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.
They aren't in competition since they are unrelated to one another.
"
But it's ok to mock God. The very One who gave you your freedoms and your rights."
God gave us free will and the choice to believe, not believe or mock. Our constitution confirms that.
***Science doesn't work on proof it works on evdience.***
I don't like word games, but the term "proof" is used 17,800 times on the website science.com
So they must kind of like the term.
"So all of science rests on whether intelligent design is taught or not? "
No, it reats on whether science is based on evidence or on faith. It is based on whether we keep searching for answers or we say "that's too hard, I give up."
"Lysenko."
Bullseye. (For others: Lysenko was a crackpot who also happened to be a favorite of Stalin. For that reason alone, Lysenko's nutty theory of acquired characteristics became dogma in the Soviet scientific establishment. Some claim that Russian bio-science has not recovered to this day.)
Oh, no. Post-modernism views rationality as a Western cultural construct, a form of domination and control. Post-structuralism maintains that there is no text, only interpretation, and that "authorship" is a myth. As the trendy post-modernists are wont to say, "There is no text, only interpetation" and "There are no facts, only interpretations."
If radical anti-rationalist philosphy doesn't "threaten science," I'm not quite sure what possibly could.
The US has always been hostile to science. Virtually all women hate science and revel in not knowing anything about it.
***They aren't in competition since they are unrelated to one another.***
Science and God are unrelated?
???
***God gave us free will and the choice to believe, not believe or mock***
So you believe in God???
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 by feeding her against her husband's wishes that she starve to death.
"So you believe in God???"
Yes. I am a Christian.
I've been saying for years that if you don't teach students basic math, and you don't teach them to read, then you should not be wasting your political capital by insisting that every student must learn about evolution. Get your priorities straight. If not, then don't be surprised when the quality of learning goes down.
"The laws of nature don't care what people believe."
--
"Nor do the laws of nature care if scientists have it wrong either. Especially if there was someone or something that penned those laws. What of it?"
The 'no text but only interpreation' is just a restating of the 'if a tree falls in the forest with no one there' argument. Post structuralism like theories have been around since classical times. They don't threaten hard science. They stay mostly in the Literary and Philosphy departments. And they certainly don't bully school boards to have say Gravity taught as a 'social construct'. That would be the comparison.
God is outside the domain of Science.
"I've been saying for years that if you don't teach students basic math, and you don't teach them to read, then you should not be wasting your political capital by insisting that every student must learn about evolution. Get your priorities straight. If not, then don't be surprised when the quality of learning goes down."
Agreed. Biology doesn't need to be mandatory in high school but if kids choose to take it they need to be taught that which is scientifically supportable.
"God is outside the domain of Science."
He certainly is right now because there is no scientific evidence of God that we have found. If clear evidence of a creator were found then science would have to rethink that.
Scientific theory needs some facts or data for support and in order be reputable the facts and data need to be challenged and hold up continuously.
Therefore when evolution is accepted unchallengeable as dogma , then scientific method can be only described as existing in a hostel environment, as with the many examples of dogma trumping the scientific method over the centuries.
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