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Intelligent design - coming to a school near you
The New Zealand Herald ^ | August 27, 2005 | Chris Barton

Posted on 08/28/2005 4:07:56 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored

Intelligent design - coming to a school near you
 
David Jensen says the evolutionists' perspective relies on unproven scientific facts and theories. Picture / Greg Bowker
David Jensen says the evolutionists' perspective relies on unproven scientific facts and theories. Picture / Greg Bowker
 
27.08.05
 
By Chris Barton
 
Science teachers say it has no place in the classroom. Christian educators say children shouldn't be denied alternative views.

Science teachers retaliate that it's not science, it's religion behind a mask and they don't want a bar of it. Christian educators argue they can teach it alongside traditional science, so what are science teachers so afraid of?

Science teachers' blood begins to boil. "It's not science."' they fume.

"It" is "intelligent design" - a challenge to the theory of evolution described by some as creationism in disguise. But it's a challenge that's garnering support from high places.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," United States President George W. Bush said this month. "If you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

The topic is also the subject of court action in Pennsylvania, taken after the Dover Area School Board decided to revamp its biology curriculum to include intelligent design.

In December, 11 parents sued the district and its board members, claiming they were bringing God into the science class. The case is being watched closely by 21 states across America facing controversies over how evolution is taught to high school students.

The debate also has been simmering in New Zealand. Chief proponents of intelligent design here include Investigate magazine editor Ian Wishart and Auckland University School of Engineering associate professor Neil Broom, author of How Blind Is a Watchmaker?

The argument was rekindled last week when 500 New Zealand schools received unsolicited DVDs and workbooks from the Christian-based Focus on the Family organisation.

The material comes via the Centre for Science and Culture (CSC), a division of the Discovery Institute, a religion-based conservative think-tank in Seattle. It criticises Darwinism and promotes the idea of an "intelligent designer" outside the laws of nature to explain the intricate complexity of living organisms.

"Intelligent design people will tell you it doesn't mean there was a God. It just means something intelligent designed it. I'm much more comfortable saying God's there and he made it," says Michael Drake.

The principal of Carey College looks pleased with his answer. It avows his faith. Drake exudes the unshakeable rightness, some might say smugness, of a committed Christian.

The private school in Panmure teaches a literal interpretation of creation found in Genesis alongside the teaching of evolution. Drake believes in a young Earth - one that's about 6000 to 10,000 years old because that's what you get if you add up all the begats in the Bible.

Questions of carbon dating are not a problem. "It's perfectly possible to say God created the world at a point in time and at that point in time it [the Earth] was fixed with so many carbon 14 and so many ordinary carbon molecules - why not? God is God."

It's the sort of statement (given ample evidence that the world is at least 4.6 billion years old) that gets science teachers spluttering into their coffee.

"There are no geologists I am aware of who think the world is only 10,000 years old. That's the most fatuous idea one has ever come across," says Martin Hanson, a science teacher of 40 years and author of nine textbooks including Apes and Ancestors II.

Drake is unbowed, pointing to the swag of science awards the school has won. "Our kids will leave this school understanding evolutionary theory and creation theory and being able to work with both right through the science syllabus."

David Jensen, principal of Immanuel Christian School, holds a similar view.

"People have to see that evolution is as much a religious faith-based position as is creationism. Our creationist beliefs rest on faith in God as creator. An evolutionist perspective is just as religious.

"It relies on unproven scientific facts and theories - that's why it's called a theory of evolution. It's not the fact of evolution - it's called a theory for good reason. No one can prove it."

Science teachers splutter in unison with incredulity. "These people talk about evolution as a theory in crisis - they don't understand the word theory," says Alan Munro, head of science at Southland Boys' High.

"In layman's terms a theory is just a guess or something unproven, but in science a theory implies something that has been proven and generally accepted as true."

Hanson agrees, pointing to atomic theory. "No chemist has the slightest doubt about the existence of atoms. They're using theory in quite a different sense - it's a framework of knowledge and ideas which has great predicative value and is solidly based."

Jensen's faith is also unshakeable. "At the very least it's intellectually honest to give a reasonable amount of attention to the deficiencies of the theory of evolution as well as having a look at other competing theories, creationism being one."

