Posted on 08/04/2005 10:31:34 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
WASHINGTON - "President Bush, in advocating that the concept of 'intelligent design' be taught alongside the theory of evolution, puts America's schoolchildren at risk," says Fred Spilhaus, Executive Director of the American Geophysical Union. "Americans will need basic understanding of science in order to participate effectively in the 21st century world. It is essential that students on every level learn what science is and how scientific knowledge progresses."
In comments to journalists on August 1, the President said that "both sides ought to be properly taught." "If he meant that intelligent design should be given equal standing with the theory of evolution in the nation's science classrooms, then he is undermining efforts to increase the understanding of science," Spilhaus said in a statement. "'Intelligent design' is not a scientific theory." Advocates of intelligent design believe that life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own and must therefore be the work of a designer. That is an untestable belief and, therefore, cannot qualify as a scientific theory."
"Scientific theories, like evolution, relativity and plate tectonics, are based on hypotheses that have survived extensive testing and repeated verification," Spilhaus says. "The President has unfortunately confused the difference between science and belief. It is essential that students understand that a scientific theory is not a belief, hunch, or untested hypothesis."
"Ideas that are based on faith, including 'intelligent design,' operate in a different sphere and should not be confused with science. Outside the sphere of their laboratories and science classrooms, scientists and students alike may believe what they choose about the origins of life, but inside that sphere, they are bound by the scientific method," Spilhaus said.
AGU is a scientific society, comprising 43,000 Earth and space scientists. It publishes a dozen peer reviewed journal series and holds meetings at which current research is presented to the scientific community and the public.
You have restored my faith in Bush. His answer is intelligently designed. I could not imagine a more diplomatic answer to a loaded question. Obviously he was being set up to look like a yahoo.
I think you are obsessing ove nomenclature. There are sciences that are mostly experimental in practice, and there are sciences that spend most of their efforts trying to reconstruct the past.
Your assertion that some kinds of science don't exist, or aren't REAL SCIENCE is just your personal opinion.
Labels are just labels. They aren't reality.
This guy has the audacity to lump the philosophy of evolution together with relativity and plate tectonics as if they are of equal value and certainty. If he cannot understand the lack of certitude that attends to conjectural extrapolations from a static record, why should anyone consider him to be a representative of "mainstream" science? Regardless, I don't think Galileo was your typical "mainstream" scientist in his day, either.
"Puts schoolchildren at risk." What unmitigated poppycock! If anything puts them at risk it is teachers who do not know the difference between science and philosophy.
Noodly Appendage placemarker
Sceptical people take scientific reports in newspapers with a grain of salt and wait for the next week's edition where today's report may well be contradicted. Discerning readers and listeners don't read Hairy Potty books and don't hail Eddie Van Halen as this century's Mozart!
How do you know, Fester? You spent previous threads arguing that as an ordinary man, you don't have the wherewithal to understand basic physics. If you can't be persuaded that the speed of light is something anyone can measure, how can you possibly argue that relativity is better supported than evolution?
Okay, good point. ;-)
What nonsense. Now your whole argument about ID not being a science falls apart.
What am I to expect, that you would have me take Psychology, Sociology or Political Science and valid scientific disciplines? Seems so. I not obsessing about anything, I am being precise, and you are dodging the issue. You perfectly well know the qualification that I am giving to "real" science, and in fact your whole argument depends on them. I am pointing out that when looks at closely, they do not obtain even in the case that you put forward.
This is just the problem with your argument: you wish to make the claims to surety of "hard science," but reject its epistemology.
I will also point out that when pressed you resort to what I would call "psychological carping" about my "obsessing" (I do not actually think that they are personal attacks, but I am waiting for that one.)
This really has no place here, and and is intellectually dishonest. My point of view is certainly not original but a common critique even inside of "the scientific community," or at least in the faculty lounge.
Again, I think the notion of "Computer Science" or "Earth Science" is apt (though I will admit that the crack about "Library science" was a cheap shot.)
