Posted on 09/28/2005 3:28:36 AM PDT by Crackingham
It's unfortunate that intelligent design is standing trial in Pennsylvania. Scientific theories require decades, sometimes centuries, to develop, to withstand scrutiny before they are accepted as legitimate. Trying to force acceptance -- or denial -- quickly is an end-run around the scientific method and the spirit of free inquiry. Whatever the lower courts decide about whether intelligent design can be mentioned in public schools, the controversy will probably reach the Supreme Court, which will be asked to determine what is scientific and what is not.
Clearly, the Dover Area School District, by forcing the issue with its requirement that teachers read a four-paragraph "statement" identifying intelligent design as an alternative theory to Darwinian evolution, has done neither science nor students any favors. Intelligent design is a proposition in a state of infancy, and has not earned a place in public school curriculums. A wide range of alternative propositions are never taught precisely because there is no structure to challenge prevailing opinion. That doesn't mean the alternatives are wrong; but students should learn first the best explanation, given what is known. Despite its many flaws, Darwinian evolution remains the standard.
It's no surprise that 11 Dover parents, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is ever eager to advance atheism as secular theology, sued the school district on the grounds that intelligent design is "a 21st century version of creationism." In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public schools violates the Constitution's establishment clause, separating church and state. Both critics and proponents with no advanced scientific degree, who have so eagerly judged the supernatural premises of intelligent design, only demonstrate their political or religious biases.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
What was philosophy in that sense is now in various facets called science, called religion, called meta-physics, called law.
In any case the ignorant by choice or by limitation cannot speak to any extent, nor do their ideas deserve much inspection or review, for that ignorance.
That said, it must be noted, and is the meat of this reply, that there are many who have their views and words and thoughts settled in ignorance. For example a person who says the plain-jane reading of Genesis -- Adam, Eve, the Garden, the Tree, the naked serpent is absolutely the last word, and has never delved into the matter, nor studied upon it because of ignorance from circumstance or ignorance from sloth -- that person is a burden to us all. And those burdensome people were at times intolerably tedious and drone religious teachers of too many. When their students leave them and grow onward they either rebel or box-off that floor of knowledge. Either way it becomes a settled matter to them. Bunkum or gospel truth. Settled.
In one case, "the gospel truth" case the ignorant become trapped on that floor of knowledge. They may grow in other aspects secularly and spirirually but that one floor walled off is a limitation to them.
The other case -- those who rebel against that dull teaching -- often find themselves entering another garden of knowledge. That rebellion motivates many into learning other forms of knowledge, of philosophy -- sceince, religion, etc. Especially modern science. And in that garden those individuals do grow, do flower, do bloom. Yet they too have left a floor walled off -- not trapped in it, but locked out of it.
So, even in science we are burdered with the ignorant, who make no attempt to find any system of true knowledge in any way associated with those old detested stories of Genesis, they scorn possible linkages, potential ways of looking at it. They lock up that floor exactly as it was so pitifully taught to them. A floor full of obvious mistruths.
And in that ignorance they do have a honest vanity -- they ARE smarter and wiser than the first group, those trapped on that floor as it was too simply taught them.
This, I would reject. The philosophical underpinnings of science has everything to do with attempting, as well as can be realistically expected, to uncover the objective facts of the way things are. Someone said that facts are those things that exist, whether you believe in them or not. I think that religion, metaphysics, the mystical are the opposite. They are subjective in nature, and can do nothing but cloud the inquiry by imposing a set of a priori assumptions and preferences which makes an objective search for truth impossible. Take evolution, for instance. Anyone who doesn't believe the theory after examining the evidence for evolution (assuming he's actually looked at it) is, I would be tempted to say, quite daft.
I would be tempted to say that, but I won't make it a universal statement, because I understand that, often times, it is not the person's intellect or education that is to blame, but is a case of someone already having a preference when he came to the inquiry. He wants there to be a God, he may have a psychological need for his preferred religion to be true. (Given the ubiquity of religious expression throughout humanity, past and present, and the inconsistency of the beliefs, rights, and practices, it appears that there is a common psychological need, expressed by the creation of religions by humans.) But coming into the question with a preferred answer (not "expected" answer, but "preferred" answer), adds a layer of subjectivity that cannot help but retard or destroy the objective search for what is. In fact, many scientists suffer from this same affliction when it comes to doing their work. They become too enamored with their theories that they become blind to evidence that disprove them.
