On 4/21/2011 3:30 PM, Warp wrote:
>    In principle, if they succed, it could not only sabotage the teaching
> of evolution, abiogenesis and even cosmology, but could possibly cause
> a chain reaction with all kinds of other fields of science. After all,
> if one pseudoscientific hypothesis is taught at schools in order to "teach
> the controversy", what stops other pseudoscientific hypotheses from doing
> the same? Perhaps homeopaths, faith healers, anti-vaccination people and
> germ theory denialists will start demanding to "teach the controversy" to
> medical students, holocaust denialists and conspiracy theorists will start
> demanding to "teach the controversy" in history class, flat earthers will
> start demanding to "teach the controversy" in geography class, and so on.
>
Too late, some colleges have "alternative medicine" programs in place, 
as additions to the existing medical education (or, in a few cases, as a 
different curriculum, where they decided to just make money printing 
diplomas, instead of the almost as lame, "People seem to like it, so 
lets sell it!", BS which has led to it sneaking in at other places. 
Mind, you could also look at some so called colleges, like Liberty U, 
which don't even make a pretense at teaching *anything* useful too.

Not too sure about geology, unless you include "the flood produced the 
Grand Canyon", which I am sure Liberty U teaches, but.. revisionist 
history in the US is only "revisionist", when you contradict the 
existing mangled history that they made up to explain what happened in 
each state (hint, you get a different version of even things like the 
Civil War, depending on if you are in a few southern states, versus... 
every other state...)

In short, this BS is already happening. And, as I stated upthread, part 
of the problem is a general refusal to reject certain redefinitions of 
terms, or properly explain why they are invalid definitions, such that 
we have no word other than theory in science to describe theories, but 
90% of the people in the country think the word means, "I pulled this 
out of my ass to explain something."

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