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Ohio bill would allow students to be scientifically wrong due to religion
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoMy working theory: the preference for believing received knowledge from the academic science community over received religious-based knowledge is (in some cases) a matter of competing epistemologies. And although most people find the former epistemology more reliable, it can be difficult to make a logically unassailable case that it always is more accurate. So one angle on this topic is the question of how much the majority will tolerate a minority adhering to a different epistemology.
- scarface74 7y agoI wouldn’t want to go to a doctor who doesn’t believe in the science that viruses evolve.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoNeither would I. However, as a counterppint: I'm guessing that some people wouldn't want to see a doctor who believed that ultimately my life had no value. Both belief types can affect the outcome of patient care.
- krapp 7y ago>I'm guessing that some people wouldn't want to see a doctor who believed that ultimately my life had no value. That's not a valid counterpoint. It assumes that only people of faith believe that life has value, and that medical practitioners who don't believe in an eternal soul are somehow categorically more reckless as a result. >Both belief types can affect the outcome of patient care. Not nearly as much as avoiding modern medicine and believing that prayer, homeopathy and magic crystals will heal your cancer.
- scarface74 7y agoI would think just the opposite. If you believe that this life is all there is and you don’t have an afterlife to look forward to, you would value life even more. Off topic: to all of the people who are downvoting the parent post: Just because you say something in a post, doesn’t mean that you believe it. For example, I often take the devil’s advocate position. If you can’t argue both sides of an issue, you don’t truly understand it.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago>it can be difficult to make a logically unassailable case that it always is more accurate Not really. If there is some evidence that something is more accurate, than the scientific method says it is the better explanation. It can only be less accurate in matters without evidence.
- bsenftner 7y agoWhatever is on that page, uBlock leaves the entire page blank.
- kgwxd 7y agoNot for me, though I wouldn't have complained if it did.
- ubermonkey 7y agoThere's other coverage, e.g. https://www.inquisitr.com/5743685/ohio-law-student-religion-science/ https://www.inquisitr.com/5743685/ohio-law-student-religion-... The gist of the problem is covered in this paragraph: "The language in the bill abolishes 'any restrictions on students from engaging in religious expression in completion of homework, artwork or other assignments.' What that means is that a student could, for example, turn in work that claims that the Earth is 6,000-years-old, as some Christian denominations teach, rather than 4.5 billion years, like the overwhelming majority of accepted science teaches, and not be penalized for it. Similarly, a student could turn in work that claims that Homo Sapiens were created by a benevolent god, rather than having evolved from a common ancestor shared by humans and other apes."
- crgwbr 7y agoWouldn’t an easy non-law compromise here be to reword questions slightly? For example, instead of asking “How did humans come into existence?” ask “According to the theory of evolution, how did humans come into existence?“ That would accurately test a student’s knowledge of what was taught without requiring them to agree with the answer.
- moccachino 7y agoAccording to my belief system any mention of evolution is blasphemy so I can not answer this question.
- dfxm12 7y agoYou're making the false assumption that this about freedom of religion. This is about Republican politicians recognizing that undereducated voters tend to vote Republican and thus are trying to keep Americans undereducated in an attempt at self preservation.
- gatherhunterer 7y agoIf it is a biology class then it is inherently an evolution class. Evolution is the central theory of biology and all of its sub-fields.
- __MatrixMan__ 7y agoIt's the dominant theory, and it's a darn good one, but isn't that a bit like saying that all geometry is euclidean geometry?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- omarhaneef 7y agoMy new RaaS startup idea: religion as a service. Ohio students join the religion, submit the answers to your latest test and we update our beliefs to match your answers.
- really3452 7y agoI suspect incorrect answers based on non-Christian religions will not get the same treatment as incorrect answers based on a Christian religion.
- omarhaneef 7y agoSir, we are a business that doesn't like to get into the politics, but did I mention the service fee is tax deductible?
- akerro 7y agoCall it "Church of Churches as a Service" and you don't have pay taxes too!
- xaitv 7y agoI bet Scientology and other cults will be just fine as well.
