Posted on 11/28/2005 6:54:46 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
Intelligent design — already the planned subject of a controversial Kansas University seminar this spring — will make its way into a second KU classroom in the fall, this time labeled as a “pseudoscience.”
In addition to intelligent design, the class Archaeological Myths and Realities will cover such topics as UFOs, crop circles, extrasensory perception and the ancient pyramids.
John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology, said the course focused on critical thinking and taught how to differentiate science and “pseudoscience.” Intelligent design belongs in the second category, he said, because it cannot be tested and proven false.
“I think this is very important for students to be articulate about — they need to be able to define and recognize pseudoscience,” Hoopes said.
News of the new class provided fresh fuel to conservatives already angered that KU planned to offer a religious studies class this spring on intelligent design as “mythology.”
“The two areas that KU is trying to box this issue into are completely inappropriate,” said Brian Sandefur, a mechanical engineer in Lawrence who has been a vocal proponent of intelligent design.
Intelligent design is the idea that life is too complex to have evolved without a “designer,” presumably a god or other supernatural being. That concept is at the heart of Kansas’ new public school science standards — greatly ridiculed by the mainstream science community but lauded by religious conservatives — that critique the theory of evolution.
Hoopes said his class would be a version of another course, titled Fantastic Archaeology, which he helped develop as a graduate student at Harvard University.
The course will look at the myths people have created to explain mysterious occurrences, such as crop circles, which some speculate were caused by extraterrestrials.
The course will explore how myth can be created to negative effects, as in the case of the “myth of the moundbuilders.” In early American history, some people believed the earthen mounds found primarily in the area of the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys were the works of an ancient civilization destroyed by American Indians. The myth contributed to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which relocated American Indians east of the Mississippi to lands in the west, Hoopes said.
“It was that popular explanation that then became a cause for genocide,” Hoopes said.
That example shows the need to identify pseudoscience, he said.
“What I’m trying to do is deal with pseudoscience regardless of where it’s coming from,” he said.
But Sandefur said intelligent design was rooted in chemistry and molecular biology, not religion, and it should be discussed in science courses.
“The way KU is addressing it I think is completely inadequate,” he said.
Hoopes said he hoped his class stirs controversy. He said students liked to discuss topics that are current and relevant to their lives.
“Controversy makes people think,” he said. “The more controversy, the stronger the course is.”
I can just picture Thanksgiving with the Professor. "Gosh, nephew, will you stop with the evo-ranting and put some punkin pie in that pie hole?"
Musta been without a wireless for vacation.
Creationists also know that evolutionists have not found all the answers
my little blonde granddaughter doesn't look like an ape
HEHE. You haven't seen my great great grandmother then:).
I slam the door and there's a big bang.
Last night, my dad walked down the street and turned into a bar.
Saw it with my own eyes.
The rain turned into snow last night here.
She is an ape, as we all are.
True, we are classified as primates.
"True, we are classified as primates."
Not only that, we are apes. That doesn't make us chimps or gorillas.
Evolutionists, unlike creationists, know they have not found all the answers.
Actually nobody has and that's just fine with me.
I've got some matches. HEHE:).
You haven't seen a couple of politicians here then. One is a dead ringer for Clyde. The other for Koko.
Sorry, you have to earn your place. No freeloaders on the VI list. You need to accumulate a history of vacuous posts, ignorant assertions, death threats, and other offenses against Nature. It's hard work; I don't know if you're up to it.
BTW, are you a fan of Oscar Wilde?
At the trial-- not to be confused with an inquistion designed to discover Behe's "TRUE AGENDA"-- we find out that Behe views the designer as God based on theological and historical assumptions.
It is truly shocking that Behe would conclude that the "intelligent designer"-- which he inferred from scientific study that such a designer was God based on theological study. Its hard to understand why studies of theology would relate to inferences between the scientific conclusion of a designer toward the further belief that the designer is God.
Don't worry us stupid Christians get the message. Stay out of science. If you so much as intimate that the order that science reveals has some divine origin, you will be heckled out of scientific inquiry.
Darwinian fundamentalists. Please read Thomas Kuhn's book on Scientific Revolutions. Don't worry. Its not a Christian book and Kuhn is not an intelligent designer. He is a historian of science.
In the book you will discover that science is consensus driven. All initial contrary theses are dismissed as "pseudo science." I do not know if ID is correct. I do know that science is well served by open and fair debate.
This ain't it.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe I've seen people with vestigial sagittal crests.
And I've seen some with crest toothpaste. SHHHHHHH, you're not supposed to give away my secret!!!!!
Almost all science done today demonstrates that events that appear to be accidental have causes. Forensics medicine is a simple example.
What does identification of causation have to do with irreducible complexity? And what's irreducibly complex about forensic medicine?
Seems to me that if you've identified a cause, you're most likely looking at a "reducibly complex" item or event. It also seems to me that forensics of any type is the antithesis of irreducible complexity.
I have no personal disagreement with evolutionary biology as a study but I do reject the outrageous censorship of scientiests such as Behe.
Behe has been censored? When and how? He seems to be raking in some pretty good money from sales of his "censored" books.
Nope, it's another creation theory that includes some things included in evolution (now that's redundant:). We can't deny that there were dinosaurs and other ancient life forms. We can't deny that there is selection and adaptation by different species to different circumstances. I just believe that God is behind the science of it. I believe in the science and I believe in God. No conflict for me.
You're claiming relativity and quantum mechanics were labelled pseudoscience?
"they don't necessarily "evolve" into another species, but they do develop their own culture, customs, and such."
This is not evolution. This is social development.
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