South Carolina standards?

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley came out this week in favor of rolling back Common Core standards in her state during a speech delivered Thursday to the Greenville County Republican Women’s Club.

In part, here’s what she had to say:

We don’t ever want to educate South Carolina children like they educate California children. We want to educate South Carolina children on South Carolina standards, not anyone else’s standards.

and adding:

We are telling the legislature: Roll back Common Core. Let’s take it back to South Carolina standards.

What standards? According to an annual report from Education Week that ranks state education across various fields, South Carolina was 26th in overall performance, with exactly the same ranking as the national average at 76.9. In 2013, South Carolina ranked 40th in the “Chance for Success” category and in 2013, the state was 45th in the nation in kindergarten- through 12th grade achievement.

The state adopted Common Core standards back in 2010, so not only would nullifying the new curriculum likely deal a blow for education in a state that has yet to achieve anything resembling widespread success, much less excellence, it would waste a lot of money already spent at the local level implementing the standards. As the article pointed out, Anderson School District 2 has allocated $350,000 in taxpayer money toward Common Core standard implementation. Many other districts have no doubt followed suit. I wonder how Haley would explain to her constituents how squandering resources is going to further education in the state.

I read the news today, oh boy

According to a recent poll, half of Americans believe God has something to do with the outcome of the Super Bowl.

Scary levels of stupidity here:

Two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl, half of American sports fans say they believe God or a supernatural force is at play in the games they watch, according to a new survey.

That percentage includes Americans who pray for God to help their team (26 percent), think their team has been cursed (25 percent) or more generally believe God is involved in determining who wins on the court or in the field (19 percent). Overall, half of Americans fall into one of these groups, according to the survey Public Religion Research Institute released Tuesday.

poll

Read more here.

Things atheists don’t believe

Through Twitter I came across this 2010 blog post titled, “12 Things Atheists Believe About God,” which was apparently written with the intention of giving nonbelievers a “gotcha” moment and giving the blog’s readers a good affirmation of their own beliefs.

Here is the list:

1. He’s a figment of our imagination. (John 20:27)
2. He’s not real. (Psalm 14:1)
3. He’s a liar. (Numbers 23:19)
4. He didn’t create the world. (Genesis 1:1)
5. He wasn’t born a Man. (Luke 2:7)
6. He didn’t live a sinless life. (Hebrews 4:15)
7. He didn’t die on the cross for sins. (John 19:30)
8. He didn’t rise again from the dead. (John 20:18)
9. He won’t be returning to earth. (Acts 1:11)
10. They won’t be standing before Him for judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)
11. He isn’t named Jesus. (Matthew 1:21)
12. They are Him. (Atheists are “god.”) (Genesis 3:5)

First off, let’s take the title, “12 Things Atheists Believe About God.” Atheists believe zero things about God because they don’t believe he exists, so to suggest anything further is to beg the question. By making the statement that atheists must believe some subset of things about God, then, presupposes, not only that God exists, but that he has defined characteristics and that he acted upon the world in ways in which nonbelievers do not agree.

In short — and I don’t need much space to eviscerate this argument — the buck stops concretely at the statement of nonbelief, or at point number two above. As point two reads, God is not real. From that, God cannot be a liar since liars must necessarily exist in order for them to act deceitfully. The rest of the points just continue the question begging ad nauseam right up to point 11.

Point 12, however, makes a different kind of claim, asserting that atheists are god — little “G” this time. This is unusual, but I’m pretty sure I know where it’s going. Christians often claim that since nonbelievers reject Christ and his assumed transformative power to change their lives, atheist are actually naming themselves as gods of their own lives, thus eschewing the need for the classical god as a kind of humanistic power grab. But again, this is begging the question. Atheists question the very idea of a god in the first place and generally embrace their own humanness, not as any type of self-described god, just as people.

On the upcoming Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate

Apparently, the nonbelieving community is in an uproar over Bill Nye agreeing to debate creationist kook job Ken Ham. I don’t think Nye does himself any favors by agreeing to this, and it’ll be mostly theater in any case, with Ham trotting out his tired and long-since debunked refrain on creationist “theory,” and Nye futilely making the case from science to someone who doesn’t respect the scientific method in the first place. It seems to me that debating someone who has long since thrown reason, if he ever had it in the first place, out the door partially legitimizes an argument that doesn’t deserve an ounce of respect or consideration in the first place.