Posted on 10/06/2005 5:04:43 AM PDT by gobucks
University of Idaho President Tim White has entered the debate pitting Charles Darwin's theories of life against religious-based alternatives by forbidding anything other than evolution from being taught in the Moscow school's life, earth and physical science classes.
White's edict came as a U of I biologist, Scott Minnich, a supporter of the "intelligent design" theory, was set to testify in a Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by eight families trying to have this theory, branded as a new form of creationism, dropped from a school district's biology curriculum. Minnich was asked to testify on behalf of the district.
Hours after White's letter reached students, staff and faculty on Tuesday, the Discovery Institute, a Seattle public policy group that funds research into intelligent design, blasted the order as an unconstitutional assault on academic freedom and free speech.
White said in his letter that teachings of views that differ from evolution may occur in religion, philosophy or similar courses.
Intelligent design is the belief that Darwin's mechanism of natural selection inadequately explains the origins of different life forms. It argues that natural selection fails to fully explain how extremely varied and complex life forms emerged during the past 600 million years. It concludes that guidance from some external intelligence that many interpret as God must be involved.
With Idaho now in the debate, disputes over evolution are unfolding in at least 19 states. In August, President Bush weighed in, saying he thought people should be taught about different ideas — including intelligent design.
Officials at the National Center for Science Education say White is likely the first U.S. university president to come out with an official position. The center advocates against incorporating theories such as intelligent design into science curricula on grounds they introduce religion into the subject matter.
"Departments have issued statements, and scientific groups have issued statements," said Glenn Branch, the Oakland, Calif.-based center's deputy director. "But I can't think of a university president who's issued a statement like this."
White wrote that national media attention on the issue prompted the letter.
"This (evolution) is the only curriculum that is appropriate to be taught in our biophysical sciences," he wrote. "Teaching of views that differ from evolution may occur in faculty-approved curricula in religion, sociology, philosophy, political science or similar courses. However, teaching of such views is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses."
Harold Gibson, a school spokesman, said the views of Minnich, a tenured professor in the school's College of Agriculture, didn't prompt the letter.
Rather, White was staking out a position on an issue that's emerged as a successor to "creationism" after that Biblical explanation was barred from the nation's schoolhouses in 1987 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Minnich didn't return Associated Press calls for comment.
But members of the Discovery Institute — founded in 1990 by Bruce Chapman, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna under President Reagan — lambasted White's edict as an intrusion into the academic freedom of Idaho professors.
John West, the associate director of the institute's Center for Science and Culture, said White's move restricting science curricula to discussions of evolution broadly restricts teaching anything that contradicts Darwin's ideas on the role of mutation and natural selection in the development of life — even by scientists not advocating intelligent design.
In addition, limiting classes where evolution alternatives can be discussed violates free speech protections, he said.
"He (White) is saying, 'If you're a teacher in philosophy, we may allow you to do this. But in science, it just doesn't cut it,' West said. "In any other area, this would be preposterous."
White's letter came just a week before Eugenie C. Scott, an activist who's fought to segregate creationism and intelligent design from science classes, is due to speak at the University of Idaho on Oct. 12.
Scott said the school's science faculty, who invited her, haven't explicitly mentioned Minnich as motivation for bringing her for a lecture titled "Why Scientists Reject Intelligent Design."
Still, "the elephant in the living room is: there is a proponent of intelligent design on the faculty of the University of Idaho," said Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. "Biologists across the country have examined intelligent design as a scientific model, and found it seriously lacking."
I didn't say science can answer everything. Please reread what I said.
You obviously can't tell propaganda when you hear it. Mein Kampf is a work of political propaganda.
1) The practice of science is impossible without an underlying philosophy of science. Your positivistic assumptions are neither themselves empirically verifiable nor logically undeniable. 2) If scientific methodology were strictly restricted to what is observable, then you couldn't even call much of theoretical physics that refer to unverifiable and unobservable things like forces, fields, and universal laws, "scientific", but the postulation of such entities is no less the product of scientific inquiry because of that. A design postulate is no less scientific than is a evolutionary postulate when it comes to making inferences about the unobservable past. Both rely on indirect observation and inference, as opposed to direct observation.
Cordially,
1) The practice of science is impossible without an underlying philosophy of science. Your positivistic assumptions are neither themselves empirically verifiable nor logically undeniable. 2) If scientific methodology were strictly restricted to what is observable, then you couldn't even call much of theoretical physics that refer to unverifiable and unobservable things like forces, fields, and universal laws, "scientific", but the postulation of such entities is no less the product of scientific inquiry because of that. A design postulate is no less scientific than is a evolutionary postulate when it comes to making inferences about the unobservable past. Both rely on indirect observation and inference, as opposed to direct observation.
Cordially,
In any practical sense we will never know what caused like to appear as it does. The strawman auguement that no science can be proved is really an attempt to elevate evolution science far above what it deserves because hard science can be reproduced in the lab while the history of a few million years ago cannot - certainly not to the level of being called (in its entirety) a fact worthy of silencing all other inquiry.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with critiquing evolution in the classroom as long as it is acedemically serious.
If course, a power-mad genocidal maniac would never LIE to achieve power. Get a grip.
"No evidence he didn't."
What lame nonsense. Hitler was attempting to exploit popular prejudices like as politicians do today. The philisophy is called utilitarianism.
It's not a straw-man, it's a fact. No theories in science are ever proved.
> What happened can never be determined with any accuracy so it is all a waste of time
Are you refering to criminal forensic investigations as well?
"No convictions without a confession."
" This is opposite to applied science, which evolution would be a subset of."
Evolution is both a *pure* and *applied* science, like all the ones you listed for both sides are. It's an artificial distinction.
I totally agree, but for the very same reasons regarding the historical character of origins science I disagree that "science will have to change to incorporate the supernatural for ID to fit." It is simply circular to exclude the postulation of nonmechanistic (mental or intelligent) agency in scientific origins theories based soley on an exclusively naturalistic definition of science. All historical theories depend on making inferences based on indirect observations in an attempt to reconstruct past conditions or causes from present facts. Excluding intelligent agency in an objective historical investigation a priori based merely on a naturalistist philosophy makes about as much sense as saying that a homocide detective is not being scientific because he attributes the cause of the dead body to some intelligent agency rather than the result of some accidental mechanism. One hypothesis or the other may turn out to be true, but one cannot say that either hypothesis and/or the investigation is not a scientific one, or using a scientific methodology. In fact, if the detective ruled out any possiblity of agency a priori he would never find the murderer, if indeed the death was the result of murder.
Cordially,
Seems to be a lot of crickets chirping ... well done, sir...
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