Posted on 11/06/2005 6:26:17 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
In the beginning, when voters created the Kansas Board of Education to oversee schools, those intelligent designers couldn’t have imagined it would go forth and multiply all this controversy.
The board could close the latest chapter of the evolution debate Tuesday when it is set to vote on science curriculum standards that change the definition of science and cast doubt on the theory of evolution. It’s possible another administrative delay could postpone the vote, but the approval is seen as inevitable.
Inevitable, maybe. Permanent, maybe not. The standards won’t go into effect until the 2007 school year. By then the school board could look dramatically different if moderates are successful in unseating conservatives in the November 2006 elections, both sides say. That could make the new standards moot, and start the whole debate over again. Both sides say the controversy has been too heated, and the implications for science, religion and education too great, for any easy solution.
The board’s conservative majority says it’s merely injecting criticism of what it calls a blindly accepted theory, and allowing students to decide for themselves. And they have their supporters. Polls indicate most Kansans have doubts about evolution and don’t dismiss the idea of teaching alternatives. Other states like Ohio and schools in Georgia and Pennsylvania have joined the debate as well.
“We want students to understand more about evolution, not less,” said John Calvert, leader of the Intelligent Design Network and one of the driving forces behind the changes. Intelligent Design is the belief that aspects of the natural world show signs of design, and not random evolution. “To understand a claim, you should also understand those aspects of the claim that some people think are problematic. That’s all these changes do.”
Moderates disagree and aren’t conceding defeat. They hope to unseat enough conservative board members in November 2006 to retake control of the board in time to change the standards back. They say the revisions to the standards are a step toward creationism and an unacceptable marriage of religion and public education. The changes, they say, jeopardize the state’s efforts to grow the bioscience industry and hurt school children who will one day graduate to an ever globalizing high-tech economy.
“This is distracting us from the goal of making sure every kid is well-educated,” said board member Sue Gamble, a Shawnee moderate. “Regular people are starting to say, ‘Enough is enough. We’ve got to stand up for ourselves.’ ”
In 1999, the board voted to remove most references to evolution, the origin of the universe and the age of the Earth. The next year, voters responded and the board’s majority went to moderates. The standards were changed back.
In politics, however, there’s no such thing as extinction: conservatives regrouped, retaking the majority in 2004.
“The state board used to be a pretty mundane office,” said Kansas State University political science professor Joe Aistrup. “But this is a clash of ideas, and it reverberates up and down, with everything that’s going on with conservatives and moderates. It’s not surprising that it’s become this high-profile, and voters will remember.”
The board’s 10 members serve four-year terms. Every two years, five seats come up for election. Conservative board members John Bacon of Olathe, Connie Morris of St. Francis, Iris Van Meter of Thayer and Ken Willard of Hutchinson all face re-election in November 2006, as does Waugh. Not every incumbent has announced re-election plans, but most are expected to run.
Conservative groups say they’re ready for a fight, and say the evolution issue cuts both ways.
“People will vote their wishes,” Bacon said. “I think the public of Kansas supports what we’re doing.”
Doubts about Darwin
The board routinely reviews curriculum standards for just about every facet of education, kindergarten through high school. The standards are the basis for state assessment tests and serve as a template for local school districts and teachers. Local districts are not required to teach the standards — they just risk lower assessment scores if they choose not to.
When a 27-member committee of scientists and teachers began the process of updating the standards, a vocal minority proposed inserting criticism of evolution. Six members of the Board of Education applauded the changes, and agreed to put most of them into the standards. Now the board is poised to put the amended standards to a final vote.
The changes to the standards incorporate substantial criticism of evolutionary theory, calling into question the theory made famous by Charles Darwin. Supporters say there isn’t proof of the origin and variety of life and the genetic code. The changes also alter the definition of science to allow for non-natural explanations.
Supporters of the changes say they don’t want children indoctrinated with an unproven theory. The board had two weeks of hearings in May to hear testimony from scientists who dispute evolution. Conservative board members said they made their case.
Calling them a farcical publicity stunt, mainstream scientists boycotted the hearings. Nobel Prize winners, scientists and religious leaders signed petitions opposing what they said was a blurring of the lines between science and religion and thinly veiled push for creationism.
Bloggers and national comedians lampooned the hearings as national and international media poured into Topeka. Board members say they received mocking e-mails from around the world. If the ridicule got to them, the conservatives won’t say. But they admit to a certain evolution fatigue.
