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
Because it is highly improbable that multiple seperate origins would all have the same 4 amino acids in their DNA/RNA out of all the amino acids available
2. Why is the environment never evolving dynamicaly but is static with Darwin's theory? Hence Darwin does not reflect relativistic aspects of evolution and social adaptation, let alone super adaptation through calculation.
3. While quantum mechanics show a change in speed of the particle as its position is observed, so does animal behavior change when it feel observed or not. This form of unknown and behavior of adaptation to the unknown is not even touched upon the primitive deterministic naive Darwinian approach.
Because you are reading 19th Century Darwinian Evolution, not current theory.
4. And while a tree branch grows thanks to a DNA program, in chaotic manner with a strange attractor, so has evolution seemed to follow a strange attractor and a program. The "DNA" of ID has not been found, but it can be programmed in a computer to create intelligently evolving machines, just as regular full chaotic evolution can be programmed too but with lesser effectiveness.
I think that is a matter of perception, not actuality, akin too the Anthropic Principle in physics.
So9
BWHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
That's all true, but it's nothing new. Unfortunately.
If only all mankind could understand this simple fact, the arrogance of science and man in general is actually laughable.
The one thing I know is how little I know.
Festival of ignorance proving that civilization is doomed placemarker.
"Winning the argument for design without identifying the designer yields, at best, a sketchy origins model. Such a model makes little if any positive impact on the community of scientists and other scholars. Such a model does not lend itself to verification, nor can it make specific, credible predictions. On both counts, scholars, particularly scientists, would be reluctant to acknowledge the concept’s viability and give it serious attention. Nor does this approach offer them spiritual direction."
"As I speak on university campuses and elsewhere, I see a larger challenge to Christianity than naturalism: the challenge of a vague or idiosyncratic spirituality, faith detached from objective truth and legitimate spiritual authority. In fact, virtually all forms of spirituality except Christianity seem in vogue with the new “spiritual” people, who tend to be less receptive than nontheists to the Christian gospel. In other words, leading a nontheist to a belief in an “intelligent designer” could do more spiritual harm than good."
Scientific process is not the oracle of truth. We often apply science to a belief (hypothesis (and some have been pretty dumb)) and try to verify the belief, the fact that the belief is going through the process does not make it truth or fact.
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