Posted on 07/09/2003 12:08:32 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
9 year olds are expected to think for themselves these days, maybe choose woodwind, brass, or strings, and they don't care what the state wants, or what their parents want for that matter. It's a little young for any of this; at 9 they should be learning to read and do arithmetic. 12 years old is functional decision age for most. Anyway, I'm concerned with the U, where no one wants any Creationism, they all want the current state of the art.
You mean like global warming, scientology, Christian Science, socialism, Krishna Consciousness, etc. You are advocating a kind of wishy-washy, relativistic, intellectual affirmative action that conservatives should be solidly against.
I have no problem with creationism, or intelligent design, or any other theory being in textbooks and curricula provided only that it EARN its way in there the same way any other theory has done or would be expected to do.
For a theory to be included in the science curricula, this means that it must FIRST earn standing in the market place of scientific ideas. It must prove its worth to working scientists such that they begin to test, implicate and employ the theory in their ongoing research. There is even an objective manner of determining if and when this has occured, since there is a professional literature in which scientists describe their research.
I've got news for you, goodseedhomeschool: All of your earnestness will not accomplish this. Hovind speaking 8 THOUSAND times a year will not accomplish this. Trying, even successfully, to persuade people on computer bulletin boards will not accomplish this. Even indoctrinating highschool students in creationism will not do this.
You've got to do the one thing creationists have never successfully done, and very, very seldom even try to do. (Because they can't. Duh!) You have to put together a coherent theory or body of theory, build a scientific research program around it, and produce some results.
If you do that -- if scientists are actually using a theory -- it will eventually be included in curricula as a matter of course. You won't need to wail and piss and moan on computer bulliten boards, or in front of school boards, or maintain a popular movement with huge mailing lists, or oooh and aaah over unctuous charlatans waving degrees from diploma mills. But so long as you fail to do the first thing, none of the rest will do any good in the long run, and in fact will only do harm, both to our educational standards AND to religion.
Just as well. Before Kansas reversed itself, we were considering refusing to accept biology credits from any school system that taught creationism. There no reason why a science department should accept pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo from fundamentalist religious fanatics, any more than we should accept the prohibition on usury in the Koran as a valid form of economics, or Vedic astrology as a branch of science.
Funny, considering Dimensio's a libertarian, and far less statist than me, you or any other conservative.
To: ALS
It does NOT further conservativism, I have told you this, WHAT? 3 or 4 times? It is SCIENCE.
Because it is science, when conservatives ATTACK IT, it discredits conservatives in the eyes of the public.
If ID actually got into schools because of "conservatives" it would DISREDIT the ENTIRE conservative movement.
It would mkae us look like a bunch of flat earther, anti science zealots, and would DESTROY ANY credibility that we have.
SO, YES, It does FURTHER the conservative movement, it gives us credibility.
1,132 posted on 07/02/2003 11:07 PM CDT by Aric2000 (If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance god)
EVOCRITE noun [U]
barking chihuahua that pretends to believe something that they do not really believe or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time.
But when we test our theories we test all applicable presuppostions at the same time. In historical fact, science has modified or abandoned even very fundamental, "philosophical level" presupositions, as well as (and sometimes in preference to) theories, simply because they did not work, or because other and incompatible presuppositions worked better.
For instance it used to accepted as a core presupposition, inherent in and necessary to science as such, that force is only transmitted by physical contact between material bodies. For this reason Newton's law of universal gravitation should have been immediately rejected as "non-scientific". (And in fact this argument was made.) The problem was that Newton's idea worked, and it worked remarkably well. As a result the theory was retained that the presupposition was abandoned.
Incidently, this undermines the creationist complaint that scientists refuse to acknowledge God as a mechanism in scientific theory, and systematically rule out non-natural causes entirely. Well, they do, and they believe (quite correctly, I assert) that there is very good reason for doing so. BUT... If you could come up with a theory including non-natural mechanisms that clearly WORKED -- that solved genuine scientific problems, and advanced research that led to the accumulation of well ordered and useful knowledge -- then this objection would be dropped. The "nature of science" is determined by it's theories, and will ALWAYS be modified to accomodate a truly successful theory.
Anyway, back to the main point I wanted to get to, which is the problem with your philosophy of presuppositionalism. It pretends that it is allright for "me" to woodenly adhere to my pressuppositions, come what may, because "thee" will do the same. But "thee" (science) doesn't do the same. Presuppositionalism thus fails as a means for religionists to either incorporate or challenge science. (I'm not saying that incorporation or challenge is necessarily impossible, btw, but just that this doesn't work.)
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