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.”
It's the Oy Vey
It's the Oy Vey
Yep.
--sorry.
It kept evolving as I wrote, and I could not stop it. :)
It kept evolving as I wrote, and I could not stop it.
And it sent my head "revolving." :)
A clear case of going from bad to verse.
So then you think Plessy vs. Ferguson should have been upheld in Brown vs. Board of Education, and that racially separate schools are OK?
Ok I'm going. You can start posting again.
A clear case of going from bad to verse.
Better than the re-verse. :)
That's not what I asked. I asked you to name one. If there are many in the article you cited, pick one.
It could lead to an ad-verse situation of the in-verse puns. Maybe sub-versial ones are better. They are a little below the normal pun. The con-verse ones are more on the ball though.
I was wondering about that after I posted - the things I listed are more analogous to finding new species as opposed to changing the ToE.
All the same, fractional electric charges, even if they obey the wave equations and so forth, are something that, AFAIK, wasn't expected or even conjectured until way after 1928.
Does quark confinement require any changed to the theory?
Such pith. Such wit. So full of--
How does my expressing an opinion impose my views on anyone? It appears you believe that my simply stating my views is impermissible.
That is pure secularism. You have also bought into the secular myth that the 14th Amendment over-ruled the religious clause of the 1st, even though there is an 1892 Supreme Court precendent which contradicts that myth.
There is no such precedent; see Senator Bedfellow's post.
But in any case, even if I were wrong in my opinion, how have I imposed my wrong opinion on anyone?
I am no egotist, so no apology is necessary.
"No apology is necessary"? What a pathetic construction - the usage of one who is neither man enough to apologize, nor man enough to refuse.
But I'm sure you'll be man enough to ignore him.
We call that a dichotomy.
Maybe so. For sure Darwin does.
>>>"Obiter dicta from an immigration case/contract dispute. LOL. You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed by the heft of such a citation, seeing as how it has absolutely zero legal meaning."<<<
I am surprised that statements from the ruling, such as the following, are unconvincing:
"These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. In the face of all these, shall it be believed that a congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation?"
Maybe Reynolds vs. United States of 1878 would be more convincing.
Ironically, according to his criteria, The Theory of Evolution must belong in the same category as I.D.
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