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How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists
io9 ^ | January 15, 2013 | George Dvorsky

Posted on 01/16/2013 4:41:13 PM PST by EveningStar

For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.

(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: arth; creationism; evolution; louisiana; lsea; notwithatenfootpole; science; scienceeducation; zackkopplin
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To: allmendream
Nice ad hominem argument there, Sparky: Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations.

When you and yours are prepared to deal scientifically with the issues raised by such works as Darwin's Black Box, and not by attacking people, be sure to give me a call.

21 posted on 01/16/2013 5:14:59 PM PST by Robwin
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To: Repeat Offender

Creationism is not a scientific theory it is a religious belief.


22 posted on 01/16/2013 5:16:36 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: kearnyirish2
Scientists can never explain the origin of the universe ...

John Wheeler, of MTW ( Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, the authors of the big black "phone book" on GRAVITATION ) wrote ( and it's in the book ) to the effect that if you take all the equations and write them on the floor of a room, and stand back and wave your arm and command them to fly, not one of them will take flight, but the universe "flies". In other words, the universe seems bound to remain an ineffable mystery to us.

23 posted on 01/16/2013 5:19:48 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: allmendream
Hitler believed in fixed kinds and that Germans were created in the highest image of God. Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations.

That may or may not be true about creationism. I don't think you are right about "fixed types," though. More here. But not being either a biologist or a theologian, Hitler mixed up concepts without much regard to theoretical consistency.

24 posted on 01/16/2013 5:21:49 PM PST by x
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To: allmendream

“Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations.”

Creationism is a prominent belief in the cultures (in America and otherwise) that believe children are worth having; someday they will be all that is left, and maybe out of the kindness of their hearts they will tend the pet cemeteries of the evolutionists from the days of yore...


25 posted on 01/16/2013 5:23:24 PM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic war against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: allmendream
"Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations."

REALLY? Then I'm going to ditch my belief in God's Word right now, because fitting in with self-satisfied intellectual nitwits is what matters to me! /s

26 posted on 01/16/2013 5:23:40 PM PST by CatherineofAragon (Support Christian white males---the architects of the jewel known as Western Civilization)
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To: allmendream
Creationism is not a scientific theory it is a religious belief.

So is evolution.

At least there are witnesses to mine.

27 posted on 01/16/2013 5:25:37 PM PST by Repeat Offender (What good are conservative principles if we don't stand by them?)
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To: EveningStar

What I find troubling is that this student activist claims to be a champion of science yet makes very unscientific claims such the one where he suggests that if a child is not taught a strict narrow secular/atheist form of evolution in a public school they will not be able to operate as a research scientist or save wetlands. It is not only unscientific but patently untrue. The bulk of the scienitists that produced our modern world of science and medicine were believers in creation even if they all weren’t creationists in the very narrow interpretation that the scientific left wish to lump all creationists into which is the “young earth” creationists.

The truth is I don’t much care but I will err on the side of freedom. If public funds can be used to promote a liberal political agenda in schools let us have an open playing field. Kids will grow up and what they learn or do not learn about evolution or any number of other topics will not prevent them from achieving success if they are worthy of it. Given the amount of crap that passes for science and education in public schools and I’m intimately familiar because I did attend them I don’t believe allowing public funds to teach kids in ways approved by their parents is a threat at all. The world will go on and the technical aspects of biology will not change either way. I don’t understand the fear myself. It is irrational just as this student activist is an irrational moron who commits the same sins of ignorance that he sees in his opponents.


28 posted on 01/16/2013 5:26:39 PM PST by Maelstorm (You may not believe in the devil but he most certainly believes in you.)
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To: dr_lew

“In other words, the universe seems bound to remain an ineffable mystery to us.”

Now that doesn’t sound very scientific, does it?


29 posted on 01/16/2013 5:27:10 PM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic war against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: allmendream

Evolution is absolutely a religious belief. You can’t prove it, can’t observe one species become another species, can’t repeat it or set up testable events. It is simply an act of faith that Evolution is “real”.


