Frist backs 'intelligent design' teaching

AP ^ | 8/19/5 | ROSE FRENCH

[SmithL]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.

Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design.

"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science.

Bush recently told a group of Texas reporters that intelligent design and evolution should both be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about."

That comment sparked criticism from opponents, including Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who called Bush "anti-science."

Frist, who is considering a presidential campaign in 2008, recently angered some conservatives by bucking Bush policy on embryonic stem cell research, voicing his support for expanded research on the subject.

Frist said his decision to endorse stem cell research was "a matter of science," but he said there was no conflict between his position on stem cell research and his position on intelligent design.

"To me, I see no disconnect between that and stem cell research," Frist said. "I base my beliefs on stem cell research both on science and my faith.

[Right Wing Professor]

Physical Chemistry/Biophysics.

[JohnnyZ]

If this country is going to return to the glory days of witch trials that your lot specialized in the last time you were in charge,

LOL, I think the last time people like me were in charge we had the Boston Tea Party. Then we sobered up and started on things like being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.....

[Borges]

Students should be taught the prevailing theory and exposed to alternate theories that have some currency

Does Astrology and scientology fall into this category? Just about every newspaper has a Horoscopes section. It certainly has currency.

[Right Wing Professor]

LOL, I think the last time people like me were in charge we had the Boston Tea Party.

Nah, the founders were men of the Enlightenment.

[itsahoot]

From David Limbaugh's column

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45621

Consider the words of Darwinist Richard Lewontin of Harvard. "Our willingness," confessed Lewontin, "to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to understanding the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for the unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism ... materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door."

So is God the real bogeyman for some Darwinists? Is that why they fight to suppress any theory, like ID, they fear might allow God's "foot in the door"?

And, if their science were unassailable, would they so vigorously resist its subjection to academic scrutiny by scientists no longer drinking the Darwin Kool-Aid? It's no secret that scientists who have broken from Darwinian orthodoxy have been ridiculed, suppressed and ostracized by much of the Orwellian scientific establishment.

[Petrosius]

keithtoo wrote: Science must be observable and repeatable

Right Wing Professor wrote: Good luck with ID on those. What are you going to do for repeatability; ask your god to remake the universe?

And when has the formation of a new species been observed?

[malakhi]

Students should be taught the prevailing theory and exposed to alternate theories that have some currency.

ID is not an alternate scientific theory. It is unfalsifiable, and offers no testable hypotheses. It is philosophy or religion, not science. If you want to teach it in school, teach it in a philosophy or religion class.

[Borges]

Incidentally the man who wrote that line about the Creator endowing us with inalienable rights, explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus and wasn't all that fond of religious orthodoxy.

[malakhi]

LOL, I think the last time people like me were in charge we had the Boston Tea Party. Then we sobered up and started on things like being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.....

You're a Unitarian, or a Deist?

[Once-Ler]

pandering to fundamentalists...it's back to the Libertarian Party for me.

I don't know how you were fooled into beliving the GOP was antogonistic to people of faith.

[Vive ut Vivas]

ID is not an alternate scientific theory. It is unfalsifiable, and offers no testable hypotheses. It is philosophy or religion, not science. If you want to teach it in school, teach it in a philosophy or religion class.

And it's pointless! What makes ID bad science (among other things) is a lack of appreciation for Occam's Razor.

[AdmSmith]

We can either base our society on beliefs:

http://www.meforum.org/article/306

"Islam contributes to the Muslim world's lagging behind in science insofar as its tenets have not satisfactorily been reconciled with those of science. Islam's most deleterious effect may be to remove most Muslims from direct contact with science. Except for a brief exposure in school, there is little science in Islamic popular culture. Scientists rarely turn up in the media. Pleas by scientists like Abdus Salam to the religious authorities for sermons about elements of science in the Qur'an and hadith go unheard."

or on science:

"Fewer and fewer students are pursuing science and engineering. While immigrants are taking up the slack in many areas, defense laboratories and industries generally require American citizenship or permanent residency. So a crisis is looming, unless careers in science and engineering suddenly become hugely popular, said Robert Barker, an Air Force program manager who approved the grant."
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/08/12/2003267470

What type of society do we want to live in?

[NJ_gent]

"And when has the formation of a new species been observed?"

How many lists of speciation events observed in nature would you like?

[Once-Ler]

Mainly Judaism and Christianity as they were the most influential on western culture.

[RightWingAtheist]

Vernon Ehlers and Roscoe Bartlett are both scientists, and we should hear more from them on these issues. Maybe they do speak out more, but they don't get half the press that the Dem's Rush Holt does, because the last think the MSM wants people to think is that conservative scientists and pro-evolution conservatives actually exist.

[Petrosius]

Frist doesn't even really believe ID should be taught. As an educated man, he can't possibly think that teaching ID does anything good.

I guess that I only dreamed that I went to four years of college and five years of graduate school.

The arrogance of the evolutionists must be seen to be believed.

[Mylo]

So how successful have theories that advocate an unknowable and unquantifiable supernatural entity as an explanation been in observing and predicting the universe?

Seems there are plenty of competing hypothesis as to the identity, motive, race, creed, and color of the creator; but no useful predictions or observations- and no way of objectively sorting through the competing and contradictory claims.

However MATERIAL explanation of quantifiable and predictable natural forces seems to be HIGHLY SUCCESFUL in formulating theories for observing and predicting the universe. All technological and scientific advancements of the human race have been through MATERIAL and SCIENTIFIC explanations; not through supernatural and theological explanations.

Can anyone tell me ANY scientific theory that is not based upon material and natural phenomenon? You cannot because there are none; and ID won't be the first.

[Once-Ler]

If you want a religion class in public schools, be prepared for that class to give every major and minor religion from the past 5,000 years equal time.

I'd prefer that over the complete vacuum of faith and morality in today's schools.

[itsahoot]

CLINTON, MCCAIN LAUNCH 'GLOBAL WARMING' WARNING

RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS BET UK CLIMATE EXPERT THAT PLANET WILL COOL OVER NEXT DECADE...

So many scientists to pick from, which to believe.....
Go to Drudge for the stories(pun intended)

[Vive ut Vivas]

Mainly Judaism and Christianity as they were the most influential on western culture.

Imagine my surprise. Christianity gets a lot of airtime in history class. But it, like Judaism and all other religions and non-scientific beliefs, is completely irrelevent in a science classroom.