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.”
The day science has all the answers will be a sad one.
Physicists were actually quite worried about a hundred years ago that they were coming to the end of physical discoveries... Everything had been explained, just a couple of loose ends to tie up and physics would be finished... Hilarious in retrospect.
I sure thought I did when I was a teenager:). Then my parents got pretty smart all of a sudden and continue to do so the older I get. Unfortunately, I get dumber and dumber.
"Physicists were actually quite worried about a hundred years ago that they were coming to the end of physical discoveries... Everything had been explained, just a couple of loose ends to tie up and physics would be finished... Hilarious in retrospect."
That's just physicists being physicists! Wacky bunch. :)
Quarks, gluons, the "colors" etc. The generations of matter: strange, charmed, etc.
That's what I was getting at, but I didn't want to show too much of my nonexpertise:).
If I throw a ball onto a roulette wheel and it lands on 24, is that chance or design?
Someone said in the 1890's or so that there was nothing left to discover. Do you know who?
If I throw a ball onto a roulette wheel and it lands on 24, is that chance or design?
I call it luck.
Evolution has been tested many, many times, and has held up.
Assertions are not evidence. If you are referring to the computer models some claim as evidence, those are as bogus as the global warming computer models.
For evolution to be held up, you have to start with a state of perfect nothingness. Otherwise, where is your starting point to replicate evolution?
Thanks for the good link.
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/courses-jmgay/GlossScience.htm
I have added that page to my regular list. However, I think it proves my point more than yours.
(Do you have any connection with that school or did you find it from a search?)
I posted this post 261 to another thread.
Your question begs the question that scientists are afraid of ID.
Neither ID nor Creationism create fear among scientists because neither one is based upon science and the scientific method. The concern among scientists is that those unwilling to do the work to pursue science will corrupt the science education for young students who may be potential scientists by inserting their sophistry into the the science curriculum.
There are no data to support either Creationism or ID, nor is there any heurism (Of or relating to a general formulation that serves to guide investigation) in either of these two positions.
No data + no heurism = not science.
Well, I just googled my own claim, and discovered that Feynmann says that the story that scientists were worried about coming to the end of physics is apocryphal. Apparently they were well aware that there were serious problems with classical mechanics from 1850 onwards. Feynmann wasn't often wrong about anything in science, so I'll await your answer with interest.
Only if you put your money on 24 too. Otherwise it is a rigged wheel.
I am not, as you would know if you had read the thread before posting.
Is it too much to ask that people use the View Replies feature John Robinson has gone to the trouble of providing for us?
For evolution to be held up, you have to start with a state of perfect nothingness. Otherwise, where is your starting point to replicate evolution?
Evolution is about how organisms change from generation to generation. It has nothing to do with nothingness.
I thought it was someone more famous, but I'll have to do some of my own research.
I took it as a compliment. Surely no one human being could generate such brilliance!
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