Posted on 02/06/2002 6:26:41 AM PST by aculeus
The Ohio Board of Education met yesterday to decide who will be given the opportunity argue for and against a new theory of the origin of life next month, when a panel meets to debate whether it should be included in the state's science curriculum.
One representative of ID will be a trained molecular and cell biologist named Jonathan Wells, who holds a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley. Wells is a fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a main promulgator of ID, whose proponents feel that "Darwinism has problems with it," according to its spokesperson Mark Edwards. "At the basic level, what's being taught is simply not accurate," he went on, "so we just feel like students should be able to know this. That's fundamental to getting an education."
To many scientists in Ohio, this sounds like Kansas - and creationism - all over again. (In that state, the Board of Education voted last year to reinstate teaching evolution, after dropping it two years earlier.) But proponents of ID maintain that this time is different.
"What they're trying to do is get [creationism] in through the backdoor of a science curriculum," charges Ohio State University paleoanthropologist Jeffrey McKee in a BioMedNet News report [LINK here] out today. "They came up with a new name, and say silly things like 'Well we don't know who the designer is.' But it's just a thinly veiled attempt to get creationism taught in a science classroom."
The semantics are important, because US federal courts have ruled it unconstitutional to teach creationism in science classes, as a violation of the separation of church and state. The chairman of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, state Senator Robert Gardner, maintains ID is still a constitutional issue, even though it does not specify the possessor of the creative intelligence.
"There's probably a place for [discussing] higher intelligence," he said. "But that's probably a history of religion class as opposed to a science curriculum, which is based on fact."
Two years ago, an independent report found Ohio one of 12 states that won the grade of F in its effort to teach evolution. Its current curriculum does not mention the word evolution at all, says Lynn Elfner, who directs the Ohio Academy of Science. Instead, it makes references to "change over time," which is "nonsense," Elfner told BioMedNet News. "The wallpaper on the wall changes over time. My shoes change over time," he said. "Change over time says nothing about evolution."
A 45-member panel of volunteers, including scientists, educators, and non-scientist members of the public, began revising standards for the teaching of evolution, prompted by the unfavorable rating, under orders from the Ohio state legislature. Oddly, the effort provoked some members of the 19-member Board of Education to propose including intelligent design rather than upgrading the teaching of Darwinism.
This is not the first time Ohio has tried to introduce ID into its classrooms, says Elfner. Two years ago, Board member Deborah Owens-Fink tried and failed to include intelligent design as one of the state's 12th grade competencies.
The Board is schecduled to vote on the new standards in December.
"I think we'll win this one," McKee said, "mainly because we have the truth on our side. We all saw what happened in Kansas."
The only thing ID has ever hypothesized is that there might be a designer. Not yet has there been a falsifiable scientific theory presented, as far as I know little or no progress has been made toward one. Until then, ID is a gedanken experiment with no room in any high-school science classroom.
So that he can bone up (no pun intended) on the state of the art in crevo discussions before uttering the same old tired canards...
This is exactly what the ID position is.
01: Site that debunks virtually all of creationism's fallacies. Excellent resource.
02: Creation "Science" Debunked.
03: Creationi sm and Pseudo Science. Familiar cartoon then lots of links.
04: The SKEPTIC annotated bibliography. Amazingly great meta-site!
05: The Evidence for Human Evolution. For the "no evidence" crowd.
06: Massi ve mega-site with thousands of links on evolution, creationism, young earth, etc..
07: Another amazing site full of links debunking creationism.
08: Creationism and Pseudo Science. Great cartoon!
09: Glenn R. Morton's site about creationism's fallacies. Another jennyp contribution.
11: Is Evolution Science?. Successful PREDICTIONS of evolution (Moonman62).
12: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution. On point and well-written.
13: Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions. A creationist nightmare!
14: DARWIN, FULL TEXT OF HIS WRITINGS. The original ee-voe-lou-shunist.
Let's mention another aspect of these discussions that fascinates me: the psychology of the people on the other side. Nearly all are totally evidence-proof.
Ain't that the truth! I also find the rhetoric and psychology fascinating.
One thing I've noticed on many threads, is that D*m*cr*ts, drug warriors, and creationists all share several rhetorical flourishes:
1) They don't have opponents who simply disagree, who weigh the evidence differently and come to different conclusions. No, you're a Cl*nt*n-hating rightwing conspirator, or a spaced-out druggie who loves the Taliban and hates America, or an atheist trying to rationalize his sinfulness.
2) Part of this is ascribing motives to their opponents and then attacking that particular strawman.
3) They prophesise the most horrible consequences if you don't follow their prescriptions. "seniors starving", "everybody a junkie", "no possible basis for morals".
4) Flat-out ignorance and impermeabliity to evidence. Have you ever tried to pin a D*m down on exactly what it was that GW Bush (or Jeb, or Katherine Harris, or whoever) was supposed to have done to 'steal' the election? They *know* he did *something*, and that's enough! It's like getting a Woddie to admit that Anslinger appealed to racism when he was lobbying for the MJ tax act, or getting a creationist to acknowledge that very similar DNA sequences are found in different species, and that the tree of variations in the DNA pretty well matches the tree of life deduced by evolution.
Amen, and thank you.
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