The article you link in #209 reminds me of a similar situation in the art world. Hardly anyone rembers that the French Impressionist painters were the art world's the rebels in 19th century France, rejected by the art establishment. Well, today it's the post-modernists who are the art world's establishment. and who vilify anyone questioning their (wacky) post-modernist theory of art. Karen Finley? High art! Piss Christ? High art! Subway graffitti? High art!
I have openly and freely admitted that I take reports regarding the speed of light as truthful and accurate insofar as science is able to measure and report the same, moreso than reports regarding the age of the earth and the universe. Relativity remains the object of current obervation. Unobserved, unrecorded history does not. It's that simple.
I am not surprised you and your "mainstream" representatives fail to distinguish which scientific disciplines are more capable of certitude than others, nor am I surprised at your ongoing failure to distinguish or acknowledge the difference between science and philosophy.
= as valid scientific disciplines
Far as I'm concerned, it's the guy who wants the total monopoly on information flow who's the risk.
But you offer no evidence of this "Intelligence" Where is the measurable and quantifiable evidence of it?
If I put a 2x4 across a couple of saw horses I can measure the force it takes to break it. Knowing the strength of the material and using Statics. A structure can be designed that will keep you sheltered and won't collapse on your head.
If I put a voltage across a piece of Silicon a current will flow. If I understand how it react electrically when manufactured with certain impurities (dopants). We produce the processors and equipment that we are conversing on.
Science is a tool we use to try and understand our world. And to use that knowledge to build a better tomorrow. Yes every scientist, engineer learns that there is an awful lot they don't know. But we can't run around acceptiung things based upon unsuported claims, wether it be a device that increases your gas milage by 50% or ID. It has to be subjected to the same degree of critcal analysis. Hence we need to know how it works before we can concider if the theory of operation is plausible and ideally reproducible.
ID could be a science, but it has yet to publish a research program that makes sense as science. To do so it would have to make some sort of prediction that could, in principle, be tested.
It could, for example, predict that no functional component part of a bacterial flagellum would be found in nature without the full assembly. It could argue against the Darwinian notion that things selected for one function can, through variation and selection, become part of a larger system and lose their original function.
I disagree completely.
The scientific issue of evolution began 200 years ago with the observation that the earth was obviously older than Genesis claimed. The prejudice of the day was that the Bible was literally true, and many scientists sought to prove it's truth. But the evidence said otherwise, and still does, and that's what science has concluded.
The Theory of evolution, which predated Darwin, has been researched innumerable times with no real evidence against it whatever.
The "ID movement", an outgrowth of the 70's "Creation Science" crowd, does no science (I don't doubt because they know they would fail). Their stated methodology is to pick at regular scientists work, searching for quotes, apparent contradictions, and making philosophical arguments in favor of ID. The lead ID organization, the Discovery Institute, joins in lawsuits, and conducts press releases. It is a political organization, not scientific.
The two "sides" are in no way similar. They conduct their work in a completely dissimilar manner. With dissimilar goals. The scientific community attempts to understand the physical world (and if that world contained a supernatural or off-earth "intelligence", no group would be more excited to prove such a discovery than they would). The ID proponents have a stated goal (the "Wedge" document), to gain the acceptance of the existence of a Christian God by the scientific community, thereby justifying their faith as the one true Faith.
The methodologies of the ID community of lawsuit, legislative board packing, and press release are the methods of the environmental community, not the scientific community.
The ID and scientific "sides" have no similarity whatever. As you can note in this forum, they talk past each other with different mindsets, just like you and I doing are right now.
"..In many ways, the historic controversy of creation vs. evolution has been similar to Galileo's conflict, only with a reversal of roles..."
More like some trying to do to Science today what they did to Copernicus.
Because not all communities are created equal. There may be a huge debate over the effectiveness of fertilizer in the screenwriting community, but farmers seem pretty convinced. And farmers are the ones whose opinions matter. Likewise for scientists here.
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