Posted on 01/06/2005 7:39:47 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A Pennsylvania school district Wednesday rejected charges that plans to include references to an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution in high school biology classes would be illegal.
The Dover Area School District near Harrisburg is the first in the United States to introduce "Intelligent Design," a theory that the natural world is so complex it must have been made by an intelligent being, rather than occurring by chance, as held by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. ["By chance" isn't quite accurate, but that's what the reporter wrote.]
The district was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State on December 14 over plans to teach the theory starting next week. The lawsuit is the first to challenge the teaching of Intelligent Design, which the groups say violates the Constitutional separation of church and state.
A Pennsylvania school district Wednesday rejected charges that plans to include references to an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution in high school biology classes would be illegal.
The Dover Area School District near Harrisburg is the first in the United States to introduce "Intelligent Design," a theory that the natural world is so complex it must have been made by an intelligent being, rather than occurring by chance, as held by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The district was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State on December 14 over plans to teach the theory starting next week. The lawsuit is the first to challenge the teaching of Intelligent Design, which the groups say violates the Constitutional separation of church and state.
The civil rights groups argued that "Intelligent Design" is a thinly veiled version of creationism -- the belief that the earth was made by God. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1980s that teaching creationism in public schools would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. [The case to which the article refers is probably this one: EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD.]
The school district said in Wednesday's court filing that its "biology curriculum policy does not advance religion."
Instead, it informs "students about the existing scientific controversy surrounding Darwin's Theory of Evolution." [Note: virtually all scientists in the field of biology deny that there is any scientific controversy involved.]
Christian conservatives, who played an important role in the re-election of President Bush, have been pressing for decades for creationism to be taught in schools. [Note: There are major political implications here if creationism (or ID) becomes Republican policy.]
Lawyers for the school board said that neither creationism nor "Intelligent Design" will be taught to students, and that no religious beliefs will be taught.
Intelligent Design does not presuppose any supernatural being, and is not creationism, the school district said in its response, saying the school district will also continue to teach evolution.
On January 13, teachers will be required to read a statement saying that Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view, and that if students want to read more about it, they can read a book called "Of Pandas and People" which they can find in the school library.
Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU in Pennsylvania, said the plaintiffs will not seek an order to stop the policy being implemented next week and hope the case will go to trial in the coming months.
"This is the first legal challenge to Intelligent Design, and that alone makes it important," Walczak said. "If we lose, we really fear that you will see school districts all across the country teaching Intelligent Design."
Bellyfull doubleplus good!
He's also famous as the author of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.What's that??
Cool, it's on the web! The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
"Festival of the Intellectual 'Chia-Pets'" placemarker
FreeRepublic unrestricted chess and bowling tournament, placemarker.
Dr. Richard Lewotnin was speaking of the importance of keeping supernaturalistic explanations out of science, because science can't work if you start allowing for any suspension of the fundamental properties of the universe to circumvent difficult questions.
As a side bar, a good discussion of causation vs correlation would also be useful. But as you point out, some topics can only really be discussed in a more advanced setting than high school. But this point is one that could be discussed and has broad implications for all science topics.
Note that things like dust undergoing Brownian motion are "uniformitarian" in that they are the results of many small effects but they also perform seemingly "large" jumps. Or as in your example, asteroid collisions may be uniformly distributed over a scale of billions of years but seem occur completely at random over a scale of centuries.
I've heard Behe lecture on ID. He made no sense whatever. He did make a personal attack on some computer scientist (but he didn't present any artuments about this) and he did emphasize the he (Behe) was a Charistian. He did get paid so I guess the lecture was a success.
Many of us do know how peer review works. Your statements are simply incorrect.
I would second Dimensio's view of Lewontin's statement. God, by definition, is supernatural. Science, on the other hand, deals with the natural world.
It also indicates that a different worldview could lead equally valid science.
No. Science is the investigation of the natural world. God is, by definition, supernatural. You could take God into consideration when trying to answer a question about the natural world, but you wouldn't be doing science, but theology. And the result you obtained would be a valid answer, but a valid theological answer, not a scientific one.