“I’m extremely anxious to put this behind us,” Morris said. She has been a strong critic of evolution, even calling it “impossible” in a newsletter to supporters.
Other states have seen similar fights to change the way evolution is taught. Education officials in Ohio changed science standards there to cast doubt on evolution. A Georgia school district tried to put stickers on textbooks that read “Evolution is a theory, not a fact.” A judge later ruled the stickers illegal, saying their message promotes Christian fundamentalism. And a legal challenge is now in court in Dover, Pa., where school officials voted to include alternative explanations to evolution.
Morris and her fellow conservatives cite polls that show Kansans have doubts when it comes to evolution. The Kansas City Star conducted a poll last summer and 55 percent said they believe in either creationism or intelligent design — more than double the 26 percent who said they believe evolution to be responsible for the origin of life. But opponents say that’s beside the point: Most Americans say they believe in God, too, but that doesn’t mean he should be taught in public schools.
“I believe in the Biblical account of creation,” Waugh said. “But it has no place in the science class. In a comparative religions class, sure. The best place to teach is at home or at your place of worship.”
Board members say the public is behind them, and that unseating them on Election Day won’t be easy.
“People come up to me and tell me we’re doing the right thing,” Van Meter said. “We wouldn’t do this if Kansans didn’t support it.”
All eyes on Kansas
Evolution turned this little-known governmental entity into a battleground in the state’s clash between conservatives and moderates. And that’s the way it’s likely to stay for a while.
This year, it’s not just the board’s take on evolution that’s stirred controversy. Conservatives also want to make it easier for parents to pull children from sex education classes, and last month they chose Bob Corkins as education commissioner, even though he had no experience teaching or running schools.
All those issues prompted a group of Kansas residents to form the Kansas Alliance for Education, a group with the goal of defeating board conservatives. Alliance leader Don Hineman, a cattle rancher from Dighton, Kan., said the group will work to support candidates and get out the vote.
“There’s a sense of frustration that I think many Kansans share,” he said. “The conservative majority on the board is focused on a narrow agenda, at the expense of their objective, which is improving education for Kansas children.”
He’s not alone. Harry McDonald, an Olathe resident and the leader of Kansas Citizens for Science, has announced his candidacy for the seat now occupied by John Bacon. More candidates are expected.
“We need to take down two to retake the majority,” Gamble said. “I’m focused on four, but that’s an enormous undertaking.”
Calvert, the intelligent design leader, said he knows the evolution debate will factor into the election. No matter what happens at the polls, he said the public is coming around to the notion of challenging one of science’s sacred cows.
“It’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s really what the public wants. Anybody who takes these changes out really needs to be thinking seriously about what they’re doing.”
If conservatives hold on to the majority, Gamble said she expects a legal challenge to the new science standards. If moderates unseat conservatives, the latter will pour its energies into the next election, even if some conservatives admit to being weary of the fray.
Kris Van Meteren is a conservative activist who helped get his mother, Iris Van Meter, on the school board. He’s part of the effort that has kept evolution front and center. He said he hopes it’s not necessary, but his side will keep pushing until evolution comes down from its pedestal in the academic world.
“We’re not in this for one or two elections,” said Van Meteren, who changed his name to reflect his Dutch heritage. “That was clear in ’99 when we lost control of the board. Everybody thought, ‘They’re gone, that’s over.’ But even if we lose another election, we’re not going away.”
You mean you'd like to see the liberals running the school board rather than conservatives. Moderate is code word for liberal. And yet you post this liberal crap on FR. Evilution is a cancer on Conservatism.
I'd like to see science taught in science class, and theology taught in theology class. I'm funny that way.
Evilution is a cancer on Conservatism.
So is stupidity.
TOE in the minds of many permitted materialism to become the only truth. But that materialism is the truth is not provable. Marterialism is, then, merely a proposition of belief, and, as such, constitutes a religion just as a non-denominational church is a religion. What materialist TOE activists insist upon is establishment of their religion in the public schools to the exclusion of all other belief systems.
A projection of TOE into an affirmation of materialism as the total truth was evidenced by Darwin himself, who was a eugenist. He advocated, among other things, enforced sterilization of homo sapiens who did not evidence advancements he and his eugenist associates deemed acceptable.
If you want to discard a scientific theory because someone might misapply it, you'd better discard all of science.