- hhas01 7y agoIt’s a broad church, long as they know to how to add dollar bills to the right palms.
- jimcsharp 7y agoIf I were FIRE I would probably spend all of my time going to court for stuff like this. I'm surprised there's not at least 1 rich person dedicated to being a righteous shit disturber.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoPublic schools--even "nice" ones--are an ideological battleground and/or laboratory, where your kids get caught in the cross-fire and/or experimented on.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoAllowing outside bullshit is not going to help this issue.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoThat makes it sound like it hasn't been smeared with a dozen different kinds of it already.
- hprotagonist 7y agonormally we call this “society”.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoAs someone who moved between states with very different ideologies half way through high-school and got to observe the curriculum differences I agree that there is an ideological component to curriculum selection but I wouldn't call it an active battle, just a reflection of the values of the people choosing the curriculum. I assume that in both states the committees that set curriculum are well meaning but small bias over time has a cumulative effect if not controlled for and they probably don't have the political capital to include good coverage of things that are inconvenient for the prevailing ideology. I wasn't ever taught "wrong" but coverage of subject areas that would cause students to ask questions that would be tough for people of the majority ideology to answer was certainly lacking. I hope the purple states are at least a little better since they should have a critical mass of people of the other ideology that keep things from going too far in either direction over time. Edit: And this was in the late '00s, before things became as polarized as they are.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
- krapp 7y agoHere is the actual relevant text from the law[0]. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work. I'm not certain whether this means students must not be penalized for factual errors if those errors are based on religious beliefs (eg claiming God created the world in seven days and declaring evolution to be a heresy), or whether they simply cannot be penalized for religious content given otherwise factually correct answers, which would seem to be blatant religious discrimination. It does seem like a really weird, suspiciously contextually specific thing to want a law for, since religious discrimination is already illegal and something people can sue over. [0]https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-documents?id=GA133-HB-164 https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-doc...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pc86 7y agoIs getting docked points for bringing religion into an answer on physics, or biology, or chemistry religious discrimination or is it requiring an answer to be germane to the question? If I'm asked a question in a biology exam and I start talking about computer science, losing part of the score doesn't seem completely egregious.
- krapp 7y ago>Is getting docked points for bringing religion into an answer on physics, or biology, or chemistry religious discrimination or is it requiring an answer to be germane to the question? IANAL but reading the text of the law, I honestly can't tell. It seems like it says a teacher can't go outside the bounds of normal academic standards for grading in regards to religious content, which if true doesn't actually change anything, since it's already illegal to discriminate against people for their religious beliefs, but it would be acceptable to do so in the specific context of education if religious beliefs aren't germane or factually correct IRT a test or curriculum.... so what's the point? Although it does use the weasel word "legitimate" which makes me suspicious that the real purpose of this is a bait for pro-religious lawsuits.
- hwestiii 7y agoWhat’s the matter with Ohio?
- sxcurry 7y agoThe MAGA caps are too tight
- Spooky23 7y agoGlobalization. Industry went to China and Mexico. Agriculture is a dumpster fire. The people who supported these industries moved on to other places. The people who are left are idle and are occupied by crazy religious people and being bitter.
- hnuser77 7y agoOhio's unemployment rate is 25% above the national average, but not particularly shocking at 4.1%. It also has a GDP per capita higher than Florida and Vermont. Ohio is 16th out of 50 states for weekly church attendance.
- throwanem 7y agoAll the work went away.
- justin66 7y agoGerrymandering ensures Republicans have a very strong majority in the state legislature. We're getting dumber and more conservative, but we're not actually THIS dumb and conservative.
- phoe-krk 7y agoDoes this bill protect against cases such as "my religious belief is that I am always correct on exams" that would otherwise award a steady stream of A+s?
- mfer 7y agoSabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist known for being outspoken, recently blogged about how it's been a long time since something new was theorized and then observed [1]. Some things scientists talk about have had experiments run and their failed to show the expected results. But, there are scientists still talking about them as if failed experiments had not happened. There are philosophers (who study logic, reason, and belief) who have noted that belief in unobserved things has crept into parts of science. When people talk about scientifically wrong I wonder if we're talking about observed and through the scientific method or the many things that don't have anything close to an observation. [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-physics-is-not-only-about.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-phys...
