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To: Crackingham

When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known.


2 posted on 10/28/2005 3:33:01 PM PDT by wvobiwan (Liberal Slogan: "News maganizes don't kill people, Muslims do." - Ann Coulter)
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To: wvobiwan

"When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known"

If you don't require any evidence to teach something then there are not two sides but thousands.

That's why science prefers teach the stuff that's backed up by evidence.


3 posted on 10/28/2005 3:36:47 PM PDT by gondramB
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To: wvobiwan

"When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known"

If you don't require any evidence to teach something then there are not two sides but thousands.

That's why science prefers teach the stuff that's backed up by evidence.


4 posted on 10/28/2005 3:36:50 PM PDT by gondramB
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To: wvobiwan
When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known.

Can't say I agree with you on this. The question "Where did we come from?" is right up there with "What happens to us when we die?". Any conversations that explore the realm of the spiritual are more appropriate in a philosophy class, not in the public school science classroom.

I see nothing wrong with a science teacher admitting that there are some things we just don't know for sure. And as a Christian, I'm comfortable knowing that while science can't explain everything, it will certainly all be revealed in the next life!!
14 posted on 10/28/2005 3:50:56 PM PDT by Nathan Jr.
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To: wvobiwan
"When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known."

Right!

The evolutionism as well as intelligent design are theories in the field of science. And both of them have the same value... the value of a theory. The evolutionism is not a law. What the hec they treat the evolutionism as a law in science?
In the communist countries the official and the only theory accepted was evolutionism. Can anybody tell us one name of communist famous man of science or a Nobel laureate?
36 posted on 10/28/2005 4:04:18 PM PDT by SeeSalt
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To: wvobiwan
"When you don't know, you don't know."
Nope. When you do not know, you apply for funding and then try to do some science to dispel the ignorance, at least to a degree. That's what the whole scientific enterprise has been all about.
72 posted on 10/28/2005 4:47:57 PM PDT by GSlob
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To: wvobiwan
When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known.

You contradict yourself. If you "don't know" then you don't know there are only two sides. We'd have to consider, and teach, any and every view we could find. There's a LOT more than just two, as anyone familiar with fringe and psuedo sciences can readily attest. For instance we'd have to cover some version of antievolutionism as held by the Hare Krishna, who assert that each individual species is biologically fixed (it's souls that evolve -- through reincarnation) something that even most "creationists" do not believe.

If we "don't know" in the dismissive (and permissive) sense that you suggest, then we "don't know" what to teach.

We do, however, know which theories have earned and maintain standing in science -- that is which ones are actually used and implicated by working scientists in the conduct of ongoing, original research -- and which have not, or at least have not yet. And because the content of the professional scientific literature reflects (with a reasonable level of fidelity) the ideas that are so employed in the conduct of research, we know this as objective fact.

So what not base what we teach in a science class on what we objectively know about the content of science? If some creationistic or design theory (or something else non- or extra- evolutionary) someday actually earns scientific standing on merit, then it can be taught too.

And, btw, if some new theory is sufficiently successful to supplant evolution completely, then evolution should be dropped from the curricula, just as would be done with any other scientific theory abandoned by working scientists.

Sorry, but I find this just obvious. And I find your view that we should just teach "both sides" to be relativistic, wimpy, wishy-washy and anti-intellectual.

79 posted on 10/28/2005 4:59:14 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: wvobiwan
When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known.
There are more than two sides. Personally, I think they ought to be teaching Wolfram's New Kind of Science.

 
179 posted on 10/29/2005 6:45:57 PM PDT by counterpunch (JRB in '05 = GOP in '06)
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