30 posted on 01/16/2013 5:28:22 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (Nothing will change until after the war.)
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To: Repeat Offender
RO, thanks for making that point. I have had problems with zealots in the past when we home schooled out children ... on both sides of this issue. I have raised my children to have faith and to be true to science. When something is a theory, it is subject to scrutiny. I would even say, laws need the same, e.g., Newtonian Physics - refer to Einstein and some quantum guys about that.

Too often politics replaces the scientific method. Just look at global warming/climate change. It is all politics, and getting the next grant, not science.

31 posted on 01/16/2013 5:28:54 PM PST by ConservativeInPA (Molon Labe)
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To: EveningStar

“Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class.”

O.K., without getting into any debate about “creationism”, what the above quote tells me is that the high school “English teacher” sees assisting and inciting kids to get political as part of the teacher’s role in teaching.

For a mere course in English there is little cause for the topic to have even come up. But the education of teachers, in the college courses they take to become teachers and in the mission statement of the college with respect to the training of teachers, includes teaching teachers to, and how to, infuse the Marxist/Progressive/Liberal political agendas into every course.


32 posted on 01/16/2013 5:29:47 PM PST by Wuli (uire)
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To: x

Hitler said an animal of one type would always be that type in Mein Kamph. Kamph

But such guilt by association is nonsense, I felt obliged to point out the reality in response to the all too typical attempt at revisionists history equating evolution with nazis.


33 posted on 01/16/2013 5:31:55 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: allmendream

More particularly, it’s “apologetics”, a theory constructed in defense of Biblical Literalism, as they see it. From my POV Creationism strays very far from biblical literalism ( small “b” small “l”. ) In fact, the template for 20th century Creationism, as expounded by e.g. Henry Morris, can be found in Thomas Burnett’s Sacred Theory of the Earth, written circa 1690, and described in S.J. Gould’s TIME’S ARROW, TIME’S CYCLE. Burnett was accused of atheism in his time for espousing the same rationalistic scenarios which nowadays brand Creationists as radical religionists.


34 posted on 01/16/2013 5:36:55 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: allmendream

"Nothing comes from nothing and nothing ever could."

35 posted on 01/16/2013 5:39:48 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion (Gone rogue, gone Galt, gone international. Gone.)
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To: allmendream

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That it seems to me is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand those laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein (1929)


36 posted on 01/16/2013 5:41:07 PM PST by CIDKauf (No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.)
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To: allmendream
"Science is of use in explaining and predicting the natural world. Creationism is useless."

Science knows how to kill an unborn child. It takes Creationism to teach us that abortion is generally, if not categorically wrong.

37 posted on 01/16/2013 5:44:01 PM PST by YHAOS
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To: allmendream
Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations.

Retard.

38 posted on 01/16/2013 5:44:08 PM PST by Rightwing Conspiratr1
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To: ClearCase_guy
Evolution is an observable fact. DNA cannot stay the same one generation to the next. I can set up testable events and repeat them.

If I plate a bacteria out, blot it on ten different plates - then subject it to ten different stresses - I will get a heat resistant strain through evolution, a cold resistant strain through evolution, an antibiotic resistant strain, etc, etc.

No scientific theory can be proven. One cannot observe the Bohr model of the atom, but the Bohr model of the atom is of use. If someday it is replaced with a mores useful model - horay! Until then it is the only scientific model currently in use.

39 posted on 01/16/2013 5:50:18 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: allmendream; betty boop; marron; Alamo-Girl; little jeremiah; metmom; xzins; GodGunsGuts; ...
"Science is of use in explaining and predicting the natural world. Creationism is useless."

Science knows how to kill an unborn child. It takes Creationism to teach us that abortion is generally, if not categorically wrong.

They are at it again Beep!

40 posted on 01/16/2013 5:55:14 PM PST by YHAOS
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