That is not what I asserted. I said that adoption of materialism as a consequence of assuming that TOE explains more than it does, e.g., the origin(s) of life, resulted in great evils. I have stated this as implicit to my point consistently, as evidenced by all the valid criticisms of my argument (many here have repeatedly pointed out that TOE does not address origins of life). I have endeavored to clarify my position, to frame it properly for discussion.
Origin of Species in 1859 was merely a component of the influences that had been building towards the "triumph" of atheistic materialism with Marx. Kant, Hegel, and Comte built the dialectical materialism mechanism that Darwin's Origin of Species triggered into the cruel realities of the USSR (perhaps 30 million intentionally murdered or starved - under the approvingly watchful eye of on-the-scene Walter Duranty and the New York Times), Red China (still unfolding, but likely more than 40 million killed in the name of atheistic humanism, with the doting approval of Jean-Paul Sartre). Lacking moral constraints, purely humanistic moral relativism resulted in history's greatest suffering, greater than any inflicted upon human beings by any religion, especially when considering the span of time in which the monumental murders of (secular humanist) communism occurred.
Of course, the ultimate application of Darwinism divorced from traditional moral considerations was Nietsche, (even before he went insane). Part of his legacy was most obviously Hitler and Nazism (about 10 million civilian murders). The concepts of purity of racial stock and the development of a race of supermen were merely the purest manifestation of unconstrained materialism that gained its confidence in large part from Darwinism.
Therefore, it is not the assertion that mutation and natural selection across millions of years are the basic mechanisms of speciation to which I object. When those mechanisms are asserted implicitly as indisputable proof of an entire philosophical system, especially with suppression of the genuine weaknesses of TOE to prevent questioning of that philosophical system (not of TOE!), THAT is what I find objectionable.
I have to agree that logically it's hard to justify considering part of the Bible metaphorical and part as narrative.
OT, something that's always puzzled me is that if there were a God He'd know exactly how people would misinterpret an earth full of fossils and the way DNA is shared by all earthly creatures. So why create the impression of evolution? It would have been a lot more straightforward to remove misleading evidence than to simply say "God created" a lot of times in a book that most human beings who ever lived never read.
Maybe some day scientists will prove God.
You persist in attempting to smuggle religion into science, or convert -- so to speak -- science into a religion. It isn't.
You have made your position more clear -- thank you -- but you haven't made it any more rational. Your argument appears to be composed of two propositions: 1) The use of materialism in science is a form or religion, and 2) Bad stuff happens when people twist the TOE.
Unfortunately for your position, if science incorporates the supernatural, it ceases to be science. "No one knows how this happened, and no one ever will," is the opposite of science. What would be the point of teaching this at all? "Roses are red because it's God's will that they remind us of the Sacred Blood of Jesus." Prove it wrong. It's fine as, say, moral instruction, at least as far as red roses go, but it isn't scientific. Science is not moral instruction.
The rest of your post about the terrible, awful things that have been justified by the Theory of Evolution even if historically correct, is fallacious nonetheless. The TOE is an attempt to explain in scientific terms what we observe in nature. It's not a recipe book for a better society. Or moral instruction.
Besides, "Bad stuff happens when people twist [insert proposition here]" can be said about anything good or even neutral. Let us stipulate that evil does not need to be twisted in order for bad stuff to happen.
No one, with the possible exception of Richard Dawkins (whom many evolutionists, myself included, dismiss as a loon any time he starts babbling about the meaning, or lack thereof, of life), is suggesting that materialism has become "the only truth." What we say is that it is the only possible basis for the scientific method.
My position is not that science should incorporate the supernatural. My position is that science taught without a reference to other things that are not science, to things that are moral and religious, is an empty system destined to destruction, despair, and emptiness.
"No one knows how this happened, and no one ever will," is the opposite of science. What would be the point of teaching this at all?
The murder rate of young black men in my city is over twenty times that of young white men. Now, a number of things may affect that statistic, but I assert that in decades past lacking this rate of murder amongst the most vulnerable of our subcultures there was also something else lacking, and that was the despair that secular materialism breeds into its adherents. By teaching the opposite of science one harvests what is the opposite of science divorce from the rest of reality, which is despair. Science in not salvation, if it is alone in the context of life. Art is not science. History, or its understanding, is not science. One might say that philosophy is not science in the modern understanding of "science." Yet one is empty without art, history, and philosophy, devoid of "human-ness." Criticism of the flaws of TOE, or merely of the origin of species, is not necessarily detrimental to development; it gives one an understanding of the possibilities of existence, much as criticism of religion derives the same experience.
