To: Protagoras
"The advocation of one theory on a given subject, while not even acknowledging a different theory is clearly not designed to further intelligent inquiry."
When no other significant, scientific theory exists, I find it inappropriate to teach alternate theories. While I'll agree that the ToE is indeed a theory (in the scientific sense, not in the common usage of the word), it remains the best scientific theory we have to explain the vast array of living things currently observed. Those who do advocate the teaching of ID under the premise that it's wrong to just teach one "theory" (and they generally advocate such without an understanding of the difference between a scientific theory and their version of the word) are implicitly advocating the teaching of any and all crackpot ideas about how the ecosystem arrived at its current state. That includes Scientology and Raelianism (both forms of ID, and both major advocates of it) as much as it does Christian creationism and Norse mythology.
I find it as inappropriate to teach ID as factual or scientific in public schools (except within the confines of a philsophy or religious studies class) as I do to teach that Yggdrasil is the foundation of life as if it were scientific in some way.
Find me a truly scientific theory that performs as well as the ToE in explainations of the source of the modern Earth biological ecosystem and I'll gladly stand behind it as being entirely appropriate and necessary for presentation in the science class of every kid in the nation. I'm no ToE fanatic who can't be convinced otherwise, but I'm not about to give up a working, functional, testable, scientific theory for thinly-veiled religious beliefs cloaked in shaky mathematical modeling.
1,672 posted on
12/20/2005 9:31:41 PM PST by
NJ_gent
(Modernman should not have been banned.)
To: NJ_gent
Since I never advocated teaching it, perhaps you should go talk to someone who has and lecture them.
Government schools are the pits. And they are rife with agenda pushing leftists. Many of whom love ToE because to them it means they can push their secular religion of humanism on unsuspecting children and win recruits for their warped cause.
Abolish government schools, and the debate disappears.
1,687 posted on
12/20/2005 10:24:07 PM PST by
Protagoras
(Many people teach their children that Jesus is story character but Santa Claus is real.)
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