David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association had submitted a legal memo to the Florida Board of Education a while ago trying to claim that evolution is a “belief system.” (previous post on who this guy is here.) Well, he’s still around and making some noise again. According to the St. Petersburg Times education blog, The Gradebook, the legal firm is updating that legal memo and will ship it to the BoE again. Gibbs whines about evolution being a fundamental concept in biology, which it is no matter how he complains. And based on this, he tries to argue again that:
“Making this gigantic jump moves the evolutionary hypothesis from the realm of science into a philosophical faith-based belief system,” Gibbs continues. “It has fallen into the same trap of which science has accused religion. It posits its entire interpretive rationale on something which is unobservable and untested.”
A representative from the ACLU puts Gibbs in his place:
“He claims that teaching science, based on well-accepted theories backed by factual evidence, is somehow promoting a particular religion in public school,” [Becky Steele] told The Gradebook in an email. “To see how cockamamie that is, imagine them arguing that the Establishment Clause would be violated by teaching a calculus class that only expresses the ‘worldview’ of mathematics without any sense of the divine.”
WOW! To use a phrse I have learned from Pharyngula. This guy is absolutely filled with fuckwittery. It’s obvious that that the fundies feeel the need to equate science with religion to even stand a chance. It’s not and never will be.
“To see how cockamamie that is, imagine them arguing that the Establishment Clause would be violated by teaching a calculus class that only expresses the ‘worldview’ of mathematics without any sense of the divine.”
Um, cockamamie or not …
http://www.hightestscores.com/christian-textbooks/christian-math.htm
Bob Jones University Press: “Who needs a Christian math book? You do.”
… “2 + 2 equals 4 whether you’re a Christian or not,” right? To most people that phrase sums up their belief that in certain areas there need be no difference between a Christian textbook and a non-Christian one. But what 2 + 2 equals is only a tiny piece of math. Far more important questions in math would be “Why does 2 + 2 = 4” or “Why does it matter?” Questions like those are the stuff of a worldview, something all textbooks — even math ones — communicate, and those questions will be answered differently by different worldviews.
“Christian maths books, because sometimes, maths isn’t religious enough”.
What the **** does “Why does 2+2=4?” have to do with maths.
Also That’s why we say if our textbooks aren’t the best in their field, then they’re not Christian enough, because everyone knows that christianity=right.
“It has fallen into the same trap of which science has accused religion. It posits its entire interpretive rationale on something which is unobservable and untested.”
Science does not accuse religion of anything. Some scientists (who may be religions) may accuse some other religious persons of confusing a description of a moral foundation for the universe (which must be accepted and practiced by creatures with free will) with a description of the physical origin of the universe (which exists independently and does not depend upon those creatures).