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.”
Troll: uhhh? The underpinnings of ID are science (do you prefer scientific?).
Me: This is usually called an evasive response.
Troll:I do not see what you think I am evading.
I didn't bother to respond to the last.
The theory of evolution could be proven false by a single rabbit fossil in a Cambrian stratum. So grab your chisel and get to work!
Kind of reminds me of
cue orchestra and that mute guy with the harp...
Professor Rightwing Spaulding, the African Explorer--he comes here just to ignore her, hooray, hooray, hooray!
He really muuuust beeee going....
(what movie?)
NewLand's been around for a long time, though he disappeared from crevo threads for a while.
RW--you are clearly NOT on the List. You've been slipping.
I'm sure victory was declared in your absence!
It's the Troll way.
Those objections to evolution that are objections to its supposed randomness are therefore misguided.
I'm sure victory was declared in your absence!
That also reminds me of something I saw in a reader review of a book on Amazon, I forgot which one.
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon -- it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory. "
Its no good if they dont tell you!
from creative evos!)
You sound more and more like Dr. Shapiro.
James Shapiro Post-Chat: How molecular biology opens up a 21st Century view of evolution.
Yaakov
Hi James, It seems to me that what you are saying throws out Darwinian(or NeoDarwinian) theory of evolution as the "major" means of evolution of life on Earth and now this 21st century evolution sees a much more elegant and orgerly mechanism to induce a guided development of life when needed. Do I understand your propositions correctly
Masciarelli
My wild question: Jim wrote: "cells are capable of altering their genomes in non-random but not rigidly specified or pre-determined ways." Could this mean that cells are making 'choices' about how to react, adjust & develop to input?
James Shapiro
Yaakov, you get the message. Evolution, yes, Randomness and gradualism, only in the fine-tuning after the heavy lifting has been done.
Ole Tom got around, didn't he?
"Convincing" has nothing to do with it. It is dicta and hence has no value as precedent, as a matter of law. Justice Brewer - who is not generally regarded as one of the court's intellectual superstars, by the way - had a habit of bootstrapping his personal views on religion into his opinions, but that doesn't make his personal views into law. Sorry.
Maybe Reynolds vs. United States of 1878 would be more convincing.
Convince me of what? Reynolds dealt with what sorts of religious exercise are and are not protected by the First Amendment - in that particular case, the court decided that polygamy was not a religious expression protected by the First. This is the case you want to hang your hat on?
Really, this is a fruitless endeavor you're engaged in. I know what you're looking for, and it just ain't there. But don't take my word for it - you keep setting 'em up, and I'll keep knocking 'em down.
>>>"It is a secular document."<<<
It is secular only in the sense that it specifically prohibits the congress from respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. There was no prohibition against practicing Christianity, in general, at either the state or federal level. In fact, one of the first acts of the House of Representatives was to establish the position of chaplain to conduct daily prayer.
Jefferson understood that the original intent of the founders was to limit the powers of the general (federal) government on the matter of religion, not the state governments, as follows:
"I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." - January 23, 1808.
While Jefferson was President of the United States, he also served as the chairman of the committee on education for the public schools in Washington, D.C. He demanded that two books MUST be taught in D.C. public schools: the Bible and Watts Hymnal.
Two days after Jefferson sent the letter to the Danbury Baptist Association he attended public worship services in the U. S. Capital building. Did you know that he authorized the use of the War Office and Treasury building for church services? That he provided, at the government's expense, Christian missionaries to the Indians? That he put chaplains on the government payroll? That he provided for the punishment of irreverent soldiers. That he sent Congress an Indian treaty that provided funding for a priest's salary and for the construction of a church for the missionaries to the Indians so the Indians might be won to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, thereby, civilized?
In 1822, four years before his death, Jefferson wrote, "In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting-house. The court-house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others' preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony."
Also in 1822, he wrote, "In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other."
The current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, got it right when he said, "There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation . . . the "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."
>>>"There is not a single reference to 10 Commandments. No one seriously thinks our laws are based on them."<<<
Not unless you recall that we have penalties for perjury, murder, theft, and, until fairly recently, adultery. Also many states had restrictions for certain activities on Sunday. Some notables considered that all our laws were based on them, as follows:
"The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code... laws essential to the existence of men in society and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws." - John Quincy Adams
"[L]aw, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God... Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine... Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other." - James Wilson, Signer of the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God-the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men." - Noah Webster
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet" and "Thou shalt not steal" were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." -- John Adams
>>>Indeed, in Colonial times, several colonies expressly forbade "clergy and pastors" from being elected to Town councils.<<<
Yet, many laws of the early colonies were based specifically on bibilical teachings. After the constitution was adopted, several tates required a religious test for public office (the 10th Amendment gave them that authority).
No offense, but on the matter of constitutional interpretation you sound an awful lot like the ACLU.
>>>"The inconsistencies in the Holy Scriptures would make any person take deep breaths."<<<
Interesting. Name a few inconsistencies.
I used to wonder, similarly, why a mechanism for Lamarckian evolution had never evolved. What an advantage it would be if we could transmit acquired characteristics to our offspring! Well, of course, it turns out we can, we just don't do it through our genes, we do it by teaching them. And it's not just humans or apes; birds learn birdsong and migration from their parents or kin.
So why don't organisms do more systematic genetic engineering? Possibly because it's hard for the somatic line to act directly on the germ line, and easier for the somatic line to affect the somatic line of the next generation.
>>>There is a lot of scientific evidence out there which documents that Homo erectus led to Homo sapiens.<<<
Since you are going that route, there is also a lot of evidence that erectus and sapiens are the same species.
Actually, it is more like the following, but you are sounding more like Shapiro.(3rd paragraph in quote below)
a 21st Century view of evolution
Now 4 years old but I don't think he has changed his mind.
As I see it, a 21st Century view of evolution has to include the following features:
? Major alterations in the content and distribution of repetitive DNA elements results in a reformatting of the genome to function in novel ways --without major alterations of protein coding sequences. These reformattings would be particularly important in adaptive radiations within taxonomic groups that use the same basic materials to make a wide variety of morphologically distinct species (e.g. birds and mammals).
? Large-scale genome-wide reorganizations occur rapidly (potentially within a single generation) following activation of natural genetic engineering systems in response to a major evolutionary challenge. The cellular regulation of natural genetic engineering automatically imposes a punctuated tempo on the process of evolutionary change.
? Targeting of natural genetic engineering processes by cellular control networks to particular regions of the genome enhances the probability of generating useful new multi-locus systems. (Exactly how far the computational capacity of cells can influence complex genome rearrangements needs to be investigated. This area also holds promise for powerful new biotechnologies.)
? Natural selection following genome reorganization eliminates the misfits whose new genetic structures are non-functional. In this sense, natural selection plays an essentially negative role, as postulated by many early thinkers about evolution (e.g. 53). Once organisms with functional new genomes appear, however, natural selection may play a positive role in fine-tuning novel genetic systems by the kind of micro-evolutionary processes currently studied in the laboratory.
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