- wjsetzer 7y agoThis is not about defending new ideas, but about them trying to get Christianity into schools in an official capacity.
- mfer 7y agoWhat if we pulled all the belief systems out of public schools. Including the non-traditional religion ones held by by some scientists that are not observable. Is this about belief systems, traditional religions, or something else? I ask merely to try to get to the core issue.
- arcticfox 7y agoPublic school is K-12. All of the questions asked in public school have overwhelming supporting evidence. I went through a 4 year engineering degree and didn't really get close to the limits of our evidence in anything (without it being made completely clear that we don't know). So those concerns might be relevant in advanced physics education but they're very outside the wheelhouse for this discussion, and IMO serve as invalid whataboutism for the religious side of the argument.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
- Beltiras 7y agoChild abuse.
- spilk 7y agoI like how this basically enshrines in law that religion is factually incorrect
- gowld 7y agoNo, it enshrines in law that religion is an axiom system independent of the state's axiom system, like the parallel postulate. Unprovable things are not to be [edit: assumed] false.
- mattigames 7y agoFalse, a giant teapot behind the moon is bot unprovable and safely can be said to be false by anyone without further evidence needed.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoWhich is obviously nonsense if applied to mundane things. For example, your religion might say that insects have 4 legs. That is not "unprovable" just plain wrong.
- ageofwant 7y agoSo there is no lack of social commentary on the general state of society, but looking at America today I just see a empire in decline. Uncle Joe can say it better than me: https://youtu.be/35qF2hEefXg?t=1738 https://youtu.be/35qF2hEefXg?t=1738 Conservative 'Christian' politicians spend time and effort virtue signalling but do not execute the basic tenets of their faith. Basic practicalities matter less, nonsense and fluff chokes society to death. Of course California is not Ohio, and maybe Ohio is such a paradise compared to California that its people can afford their idiosyncrasies. I live in ANZACistan a vassal of America, and have just witnessed a colony of 600 Koalas burn to death. Something that was warned against for decades by scientists. So I send my thoughts and prayers to all creatures here in the Holocene, perhaps the Lord of Koala's will raise and save His people.
- vermontdevil 7y agoLooks at the Senate and Governor of Ohio Republican controlled Oh boy - this is going to pass for sure.
- ddgflorida 7y agoIt looks like local12 reached the wrong conclusion. I doubt they read the law in question.
- akerro 7y ago>I doubt they read the law in question. No, but they answered it according to their beliefs.
- vikingcaffiene 7y agoBesides the implied xenophobia here (the whole "war on Christianity" trope that's been getting trotted out by the far right), it's important to remember that an educated population is not in the best interests of the politicians who put trash like this law together. They _want_ you to be uninformed. They _want_ you to leave the big questions to a higher power. The stupider their constituency, the better. There are few better ways to control a large mass of people than to keep them stupid and then manipulate them emotionally. The only thing I find shocking about things like this is that there are people so devoid of anything I would call a moral compass that they are willing to go here.
- jacobush 7y agoI don't really disagree with you, it's just that I think it's more of the usual divide and conquer, and pander to your perceived constituency more than anything else.
- henryackerman 7y agoKeeping the general population uneducated is very beneficial for divide and conquer. It's far easier to divide stupid people who don't have any sense of critical thought.
- vikingcaffiene 7y agoOh we are in complete agreement there. I was just speaking to another facet of the issue. :)
- ubermonkey 7y agoExactly. 13 years ago, my friend R. said this in an IM chat we were having. I found it resonant enough that it's been one of my rotating .sig quotes ever since: "An educated public is exactly what they don't want . . . more people believe in angels than believe in long division." (R., for his part, may well read HN -- he's a Scala bigwig now.)
- champagnepapi 7y agoLOL Wonder what the long-term (10-20years) impacts of this will be? Will college's be less willing to accept students from Ohio? Perhaps resulting in more harsh economic conditions that result in bills like this and others passing in the first place. As well as a negative economic loop.
