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Science, Religion and Politics
It is common to mock the lack of scientific literacy in allegedly educated countries; well, Australia itself can join in with a bit of navel-gazing. The Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies have conducted a survey on scientific literacy. The results were not pretty; three in ten Australians believe that the earliest humans co-existed with dinosaurs, and almost the same claimed that it takes but a day for the earth to travel around the sun. Fortunately 80% say that science education is essential or very important to the Australian economy.
Despite sufferin a headache that plagued me throughout the weekend managed to stumble my way through giving an address at the Unitarians on Faith, Deeds and Salvation, where I concluded with a progressive version of these oft-reactionary concepts. People apparently liked it, however I found it very tiring. I had to cut huge swathes from the work which dealt with minor and often slightly odd doctrinal differences from Protestant sects and I felt I didn't discuss the East Asian approaches sufficiently (especially Taoistic religions). After the service was the Unitarian Philosophy Forum where Rick Barker - from my prompting - provided an entertaining discussion on the draft sequence of the Neaderthal genome which suggests that there is admixture between Homo Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens - but not the sub-Saharan African clines.
Had a prior booking after the Forum meeting (namely, another episode of GURPS Krononauts) and as such couldn't attend the second meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby, which has initiated its second campaign, this one in favour of ending the National Schools Chaplaincy Program (your tax dollars at work). There is a fear among religious conservatives that the NSCP may be "secularised" when Labor is re-elected, and with some coalition MPs expressing concern. Less than 2.5% of chaplains have appropriate qualifications in counselling or social work and the Australian Psychological Association has some strong words on the subject. On a related topic - and getting back to the first paragraph; religious fundamentalists conducting religious instruction classes in Queensland in state schools have come out with predictable results.
Despite sufferin a headache that plagued me throughout the weekend managed to stumble my way through giving an address at the Unitarians on Faith, Deeds and Salvation, where I concluded with a progressive version of these oft-reactionary concepts. People apparently liked it, however I found it very tiring. I had to cut huge swathes from the work which dealt with minor and often slightly odd doctrinal differences from Protestant sects and I felt I didn't discuss the East Asian approaches sufficiently (especially Taoistic religions). After the service was the Unitarian Philosophy Forum where Rick Barker - from my prompting - provided an entertaining discussion on the draft sequence of the Neaderthal genome which suggests that there is admixture between Homo Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens - but not the sub-Saharan African clines.
Had a prior booking after the Forum meeting (namely, another episode of GURPS Krononauts) and as such couldn't attend the second meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby, which has initiated its second campaign, this one in favour of ending the National Schools Chaplaincy Program (your tax dollars at work). There is a fear among religious conservatives that the NSCP may be "secularised" when Labor is re-elected, and with some coalition MPs expressing concern. Less than 2.5% of chaplains have appropriate qualifications in counselling or social work and the Australian Psychological Association has some strong words on the subject. On a related topic - and getting back to the first paragraph; religious fundamentalists conducting religious instruction classes in Queensland in state schools have come out with predictable results.
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http://creationmuseum.org/
Which pisses me off to no end. Instead of believing that dinosaurs bones were buried to test people's faith, now they are touting that they coexisted harmoniously with humans in the Garden of Eden. Somehow, I'd have thought getting a raptor on the Ark to be tricky in the least.
My biggest issue with this is that dinosaurs are a really cool 'gateway drug' to science with little kids. It gets them thinking about a world bigger than themselves. You can use dinos to not only teach evolution, but geology and physics and astronomy as well. So to just lump them in with 'on the sixth day, God created chickens and KFC...', well, that just irritates the crap out of me. =P
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