Intelligent design advocates to campaign in Kansas

Lawrence Journal-World (Kansas) ^ | 07 July 2006 | Scott Rothschild

[PatrickHenry]

A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound.

“Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute.

West said the group will start an information campaign over the Internet immediately and possibly start a radio campaign. He declined to say how much the center would spend.

The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly-contested State Board of Education school board races.

The board’s 6-4 decision to approve science standards that question evolution has been a major issue in the five board places that are up for grabs this year. The science standards are used as guidelines to what students learn in Kansas public schools.

Mainstream scientists have said the standards criticize evolution in a way that could introduce intelligent design in science classrooms. Intelligent design posits there was a master force that designed life.

[Radix]

OIC

You just gotta have the last word.

OK

But ya gotta work for it.

[freedumb2003]

The last word goes to He who stays awake latest.

I claim last to fall asleep (but I also admit my laptop freaked out and I just got it back online).

But I still WIN THE THREAD!

[Thatcherite]

I hope that the FBI is never duplicitous. That would be too terrible. Remember, coming from some quarters, duplicity is a compliment. What you have to consider is whether you value compliments from that source.

[PatrickHenry]

Man ... I leave this thread for the night, come back the next morning, and the place has turned into troll city.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Her core audience includes many people from whom you should be willing to learn."

No, Coulter's core audience is scientifically illiterate, which is why they accepted "Godless" without even thinking of checking her sources. She appeals to the losers in life's IQ lottery.

"But, apparently, are significantly too arrogant to consider that possibility."

Coulter is the arrogant one. She thinks she can slap together any old thing and call it a book, and nobody will check it for accuracy. Her arrogance is founded in her knowledge that the facts won't matter to her core audience.

[PatrickHenry]

When you visit the Discovery Institute, this is the place where their [cough, cough] "scientific" operations take place: Melbourne Tower, Seattle. The address comes from the Discovery Institute's website.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Step away from the troll and desist!
Step away from the troll and desist!

This is not a drill!

(You'll thank me later)

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"You're another."

Great comeback. I'm impressed with your ingenuity. You got the whole Pee Wee Herman thing going great ("I know you are but what am I?!").

You did better than I expected.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Ok... not sure why 208 was pulled... I didn't write it but it seemed pretty harmless...

odd.

[freedumb2003]

Man ... I leave this thread for the night, come back the next morning, and the place has turned into troll city.

Sleep is overrated. I suggest you not give in to it.

[freedumb2003]

Who posted 208? What was the upshot of it?

[PatrickHenry]

Wasn't me. I was away when it happened.

[andysandmikesmom]

Sound advice indeed...

[andysandmikesmom]

Thanks for all the info...I really dont like visiting cities a whole lot, just dont like cities...but eventually we will work our way up there, and see what is going on...

[Radix]

"..one question: you do realise that the "Wedge Document" is an internal memo from the Discovery institute, don't you?"

I just read the stuff on that site for the first time.

I gotta think about it a little bit and read it again.

I'll get back to you.

[andysandmikesmom]

Ah, yes, consider the source..indeed, thats very important...

[2nsdammit]

placemarker

[mjolnir]

Of course they could have been, OmahaFields; that's why Francis Crick in the eighties was doing ID as much as Behe later on, etc. ID doesn't is supposed to identify makers of intelligence, not the identity of that intelligence.

Nor does ID purport to be a version of the argument from design at the biological level. That would be to engage in the birthday fallacy. Suppose ID claims that all life forms bear marks of design-- that doesn't imply that there's only one designer.

There's nothing wrong with what the Discovery Institute is doing here. It isn't asking that ID be taught in Kansas schools by any means-- it's only asking that teachers equip students to critically analyze evolutionary theory by presenting them with the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution.

Even a very productive theory has limits to its scope. ID isn't the the only challenge to the what those limits are--Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science" presented such a challenge at the level of pre-biotic evolution, Lynn Margulis has challenged the ubiquity of evolution as competition and so on. Presenting evidence for and against aspects of Darwinian evolution makes biology more interesting-- this is not an ID issue, it is an education issue.

Incidentally, I hope you don't mind my asking why you use the tag line you do. Thomas Jefferson was a great thinker and in his thoughts on natural rights, which thought to be derived from the God he saw plain evidence of in nature, he provided a foundation upon which Lincoln stood to free this country from its slavery. In his writings on agrarianism and limited government, he even shows some hints of conservatism.

But the side of jefferson you're quoting is the one which was bigoted toward all established religion, especially Catholicism. This was the same side of Jefferson which on the that basis approved of the first great leftist totalitarian experiment, the French Revolution. Whenever one speaks of the Enlightenment, one should carefully distinguish between the French/Continental Enlightenment
and the American/British Scottish Enlightenments. Only the legacy of latter is compatible with conservatism imo.

[mjolnir]

The idea that one document can speak for all "IDer's" is a silly and bankrupt notion, akin the claims of many on the Left that claiming that everyone who supports the Iraq War signs on to everything in the Project For a New American Century's statement of principles.