- danesparza 7y agoWell, I think it's no wonder that Ohio isn't a hotbed of engineering startups. And before you get all hot and bothered and tell me the one obscure company you know of in Ohio that is (kind of) technical ... I care just about as much as Ohio cares about science.
- justin66 7y agoThe effect of poorly funded public schools and of a system for funding public education largely from property taxes, which ensures that wealthier districts spend far more per child than less affluent districts, is infinitely more significant than something like this law. (Ohio's supreme Court has repeatedly over the years found our schools to be in violation of our constitution, which mandates public education, equal protection, etc etc)
- gowld 7y agoThis clickbait headline was refuted on Reddit. The law (dispayed in the artcle!) says that students cannot be punished and cannot be rewarded for making religious statements. It says they must be tolerated, and the non-religious portion of the answer is to be judged academically.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y agoSo what happens when the answer is wholly religious?
- diffeomorphism 7y agoThen you effectively submitted a blank page, congratulations. As a non-religious example: Q: Here are two functions describing supply and demand, where do they intersect? A: A short essay on capitalism. Yeah, you are not getting partial credit for that.
- lolive 7y agoNext step: allow teachers to ask for scientifically wrong questions. (like How long does it take to create a world?)
- PeterStuer 7y agoI think some essential context here is required. As I get from this article [1] it is not so much about 'anything goes' student answers needing to be accepted by a scientific teacher under the cop out of "according to my religion", as indeed careful wording of the questions on tests could easily prevent this as in “according to evolutionary theory”, it is about a creationist teacher marking student's creationist answers as good and being protected from scientific challenge by this law. This article states: "This is an extension of a strategy that creationists have been using in recent years. They are pushing for carefully crafted laws that sound like they are just promoting freedom, but are specifically designed to provide cover for teachers who want to introduce creationist materials in their classroom. Alternatively, under the guise of “standards” they can introduce laws carefully crafted to provide justification for not admitting evolution or climate change into the classroom." [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ohio-student-religious-liberties-act-of-2019/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ohio-student-r...
- hhas01 7y agoGood summary link. And yup, of course those “loopholes” are Features, not bugs. The folks crafting these edu laws are the same folks who craft the env and tax laws that enable billionaires and megacorps to shit in your drinking water and pay fuck all while you little people get it up the ass.
- ken 7y agoMods (dang?): the actual title (and content) is "Ohio House passes bill ...". The current HN title, "Ohio passes bill ...", makes it sound like this is already law.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- aezakmi 7y agoAnother episode of “Hacker” “News” willingly biting the bait just to have an excuse for some good old Christian bashing.
- fgnkj 7y agoAdequate in the post-truth world we live in.
- AdamSC1 7y agoSo if this WERE the case, I'd be against it. But, this is clickbait journalism at its finest. If we read the actual text of the law: > No school district board of education, As Passed by the House governing authority of a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the Revised Code, governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter 3326. of the Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory boarding school established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work. This suggests, that, you may not penalize OR REWARD a student because their work contains religious references. However, the work is still to be marked using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance. So if a student said that "The world was created 6000 years ago" on a science test, then they are still marked wrong. If they said "I believe the world was created 6000 years ago, but scientists say that it is 4.543 billion years old" then the student should be marked right for providing the correct answer, and their religious view should not be considered or weighted. Further, if a student was making a moral argument about a character in a novel for an English paper, if they referenced morality as coming from god, they shouldn't be penalized for that if the paper still is a strong well formed academic work that assesses the themes in the book. The other sections of this bill actually do a lot to protect the individual rights of anyone religious (whether Christian or otherwise) and atheists, by disallowing school boards to prevent you from practicing your beliefs and requiring that they allow time for prayer, meditation or reflection, as well as allowing students to opt-out of any such activity without repercussion. This law is being constantly painted as some draconian attempt to allow wrong-answers based on religious belief, and it simply doesn't even come close to doing that.