Some on these boards accuse people who believe in evolution of treating it as a religion and of rejecting the evidence against it. Frankly, I can't speak to anyone else's feelings on the question, but as for me, if someone disproved evolution tomorrow, I would be surprised, but I would also be very excited to discover what, in fact, really is the real deal. I don't have a preferred outcome, I just follow where, objectively, the evidence leads me. I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that the same can't be said of religious beliefs.
The fact is, however, that nothing that has been presented which even comes close to putting a dent in the theory of evolution nor the fact that evolution has occurred. There are literally millions of data points which bear this out. There are still questions to be answered, and details to be figured out, but the vast structure is sound. (One cannot say that the Empire State Building is teetering on the edge of collapse because the drywall on the 12 floor needs to be repaired and there is a sink clogged on the 7th floor. That's the equivalence to the type of details which the science of evolution is attempting to clear up now.)
But I appreciate an honest discussion of this matters and appreciate your post.
The opponents of Providence (to give ID a more realistic name, and also to seperate from the term "The Creator", and all the initial conditions, staring discussion) caricature the Book of Genesis, holding it to the same toddlerish interpretation as some "believers" do. That is and was my main point.
The opponents are smarter by some levels of intelligence than those who hoe to the simplistic view and never challenge it or attempt to understand it deeply.
For most people, both evolutionists and creationists, intelligent design means Christian creationism. However, there are other views of creation among Americans. An example is the Islamic Intelligent design described in a recently published book, Creation AND/OR Evolution An Islamic Perspective, by a Muslim theist evolutionist, T.O.Shanavas. The author is very critical about Muslim anti-evolutionist. However, he claims that Theory of evolution has an Islamic root and, in fact, according to him, Muslims proposed theory of evolution centuries before Charles Darwin.
This book is a challenge to those who want to teach Christian creationism or Intelligent design in science class in American public school. America being a secular country, there is a separation of church and state. Government cannot promote any purticular religion.
I want to ask those who want to teach Christian intelligent design and creationism in science classes: Do you want Shanavas' Muslim Intelligent design also included in science curriculum or only Christian intelligent design in any of the states such as Kansas, Pennsylvania, etc?
Shanavas is a creationist but strongly opposes the teaching of any form of creationism in public schools in America. In a news paper (The Daily Telegram) interview Shanavas states that there is no place for intelligent design in science class rooms. (http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=Post;CODE=00;f=2)[I][B]
Shhh! Posts like his do far more to undermine the credibility of ID supporters than any rational recapitulation of scientific research by the science-literate here.
And also to proactively recommend a throroughly scientifically discretited "alternative" text called "Of Pandas and People", I believe. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that score.
Sigh. "discredited", not "discretited". An edit feature would be so sweet.
The same Michael Behe who just admitted on the stand that evolution was science and ID was not?
For the science room, no free speech
By Bill Murchison
Dec 28, 2005
Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years -- not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade -- haven't driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity.
Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones' anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools' Darwinian monopoly.
Jones' contempt for the "breathtaking inanity" of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism's "gaps/problems" is unlikely to intimidate the millions who find evolution only partly persuasive -- at best.
Millions? Scores of millions might be more like it. A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God. A Kansas newspaper poll last summer found 55 percent support for exposing public-school students to critiques of Darwinism.
This accounts for the widespread desire that children be able to factor in some alternatives to the notion that "natural selection" has brought us, humanly speaking, where we are. Well, maybe it has. But what if it hasn't? The science classroom can't take cognizance of such a possibility? Under the Jones ruling, it can't. Jones discerns a plot to establish a religious view of the question, though the religion he worries about exists only in the possibility that God, per Genesis 1, might intrude celestially into the discussion. (Intelligent-designers, for the record, say the power of a Creator God is just one of various possible counter-explanations.)
Not that Darwinism, as Jones acknowledges, is perfect. Still, "the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent scientific propositions."
Ah. We see now: Federal judges are the final word on good science. Who gave them the power to exclude even whispers of divinity from the classroom? Supposedly, the First Amendment to the Constitution: the odd part here being the assumption that the "free speech" amendment shuts down discussion of alternatives to an establishment-approved concept of Truth.
