School begins again, and we read more about the intrusion of pseudoscience into school science curricula in this country, particularly into the study of biology and evolution.
The motive, despite the claims of proponents of intelligent design and other bogus “disciplines,” has been religious. Although some of the creation scientists’ arguments presented have a probabilistic flavor, the mathematics curriculum has seemed somewhat resistant to this trend. Recently a number of readers have sent me course descriptions from various schools that suggest otherwise, however.
Consider first a Baptist school in Texas whose description of a geometry course begins:
Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. They will see God’s nature revealed in the order and precision they review foundational concepts while being able to demonstrate geometric thinking and spatial reasoning. The study of the basics of geometry through making and testing conjectures regarding mathematical and real-world patterns will allow the students to understand the absolute consistency of God as seen in the geometric principles he created.
This is only happening at private schools so far, but how long will it be before Christians start demanding both sides of this nonsense debate in the public schools?!
So we didn’t invent geometry.
We invented God.
Same diff.
G = OD2
Thats my theory of Christianity…
Math isn’t perfect. A look at Godel’s incompleteness theorem should have derailed those courses before they began. By their own definition, since [g]od’s nature is consistent, it is incomplete!
Didn’t Issac Newton try to do this when he invented calculus?
perhaps Christian math can explain how 3 = 1 and 1 = 3.
whoops, there I go using those heathenish ‘arabic’ numerals
III = I
I = III
Does anyone really care any more about what happens to Texas?
So he Arabs invented numbers? and ‘0’ right?
I’m getting really confused. I wonder if they will teach that?
And, what ever happened to all of those learned arabs? Did the culture just give up and not grow in a schollastic sense?
Or, did their religion occupy too much of their time?
Really, I wonder what happened. It would be nice if some other culture picked up the ball and ran with it for a while.
Interesting that anti-Christian themes seem to abound in Dvorak but, I’ve never heard of Christians crashing loaded jets into buildings to murder thousands of innocents, deploying IED’s, ruthlessly killing “infidels” as a matter of religious doctrine or, any other barbarous acts that are apparently applauded by many on this board.
Tell ya what, bow down and show your liberal compassion and heartfelt understanding to your Islamist Masters and then, see if you can rise back up with your head still attached to your neck.
Christianity is about LOVE, not some hidden agenda of evil as many of you are duped into knowing as “fact”…and Christians are not committed to killing you if you decide to believe otherwise…really!
From the article I wonder if the school teaches that non-Euclidean geometry is the work of the devil or at least of non-Christians.
Reminds me of Einstein’s comments on the “uncertainty principle” of quantum theory, frequently summated as: “God doesn’t play dice”.
This theologian, Thomas Torrance, has an interesting comment on that:
http://tinyurl.com/zv3p3
That “God does not play dice” highlights the fact that chance is after all a negative way of thinking, or rather a way not to think. This is a lesson I believe that many scientists today, especially perhaps in biology, need to learn – their appeal to “chance” too often appears to be a sort of “scientist’s God of the gaps”!
How better to advance the argument that there is an “Intelligent Designer”, than to embrace all orderly aspects of the world – in any scientific field of study – as proof of design?
Anything that conflicts with the idea of an orderly, designed system is either:
a.) insufficiently understood – and we will eventually discover the underlying order, God willing…
or:
b.)the people who argue there isn’t any underlying order are depending on chance as a crutch to support their “negative thinking”. đ
Ah, christian math.
Where pi=exactly 3 and the earth is flat.
Who could possibly have a problem with that??
#8 – There is not any anti-christian bias here, just anti-stupidity.
Take a step away from your bible and then think about the whole christian myth without your eyes clouded by brainwashed dogma and you’ll have to agree its completely laughable.
As a Christian, I think this sort of thing is nonsense. But I suppose I’m a bit of an unusual Evangelical U.S. Christian, since I also accept that evolution is a scientific fact (as opposed to the myriad theories of evolution that abound.)
I know that many of my Catholic brethren have no problem with evolution, but it’s not common among evangelical Christians (unfortunately).
