Pecier Decierdo

Laugh at what is most sacred. Poke fun at what is most holy.

Author's Note: The author claims full personal responsibility for the confusion regarding the origin of this petition. Although the author knew well that the petition was not an initiative of UPSCA, he failed nonetheless in correcting other members of the Forum when they made the mistake of attributing it to the said campus organization. As a result, the author removed the name of the aforementioned organization in the introductory part of this article.

Sometimes, being nice to people is not being nice to the truth. Politeness must never be allowed to trample honesty. Offending by telling the truth is not being rude, keeping the truth from others is.

All creators are mothers, and all creation is like giving birth – painful, bloody, and dangerous.

...should I be open about my secular humanism to my students when I know well that my opinions will bear the seal of a teacher’s authority? After all, am I not a math and science teacher, not a social science teacher? Can’t I just be silent about my opinions, wear the robe of neutrality on sensitive issues and get on with science education? After all, a good science education is an avenue to progressive thinking, is it not? Perhaps there’s no need to use my influence as teacher to “preach” secular humanist values. Perhaps I can just teach science well and let the brightest among the kids find their own way to secular humanism.

Sometimes – actually oftentimes – we can get pretty sloppy and careless in our use of words. Take the use of the words “proof” and “evidence”. Proof and evidence, like speed and velocity, or theory and guess, have colloquial definitions that often lead to confusion. In order to smooth the progress of communication and avoid misunderstanding, these words have been given technical definitions in science and philosophy...For example, we prove a mathematical theorem instead of “finding evidences” for its truth, while we accumulate the evidence for a particular scientific theory but we never “prove” a theory. What’s the difference? The distinction is best illustrated by examples.