"It's a system of verifiable facts, an approach that must be preserved and fought for if American pupils are going to get the kind of education they need to complete in an increasingly global techno-economy"
Assphinctor says what?
Then why not elaborate on what those particular points of debate are?
"two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see creationism taught to public-school science pupils alongside evolution."
66% of Americans are in favor of using public tax dollars on teaching an unprovable, silly religious story? That there are that many ignorant people is pretty scary.
I agree with this but I also believe that the "theory of evolution" and all its tenets are just as flawed and specious and do not hold up under rigorous experimentation.
Flame away evolutionary acolytes!
Disheartening to see that someone here on FR is still brainwashed by the secular indoctrination of our public education system.
By the way, Darwin personally refuted many of his own claims later in life. And as for your "vast weight" of evidence, most of it still lies on the foundation that Darwin created and of course later refuted. So it seems, when you pile BS, it just stinks a little more.
"and it's unfair to burden children with pseudoscience to further an agenda that is more political than academic"
I certainly agree with this statement.
Ive never seen creationism and the theory of evolution as being mutually exclusive. There are plenty of verifiable facts in the bible but a literal story of Adam and Eve is rather problematic.
"established evolutionary theory"
This phrase says it all....case closed.
I like "Wired"! Also 2600. :-)
bump
It might help the argument if the author understood that evolution and natural selection are not synonymous terms.
>>It's a system of verifiable facts
LOL. Like the world is flat? Like nothing escapes from black holes? (Hawking was wrong on that one!)
Science is a system of facts, postulates, and hypothesis.
There is a difference between proven, verifiable facts and theory.
Evolution at best is a theory, one that is constantly shifting. While the consensus of the scientific community upholds the theory and gives it some credibility, it doesn't mean it's facutual or accurate.
This is not to say the theory is hogwash, or that there are not verifiable facts. However, to say Evolution is proven and verified is a gross misunderstanding of science.
Having said the idea of "intelligent design" has been co-opted by those who wish to rewrite scientific thoery according to scripture.
I believe there is a better case for an "intelligent design" than what is being put out right now. Unfortunatly the "bible alone" crowd has co-opted this phrase and by doing so have discredited an intelligent "intelligent design" theory.
This statement is absolutely false and in fact the opposite is true. The vast weight of scientific evidence and research supports intelligent design. Understand too that what has raised the heckles and upped the ante has been the tendency of the evolutionists to refer to their teaching as 'the fact of evolution', not 'the theory of evolution'. However, be that as it may, both have to be accepted on faith as no one can go back thousands, millions or billions of years to see what went on way back then. Here's the conclusion that I've come to as far as this subject for public and high schools. I don't think that it is necessary to teach either - and in fact neither should be taught as 'origins' has nothing to do with understanding the science of anything. Here's the human eye - here's how it works, here's how it relates to the rest of the body, the biology of it, differences from one eye to the next etc etc - where did it come from? Oh, that's a mystery and we don't need to go there to understand the eye. Ban both evolutionary and creation teaching from the public classroom. As a matter of fact, ban public education.
This editorialist has not demonstrated that he understands much more than standard-issue ideological rants. The key is in this sentence:
This "theory" doesn't spend much time pondering which intelligence did the designing.
This is a classic example of moving the goalposts: from a scientific standpoint it literally doesn't matter which intelligence did the designing. What this little gem really suggests is that Our Editor has an antipathy toward religion. That's his right, certainly, but it's not evidence that he "understands" anything other than his own biases (and possibly not even those).
A lot of the confusion springs from use of the word "theory" itself. Used in science, it signifies a maxim that is believed to be true, but has not been directly observed.
Not correct. For example, the "Theory of Relativity" remains a theory despite the fact that it was developed in response to phenomena that have been directly observed. To base a "theory" on things not directly observed is the exception, not the rule.
Since evolution takes place over millions of years, it would be inaccurate to say that man has directly observed it -- but it is reasonable to say that evolution is thoroughly supported by a vast weight of scientific evidence and research.
By that standard, "Intelligent Design" is a valid theory. It is supported by millenia of evidence -- as any good University Agriculture department could tell you. The age-old practices of Selective Breeding, and the newer sciences of genetic manipulation, are irrefutable proof that Intelligent Design is a viable theory. At least some of what we see can be explained just as easily, and perhaps more easily, by theorizing the actions of an intelligent agent.
The problem, of course, is that there is an a priori, if widely unacknowledged bias, against the presence of intelligent agents -- even though we humans play that role literally all the time.
All of this is not to say that evolutionary theory is wrong -- I would not make such a claim. Rather, it is merely to point out the foolishness of claiming that it is the only possible explanation. After all, we already know that Intelligent Design is reasonable, because we know that humans can, and do, use it.
I'll be honest, PH -- it's far below your usual standards to be posting ill-reasoned, unsigned newspaper editorials in support of your views.
Correct and macro evolution is not verifiable.
Suppose we look up at a clear night sky, and conclude that, because bright stars appear to be closer than dimmer stars (based on our experience that brighter street lamps our closer than dimmer street lamps), we need not invent telescopes to view them in detail and apply the parallax (basic trigonometry) to discern their true distances. That's just what advocates of ID would have us do.
Liberals figured out too many people were opposed to gun control, so they started preaching to us about gun safety. Now Creationists have their own less offensive, harder to immediately dismiss Intelligent Design to slip into our science curriculum!
Actually, come to think of it, I'd like to know more about this poll. Frankly, the numbers sound about as reliable as a Democrat exit poll. Who did they ask the question of? Sounds to me like more left-wing post-election hysteria. I think most open-minded people of faith think it's reasonable to have Creationism referenced in the classroom as an alternate belief system to evolutionary dogma, but I don't think they feel it needs to be a full-fledged parallel curriculum; for the simple reason that it doesn't require as much detailed explanation to grasp the theory.