Posted on 11/07/2002 7:07:47 PM PST by Nebullis
The AAAS Board recently passed a resolution urging policymakers to oppose teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" within science classrooms, but rather, to keep it separate, in the same way that creationism and other religious teachings are currently handled.
"The United States has promised that no child will be left behind in the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, CEO and executive publisher for AAAS. "If intelligent design theory is presented within science courses as factually based, it is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and to undermine the integrity of U.S. science education."
American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints, Leshner noted. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, he added, science-based information and conceptual belief systems should not be presented together.
Peter H. Raven, chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors, agreed:
"The ID movement argues that random mutation in nature and natural selection can't explain the diversity of life forms or their complexity and that these things may be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent," said Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "This is an interesting philosophical or theological concept, and some people have strong feelings about it. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution. Intelligent design theory has so far not been supported by peer-reviewed, published evidence."
In contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a "disputed view" within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through "disclaimer" stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.
"The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry," the AAAS Board of Directors wrote in a resolution released today. "AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of `intelligent design theory' as a part of the science curriculum of the public schools."
The AAAS Board resolved to oppose claims that intelligent design theory is scientifically based, in response to a number of recent ID-related threats to public science education.
In Georgia, for example, the Cobb County District School Board decided in March this year to affix stickers to science textbooks, telling students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Following a lawsuit filed August 21 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the school board on September 26 modified its policy statement, but again described evolution as a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other family teachings. The exact impact of the amended school board policy in Cobb County classrooms remains unclear.
A similar challenge is underway in Ohio, where the state's education board on October 14 passed a unanimous, though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But, their ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science, and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."
The Ohio State Education Board is inviting further public comment through November. In December, board members will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels. Meanwhile, ID theorists have reportedly been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey, and other states, as well Ohio and Georgia.
While asking policymakers to oppose the teaching of ID theory within science classes, the AAAS also called on its 272 affiliated societies, its members, and the public to promote fact-based, standards-based science education for American schoolchildren.
So what? If evolution were true, then this could not be an impediment to evolution. Single celled organisms - the first organisms on earth - are still the most common life on earth. So much so that in spite of their minute size (they are even smaller than the average human cell of which each person has some 100 trillion) they constitute some 90% of the biological mass on earth. They are also found everywhere - including in places where even humans and roaches cannot be found. So clearly these organisms had no necessity to evolve into higher species.
Furthermore, there is no geographic isolation between any of the human populations.
Again - see above. I am beginning to wonder if this hero of evolution is really an evolutionist.
Today there is far too much contact among all human populations for any kind of effective long-term isolation that might lead to speciation.
Speciation is not evolution. Splitting the gene pool of a species does not create new genetic information, it only decreases the genetic information of each new species, it makes the species less viable, not more viable and it does not add any new functioning. Like natural selection, speciation cannot be the source of more complex forms, of more complex organisms, so this hero of evolution is talking more garbage.
To be sure, there is abundant genetic variation within the human genotype to serve as material for appropriate selection, but modern conditions are very different from the time when some populations of Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. At that time, our species consisted of small troops, in each of which there was strong natural selection with a premium on those characteristics that eventually resulted in Homo sapiens.
The question that must be asked again of this hero of evolution is how can selection which destroys genetic information create a more complex species? Clearly it cannot be the source of it. That he denies any source other than selection for the creation of new species shows quite well that at least according to his criteria, evolution is impossible.
However, genetic deterioration is not an immediate danger, considering the high variability of the human gene pool.
Again Mayr precludes the possibility of creation of any new genetic information. Selecting destroys information, it does not add to it and therefore cannot create complexity which is what evolution claims is how we descended from single celled organisms.
Intelligent Design offers no more an explanation for design rules in biology (think of power laws, for instance) than it offers for any other law of nature. It has no predictive or explanatory power.
I think that issue is being addressed: Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls and Reality Check for ID (pdf)
One of the things I find silliest is the belief by many that humans thousands of years ago were less intelligent than us. Humanity may have progressed technologically a great deal as time went on, but human intelligence, human ingenuity has certainly not changed. I doubt we could find many as smart as a Plato or an Aristotle in our own age.
I doubt we could find many as smart as a Plato or an Aristotle in our own age.
IMHO, the main change over history has been in the circumstances of life. I suspect the ancients had fewer distractions while pondering the deep questions.
And what great discoveries have been made following evolutionary theory? Evolution has no explanatory power at all. Random mutation? What does that explain? How can one make predictions about a process which will result in random consequences? The answer is one cannot.
