLUTION (the changes go on and on and on...!)
On and on and on and on and on and on and on!
A FEW DISCLAIMERS:
While I conceived the song, created some of the animations and storyboarded the narrative, I had help in realizing the video. My former student, Brianna Christophersen, was a senior in the spring of 2009 and working at our school's Mac lab in a video production class. She shot the video of me lip-synching the tune and edited the whole thing together using Final Cut Pro and some other tools. I couldn't have done this without her, and I am happy that she now has a 'Major Award'-winning production to go in her student portfolio.
Also, I should point out that by submitting my video along with my song I agreed to give Discover magazine the right to post the material. The video itself is not my property, and for the purposes of the contest I agreed to grant Discover magazine the rights to present this content. I am reproducing the lyrics to make my amateur efforts more accessible. Since Discover magazine is providing this content free on-line, I think it is 'OK' to post the lyrics here as long as there is no attempt to repackage the content without the permission of Discover magazine.
For my next trick where teaching evolution is concerned, I'll be taking courses while visiting the Galapagos Islands in the summer of 2010. I plan on taking a video camera with me and documenting all my thoughts and impressions while there, then turning that content into an online web site that can be used for science education. More free content, I guess, but that will help me write off the expenses of the trip for professional purposes.
