251–260 of 292 posts
Id encourage non-Indians to read up about India to have the cultural context we grow up in
India is a country of contradictions. My mom was a bio teacher, and obviously believes in the concept of evolution. But she's also spiritual and religious, and believes in creationist theories. She is somehow able to juxtapose both into creating a meaningful "story". Id encourage non-Indians to read up about India to have the cultural context we grow up in https://profcohen.net/reli113/uploads/texts/ramanujan.pdf
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It's also like bragging that you were a highly advanced civilization and got conquered/occupied by a bunch of dumb savages. There's a few more prominent countries that follow similar narratives and I agree with you that it sounds far more embarrassing than boasting. And if you're superior then why haven't you caught up or surpassed the others? I can understand if this is like As to why it works, I completely understa…
>>It's also like bragging that you were a highly advanced civilization and got conquered/occupied by a bunch of dumb savages. They explain that part by using the idea of 'traitors'. They are often the minorities of that land(whom they currently hate, and serve as a nice punching bag in the whole process, and in the overall scheme of hate process). The 'traitor' part is like a constant theme in these stories. Super ad…
India has been getting high on its own supply for a few years now. The narrative is that all knowledge originated in ancient Indian texts and was stolen by the west. Even the ISRO chief made a comment in this vein a few days back. Cultures that keep looking at imagined past glories, imo, are destined to become static and falter.
What countries don't look back at their past glories?
India’s obsession with the past has coincided with a period of anaemic real growth and widespread joblessness and unemployment.
Teachers will still be teaching (and this is probably what NCERT expects) these basic topics, because teaching the topics that remain won't be easy without them. My sibling was in grade 10 when COVID hit, some topics that had been removed from the final exam were still taught (although in a somewhat brief manner, considering this was online schooling). Indian politicians say a lot of dumb and pseudo-scientific garbag…
Kinda wild to see comments on here saying that India's slide into religious fascism isn't a big deal. "We/Indians don't politicize science" "There are many education authorities" I think this is only affecting a particular grade, but we already have seen the slow rollout of other efforts. You can't normalize politicians saying stuff like "our ancient civilization had nuclear energy". edit: surprised that I wasn't imm…
Most Indians are in fact happy about that slide, given that 80%+ of the country are Hindus. What a shame!
We have always had crackpots (sometimes crackpots in positions of power/influence) who spout nonsense on all flavors of political ideology. Unfortunately, media (traditional and social media) amplifies the nonsense.
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The fossil record isn't particularly good evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection because of the nature of fossilization. It requires special conditions and the overwhelming majority of creatures never fossilize. It is good evidence that creatures that used to be around aren't anymore though. Evolutionary biologists tend to be very defensive though. If you say to a particle physicist "hey the standa…
Evolution can be simulated in a computer as a reproducible experiment and I have even done it myself. Genetic algorithms, evolutionary computing, etc. So no.
(1) Evolution by natural selection
(2) Evolution guided by God
(3) God created the world 5000 years ago, but didn't want to leave evidence to leave open the question of faith
There are many others. You will find some more reasonable than others, and for others, it's the reverse. A big part of what I'd like my son to develop is empathy: being able to step into the mind of others, and understand what they think.
Even if "they're wrong" and we're fighting "them." If he were growing up in Ukraine, I'd like him to be able to understand the Russian soldiers' mindset. That fits into Sun Tzu / Understand Your Enemy.
In the scientific process I learned in high school, we have hypotheses confirmed with experiments (the current process adds things like preregistration and replication). For things which only happened in the past, we can't follow this process; it's fundamentally extrapolation.
Yes, we can observe and simulate evolution right now, but unless we invent a time machine, we can't know -- in a scientific sense -- that's what led to where we are today over millions of years. That's the whole micro-/macro-evolution debate.
Getting back to Sun Tzu, without understanding the intellectual basis, it's impossible for you to have a meaningful conversation with a well-educated young earth creationist. In a debate, they WILL win. You might be right, but your arguments won't be. In a discussion, you'll look like an idiot. Stepping up a level, politics will become more polarizing because your side will be painted as idiots to them, and vice-versa.
That's what I don't want for my child.
This makes no sense to me. This highly unlikely to be a political move. Science education is not political in India. Evolution, abortion, chemistry are not debated at all. This is more likely for the reasons to be innocuous. > In explaining its changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the conte…
I have no idea exactly how much this particular curriculum change is influenced by religion. But your assertion that science is depoliticized in India is very wrong. In 2018, the education minister declared Darwin was wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/23/indian-educati... This is just one of many such troubling incidents, including apparent indifference to the murder of pro-rationalism academics. Anec…
This was relayed on TikTok and other platforms to the point where some gov't official had to say that this is bullshit.
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Ah, you are not reading the situation right. The fascist elements have hijacked the term "science". Nowadays, it is science if you say that cowling protects against atomic radiation ([1]) or you say that ancient India had interplanetary travel ([2]) .. note that the latter was at an official track at the Indian Science Congress on science in ancient India. If the vedas said something, that is science. If the white ma…
It is wild to me that one of the next great world powers is shooting itself in the foot like this with regards to science education. Surely that runs counter to their goals, right?
Humanity goes extinct due to an inability to switch off the tribalism us-vs-them mechanism.
Petty nationalism steals humanity’s future for 10 points, Alex