With energy and undisguised contempt for the critics of Darwinism, Jones thrusts out the back door of his courthouse the very possibility that any sustained critique of Darwinism should be admitted to public classrooms.
However, the writ of almighty federal judges runs only so far, as witness their ongoing failure to convince Americans that the Constitution requires almost unobstructed access to abortion. Pro-life voters and activists, who number in the millions, clearly aren't buying it. We're to suppose efforts to smother intelligent design will bear larger, lusher fruit?
The meeting place of faith and reason is proverbially darkish and unstable -- a place to which the discussants bring sometimes violently different assumptions about truth and where to find it. Yet, the recent remarks of the philosopher-theologian Michael Novak make great sense: "I don't understand why in the public schools we cannot have a day or two of discussion about the relative roles of science and religion." A discussion isn't a sermon or an altar call, is it?
Equally to the point, what does secular intolerance achieve in terms of revitalizing public schools, rendering them intellectually catalytic? As many religious folk see it, witch-hunts for Christian influences are an engrained part of present public-school curricula. Is this where they want the kids? Might private schools -- not necessarily religious ones -- offer a better alternative? Might home schooling?
Alienating bright, energized, intellectually alert customers is normally accounted bad business, but that's the direction in which Darwinian dogmatists point. Thanks to them and other such foes of free speech in the science classroom -- federal judges included -- we seem likely to hear less and less about survival of the fittest and more and more about survival of the least curious, the least motivated, the most gullible.
The one question I would have as a student is, "Can you PROVE evolution? No? Then why are you trying to cram it down our throats as an alternative to religious views that God created all things? Why do you fear religion and God? People are religious and that is fact so why not also include that fact? What are you afraid of?"
We aren't cramming anything down anyone's throat, we are simply saying that ID is not science and therefore does not belong in science class.
Does your church teach science in it's services?
Evolution of life explain how life changes, it has nothing to do with it's origin. There can't be an evolution of life without life afterall.
Science is about facts such as : Fossil records showing different stages of humanity's evolution. If you want to discredit evolution then attack it scientifically.
If evolution is proven wrong then it will be removed from school. It has not been proven wrong yet and there isn't a better Scientific theory to replace it.
You cannot argue science without using logical arguments. Religion, Public Opinnion, Personnal Opinions and Conscience are logically flawed arguments.
Religion because no one knows if their beliefs are any more right then anyone else's. If everyone's equally right then whose' beliefs should we follow ?
This comes down to personnal opinion in the end.
Public Opinion because opinions can be right or wrong. A million worthless personnal opinions aren't worth any more then one. 1 000 000 X 0 = 0 afterall.
Personnal Opinion because you can justify anything with it.
I like killing people so it's right to commit murder.
Conscience because some people have done horrible things while keeping a clear conscience. If they justified those and you accept Conscience as a logical argument then you must accept those horrible things as right.
The purpose of schools is to educate and extend ideas. The purpose of a church is to do the same within the confines of their beliefs. They are two totally different institutions with different purposes.
Evolution is also a faith as it is not a fact of science but a theory of science.
Religion is also a theory that requires faith but to say it is a "logically flawed argument" is to not know religion.
"Science is about facts such as : Fossil records showing different stages of humanity's evolution.
There is no fact to prove evolution. There are only some fossiles to suggest evolution, but they provide no proof.
The purpose of school is to teach appropriate subject in the right classes as well. ID is a prostitution of science and does not belong in a science class. It does however belong in a philosophical or religious one.
Really then maybe you should enlighten me as to how religious arguments are not logically flawed.
I'm open to counter arguments. Claiming something does not make it true. Everyone believing the earth flat didn't make it flatter. This is a valid argument because no sane person can refute the fact that beliefs don't make things happen.
I'm not saying Evolution is a fact. I'm saying it's got facts to back it up.
Big difference.
If you do not want to have a rational discussion then we will simply have none.
"I'm open to counter arguments. Claiming something does not make it true."
YOU are the one who claimed religious thoughts are logically flawd, not me., sweetie. Prove your own point first.
"I'm saying it's got facts to back it up. "
It has no facts to back it up. None. The presence of a fossil has brought about a theory of evolution, but the presence of the fossil is not a fact that supports evolution.
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