Posted on 12/28/2005 3:49:52 AM PST by PatrickHenry
US. District Judge John E. Jones III's decision to bar the teaching of ''intelligent design'' in the Dover, Pa., public school district on grounds that it is a thinly veiled effort to introduce a religious view of the world's origins is welcome for at least two reasons.
First, it exposes the sham attempt to take through the back door what proponents have no chance of getting through the front door. Jones rebuked advocates of ''intelligent design,'' saying they repeatedly lied about their true intentions. He noted that many of them had said publicly that their intent was to introduce into the schools a biblical account of creation. Jones properly wondered how people who claim to have such strong religious convictions could lie, thus violating prohibitions in the book that they proclaim as their source of truth and standard for living.
Culture has long passed by advocates of intelligent design, school prayer and numerous other beliefs and practices that were once tolerated, even promoted, in public education. People who think that they can reclaim the past have been watching too many repeats of Leave it to Beaver on cable television. Those days are not coming back anytime soon, if at all.
Culture, including the culture of education, now opposes what it once promoted or at least tolerated. The secular left, which resists censorship in all its forms when it comes to sex, library books and assigned materials that teach the ''evils'' of capitalism and ''evil America,'' is happy to censor any belief that can be tagged ``religious.''
Jones' ruling will be appealed and after it is eventually and predictably upheld by a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees (Jones was named to the federal bench by President Bush, who has advocated the teaching of creation), those who have tried to make the state do its job for them will have yet another opportunity to wise up.
This leads to the second reason for welcoming Jones' ruling. It should awaken religious conservatives to the futility of trying to make a secular state reflect their beliefs. Too many people have wasted too much time and money since the 1960s, when prayer and Bible reading were outlawed in public schools, trying to get these and a lot of other things restored. The modern secular state should not be expected to teach Genesis 1, or any other book of the Bible, or any other religious text.
That the state once did such things, or at least did not undermine what parents taught their children, is irrelevant. The culture in which we now live no longer reflects the beliefs of our grandparents' generation.
For better, or for worse (and a strong case can be made that things are much worse), people who cling to the beliefs of previous generations have been given another chance to do what they should have been doing all along.
Religious parents should exercise the opportunity that has always been theirs. They should remove their children from state schools with their ''instruction manuals'' for turning them into secular liberals and place them in private schools -- or home school them -- where they will be taught the truth, according to their parents' beliefs. Too many parents who would never send their children to a church on Sunday that taught doctrines they believed to be wrong have had no problem placing them in state schools five days a week where they are taught conflicting doctrines and ideas.
Private schools or home schooling costs extra money (another reason to favor school choice) and extra time, but what is a child worth? Surely, a child is more valuable than material possessions.
Our children are our letters to the future. It's up to parents to decide whether they want to send them ''first class'' or ``postage due.''
Rulings such as this should persuade parents who've been waffling to take their kids and join the growing exodus from state schools into educational environments more conducive to their beliefs.
Perhaps you're right - it may depend on where they're talking about home schooling. The kids I know who are home schooled are outscoring traditionally educated kids of the same age.
Of course, they have to pass, but we all know "passing" is barely above brain dead and doing well is a totally other thing.
He's not talking about viral evolution.
The people I know who were home schooled have gone on to college and successful lives. So, yes they are doing well in all areas. What do you have against home schooling? Maybe I misunderstood your post.
Piltdown is a good example of how science works. It was a hoax from the beginning, and came at a time (ca. 1912) when there were few fossils available. Also, it fit the model of what many of the British were predicting, so they were easily fooled.
By the mid-1920s, the South African fossils began appearing--and they did not match Piltdown. Rather, they documented a different sequence of fossils which did not include Piltdown at all.
As more and more data accumulated, more and more researchers recognized that Piltdown just didn't fit. Friedrichs and Weidenreich had both, by about 1932, published their research suggesting the lower jaws and molars were that of an orang (E.A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, revised edition; The MacMillan Co., 1946).
In 1954 the technology was available to disprove Piltdown Man completely, but it had been widely ignored long before that.
Now, the lesson in science. There are a lot of people practicing science (and evolution) and a lot of different opinions on things. A newcomer who makes a great find or a theoretical breakthrough can become quite famous. You only do that by stretching the envelope and breaking new ground. And this is exactly how Piltdown was first bypassed then disproved.
With Piltdown, it could be accepted only in the absence of other evidence; when that evidence came, Piltdown was discarded. This is part of the self-correcting part of the scientific method.