The rest of your post about the terrible, awful things that have been justified by the Theory of Evolution even if historically correct, is fallacious nonetheless. The TOE is an attempt to explain in scientific terms what we observe in nature. It's not a recipe book for a better society. Or moral instruction.
Though awful things have been justified by TOE and are historically true, I am inaccurate in assessing TOE effects upon the human condition. I think that is basically your assertion, sounding much like Dan Rather's assertion regarding the National Guard Memos: "They are fake, but they are nevertheless accurate." I agree that TOE is NOT a recipe for a better society; why do so many TOE adherents fight resolutely to suppress what may be a recipe for a better society? Teaching alternative explanations for the existence of life may be an improvement upon a singular explanation with serious flaws.
What we say is that it (materialism) is the only possible basis for the scientific method.
I agree, but if implication carries this principle beyond its competence, it is only fair to warn the naive of that fact.
My position is not that science should incorporate the supernatural. My position is that science taught without a reference to other things that are not science, to things that are moral and religious, is an empty system destined to destruction, despair, and emptiness.
Does this apply to math, as well? What's the moral precept behind 1 + 1 = 2? How about physics? If E=mc2 doesn't make us better people, should we ban it?
I have no idea how relative murder rates among various subpopulations of the United States have to do with getting the science in science class. I'm not advocating dropping history, art, music, et al., from our schools, I'm advocating keeping science in. ID is not science. It does not belong in science class.
Though awful things have been justified by TOE and are historically true, I am inaccurate in assessing TOE effects upon the human condition.
"Before the TOE there was no Hitler. After the TOE there was Hitler. The TOE caused Hitler. QED." I don't buy it. But if you'd like to apply it to the various depredations perpetrated in the name of religion (I wouldn't), be my guest.
I think that is basically your assertion, sounding much like Dan Rather's assertion regarding the National Guard Memos: "They are fake, but they are nevertheless accurate."
You're wrong. I am asserting you're using a logical fallacy, even though the facts you cited may be correct. See the Hitler example above. This is not remotely akin to what Dan Rather said, and I'm surprised you'd even attempt such a smear. Thugs will use anything handy to justify thuggery. Do guns cause violence?
I agree that TOE is NOT a recipe for a better society; why do so many TOE adherents fight resolutely to suppress what may be a recipe for a better society?
Not only is the TOE not a recipe for a better society, it's not intended as such, and no scientist will assert that it is. What is it that TOE adherents are suppressing that might be a recipe for a better society? If it's cramming religion into science class, that's what Islamic societies are doing right now. Are they better off for it?
Teaching alternative explanations for the existence of life may be an improvement upon a singular explanation with serious flaws.
The TOE is NOT an "explanation for the existence of life." (Repeat once for every time it's been posted here on FR. This will keep you busy for the next thirty years or so). If there ever is a scientific explanation for the existence of life, I will support teaching it in science class. But I will not support teaching non-science in science class under any pretext -- "we'll all be better off," "the kids won't kill each other as much," or "I just hate those lying commie, atheist smarty-pants so-called scientists." I hasten to add that I know that last is not your position, but there's another poster here at FR who seems to think that's actually a sound argument.
Hmmm. I re-read my last post and I did not state that we must cease teaching TOE. I said that teaching TOE in a context lacking alternative ideas, a context that implicitly concludes that materialism explains the origins of the human condition is a dangerous curriculum. TOE potentiates materialism. TOE implicitly teaches atheistic materialism. Maybe this is the concept upon which we disagree, that you do not think it does?
Sartre expressed in his work the agonizing alienation a self-aware entity must combat when fully comprehending the uselessness of the purely materialistic existence. From it rose existentialism, of course, but that philosophy provided scant reason to rejoice in life, except (as did Sartre) with hedonistic excess. Observe materialism's effects, when its stepchild secular humanism becomes government policy, in France, where the native French population has expressed this brave despair by not replacing itself! In just a few generations the French will be a minority in their own nation. And it is the same despair that infects young black men and women who are murdering and being murdered at an unprecedented rate.
Materialism is not the truth, however. And yes, I cannot prove it empirically, but neither can a materialist prove that philosophy's truth empirically. TOE implies a proof of materialism's truth, if no qualification of its inherent weaknesses are not part of the curriculum's context.
"Before the TOE there was no Hitler. After the TOE there was Hitler. The TOE caused Hitler. QED." I don't buy it.
