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.”
Wrong. In fact, very wrong. You'd think people would know by now how how false this statement is. Yet people keep claiming it, in willful disregard for the truth.
I think he's funny.
Althought I'll admit it'ss easy to wonder about the intent. Creationitssts mentioning homosexuality is as much a characteristic riff as John Kerry mentioning he served in Vietnam
O.K., I'll bite. It's a problem because American productivity is tied to technological innovation and utilization. By discovering and utilizing technology, our workers are more individually productive than those of other countries. That is in turn what enables us to maintain our standard of living. Countries that do not do this have lower standards of living. If don't maintain this lead, we'll be less able to compete with countries such as India and China, and the competition with them will cause our standards of living to converge.
That's just spooky.
How?
Give it a minute. That sound you hear is the creationist moving the goalposts.
Your hostility is showing. Keep calm, try banging your head against a door!
Again, That's a problem for you.
You asked for a verified example, and I gave you one -- How about Homo erectus =====> Homo sapiens. Now you want it to have been observed and reproducible?
By your requirements, physical observation and reproducibility, pretty much nothing can be demonstrated. You are not doing science.
Do you believe in the global flood too?
Oh yeah, I know. Gets to be, you can figure it out three moves in advance.
Okay, you clearly don't have a rational argument to offer. Nevermind then.
Behe wasn't functioning as a scientist when he formulated his ID theories...there's not a bit of science in ID.
Actually science welcomes critiques that are meaningful and generated by data derived via the scientific method. In fact, that is exactly the way science progresses.
ID is actually sophistry.
Actually it's a problem for everyone. The techology of our species as a whole is made up of efforts from many countries. If technological innovation in a country falls it not only lowers that countries economy and esteem, but it also reduces the pace of global technological innovation.
My country (UK) is quite poor when it comes to research, I don't even think we're in the top 15 :(
I am glad the US is churning out so many innovations and research inititives as it makes up the most significant part of global technology inventions. I wish my country had the motivation to put more effort in when it came to research. But all the money gets wasted on socialist programs instead.
By adding religiously motivated falsehoods to the biology curriculum, they infringe on the right of Kansans to be free of an established religion.
Currently, you mean. The sectarian views of the Evolutionists are being forced on all of us. It will be nice to hear other viewpoints.
In science classes????
'Evolutionists' are not a religious group. In fact, advocates of the scientific theory of the origin of species subscribe to many religions, and in some cases to none. Evolution is no more a religion than math is.
Name one that is scientifically generated.
By the same standard, your theory fails because my little blonde granddaughter doesn't look like an ape and if you say she does, you're in a world of trouble, pal.
Ah, the old missing link, eh? Piltdown Man was her other grandfather?
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