ID could potentially do the same--but, unlike the South African fossils, ID cannot compete as an alternate theory in evolution as there is no evidence to go on. A large number of the posts to these threads complain about this or that feature of evolution (or simply disbelieve it) without supporting ID in any way.
And because ID lacks evidence, it is being pushed along another route--public opinion and influencing school boards--rather than peer-reviewed scientific journals.
I have nothing against home schooling - I did it, partially. But people who do it for reasons to avoid facts and information are potentially doing great harm to their children. People who do it because the available schools are doing a crappy job are doing it for the right reasons.
The "choice", as such, is made after the fact, after the evident selection on such ad-hoc basis as the compilier of data, that is to say, the scientist, then applies to best fit his ordering of artifacts.
Using your a element from your list -- temparature, say. A scientist working to promote and advance the theory of natural selection would take a series of bone and fossil artifacts out of layers of sediment and say "these particular changes over geological time are due to adapations to decreases in temparature of the local environment".
Am I correct so far?
These are all topics worthy of scientific research, no doubt, and good examples of actual controversies in evolutionary biology and abiogenesis (at least as far as I know). What kind of results, though, from research in these areas, could contribute positive evidence to the necessity of an intelligent designer? In other words, what finding would differentiate between the presence of a designer and our own ignorance of an identifiable natural cause?
The only warranted conclusion that science can make about these topics so far is that we don't have all the answers yet - assuming anything else is a leap of faith (which is not a bad thing, but it must be admitted for what it is).
Who decides "This is the set of selective pressures and those ain't?"
" Who decides "This is the set of selective pressures and those ain't?"
Nature. If you have a serious complaint about natural selection now would be the time to present it.
I know of children who were "home schooled" who ended up in foster homes and struggling to catch up to their public school age group.
Using your a element from your list -- temparature, say. A scientist working to promote and advance the theory of natural selection would take a series of bone and fossil artifacts out of layers of sediment and say "these particular changes over geological time are due to adapations to decreases in temparature of the local environment".
Am I correct so far?
This approach does not feel right to me.
I too think looking at living populations is a better way to test the method. For example, draw a graph of skin color from the equator to the arctic circle and there is a gradual lightening--up to a point, then skin goes darker. This most likely relates to the selection pressure of (1) protection from ultraviolet radiation vs. (2) production of vitamin D in the skin. (The extreme northern peoples cannot expose skin to the elements, so lighter skin does no good; they supplement their diet primarily with fish oils.)
Some of the temperate areas are pretty hot in summer but cooler in winter (and shorter days to boot). The ideal would be skin that changed with the season. Thus the tanning ability.
Now with this data you can work on theories of how and why.
These in turn might be important for the example you posed.
So, to summarize, we can see adaptation in human populations, with skin color changing with latitude. The evidence is pretty good that ultraviolet light and vitamin D are related, but there could be other factors as well. The mechanism whereby these changes occur is natural selection; some individuals have better adaptations to a specific location (or changing condition) than others and so reproduce better.
Now, take this example and multiply it by many factors, including diseases, predators, culture and technology (presence of absence of fire, for example, or antibiotics), and you can have a lot of fun figuring out the best answers to the puzzles.
This essay proves only that he has allowed others to do his thinking for him.
Whether the failure is due to intellectual laziness or the press of deadline, the effect is the same. He has completely failed to grasp the issue let alone grapple with it.
What a pity.
I was responding to the individual who posted:
"Piltdown Man. Discovered as a fraud by scientists, because it didn't fit into the evolutionary picture as it should."
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that it didn't fit with other finds and THEN the fraud was uncovered.
Great post. Thanks!
I'm no expert on Piltdown but I believe that after it was discovered and published, it was stashed in a vault for a long period. Only after other finds cast doubt on it's authenticity was it was reexamined and declared a hoax.
As I recall from the textbooks, the person who did the hoax gave the British scientists just what they had predicted, and pulled them in hook, line and sinker.
Other scientists had other predictions, but could not argue against the data very much. So they went in search of more data in new places. By the 1920s there was a lot of other data, especially from South Africa, and most realized Piltdown didn't fit the accumulating data. Not everyone agreed it was a fraud, though Friedrichs and Weidenreich had both, by about 1932, published their research suggesting (correctly) the lower jaws and molars were that of an orang.
Piltdown was thereafter widely ignored until the technology came along which let scientists document the fraud conclusively.
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