Posted on 10/28/2005 3:29:36 PM PDT by Crackingham
A bitter debate about how to teach evolution in U.S. high schools is prompting a crisis of confidence among scientists, and some senior academics warn that science itself is under assault. In the past month, the interim president of Cornell University and the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine have both spoken on this theme, warning in dramatic terms of the long-term consequences.
"Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation," said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3.
Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his "state of the university" address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by "intelligent design" which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed. Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. "When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers," he said.
Adherents of intelligent design argue that certain forms in nature are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must have been created by a "designer," who could but does not have to be identified as God.
In the past five years, the scientific community has often seemed at odds with the Bush administration over issues as diverse as global warming, stem cell research and environmental protection. Prominent scientists have also charged the administration with politicizing science by seeking to shape data to its own needs while ignoring other research. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have built a powerful position within the Republican Party and no Republican, including Bush, can afford to ignore their views. This was dramatically illustrated in the case of Terri Schiavo earlier this year, in which Republicans in Congress passed a law to keep a woman in a persistent vegetative state alive against her husband's wishes, and Bush himself spoke out in favor of "the culture of life."
The issue of whether intelligent design should be taught, or at least mentioned, in high school biology classes is being played out in a Pennsylvania court room and in numerous school districts across the country. The school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, is being sued by parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union after it ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it. The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternative theory and recommended students to read a book that explained the theory further.
Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller believes the rhetoric of the anti-evolution movement has had the effect of driving a wedge between a large proportion of the population who follow fundamentalist Christianity and science.
"It is alienating young people from science. It basically tells them that the scientific community is not to be trusted and you would have to abandon your principles of faith to become a scientist, which is not at all true," he said.
On the other side, conservative scholar Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, believes the only way to heal the rift between science and religion is to allow the teaching of intelligent design.
"To have antagonism between science and religion is crazy," he said at a forum on the issue last week.
There's less motivation to solve some of the more severe problems people have, when it's easier to just throw the people with the problems on the dung heap.
The laws of nature don't care what people believe.
"Guided how? Which physical law would you like to suspend?"
I am saying that you cannot demonstrate that the process has not been guided. To make that statement, which I dont believe you can honestly refute, I don't need to violate any physical law.
Really? Did the brainy liberals miss post-modernism, post-structuralism, the past 50 years of academic "discourse" in America?
It's obvious they did. Either that, or they're engaged in a little propaganda for the masses.
If CS/ID is brought into the science classes everything is fair game. Do people actually want science dissecting the believability of particular religious beliefs?
"The US is becoming more hostile to science, as it increasingly encourages abortion and euthanasia."
Abortion and euthanasia are ethical issues and scientific ones. This is a false argument against science, but not an uncommon one.
***They are entitled to mock or not mock but they cannot say they have proved there is no God.***
They do not need to "prove" anything - they are scientists!
And are they really "entitled" to mock? Seems like if they mocked any other group (racial or sexual) the scientific community would rise up and remove them from their positions.
But it's ok to mock God. The very One who gave you your freedoms and your rights.
Post Modernism is a cultural logic. Post-structuralism is a theory of language. Neither threaten science.
NO.. the U.S. is becoming hostile to GOD..
And a brain washed electorate (whom are mostly believers of some sort) is fueling it.. Sheeple ain't too smart..
Even Jews whom are mostly democrats could care less the democrat party is on the side of the Jews enemys ALL OF THEM.. with the exception of Nazis and skinheads.. They see nazis and skinheads as with blinders ignoring all others..
NEXT WEEK- the blacks whom are mostly democrats too.. same situation with blinders like a black nag in an Ostrich race.. Would be funny, if it was..
It is also something of a smokescreen. Many skeptics and critical thinking activists, notably Robert Sheaffer of the Debunker's Domain, are aware that much of the real hostility to science comes not from Creationists but from fuzzy-minded New Agers and post-modernists. Many of the latter, for example, assert that science and logic are merely inventions of the white male European hegemony. I have seen the word "logocentric" used in all seriousness in recent years, as though a preference for logic and evidence were merely another prejudice to be condemned and proscribed.
As for the New Age, this is practically the state religion of the institutional media culture. The media culture's commercial and political incentive for undermining rational thought is obvious. Hostility to science, and the triumph of intuition, emotion, and folklore over science, are tiresomely common themes in popular media presentations. This is, of course, the Spock/McCoy meme from Star Trek, repeated in endless permutations over the decades since.
Some years ago, the University of North Texas provided a class in "aura-reading." The instructor was what you might expect, a middle-aged Earth mother type who might otherwise be employed reading tea leaves or bat entrails. She spotted me as a skeptic. Her response was so extraordinary that I wrote it down verbatim and kept the words all these years:
"Intuition and sympathetic magic are part of a nurturing life-centered, worldview that is just as valid as all this white male science of yours."
I responded, "Ok, we'll both fly to Chicago. I'll get on a plane designed by wicked scientists and engineers. You get on one designed by a committee of witch-doctors and aura-readers and we'll see who gets there." Her additional response? I had an "evil aura."
I become hostile to "science" when they shove their global warming lies in my face.
Science doesn't work on proof it works on evdience.
Most of the scientific innovations coming today are from American universities and military research. That being said, anti-evolutionists certainly aren't in the driving seat of those innovations.
***The laws of nature don't care what people believe.***
And who will speak for the "laws of nature"?
You?
Atheistic science discards God because it doesn't like the competition.
Is Reuters becoming hostile to facts?
Lysenko.
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