The only explanation which evolutionists claim is that one can compare one species with another and learn something about them that way. Well, this was being done thousands of years before Darwin and evolution. Aristotle and his people were dissecting animals to see how their bodies worked in order to learn how our own worked. So evolution has no claim to this insight. Interestingly for thousands of years, following this insight people thought that organisms were intelligently designed. Evolutionists, like Clinton, have taken everything good in science and claimed it for their own. However, this insight disproves evolution, it does not support it. The reason is the problem which evolutionists call 'convergence' or the creation of similar structures in totally unrelated species. The use of similar structures, similar genes, similar functions in widely diverse and totally unrelated species proves that evolution cannot explain the nature of organisms. ID though can explain it quite well. Like any intelligent designer - say a kid with an erector set - the intelligent designer which made the different species borrowed pieces from one and used it in another with slight modifications here and there. This perfectly explains the problem of convergence and why ID has more explanatory power than evolution.
Who cares how many other people tell that lie as the definition of evolution? How do you know that they are not repeating the garbage written in TalkOrigins. The point is that the premier evolutionist site gives that garbage definition for evolution. Note that you cannot refute the fact that the definition of evolution given by the poster and by TalkOrigins, the premier evolutionist site on the internet is indeed nonsense.
I accept that there are many who have not thought about and do not realize that they are accepting two incompatible positions. Evolution is materialistic and therefore leads to atheism in those who believe in it. All the major proponents of evolution have been atheists - starting with Darwin. The hatred of religion by evolutionists can be seen in their term 'creationism' which they use as an insult of those who deny their theory. Every Christian, to be a Christian need believe that God is the Creator and their insult of 'creationism' is a not so veiled attack on the Christian religion.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... HAHAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHA... hehehe... hehe... <giggle> whew! Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
Yeah, gore3000, you're right: Speciation happens when the offspring have half the chromosomes of their parents. Keep telling those stupid lame evolutionist what for. You'll get your Nobel Prize yet...
Intelligent Design offers no more an explanation for design rules in biology (think of power laws, for instance) than it offers for any other law of nature. It has no predictive or explanatory power.
I think that issue is being addressed: Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls and Reality Check for ID (pdf)
Alamo-girl, where in Dembski's speech does he address Nebullis' concerns? Dembski lists several basic things that the ID movement must come up with in order for it to progress as an actual research programme. That's not much more than the very criticisms we lay on ID ("there's no positive evidence for ID"), except that he spins them as opportunities for further research instead of criticisms of the theory.
Dude, that is so mean. :-)
A-Girl, as every PhD candidate will tell you, the anomalies are where the action is. The only folks who constantly wallow in the well-established stuff are the writers of children's textbooks. All the useful research takes place around the anomalies. They are the most useful of signals to a scientist. An anomaly is shouting: "Hey, look here, check this out!" And that's what scientists do.
Me: I think that issue is being addressed: Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls and Reality Check for ID (pdf)
You: Alamo-girl, where in Dembski's speech does he address Nebullis' concerns? Dembski lists several basic things that the ID movement must come up with in order for it to progress as an actual research programme.
He also indicated that first-order steganography (i.e., the embedding of functional information useful to the organism rather than to a scientific investigator) could also provide strong evidence for ID.
JennyP, your last sentence is troubling to me: That's not much more than the very criticisms we lay on ID ("there's no positive evidence for ID"), except that he spins them as opportunities for further research instead of criticisms of the theory. IMHO, yours is the same kind of argument made by creationists to which evolutionists respond "that will be found someday."
Both ID and evolution make predictions. Science should not be prejudiced to pursue one and not the other.
The only folks who constantly wallow in the well-established stuff are the writers of children's textbooks. All the useful research takes place around the anomalies.
I agree that is the way things ought to be.
In the case of the Sphinx, the Egyptologists' reaction was extremely defensive and they sought to dismiss the Geologists' findings, out-of-hand. Were it not for the coverage by conventional media, the finding might have been hustled off into obscurity.
My hope is that Evolutionary Biologists will not behave the same way if faced with "dense, multi-layered embedding of information" as predicted by ID.
Such as phenomena and their effecient causes.
The idea that only particular objects are worthy of our science...
The objects "worthy of science" are only those which are amenable to current tools and methodologies. As they improve, the sphere of objects grows.
You: This is also restrictive to the character of science, for it determines that its object conforms only to present evidence.
We are talking about what is taught as science in lower level education. There are an infinite number of possible hypotheses without predictive or explanatory power. What tyranny of truth should keep them out of a science classroom? The direction that scientists take in their own research can be as far afield from present evidence as they like.
At lower levels of science education, the kids must learn the language and present evidence first. How else will they be properly equipped?
An analogy can be found in mathematics education. At lower levels, the thought processes for math (such as computation) have little to do with the type of thinking required for higher level math. Yet it is the proper foundation.
I'm surprised at this extreme dichotomy. Is Wolfram so easily forgotten?
It's one of those divisive topics. It doesn't seem to matter who posts the articles.
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