Jensen is not as hard-line as Drake in terms of the age of the Earth. He's comfortable putting that aside as "a bit of a grey area". He claims evolutionists are fixated on the Earth being millions of years old because that is what evolution requires.

His main problem with evolution lies with its notions of chance mutations and accidental events creating complex forms of life. He rejects more figurative interpretations of the Bible which allow some Christians to see evolution as part of God's plan.

"It makes no sense. Why would God use a process of death and random events to create when he can create things as good?" And he sees it as inconsistent that "a good God" used millions of years of death and suffering.

For Jensen such an idea doesn't fit with Genesis, where it says, "God created and it was good." And with the description of the Garden of Eden - "an amazing place where animals were not ripping each other apart and devouring each other".

The intelligent design argument is more sophisticated. It doesn't retreat to a belief in the Bible as its founding truth. And it doesn't directly refer to God. But it shares with creationists the same difficulty in accepting the role of chance, accident or randomness in explaining the origin of life.

Drake sums up the problem for all. "Evolutionary theory says if there is a God, then he has not made things by means of design, purpose or, in the creationist point of view, with immediacy."

Hanson is scathing. "Intelligent design people are nice people, but they have difficulty in confronting complex realities - they need simple truths. There are a tiny number of biologists who do have problems with evolution, but they are such a minute, microscopic rump that they are hardly worth considering."

The Privileged Planet, one of a set of three DVDs distributed by Focus on the Family, sets out to show through maths and astronomy that purpose and design are everywhere.

The Earth, rather than being an inconsequential, chance speck in a vast universe, is the perfect viewing platform from which to appreciate God's handiwork. Similarly it's hard to accept that humans might not be the special objects of God's creation but simply a product of natural selection brought about by "numerous successive slight modifications".

Enter Icons of Evolution to cast doubt on the formulation of Charles Darwin's theory. Munro, who has assessed some of the DVDs, is annoyed by its bias and use of outdated information. "They say 'here was an error that was made back in the 1860s' and, therefore, because of this error the whole of evolution is wrong."

He points out the nature of science is to test theories for validity and be prepared to accept the theory can be proved false. "You come up with a theory and later evidence changes the story and we have to do a rethink, but we've never found anything which totally disproves evolution."

The material, Munro thinks, should probably be returned to sender. But he's toying with the idea of using some of it in a lesson on testing whether evidence is valid. "If it was going to go to the library, I'd file it under something like fairytales and fables - it's not scientific."

Intelligent design's king hit argument against evolution is found in the third DVD Unlocking The Mystery of Life. It claims to have found a scientific principle ("irreducible complexity") which proves certain structures could not have been produced by evolution.

The argument asserts that structures like the bacterial flagellum (a whip-like motor found in single cell organisms) and the human eye are so enormously complex that if you take them down into their constituent parts, the simpler bits and pieces don't have a function.

Take one part away and the eye or the flagellum doesn't work. In other words, it's irreducibly complex and must have been designed.

While evolution doesn't have a clear explanation for the development of the eye or the flagellum, biologists say they can show that both are not irreducibly complex.

"As soon as you look at bacterial flagellum and find that the various structures that go to make it up do have a function, and look at the complexity of the camera eye and find that there are much simpler versions available, the argument gets pulled to pieces," says Alison Campbell, a former secondary school science teacher and now senior lecturer in biology at Waikato University.

Campbell, who helps run the Evolution for Teaching website, points to a paper - The Flagellum Unspun - which claims to undo some of the probability equations used to make the irreducible complexity case.

Intelligent design may not be in our science curriculum, but it's not exactly out, either. The Ministry of Education's national administration guidelines don't place any restrictions on its teaching. Nor do they specifically restrict the teaching of young Earth creation or theistic evolution. So does the science curriculum allow for alternative theories to evolution to be taught?

"Schools and teachers have a responsibility to select theories widely accepted by the scientific community," says the ministry's curriculum manager Mary Chamberlain. "A full exploration of these theories should include a consideration of challenges that have been made to them."

Even if the challenges are non-scientific? "We are not suggesting that teachers teach it as accepted science," says Chamberlain. "We are suggesting that challenges to accepted scientific understandings should be considered in science lessons" - such as in the "Making sense of the nature of science" strand.

Southland High's Munro rejects the interpretation of the syllabus. "A science controversy has to have science on both sides."