But it cleared up one thing for me, which is that if I held his worldview, I agree that evolution becomes more compelling, and I can see why people with that worldview would think of it as fact. It also becomes obvious that those who do not have that worldview do not believe in evolution and for the very reasons Dr. Richard Lewotnin says "no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated".
Actually, when you look at this quote in context, he is really making the point that one of the difficulty science has in educating people is the fact that some things which are true seem to lack "common sense" to those who don't know science. Nonetheless, they are true. Thus, Lewontin is really saying, is, essentially, that people have difficulty believing in science because they are ignorant of how science works. What he is saying is that the fact that science is "counterintuitive... [and] mystifying to the uninitiated" simply means they don't understand it, and scientists have to do a better job in teaching it.
From the article:
With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn't even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one's prejudice. ...Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism....
I see this all the time on these boards, when people say, "I don't believe in evolution because it just doesn't make any sense to me..." That something appears to go against common sense is no proof that it is not true.
I just never realized before that the worldview used going into the science really determines the outcome more than anything else. I thought maybe the science filtered it out somehow.
I've seen this happen when people refuse to believe in evolution because it contradicts their religious beliefs. That is their right, of course, but they are doing religion, not science.
You have suggested observations that prove that there IS a God. To be scientific, however, you must suggest observations that would prove that there IS NOT a God, and show that these observations are not, in fact, observed. If you (and I don't necessarily mean you personally) can suggest an observation that would prove that there is no God (or no designer) then creationism or ID would be scientific. I would contend that this is impossible, in principle, because the designer, if he/she/it actually designed life, would be presumably be able to design life in such a way that any observation could be accounted for. If you grant that designer=God, then this is easy to see, since God is omnipotent. However even if the designer is not God (although there are other logical arguments to suggest that some form of deity is necessary for ID) it would be impossible for us to say that any observation was absolutely not the result of design. ID is therefore not falsifiable, and hence is not science. Evolution, on the other hand, does meet this requirement. There are numerous observations that would prove that evolution couldn't be true. I will admit that it seems unlikely that any of these will ever be actually observed, but that's why scientists hold evolution so strongly. Examples: find an organism with something other than polynucleotides for genetic material, find a fossil of a complex, multicellular organism that is reliably dated to an age of 1 billion years, find a mechanism that would prevent speciation as a result of genetic variation, etc. (I'm sure a real biologist could provide many more; that is not my area of expertise.)
It's anti-christian to say that the variation of allele frequencies in the gene pools of populations of organisms is sufficient to cause speciation? Where does that statement conflict with the statement that Jesus was the Messiah and died to redeem us from our sins?
Don't confuse the science with the scientist. That's one scientist's opinion. He's correct when he says that science must assume a lack of divine influence. That's because in order for science to work, there must be regularity in nature that would be disturbed by interference from God. For example, if, every so often, God changed the force of attraction between the earth and an apple, Newton would never have been able to formulate the law of gravity. We can't know, however, that God doesn't do this, so it is an assumption. This assumption goes by the name of methodological materialism. That is required to do scientific research, but philosophical materialism is not. That is, a scientist can believe in God, but must assume that God doesn't interfere with whatever phenomenon that he/she is studying. Therefore, scientists who study evolution must do so starting by assuming that God is unnecessary to explain where the diversity of life came from. This is different from a philosophical materialism which states that only what is material exists. Philosophical materialism is contradictory to the existance of God, but that's not required to do science. Any scientist who says that there must be no God is either doing a poor job of explaining methodological materialism or is injecting his/her own personal belief system. No scientific theory could ever show that God doesn't exist (or that He does). God is outside the scope of science.
You certainly are a good example og ignorance.
Why don't you find out what I.D. actually is?
Talk about 'forcing down throats', what about the non-science of dogmatic darwinites?
Yeah, you know how to criticize creation...wow!
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