Posted on 11/08/2005 4:17:17 AM PST by PatrickHenry
For the past six weeks, the debate over evolution and intelligent design has played out in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Today, Kansas gets the national spotlight back and with it, the possibility of a federal lawsuit here.
Whats going on in Kansas, said Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, is much more radical and much more dangerous to science education than the contested decision in Dover, Pa., to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes.
Intelligent design speculates that the world is too complex to have evolved without the help of an unknown designer an alien, perhaps, or God. Such teachings in public schools, the ACLU says, violate constitutional restrictions on the separation of church and state.
Absolutely, absolutely, said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLUs Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, when asked if the new science standards Kansas is expected to adopt today could be vulnerable to litigation.
An official with the Discovery Institutes Center for Science and Culture, which helped defend the Dover school board, said Kansas should be able to avoid legal scrutiny. Casey Luskin said the standards here critique evolution, but they dont promote intelligent design.
Its definitely a different issue in Kansas than in Pennsylvania, Luskin said.
More radical
Its a different battle, perhaps, but definitely the same war. Many of the participants in the Pennsylvania trial are veterans of the Kansas evolution debates, and are keeping a close eye on todays meeting of the Kansas Board of Education.
Miller, for example, testified in the Pennsylvania trial against intelligent design. He came to Kansas in 2000 to campaign against conservative school board members the last time the evolution debate flared up here.
The new Kansas standards literally change the definition of science, he said, so that natural explanations arent necessary to explain natural phenomena. That opens the door, he said, for astrology to be taught in public school classrooms.
Is this what proponents on the Kansas Board of Education have in mind? Miller asked.
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University scientist, wrote Darwins Black Box a touchstone text of the intelligent design movement. He testified in Pennsylvania, and before the Kansas Board of Education when it held hearings on the science standards.
I think having students hear criticisms of any theory is a great idea, Behe said. I think in one respect, itll mean its permissible to question evolution. For odd historical reasons, questioning evolution has been put off-limits. If Kansas can do it, it can be done elsewhere.
More evolution?
Luskin agreed.
In contrast to what everybody has said, Kansas students will hear more about evolution and not less about evolution, he said. This is a victory for people who want students to learn critical thinking skills in science.
But Gunn noted that the vast majority of scientists believed in evolution as a proven explanation for the origins of life. The handful who dont, he said, have resorted to making their case through politics instead of through traditional scientific methods.
Do we teach both sides of the controversy on astrology in science class? Do we teach both sides of phrenology? Gunn said. This is not a scientific controversy, its a political controversy.
Testimony in the Pennsylvania trial wrapped up on Friday. A ruling in that case is expected in January.
Wrong question. Not all things that pretend to be science can support that claim. If you have reached your conclusion prior to gathering the evidence, and that conclusion causes the rejection of the bulk of the evidence because it fails to support your pre-conclusion, then you are not a scientist.
This test eliminates more than 99% of those posting here in the name of teaching evolution.
I think it is like the Dem/Johm Kerry replay of Vietnam. Iraq becomes Vietnam. Re-fight that.
This is a silly replay of Scopes, this time the sides are switched in terms of who has the power. It's boring and pathetic.
As I said it is the battle of the mediocrities with world views of the early 20th century.
One guy at work teased me about it, saying "you're talking to yourself again!", to which I responded "sometimes that's the only way to have an intelligent conversation around here!"
(I'd like to say that I came up with that witty response myself, but I honestly picked it up from a comedy routine. It was worth remembering, in case I ever had the opportunity to use it. The look on the guy's face when I said that to him was priceless).
The Protestant religious ones.
You think all public schools suck?
Issues with reality dude.
Coming from an IDer, that's rich.
I think the reason so many here get so hysterical at the thought of Behe saying his stuff is because they are the flip side of the coin. Nothing personal to anyone on any side, but this is rather the war among the mediocrities with no better things to do or think about.
Ah, thank you for enlightening us from your Olympian heights, oh Great One. And what year did you win your Nobel Prize?