Campbell is not impressed, either: "It's a non-controversy as far as the wider scientific community is concerned." There is only one theory - evolution - and to suggest otherwise is to fall into the trap of misunderstanding what a scientific theory is.

She says neither young Earth creationism nor intelligent design offer any reasonable challenge to evolutionary thinking.

"It's the thin edge of the wedge - as soon as you introduce intelligent design into the classroom in any guise, then it's in the classroom and it gives it some legitimacy and I don't think that legitimacy is warranted. It's not science."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: allcrevoallthetime; anothercrevothread; antiscience; biology; creationism; crevolist; crevorepublic; darwinism; enoughalready; evolution; groan; intelligentdesign; irrationality; makeitstop; samethingoverandover; walltowallcrevo
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To: snarks_when_bored

Great - so maybe for the first time SOME intelligence will be in school.....


21 posted on 08/28/2005 5:37:58 AM PDT by prophetic ("I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."--Dan Rather)
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To: Non-Sequitur
"...an amazing place where animals were not ripping each other apart and devouring each other".

So...what were they eating? Purina Dinosaur Chow?

Some questions don't have answers that mere humans are capable of understanding, you see?

22 posted on 08/28/2005 5:51:24 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: shuckmaster
"You've got to be extremely naive to believe there's any such thing as a conservative think-tank in Seattle."

Seattle's a big city. Room for an entire political spectrum of nutcases. Admittedly, most of them ARE liberal, but there are a few "right-wing" ones, too.

23 posted on 08/28/2005 6:09:54 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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To: snarks_when_bored
Some questions don't have answers that mere humans are capable of understanding, you see?

Hence the rational behind intelligent design. Someone had to create the dinosaur chow.

24 posted on 08/28/2005 6:25:35 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: snarks_when_bored
I'm still trying to determine what the Creationist/ID crowd really want.

On the one hand they say that the TOE is not science but religion. And/or they say it has so many holes as a scientific theory it is invalid as a scientific theory.

On the other hand they say Creationism and/or ID should be taught alongside it in science classes.

So if TOE is not science, why should Creationism or ID be taught alongside it in a science class?

If TOE is invalid as a scientific theory, why should Creationism or ID, which have even more holes in them as scientific theories be taught alongside it in a science class?

It seems to me that if they were intellectually honest and logical, they'd simply say that the TOE should not be taught in a science class at all, and that TOE/Creationism/ID should be taught alongside each other in a philosophy class.
25 posted on 08/28/2005 6:30:07 AM PDT by ml1954
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To: ml1954

Well, ID'ers won't concede that what they're doing isn't science, but your exercise nicely reduces to absurdity the ID position.


26 posted on 08/28/2005 6:49:40 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: ml1954
I'm still trying to determine what the Creationist/ID crowd really want.

They want what every swami since time began has always wanted. They want to convince you that you have no capacity to observe and understand reality. Thus paralyzed, you will have no alternative but to turn to the swami for his profound wisdom, and his gentle guidance.

Because we're no longer living in caves, stunned into terror at the sight of lightning, it's a bit more difficult for the swamis to accomplish their goal. Discovery Institute is working on it, however. Their campaign against evolution -- and against the scientific method itself -- literally amounts to a full-blown war against reason. Those who don't understand this are already in swami-land.

27 posted on 08/28/2005 6:56:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. The List-O-Links is at my homepage.)
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To: snarks_when_bored
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." --Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

It seems that pure evolutionists have abandoned a true scientific effort to robustly challenge Darwin's self-admitted vulnerable theory. Perhaps those scientific logs which remain bereft of proof upon proof of so many transitional structures......and the inability of modern science as yet, to produce a spark called "life" from presumably our cosmological baseline inanimate matter...are making them a bit cranky and defensive? Which leads to ad hominem attacks on those who do dare to take up Darwin's challenge....the personal and professional ridicule and downright censure, of fellow equally educated scientists who fill in the missing links of scientific proof with an theory that the most credible explanation is.... incredible.

If man is so clever, why not kill, and/or build, a cell? Then simply re/insert the chemicals and minute bit of electrical energy needed to bring it (back) to life or to transition it into a new form of life? Creatio ex nihilo in the laboratory should be a piece of cake. WE have the recipe, after all. I'm not talking about recombining existing life...but of a true Genesis/Lazarus experiment. If nature could do it at random, surely WE as products of nature can do it by our own understanding of the (forgive me for the terminology) design.

