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.
“What’s 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 ACLU’s 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 Institute’s 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 don’t promote intelligent design.
“It’s definitely a different issue in Kansas” than in Pennsylvania, Luskin said.
‘More radical’
It’s 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 today’s 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 aren’t 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 “Darwin’s 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, it’ll mean it’s 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 don’t, 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, it’s a political controversy.”
Testimony in the Pennsylvania trial wrapped up on Friday. A ruling in that case is expected in January.
Okay...I'm going to ask this ONE MORE TIME, and then I give up. What EXACTLY is the reason that ID should not be mentioned in schools? I'm still waiting for you guys to stop calling me an a--hole and start the debate.
It has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of experts in the field. While that doesn't by itself make it wrong, it's the only criterion by which school boards, administrators and teachers can judge what to teach and what not to teach.
Can you find individual experts who dissent? Perhaps. But the same is true of astrology, alchemy, homeopathy, geomancy...all manner of obsolete, medieval superstition, in fact...but we don't teach them on an equal footing with science.
Mention ID in schools, yes, but numbered among the list of rejected, old ideas.
LOL! My nameless relative tops your nameless relative.
Bona fides only count when the owner brings them here.
Or is 'science' now decided by majority vote? After all, there are NO cases in history where 'scientists' bray about something ceaselessly, confident that it is true and have those theories discarded and replaced.
So, again, why is your side science and my side philosophy?
Bona fides only count when the owner brings them here.
Ah, the old 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound' assertion. My guess is that even though he won't participate in this discussion his credentials remain intact.
At least one or two people have actually started the debate rather than attacking me or my family.
And again, all I keep hearing is how ID has been discredited and rejected. How? Why? What is the bullet through the brain (or heart)?
Rejected, old ideas? Hmmm, something else comes to mind. Can't quite put my finger on it.
It's really hard to convincingly argue something is wrong when you are wrong about what the something is.
I was around then. In fact I took college geology before plate tectonics. The mechanism now called plate tectonics was unknown, but the movement of continents was known from many lines of evidence.
Therefore?
Your example of plate tectonics being rejected is nonsense. Geologists were quite aware of the continental drift hypothesis and spent decades looking for evidence (and finding it).
There is no comparison to ID, which has neither a phenomenon to explain nor an explanatory hypothesis.
I'll take the results of my own work over the claims of an unnamed relative. There are others here who can easily do the same. FoaF stories are no more useful in science than in chasing UFOs.
But plate techtonics was not taught in school back then, nor should it have been. Only once it was accepted by scientists (i.e., once it had survived the challenges raised against it) did it become appropriate fare for a public science class.
And again, all I keep hearing is how ID has been discredited and rejected. How? Why?
Because it's not testable and it has no predictive power. End of story, as far as science is concerned. If and when that changes, scientists may give it a second look. Some time later, it may gain some acceptance. Then and only then will it be appropriate to begin the debate about whether to teach it to children.
There is a huge host of tentatively accepted, scientifically worthwhile ideas which are debated and discussed in the scientific journals, but which are not ready for a school curriculum.
REALLY? What do you think of this statement:
[The] hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty ... and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories."
The statement was uttered by Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago, regarding Alfred Wegener and his ridiculous theory of continental drift.
In fact, one of the proponents of this ridiculousness was so ostricized by his fellow scientists that he had to get a job teaching high school.
So let's forget the rewriting of history and get to what seem to be your points: ID has no phenomenon to explain nor an explanatory hypothesis. Both statements prove that you do not understand or are misrepresenting ID.
I have to go, but I'll post my response this evening. I'm sure there will be plenty more to discuss then.
Aye, intact and irrelevant to this discussion.
At least one or two people have actually started the debate rather than attacking me or my family.
Have I attacked you or your family?
Oh, it goes in the schools. I've always said it belongs in Abnormal Psychology. It just doesn't belong in biology classes.
A statement made in the 1920s, only a decade after Wegener proposed his hypotheisis.
ID is already twice as old a theory, with less explanatory influence.
Good theories survive sciebtific criticism, bad ones fail
I have a tame squirrel who has an advanced degree in economics, directed fiscal policy through three Republican administrations, and is now leading a well-earned retirement in the oak tree down by our creek. He's firmly convinced that species arouse by mutation and natural selection, even though as a fox squirrel he's not altogether happy at being closely related to the gray squirrels on the other side of the Missouri. He claims they're mostly Keynesians.
Wegener was basically the first to notice evidence that the continents fit together, not only in the manner of jigsaw puzzle pieces but when other lines of geological evidence were considered. However, he didn't have a mechanism for it, only some evidence that it seemed to have happened. To most scientists, the idea that a whole continent could move seemed preposterous.
In the early 20th century when Wegener published, we knew that there was magma and lava deep in the Earth. We knew the Earth could move in small ways, locally (earthquakes).
We didn't know the cross-sectional picture of the Earth, a tiny lithospheric crust riding on a sea of magma like scum on cocoa. We didn't know much about the mid-ocean ridges. When you add ocean floor topography to the continental relief maps, the picture for continental drift snaps into place, but we didn't have that. We knew nothing of nuclear fission reactions, which would provide the energetic mechanism once we did know about that. Finally, we didn't have the tools for precise measurement of yearly micro-drift, the final piece of evidence for macro-drift.
All that changed and the pieces snapped together in the 60s. That's science, the real version, for you. It actually absorbs new data, identifies and rejects bad data and bad arguments, revises theories or accepts new ones as needed, and makes progress.
Now, you'd have to be some kind of crank to deny plate tectonics. We have the evidence it happened. We have the mechanism. We can measure it happening now.
Of course, that last part is just micro drift. If you ARE a crank and want to deny plate tectonics, you only need insist that evidence for micro drift is not evidence for macro drift, the mechanism of which is still unexplained. If you are a crank, you can proclaim that ID (Intelligent Drift) explains the features just as well and isn't as materialist and dogmatic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.