Trying to strain to make geometry “prove” the existence of God is as doomed to failure as all the other such attempts to use scientific or mathematical facts to “prove” it. In my more extreme moments, I often feel that Christians who try to do this aren’t really believing the Bible when it says that you take God on faith or not at all (my paraphrase of a passage in Hebrews…).
I fear that this attempt will also ruin any interest the children this is perpetrated on might eventually have in math. And that’s just sad.
This is rich — their “absolute consistency” theme fairly reverberates with irony. The Bible is a virtual echo chamber of moral and logical dissonance.
This could actually be a brilliant tactic, though, to take their greatest weakness and flaunt it as their greatest strength. Baptists are a very clever bunch.
#8. interesting that someone who posits that ‘christianity is love’ adopts the handle of the political front for a Catholic terrorist organization.
but anyway.
#7. Arabs did not invent ‘arabic’ numerals, but they did convey them to Europe from India, where they had been invented by other non-Christians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals
The reason that there was no renaissance or scientific revolution in Dar al Islam is hotly debated, but a commonly-cited reason is that Islamic religious authorities retained the power to ban learning that conflicted with revealed ‘truth,’ whereas that power was lost in Europe.
However, during the Middle Ages the Arab world was critical in preserving the learning of the ancient (pagan) Greeks for subsequent use by the Europeans.
#14 Yes they did and to thank them we haven’t turned all their sand to glass. I think we are even.
To all that mock. This whole bit is just advertising. It is aimed at people that want their kids to get a Christian education in a private school. Since it is advertising done by people that no nothing about advertising it sucks and sounds stupid.
I’ll bet if you go sit in on that math class it is no different than any other.
I heard a call-in recently from a chemistry teacher who related how he was asked to develop a chemistry curriculum that gave time to alternative theories to matter being made up of atoms. Being that this happened in the liberal stronghold of MN, you can’t chalk that one up to fundamentalism, just nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there is a lot more “nonsense” out there that any us would believe.
#8 any other barbarous acts that are apparently applauded by many on this board.
SIOOMA
Go play hide-the-salami with your straw-man somewhere else, unless you can cite examples of the “many” who have “apparently” applauded barbarous acts on this board.
Yeah, I didn’t think so….
Still more AntiChristian bigotry. As the article mentions … this is a BAPTIST school. Which means it’s a PRIVATE school. As such, they have every right to teach the course as they see fit as long as they pass the proper testing.
For “dvorak.org/blog” to insinuate that this is coming to a public school is pure speculation. The bottom line is that 1+1=2 and 1/2 of a 45 degree angle is still 22.5 degrees. Whether your Christian or not.
So get over it.
#8 – Bla bla bla Christ is love bla bla bal…
The same old tired canard deserves the same old tired response: bla bla bla Crusades bla bla bla Operation Rescue bla bla bla Jesus Camp…
Christianity and Islam are the same religion with different window dressing, and both are about power and control and totalitarianism. That whole Jesus is love bullshit is just Hippy Grade claptrap, but from the Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials to the KKK lynching black in the south, Christianity’s history is riddled with violence.
If you want a recent example, try Christian forced attempting to execute a policy of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the 90s.
Most people, whether Christian or Muslim or Jew or whatever, just want to work and get married and raise kids and live in peace… but the institutional religions they subscribe to all have long and bloody histories of violence.
I’ll hang with the best minds in the world, who seem to agree on evolution.
I support anyone’s right to start and fund a school that teaches divergent theories, right up to the point that they try to foist such silliness on the public schools.
If a privately funded Baptist school want to interpret the curriculum to reinforce their religious belief, then all power to them. That’s the whole point of private schools isn’t it?
Not that I’d send my kids to that school (given a choice, they’d probably be going to a Waldorf/Steiner school).
#7 & #14
Actually the number zero was invented by those job stealing, wage lowering mayans south of the border.
Basic Christian Math is nothing more than the way a small group of bible thumpers manage to divide a community.