This should be the challenge for those who believe that "intelligent" design needs to be kept away from vulnerable young minds. OK then. Give the best minds in science a nothingness and challenge them to build via computer simulation our universe, and a man, purely mindlessly without a sentient overseer or designer. And also, perhaps, to explain, scientifically, why mankind only, among known species, spends so much time and brainpower looking BACKWARDS to understand our own beginnings. When (and why) did life coming out of nothing, make that jump, from surging forward, to looking back?
28 posted on 08/28/2005 7:01:02 AM PDT by silverleaf (Fasten your seat belts- it's going to be a BUMPY ride.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Personally, I have no interest in seeing a new Dark Age in the 21st century.

It's good to see I'm not alone.

29 posted on 08/28/2005 7:06:08 AM PDT by Wormwood (Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!)
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To: PatrickHenry

Thanks for the ping!


30 posted on 08/28/2005 7:14:04 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: silverleaf
If nothing else, your timing is good:

Researchers Creating Life From Scratch

All in good time, grasshopper.

31 posted on 08/28/2005 7:17:30 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: PatrickHenry

They want what every swami since time began has always wanted. They want to convince you that you have no capacity to observe and understand reality. Thus paralyzed, you will have no alternative but to turn to the swami for his profound wisdom, and his gentle guidance.

That's what I think. I'd just like them to try to tell me, logically, how they can justify teaching what they advocate alongside TOE in a science class. I don't think they can.

32 posted on 08/28/2005 7:20:32 AM PDT by ml1954
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To: silverleaf; snarks_when_bored
Posting the entire article, just for the record:

Researchers Creating Life From Scratch

BERKELEY, Calif. -- They're called "synthetic biologists" and they boldly claim the ability to make never-before-seen living things, one genetic molecule at a time.

They're mixing, matching and stacking DNA's chemical components like microscopic Lego blocks in an effort to make biologically based computers, medicines and alternative energy sources. The rapidly expanding field is confounding the taxonomists' centuries-old system of classifying species and raising concerns about the new technology's potential for misuse.

Though scientists have been combining the genetic material of two species for 30 years now, their work has remained relatively simplistic.

Scientists might add one foreign gene to an organism to produce a drug like insulin. The technique is more art than science given the brute trial-and-error it takes to create cells that make drugs.

So a new breed of biologists is attempting to bring order to the hit-and-miss chaos of genetic engineering by bringing to biotechnology the same engineering strategies used to build computers, bridges and buildings.

The idea is to separate cells into their fundamental components and then rebuild new organisms, a much more complex way of genetic engineering.

The burgeoning movement is attracting big money and some of the biggest names in biology, many of whom are attending the "Life Engineering Symposium" that begins Friday in San Francisco.

"Synthetic biology is genetic engineering rethought," said Harvard Medical Center researcher George Church, a leader in the field. "It challenges the notion of what's natural and what's synthetic."

Already, synthetic biologists have created a polio virus and another smaller virus by stitching together individual genes purchased from biotechnology companies.

Now, researchers are getting closer to creating more complex living things with actual utility.

In Israel, scientists have created the world's smallest computer by engineering DNA to carry out mathematical functions.

J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who mapped the human genome, announced last month that he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol.

With a $42.6 million grant that originated at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Berkeley researchers are creating a new malaria drug by removing genetic material of the E. coli bacterium and replacing it with genes from wormwood and yeast.

"We're building parts that can be assembled into devices and devices that can be turned into systems," said Jay Keasling, head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Berkeley synthetic biology department, which was created last year.

Keasling, who doubles as a chemical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes to create never-before-seen living molecules by fusing genes from the three species - a new breed of bacteria capable of spitting out malaria-fighting artemisinin, a chemical now found only in small traces in the wormwood plant.

Artemisinin has been extracted from finely ground sweet wormwood for more than 2,000 years as a treatment for a variety of ailments, but the method is expensive, time consuming and limited by access to wormwood, which is found mainly in China and Vietnam.

Keasling has a similar project in the works to synthetically create a compound now found in Samoan trees, one that shows promise in fighting AIDS.

Such efforts are attracting more than grant money.