- vchak1 7y agoNo, my religion says that the current title is fine.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sunasra 7y agoLooks great decision. this allows students to put their opinion in front of everyone without any resistance in class or anywhere(including those who follow old theory just because they learned in school). For example, Darwin theory looks very illogical and nonsense to me as it is never proven, everything is based on assumptions. This will definitely gives extra space to students thoughts to connect the dots between religion and science
- mbostleman 7y ago3320.03: "[No one involved in running the school] shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work." Assuming this is the relevant section, does "grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance" allow this to be construed as "[allows] student answers to be scientifically wrong due to religion"? I don't think that the title expresses either the intent of the bill or it's actual verbiage. It actually seems like it was made up specifically to make people angry. But maybe I'm missing something in this section or maybe I missed another section as I only skimmed the whole document.
- quantified 7y agoWill medical schools be covered by this? Wouldn’t the state be forced to license doctors who followed a religion’s teachings on how to treat illness?
- XCabbage 7y agoWhat utter bullshit reporting. For context, this is a bill establishing religious and conscientious rights for students in state law, including things like an explicit right to refuse to participate in acts of collective worship at school, or in displays of patriotism. Its effect, unless I have missed something very important in my skim, is to protect students with minority religious beliefs (including atheism) from being bulldozed by the Christian majority. That's admirable! And it's necessary, given how many stories there are from conservative states in the US of students being unconstitutionally discriminated against by schools for their beliefs - for instance, for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The bit that this article seems to be alluding to is this: > Sec. 3320.03. No school district board of education, governing authority of a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the Revised Code, governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter 3326. of the Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory boarding school established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work. It's pretty clear that what this is saying is that teachers must assess work in a secular manner; that if, for instance, if in poetry class a religious student writes a poem about how their god helps them through life, the teacher can't penalise them because they don't approve of the student's religious beliefs but must instead mark the poem on its poetic merit. But Local12 decides to spin this as forbidding secular marking, instead, claiming that a student denying evolution for religious reasons can't be penalised for their scientifically wrong answer. Yet this is nonsense! The teacher is in fact required to mark the answers in a secular way - based on "substance" and "legitimate pedagogical concerns". The bill that they're saying forbids penalising this hypothetical evolution-denying students in fact requires penalising them. But instead, through dishonest journalism, we have a good, liberal, secular bill being reframed as Republican-imposed state theocracy. It's bullshit, and it creates terrible incentives. Why should Republican lawmakers in conservative states try to stop conservative schools oppressing minorities over differences of belief if their attempts to do so are just going to get spun by lying journalists as impositions of Christian theocracy like this? They'd've gained more, politically, by doing nothing to help.
- cm2187 7y agoMaybe I am missing something but I think the inflammatory paragraph is this: > Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work. I am not sure that it means that negating something that is scientifically proved is OK by "ordinary academic standard". Just that peppering a math paper with religious references shouldn't be penalized if the math is correct (not saying it is a good idea either). Also, as far as I can tell, Darwinism isn't scientifically proven anyway. It is just a very convincing theory compatible with all sorts of observations, and for which we don't have a better explanation. But it cannot really be falsified. I don't believe in creationism but I don't understand why people get so upset about not taking the theory of evolution for granted.
- crazydoggers 7y agoI love that this got flagged! Well done HN. The anti evolution crowd really got their pants in a tizzy trying to downvote everyone and turn this into an evolution debate. The fact this stuff doesn’t get flagged on other social media platforms is part of the problem with society right now. Companies need to start doing the right thing rather than follow the ad dollars and claim it’s all in the name of free speech.
- paulcarroty 7y agoMy school biology teacher said "Darwin theory was a pure garbage, we believe in God." After years I absolutely agree.
- mnm1 7y agoSo 2 + 2 = 5 because my god said so and therefore I'm right. And we wonder why Americans are considered so stupid. Many of them literally are.
- jdkee 7y agoOhio, hollowed out by years of de-industrialization and the loss of a middle-class future that depended on those jobs. Ohio, ground zero of the opioid epidemic that is shortening residents life spans. Ohio, a state that needs to attract world class intellect to compete on the world stage. And this is their solution.