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.”
Oh absolutely --- isolated populations will inevitably speciate. Problem is human populations aren't anywhere near isolated enough for that to happen -- there is way too much gene flow -- and the genetic evidence backs that up.
I'll be generous, and assume the phrase 'specific instance' confused you. You claimed somebody was imposing their secular views on the community or nation. Now you claim I've done so. Given that you've made a direct personal accusation here, I expect you to provide a specific instance of how I've imposed my secular views on anyone; and if you can't, please retract and apologize.
So, thanks for coming up with a third alternative. Where does that leave your argument?
Intact as your question had nothing to do with my argument. For your question to have any validity with my "argument", why not pose it as "what are the chances of that ball landing on 24 each and every time?" The answer being the ball would land on the 24 every time only if the game were rigged.
To believe that it would land on the 24 each time by chance is to believe that trees give off oxygen and take in carbon dioxide while humans give off carbon dioxide and take in oxygen by chance. And that "chance" occurred at the same time for both.
You said there were two alternatives, chance and design. Now you say there's a third. I'll respond when you've made up your mind.
Chance, design, or ???
The wheel (and evolution) is rigged. The randomness is selected upon by environmental bias (or pressures) in the process of evolution.
>>>...it would be far more helpful if the proponents of the notion of "irreducible complexity" could explain what the heck they mean by the term.<<<
Irreducible Complexity is very well defined. It means, in a nutshell, that certain biological systems cannot function until all individual components exist, eliminating the possibility of evolution of the system.
But for a more scientific explanation, I resort not to Behe, but to Michael J. Katz, who wrote:
"In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but the final patterns that they produce are so heterogeneous that they cannot effectively be reduced to smaller or less intricate predecessor components. As I will argue ... these patterns are, in a fundamental sense, irreducibly complex..." -- Michael J. Katz, Templets and the explanation of complex patterns, Cambridge University Press, 1986
For those of you who are wondering why the evolutionists are so psychopathically against ID, you need only to read Darwin:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." -- Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
Name one such system.
and here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1351793/posts
and here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1343600/posts
So what is your problem with chance?
None as long as we are talking about Las Vegas.
The usual suspects are all here in the thread. They sound alike. They ho-ho-ho with each other just alike. They try to bully and insult--just alike. Their posting histories are uncannily similar.
If they're not the same person, they might as well be. There's nothing new in insight or expression from one evo-rant to the next.
I did read something original a few posts back about isolation making speciation inevitable. I do hope that means a new Evo-chat room...?
You said there were two alternatives, chance and design. Now you say there's a third. I'll respond when you've made up your mind.
You're the one who came up with the roulette wheel example, Prof. Stop trying to evade the question that I asked you. My point to you is that you were arguing out of both sides of your keyboard.
That's circular, gobidleygook sophistry.
"Oh wait... mamzelle... these split personalities can get real tricky. I am you too."
That's what happens when you get feminized androgenous-ized.
I took it as a compliment. Surely no one human being could generate such brilliance!
Or become the object of the shared paranoia of the multiple personalities existing within one physical body.
him to another---My point to you is that you were arguing out of both sides of your keyboard.
It must be magic then.
Name one such system.
Humans
That's right. You said it had to be either chance or design. Which one is it?
Stop trying to evade the question that I asked you.
Why, because I refuse to accept the validity of your phony question? If your question is legitimate, you should be able to tell me if the ball falls on 24 by chance, or by design.
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