Posted on 09/22/2006 2:09:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Free Republic is currently running a poll on this subject:
Do you think creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science classes in secondary public schools as a competing scientific theory to evolution?You can find the poll at the bottom of your "self search" page, also titled "My Comments," where you go to look for posts you've received.
I don't know what effect -- if any -- the poll will have on the future of this website's science threads. But it's certainly worth while to know the general attitude of the people who frequent this website.
Science isn't a democracy, and the value of scientific theories isn't something that's voted upon. The outcome of this poll won't have any scientific importance. But the poll is important because this is a political website. How we decide to educate our children is a very important issue. It's also important whether the political parties decide to take a position on this. (I don't think they should, but it may be happening anyway.)
If you have an opinion on this subject, go ahead and vote.
This is a serious point. Where are the parents in all this? Has modern conservatism come around to the point of view that parents are no longer willing or able to teach discipline and morality to their children, such that it has become the responsibility of the school system?
School is for education. Children need to have a moral sense and self-discipline instilled in them before they get to school. By they time they are in secondary school, it's too late anyway. "Teaching the controversy" is not going to do anything for a child with no discipline. They're just going to ignore it along with everything else.
Good work identifying one of the most stupid posts of all time.
It is possible to find all manner of objectional quotes from people in science, government, and industry. There seems to be the implication of a grand conspiracy among science to persecute Christians. I suggest again this is mildly paranoid. Don't take the philosophy of a few people as representative of the whole. Science does not teach that science all the answers. Dawkins is allowed to have his opinion, however objectionable it may be. But he does not speak for me and he does not speak for science as a whole.
Why speculate about a threat that ‘could’ exist when there is an obvious threat that actually does exist?
You could start with post #735.
There is no paranoia about theism destroying science.
Do you believe religious belief ultimately comes from stupidity or just ignorance?
Of course not. There are vast numbers of religious people working in theoretical and applied sciences. There's a few atheists, but so what? There are Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sihks, as well. There's no paranoia about this because science and technology work no matter what your theism may be.
I don't know where that came from, and I don't know how to answer it.
Creationists are unable to destroy science, science will always be around, it is far too useful for that to be otherwise.
But, the fact is, if the US schools are taken over by a bunch of creationists, and our children are taught that science is whatever they wish it to be, then later on, we are no longer going to be one of the top scientific countries in the world.
It will destroy us as an industrialized modern society.
Kind of like what Islam is doing to the middle east.
Science is science, and to change the definition to suit some religious agenda makes it useless, and will destroy our industrial base, as we dumb down our children even more.
Or want the geologic record compressed into a 6,000 year timespan?
Or want the geologic record compressed into a 6,000 year timespan?
Geologic? You can't even compress the archaeological record into 6,000 years!
Is Roland F. Hirsch a creationist destroying science?
What did that article have to do with what I stated in my last post.
Science is science, not what some creationist driven by a religious zealotry wishes it to be.
Creationism is not science, nor is ID, to teach them beside an actual scientific theory, is changing the definition of science to young minds that don't know better.
Again, science is science, not what you wish science would be.
There are two parts to what is called Evolution, the fact and the theory.
The fact of evolution is what I posted to you earlier, that allele frequencies within a population varies through the difference between the number of successful offspring and the number of unsuccessful offspring. If you have a population with a good allele given the environment the frequency change can be predicted mathematically. It's just a number game. Easy to visualize and easy to understand.
This change in allele frequency has been observed many times, both in the lab and in the field.
The Theory of Evolution, or more properly the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, is a number of tenets, or sub-theories, that explain how the 'fact' of evolution works - which mechanisms cause which outcome - and suggests falsifying tests and predictions that can potentially disprove the sub-theory.
This is true of all theories.
It is the job of the education system to prepare the students as well as possible for entrance into the world of work. To do that they have to provide the students with material that is valuable to potential employers. In the arena of science the material provided must be up to date to with the most recent understanding of the physical world available. What is considered to be the best understanding, and the material that needs to be taught is determined by the consensus of scientists working in the field.
So far that group of people, scientists, have provided for us the computer you are using (which by the way would not work without understanding of quantum physics, a science where it is impossible to directly observe particles in action), the car you drive and all the technologies within it, your TV, the paint on the walls of your house, the flooring you walk on, the roads you travel, the bridges you cross, the fountains you watch while in Las Vegas. Science has contributed to every artifact you see, touch, and in some cases eat. It has enables us to produce those things by using the exact same methods used to determine the validity of the tenets of the SToE.
Would you really prefer to stop providing students with the most useful information available?
I was just perusing that site a bit more, and I see all of the usual suspects.
Dembski, Behe, etc, the "I can't figure it out, so it is irreducibly complex" crowd.
The whole bottom line of this is that they make assumptions, and then expect you to take those assumptions at face value, because they are "scientists".
The discovery institute has never had a paper peer reviewed, so they have created the ISCID to peer review for them.
Again, this is not the way science works.
ID is nothing more then a religious/political movement, it is not scientific, no matter how many organizations they create to peer review themselves.
They hold high positions at universities and write books that are required reading in some universities.
Look, The National Center for Science Education gives teachers lessons on how to ‘reconcile’ science and religion. Think about that… The NCSE is against religious views in science if they include any intelligent design but yet they advocate the mixing of the two according to the rules they have established.
Certainly it is. The tenets of the SToE can currently only be applied to life. This is because of a very simple idea - descent with modification. Anything that is not subject to descent with modification is outside the SToE.
I doubt anyone is claiming the BB was subject to descent with modification, and we know too little at this time about pre-life to claim they were subject to descent with modification, although most believe that will change in the future.
I have a question for you. Do we need to know where or how life began to study the relationship between organisms based on fossils, morphology and DNA, or can those mechanisms be studied independently from ultimate origins?
If you believe we cannot study those relationships without knowing ultimate origins, then how is it that we have done so for the past 150 years or so?
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