That is not what I stated. I outlined a progression of development in brief from Comte to Nietzsche, that came to major fruition in Marx. A major component of the progression included Darwin and TOE, with its implicit materialistic affirmations. Your distillation of my summary is a misunderstanding of my argument.
I am asserting you're using a logical fallacy, even though the facts you cited may be correct.
What I asserted is not logically false. It is a conclusion drawn from facts. I may be in error, but it is not illogical.
See the Hitler example above.
I have addressed that misunderstanding.
This is not remotely akin to what Dan Rather said, and I'm surprised you'd even attempt such a smear.
If you think of Dan Rather with such low regard that you assess comparison with him to be smear, you deserve an apology. I apologize for the smear.
The TOE is NOT an "explanation for the existence of life." (Repeat once for every time it's been posted here on FR. This will keep you busy for the next thirty years or so).
I slipped when I wrote that. I know that TOE is not an explanation for the existence of life. Honestly, I was not aware of the error even as wrote the sentence. But it is an honest example of the way that TOE affects thinking: if mutations + natural selection + billions of years = human development from primitive life, then something else akin to it must be responsible for injecting life into TOE. It is difficult to separate matters, perhaps also in the science classroom?
If there ever is a scientific explanation for the existence of life, I will support teaching it in science class. But I will not support teaching non-science in science class under any pretext...
I do not think we disagree substantially, since I insist only upon an educational context that includes mention of TOE weaknesses and alternatives. Does that have to be in the science class? Not necessarily, since my concerns can be addressed in other studies, if alternative explanations are not prohibited in a public school setting.
...or "I just hate those lying commie, atheist smarty-pants so-called scientists." I hasten to add that I know that last is not your position, but there's another poster here at FR who seems to think that's actually a sound argument.[emphasis added]
Well, that is unfortunate, since hate accomplishes little constructively, but I know you are sensible enough to disregard such drivel.
Yours may be the last word, if you wish to respond.
Thanks for an interesting conversation.
...if the shoe fits...
I'd be more interested in finding the common ancestor between Cro Magnon and Neanderthal. It's a lot more recent and a common ancestor of two groups that buried their dead, so there is a probability it buried its dead too.
Of course, what would be really exciting would be finding creatures for which living species, like sharks, are the common ancestor. Sharks have been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years; they should be the common ancestor of thousands if not millions of species. Then you can work with living organisms instead of incomplete fossil records when trying to reconstruct your phylogeny trees.
In fact, I think the primary focus of biologists should be to locate the descendant species for which the so-called living fossils are the common ancestors. TOE predicts they should be everywhere.
Marterialism is, then, merely a proposition of belief, and, as such, constitutes a religion just as a non-denominational church is a religion.
Religion concerns that which is beyond the visible, i.e., material, world. At least in my unabridged Webster's. In reality, religion and materialism are mutually exclusive terms. Calling "materialism" a "religion" is to destroy the meaning of both words. The same trashing of language can be seen in those that insist that anyone who considers the ToE as scientifically accurate are indulging in "faith" but ID advocates are honest scientists. Utter "non-sense" in the literal meaning of the term.
The rest of the argument about the supposed evils of materialism is merely a matter of historical demographics. Had there been an equal number of human beings on the planet during the Inquisition and the Middle Ages then a similar proportion of the population would have been tortured to death and burned at the stake for being demon spawn. The 8 million mostly women and children that were murdered for being witches and such was a comparable percentage of the population as the commie's put to death in various forms in the last century or so. It isn't the belief system but the respect for human rights that the belief in reason brought that changed that outlook.
We see the proof today in a religious system that refuses to enter into the 21st century by using violence to tear down the technological advances it rejects. Just believing in a religion is no guarantee of anything. If ID proponents get their way in the public (government) schools then eventually you can expect to see those religious leaders acting as the Ayatollas do now.
Finally, the assertion that ID is about anything other than sneaking Creationism into the school curriculum was belied by the reaction of none other than our favorite goofball Pat Robertson who said that should anything bad befall Dover then they couldn't pray to God for help after already having ejected Him from the city.
Now if ID isn't about teaching Creationism in the schools how could he make this statement?
The truth is, and I've said this before, the reason ID advocates want Creationism taught in the schools is to influence other people's children since they have no other agency by which to force them to be exposed to their supernatural belief system. It is really kind of hilarious. ID advocates lie like the devil denying that ID is really Creationism while in their hearts they know that that is exactly what it is.
Can you say "Irony?"
What5 is materialism, if it not merely a belief system?
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