*sigh*
Science curriculum should teach the prevailing scientific theory. In the life sciences, this means teaching evolutionary theory. Students spend precious few hours in science class as it is, and there simply isn't enough time to spend on digressions about alternative points of view. Also, as most schools are geared towards college prep, science curricula should take this into account. Public schools should cover material in the same way students will be exposed to them in college, so that they will have the proper foundation in the subject when the continue in their studies at university.
Then I shouldn't hear any objection to the suggestion that evolution be taught in biology class and creation be taught in Sunday School.
Yes, but with no more understanding that their reading of yours.
I'm not an IDer. Why do you have that impression?
Talking to you guys is like being in the twilight zone.
I won my Nobel the same year you won yours.
But your kids would NEVER fall for that so why are you concerned?
Evolution explains the 'origins of life'?
Someone needs to tell this guy that evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life.
However, people pushing this pseudo-science are in charge of public health and nuclear weapons development work and disaster rescue.
When I was in high school, we had to do one year of science. We had a choice between Biology, Physics, or PhysChem (a mix of physics and chemistry). Most kids chose one of the latter two, especially the girls. The Biology teacher was a major sexist and pervert, and he was hell on the female students. For example, he would let cheerleaders roll dice for their grades, as long as they wore their cheerleading outfit. Less attractive girls had to be absolutely perfect with their work (and were severely harrassed in class), while the more attractive girls got a lot of "gimmies".
I took PhysChem. I wanted nothing to do with that Biology teacher. The theory of evolution never even came up in high school unless you took Biology. Even then, the Biology teacher spent more time on anatomy than evolution. The man was a pig.
My question still remains: "How do we get government out of education?"
Yeah - sounds like it is unfriendly territory for the cultural Marxists.
Can you cite the page numbers where he makes the statements you claim? Have you even read the book?
BTW, I have read it; and still have my copy.
C'mon guy, I know you from way back.
I won my Nobel the same year you won yours.
I'm not haranguing people about mediocrity.
Some one-day comment in passing in a minute percentage of biology classes in High schools that some people believe in ID is about as trivial an issue as there is.
The massive hysteria on the part of those "objecting" is telling of larger issues.
[ModernDayCato] Here's some science for you, friend. I happened to be listening to talk radio on the way to work yesterday. There was a molecular biologist talking about so-called 'random evolution,' with regard to a single-celled organism.It sounds like ModernDayCato's "scientist" authority is repeating (with mutations) the old creationist chestnut from Hoyle & Wickramasinghe:He said that the odds of that organism evolving randomly were calculated to be 10 to the fifty thousandth power, which is basically an unfathomable number, which validates what I suspected since the first time I heard it...Darwin was the first person to push junk science.
[ModernDayCato]But seriously, no. Google actually buttressed the argument. Take a look for yourself.
[Dimensio]How can we "take a look for ourselves" when you refuse to provide any references, or even a justification for the starting premises of the alleged probability calculation?
MDC, please click on the link to the whole article. You need to understand just how dishonest these "impossible odds" arguments are. The authority figures you respect (WRT creationism) are lying to you.The most commonly cited source for statistical impossibility of the origin of life comes from another odd book, Evolution From Space, written by Fred Hoyle and N.C. Wickramasinghe (Dent, 1981; immediately reprinted by Simon & Schuster that same year, under the title Evolution From Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism). The statistic 10^40,000 is calculated on p. 24 (Hoyle repeats the exact same argument on pp. 16-17 of The Intelligent Universe (1983)). A twenty-amino-acid polypeptide must chain in precisely the right order for it to fit the corresponding enzyme. Although Hoyle does not state it, this would entail that there must have been a minimum specificity, of one specific possibility, for the first enzymic life, of 10^20, a value to which Hoyle himself says "by itself, this small probability could be faced" (and this statistic even fails to account for that fact that any number of "first enzymic organisms" are possible, and not just one as his calculation assumes). Hoyle then goes on: "the trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes," (in "the whole of biology," p. 23), "and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000..."
There are three flaws in this conclusion: he assumes (1) that natural selection is equivalent to random shuffling, (2) that all two thousand enzymes, all the enzymes used in the whole of biology, had to be hit upon at once in one giant pull of the cosmic slot machine, and (3) that life began requiring complex enzymes working in concert. ...
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