Treating indigenous myths as science?

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Of course, Krauss has a presence in the Epstein Files (eerie "dah-doo-doo-doo-doo" whistling theme in the background). So postcolonial morality and justice quickly get this privileged crusader and his complaints and Western bias cancelled or negated just from that alone. Adios, Lawrence! ;)
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Treating myths as science
https://quillette.com/2026/03/26/treating-myths-as-science-education-canada/

EXCERPTS: In the early 2000s, I spent much of my time over the course of several years fighting the incursion of religion into science classes in the United States. At the time, the main target of religious fundamentalists was evolution. [...] Let’s fast forward 25 years [...] A colleague recently forwarded me the current B.C. high school science curriculum for grades nine and twelve. It includes an embarrassing amalgam of religious gobbledygook and anti-science rhetoric..

[...] You may wonder how religious fundamentalism could so effectively creep into the curriculum in a progressive place like British Columbia. The answer is simple. The religious nonsense being inserted into the curriculum has nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism; rather, it is Indigenous religious nonsense. And in the current climate, Indigenous “knowledge” is held to a different standard from scientific knowledge—or, rather, to no standard at all.

[...] To be clear: This postmodern perspective isn’t science. It is, at best, anti-science. Cultural and intuitive beliefs are—and should be—irrelevant to our understanding of the cosmos. Science has taught us to conform our beliefs to the reality of nature, as determined by falsifiable evidence, not the other way around. It is fine to teach Indigenous mythological storytelling in a social science or history class but it is not appropriate to teach it as if it is science... (MORE - details)

RELATED: Decolonization of knowledge
 
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Wish Krauss had opted not to defend Epstein after his first 2008 conviction, but people will refuse to believe the worst about a friend, against the evidence. I don't know the details about the sexual misconduct allegations at ASU, but I'd guess his prior record of Epstein defense did not help him one bit. None of this should detract from his good work critiquing slop science and anti-science but of course it does. He's kind of a Woody Allen (good films, poor life choices) of science. His book on the physics of Star Trek is great fun. Generally, I dislike all the adversarial stuff between postcolonialism and science, and the fog of such culture war obscures both the universality of science and the authentic wisdom that was present in indigenous cultures. (Just because ancestors thought the stars were souls, or the world rested on the back of a lizard, doesn't mean they weren't clever to peel off willow bark and boil out salicylic acid for analgesia)
 
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