#8 – Sinn Fein,
Interesting that anti-Christian themes seem to abound in Dvorak but, Iâve never heard of Christians crashing loaded jets into buildings to murder thousands of innocents, deploying IEDâs, ruthlessly killing âinfidelsâ as a matter of religious doctrine or, any other barbarous acts that are apparently applauded by many on this board.
Are you really walking through life with your eyes that tightly shut? Have you not heard of the IRA? Have you not heard of abortion clinic bombings? Have you not heard of doctor shootings? Anti-gay violence (directly and explicitly in accordance with the bible)?
And, that’s only the stuff withing very recent history. Have you not heard of the Spanish Inquisition? The Crusades? The witch hunts?
However, don’t worry, I’m not an anti-Christian. I’m an antitheist. I despise all forms of theism equally. Further, don’t worry, I don’t hate theists, just the religion. The Zoroastrian-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (deliberately singular) is designed to be divisive and violent. All attempts to change that are a good thing, but are still just bastardizations of a bad religion.
As written above, this doesn’t strike as the worst form of math. They haven’t pinpointed any wrong things the students would learn, like pi=3, which is in the bible.
Worse is the math already being taught in some places that focuses on diversity in place of actual learning, or emphasize self-esteem and tell teachers not to correct students, or those that involve a calculator rather than doing the math yourself.
#5 – doug,
Dang that took me a minute. It’s pretty hilarious!! I know a proof that one equals two. But I don’t have a version for one equals three.
Thinking about it some more though, it’s at least 4, if not a very much larger number. See, Satan is clearly equal or nearly equal to God since God is incapable of getting rid of him. Then, there are all the angels, the Virgin Mary, the saints, cherubim, seraphim, incubi, succubi, and all the rest. All of these must be counted as at least minor deities, at least for some flavors of the religion where people actually pray to them. The prior pope cited one such minor deity as the force that turned a bullet away from his heart. That’s at least a minor deity or demigod or some such, right?
#18
>>”this is a BAPTIST school. Which means itâs
>>a PRIVATE school. As such, they have every
>>right to teach the course as they see fit as long
>> as they pass the proper testing.”
Can the Scientologists teach about Xenu and his Galactic Confederacy in history class?
I wouldn’t dream of restricting someones religious beliefs. But when religion supplants history, mathematics or physics we have a problem.
#21
>>”If a privately funded Baptist school want to
>>interpret the curriculum to reinforce their
>>religious belief, then all power to them.
>>Thatâs the whole point of private schools
>>isnât it?”
I’m pretty sure the point of private schools is to provide a superior(subjective) environment for teaching and learning. As long as religious doctrine is confined to religion class I don’t see a problem.
#8 If you think that Christianity is love then you should educate yourself by sitting down and actually reading the bible. Start with the book of Job, that’s a type of love I can do without.
#3 Damn good point. I’ve studied Godel’s work. If God is all knowing then why is the system he created incomplete?
#27 – I wouldnât dream of restricting someones religious beliefs. But when religion supplants history, mathematics or physics we have a problem.
I totally agree.
I don’t think I can support the idea that if people want to send their kids to religious schools instead of public school, it’s okay. It isn’t ok.
If Xians are gonna bomb abortion clinics to protect the rights of the unborn, then they need to bomb private religious schools to protect the educational rights of the born.
Any kid taught that evolution is a lie and that gays are subhuman and all the other BS Bible Thumpers preach is being condemned to a life of being an ignorant redneck living in a trailer unable to compete in the real world. I argue that is child abuse.
I don’t care if private schools exist… but they should damn well be held to educational standards, and parents so called rights end when they start pushing their slack-jawed bullshit on their innocent kids.
Jesus freaking Christ… Won’t somebody think of the children?
#27 “Can the Scientologists teach about Xenu and his Galactic Confederacy in history class?”
Yes in their private school they can. Oh, and by the way. That knocking on your door is the COS lawyers/
“As long as religious doctrine is confined to religion class I donât see a problem. ”
If it is their private school they can teach whatever they want where ever they want.