Posted on 08/03/2006 9:23:14 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Dishonest Darwinists -- coming to a state near you.
By David Klinghoffer
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State school-board elections don’t normally receive much national media attention. Yet the school-board primary race in Kansas on Tuesday, representing a key front in the Darwin wars, was an exception.
Will Darwinism be taught as unquestionable dogma? That’s the question that voters decided. In Kansas, it seems it will.
Kansas has been one of five states with biology curricula that include instruction about the evidence both for and against neo-Darwinism, requiring that students learn about the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory. Darwin advocates worked hard to defeat the majority on the education board and eliminate this requirement. On Tuesday they succeeded in this first objective, and the second will follow in due course.
The current “controversial” Kansas Science Standards very clearly do not mandate that students learn about intelligent design. On the contrary, as the board explained, “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design.”
Can’t get much clearer than, can you? Yet an outfit called Kansas Citizens for Science argued exactly the reverse — that the Kansas Science Standards do indeed mandate instruction about ID. It ended up convincing the voters. Or rather, deceiving them.
It was all part of a campaign, on behalf of liberal candidates for the education board that included other bold falsehoods. For example, the Darwin faction scared Kansas educators with the prospect of being sued on the basis of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Pennsylvania. In fact, Kitzmiller is irrelevant to a curriculum in Kansas that does not advocate teaching about ID.
Opponents of the school board’s majority also argued that the science standards represented “science-bashing” by an “anti-science cabal” –- in the words of an editorial in the Witchita Eagle. Hardly. The Kansas standards simply mandated that young people be exposed to a full range of mainstream views from respected scientists.
The silliest objection to be raised was that the Kansas standards — get ready — hurt poor children. As a political-action committee, the Kansas Alliance for Education, put it during the lead-up to the election, “the best chance children, especially those in poverty, have to experience economic self-sufficiency and become tax-paying citizens is to receive a quality education.” According to this PAC, learning to critically analyze scientific evidence is incompatible with a “quality education.”
You would have thought that being able to understand both sides of a scientific issue would be a valuable intellectual experience for anyone to have.
Unfortunately, scare tactics like these persuaded voters to unseat key members of the Kansas board of education. Well, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Much the same thing happened in Ohio.
In February, Darwinists succeeded in pressuring that state’s board of education to repeal the Ohio science standard requiring that students, “Describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” In Ohio, too, the media warned of the danger to “the future of the nation” from a policy that they said encouraged scientific illiteracy.
The dogmatism and dishonesty of some orthodox Darwinists is simply breathtaking. Yet, having prevailed in Ohio, they triumphed in Kansas and further victories elsewhere may be expected. So it seems increasingly likely that students will be kept in the dark after all about an issue with not only scientific ramifications but critically important moral ones too.
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David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author most recently of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.
"So, how do you heat your cave?"
Inventions are not the same thing as science. Yes, we have invented lots of things, but that does not have anything to do with science. Most inventions were not done with the scientific method or science.
But within its limited realm, it is very very good at finding answers. Remember recently the ToE was used to predict what to look for and where to look, and now we have yet another transitional fossil, Tiktaalik. That's more in one year thn ID or creationism has done in 200 (or 5000).
The fact that something is not science does not bother me because most of science is junk anyway and it is full of politics and dishonesty. Science is like the old media--it is losing its credibility to be objective.
An interesting scientific experiment would be to measure the pH of your grapes.
This one leaves me speechless.
The truth often does that to people.
So how did Noah pick up the kiwis, wallabies, kangaroos & kookaburras?
It takes a modern diesel powered containership 3 weeks to get from LA to Sydney.
And if Noah picked up 2 dingoes, didn't Dingoes eat his baby?
Careful, don't do anything you might later regret
What about the dishonesty in falsely representing creationisn or ID as though they were science? What about the dishonesty in claiming thta there is a growing ID movement within science?
"So how did Noah pick up the kiwis, wallabies, kangaroos & kookaburras?"
I don't know and I don't care. Again, it has nothing to do with religion with me. I just get tired of our society believing that science can produce answers and that science produces good answers. Most of science is junk science.
What - specifically - are you referring to?
Bullshit. The book's theme is that Kansans are stupid for not voting Democrat to get govt handouts.
I don't think ID is science and I don't really care about teaching ID. I just want evolution to be taught that it is just a theory that has flaws. It is not a fact. For science to pass it off as a done deal is dishonest.
The reason you want to find flaws in evolution appears that you are religious; why are you trying to take all of science down with evolution?
Do you really think trashing all of science for personal religious reasons is either productive, or a good idea? (Be careful what you wish for... )
Where do you get any religion from anything that I have posted? I just want honesty. Can't you people at least be honest and admit that evolution theory has flaws. If you cannot, then you prove my point. In fact, you have turned science into a religion (faith in things).
I'm just asking for some examples. You say most of it's junk. You must have some examples in mind. Care to share?
People should not have to evolve if they don't want to.
Even if the criticisms are unfounded, fallacy-ridden, and driven by non-(or anti-)scientific motives? Wouldn't that be like allowing an anti-semite teach our children about the Holocaust?
that' why it's called a theory
For science to pass it off as a done deal is dishonest.
When over 99% of biologists subscribe to it, that's a done deal. To imply otherwise is dishonest. At the level of presentation appropriate for a high school, there are no disputes among biologists.
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