A group of topflight venture capitalists led by Vinod Khosla of the Menlo Park-based Perkins, Caufield & Byers invested $13 million in Codon Devices of Cambridge, Mass., which was co-founded by Keasling and Church. Keasling also co-founded Amyris Biotechnologies of Emeryville to build microbes that will produce novel or rare drugs.

Venter, meanwhile, has launched Synthetic Genomics Inc. with Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith and will compete with Codon and several other recent startups to commercialize the technology.

But with success also comes ethical questions.

For example, national security experts and even synthetic biologists themselves fret that rogue scientists or "biohackers" could create new biological weapons - like deadly viruses that lack natural foes. They also worry about innocent mistakes - organisms that could potentially create havoc if allowed to reproduce outside the lab.

"There are certainly a lot of national security implications with synthetic biology," said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.

Researchers are casting about for ways to self-police the field before it really takes off. One solution could be to require the few companies that sell genetic material to register with some official entity and report biologists who order DNA strains with weapons potential.

The Arthur P. Sloan Foundation in June awarded the Venter Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Strategic and International Studies a $570,000 grant to study the social implications of the new field.

"There are a cascade of ecological issues," said Laurie Zoloth, a bioethics professor at Northwestern University. "Synthetic biology is like iron: You can make sewing needles and you can make spears. Of course, there is going to be dual use."

---

On the Net:

Lawrence Berkeley lab: http://www.lbl.gov/

Church's lab: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/

Venter Institute: http://www.venterinstitute.org/


33 posted on 08/28/2005 7:23:39 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: snarks_when_bored; PatrickHenry
David Jensen, principal of Immanuel Christian School

"It relies on unproven scientific facts and theories - that's why it's called a theory of evolution. It's not the fact of evolution - it's called a theory for good reason. No one can prove it."

Ignorance on parade.

34 posted on 08/28/2005 7:24:28 AM PDT by RadioAstronomer (Senior member of Darwin Central)
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To: RadioAstronomer
David Jensen, principal of Immanuel Christian School

"It relies on unproven scientific facts and theories - that's why it's called a theory of evolution. It's not the fact of evolution - it's called a theory for good reason. No one can prove it."

Ignorance on parade.

Yep. Jensen is a living instantiation of the 'Peter Principle', having obviously risen to his own level of incompetence.

35 posted on 08/28/2005 7:35:55 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: snarks_when_bored
Intelligent design:


Creation of the Earth

The world was once nothing but water. The only land above the water was Black Mountain. All the people lived up there when the flood came, and their fireplaces can still be seen.

Fish-eater and Hawk lived there. Fish-eater was Hawk's uncle. One day they were singing and shaking a rattle. As they sang, Hawk shook this rattle and dirt began to fall out of it. They sang all night, shaking the rattle the whole time. Soon there was so much dirt on the water that the water started to go down. When it had gone all the way down, they put up the Sierra Nevada to hold the ocean back. Soon they saw a river running down through the valley.

When they finished making the earth, Hawk said, "Well, we have finished. Here is a rabbit for me. I will live on rabbits in my lifetime." Fish-eater was over a swampy place, and he said, "I will live on fish in my lifetime." They had plenty to eat for themselves. It was finished.

Owens Valley Paiute creation story, eastern California


36 posted on 08/28/2005 7:37:23 AM PDT by Coyoteman (Is this a good tagline?)
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To: PatrickHenry
Southland High's Munro rejects the interpretation of the syllabus. "A science controversy has to have science on both sides."

Yes, the article gives both sides, but that makes it one for our side.

37 posted on 08/28/2005 7:48:44 AM PDT by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: Amelia

bookmark


38 posted on 08/28/2005 7:53:27 AM PDT by Amelia (Common sense isn't particularly common.)
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To: snarks_when_bored
Dang, we had it good back then. That Eve...what a bitch, huh? She messed it up for all of us!

Everybody in the world, their cute kittens, their puppy dogs, every bird and every worm, (but not necessarily every amoeba) has to die because two people ate one fruit. Such a just and loving deal!

39 posted on 08/28/2005 7:53:45 AM PDT by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: Coyoteman
Isn't there an "Animal House" creation story? Remember in the movie when Donald Sutherland's character introduced Pinto to the evil weed and he had a vision of us living on an electron.
40 posted on 08/28/2005 7:54:58 AM PDT by ml1954
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