Posted on 06/22/2003 5:29:39 PM PDT by Aric2000
In Cobb County, Ga., controversy erupted this spring when school board officials decided to affix "disclaimer stickers" to science textbooks, alerting students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."
The stickers were the Cobb County District School Board's response to intelligent design theory, which holds that the complexity of DNA and the diversity of life forms on our planet and beyond can be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent. The ID movement -- reminiscent of creationism but more nuanced and harder to label -- has been quietly gaining momentum in a number of states for several years, especially Georgia and Ohio.
Stickers on textbooks are only the latest evidence of the ID movement's successes to date, though Cobb County officials did soften their position somewhat in September following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. In a subsequent policy statement, officials said the biological theory of evolution is a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other, religious teachings.
Surely, few would begrudge ID advocates their views or the right to discuss the concept as part of religious studies. At issue, rather, is whether ID theory, so far unproven by scientific facts, should be served to students on the same platter with the well-supported theory of evolution.
How the Cobb County episode will affect science students remains uncertain since, as the National Center for Science Education noted, the amended policy statement included "mixed signals."
But it's clear that the ID movement is quickly emerging as one of the more significant threats to U.S. science education, fueled by a sophisticated marketing campaign based on a three-pronged penetration of the scientific community, educators and the general public.
In Ohio, the state's education board on Oct. 14 passed a unanimous though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But the board's ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."
In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."
Undaunted by tens of thousands of e-mails it has already received on the topic, the state's education board is now gamely inviting further public comment through November. In December, Ohio's Board of Education will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels.
Meanwhile, ID theorists reportedly have been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey and other states as well as Ohio and Georgia.
What do scientists think of all this? We have great problems with the claim that ID is a scientific theory or a science-based alternative to evolutionary theory. We don't question its religious or philosophical underpinnings. That's not our business. But there is no scientific evidence underlying ID theory.
No relevant research has been done; no papers have been published in scientific journals. Because it has no science base, we believe that ID theory should be excluded from science curricula in schools.
In fact, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world, passed a resolution this month urging policy-makers to keep intelligent design theory out of U.S. science classrooms.
Noting that the United States has promised to "leave no child behind," the AAAS Board found that intelligent design theory -- if presented within science courses as factually based -- is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and undermine the integrity of U.S. science education. At a time when standards-based learning and performance assessments are paramount, children would be better served by keeping scientific information separate from religious concepts.
Certainly, American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints and the scientific community is no exception. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, science and conceptual belief systems should not be co-mingled, as ID proponents have repeatedly proposed.
The ID argument that random mutations in nature and natural selection, for example, are too complex for scientific explanation is an interesting -- and for some, highly compelling -- philosophical or theological concept. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution, and it isn't based on science. In sum, there's no data to back it up, and no way of scientifically testing the validity of the ideas proposed by ID advocates.
The quality of U.S. science education is at stake here. We live in an era when science and technology are central to every issue facing our society -- individual and national security, health care, economic prosperity, employment opportunities.
Children who lack an appropriate grounding in science and mathematics, and who can't discriminate what is and isn't evidence, are doomed to lag behind their well-educated counterparts. America's science classrooms are certainly no place to mix church and state.
Alan I. Leshner is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science; www.aaas.org
Already answered you on that one, but you're determined to stay in the slow-learner class by not reading what has been posted already.
Now, almost all of the data you have been reviewing [But not you, Timmy! How many of the preceding links did you even click on?] were unknown in Darwin's day. For all the evidence that they did have, there were a lot of holes. Darwin et al. fearlessly predicted based upon the already-outlined tree of life that certain kinds of "intermediates" would be found. Precambrian life of any sort, legged whales, legged sirenians, ape-human intermediates, etc. Other intermediates, amphibian-bird mixes for instance, violate the presumed evolutionary scenario and are not predicted.This prediction is a certain kind of inference. Creationists who believed that God on certain days created certain "kinds" scoffed then and denied that such an inference from the then-available data was valid at all. They began to mockingly ask for "the missing link," which is exactly how you, who bill yourself as a scientist, opened the discussion.
The history since then has filled in gap after gap in the areas where evolution says the intermediates have to have existed. The people who will not make certain inferences because God will burn them in Hell for so doing still will not make them. Nevertheless, the ground under their feet has shrunk to nothing compared to the situation in 1859.
So, you'll be back tomorrow dumb as a stump and trolling for suckers, no one today having succeeded in making you see what has been posted to you. Tomorrow, of course, you will still be wasting people's time by "demanding to see" the evidence.
BwaHaHaHa!!!
Hey, when evolutionists cannot contradict a statement they just give a link, hoping no one will read it. Anyone can give a link and claim it proves their point. There are billions of pages on the internet and you can always find at least one that will say what you want. This is a discussion, discuss my statement.
It is evolutionists which are always trying to re-define science. Without facts, science is garbage. Models are themselves garbage. By tweaking a model you can 'prove' whatever you like. That is not what science is about. Science is about knowledge, factual knowledge, not about models and fairy tales which is what evolutionists want to turn it into. It is about the speed of light is x and the force of gravity is y, about facts, not storytelling. That is why science has accomplished so much, because it builds upon the facts already discovered to gain new knowledge, build practical applications and solve problems.
enjoy!
Timmy's "demand" will be the same simple discourtesy tomorrow that it was today. He has no intent of paying the slightest attention to what is furnished. As I explained on that earlier thread to Darwin_is_passe:
Just a few posts, and we've already gone far enough to see how dumb your little dumbshow is. You issued a challenge for the production of transitional fossil evidence from the fossil record. This challenge is meant to fool the naive lurker into believing that something to be reasonably expected in that record is actually missing. In fact the fossil record is full of extinct life forms which outline branching progressions from the long ago few and simple to the extant many and varied.Your dodge is not in the evidence, but in your simple refusal to draw any inference at all therefrom ...
I was beginning to forget what real critical thought looked like.
The strange fossils that are found consist of:
1. Mammoths with undigested food standing upright in ice.(wonder if they were stuck in a snow drift because a forty day blizzard trapped them).
2. Fish fossils that are in the process of eating, with a little fish still in it's fossilized mouth.(wonder if the mud slidding off the continent buried the poor guy trying to get a meal).
3. Fish fossils giving birth when they were buried.
4. 10 feet deep dead clam shell layers in the closed position. (Clam shells open when the clam dies, the muscle relaxes).
5. Petrified trees in the upright position crossing through multiple layers of rock.
For more information on these strange occurances try clicking here.
Vade, we skim your sources because we have read them, or others like them, countless times. You think because we aren't convinced to come around to your simple idea, then we either won't read them or are simply too stupid to learn.
Sorry. I have a pretty good understanding of this stuff and won't waste my time trying to reason with a simpleton who puts out bird to dinosaur, or mutated plants or fruitflies, or the peppered moth hoax, or those who buy every Nebraska man that comes along. We ain't stupid. We just ain't buying.
Hmmmm... You may want to do a bit of research on Kent Hovind before using him as a reference.
Oh, well done! You have now superbly demonstrated both your astounding ignorance and your intolerance of correcting it. That's good to know for our future reference - Darwin Central will be informed. Oh, and, congratulations on joining ALS on the Idiots Crusade.
Feel free to wallow in your pitifully inadequate self-image as the final arbiter of what is and isn't current evolutionary theory (at least to yourself, that is). Revel in it for all to see and entertain us with your further puerile assertions!
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