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.
The truth often does that to people.
So does blind ignorance and arrogant presumption.
Judging from your posts you seem to have some unnatural grudge against science. It is only natural to assume you don't know a lot of the finer points, hence the definitions I posted.
However, science likes to pass off theories as fact (in layman's terms), and they are not.
Scientists don't use layman's terms. That's why I post the definitions occasionally.
But if you want to get technical, evolution is both a fact and a theory. The fact of evolution is that change occurs from generation to generation. There is absolutely no argument about this. The theory of evolution is to explain that change, including going back through the fossil and genetic records.
That is what is happening with the theory of evolution. Science is trying to pass it off as having no contrary views or flaws.
The contrary views are virtually all coming from religious beliefs that oppose the theory of evolution because of disagreements with the conclusions of evolutionary sciences.
There are virtually no contrary views of the overall theory of evolution within science, although there are a lot of controversies over nomenclature and interpretation of specific fossils. For example, what classification do you favor for KNM-ER 3733, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, or Homo erectus ergaster?
It is.
It is not a fact.
For science to pass it off as a done deal is dishonest.
Depending on what you mean by "done deal", your claim is either false (i.e. it is not dishonest to teach evolution as overwhelmingly established science, because it is) or makes a false implication (that anyone actually does teach evolutionary biology as if it's a finished field with no more work to be done).
So please clarify your statement so that I can more directly deal with how wrong it is.
The irony is that the Darwinist will never ever take responsibility for what their "survival of the fittest" doctrine has wrought. Government programs for those marked least fit.
(bolding added)
Really? Most?
Actually, the one being dishonest here is the one making false accusations like "you people want to teach it is a done deal with absolutely no flaws".
Care to retract that bit of false slander?
Cave dwellers still exhist in the deserts of Hebron, which is proof of...? http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/01/26/west.bank.caves/index.html
What will happen when dinosaurs are discovered alive?
To wit, Crocodiles, though regarded as archosaurs, have 200 million year old relatives, and have not "evolved" appreciably, http://english.people.com.cn/200203/11/eng20020311_91898.shtml), and the coelacanth, thought extinct 80 million years ago, and once thought to be land crwling ancestors, have been caught alive, and since filmed in their natural enviornment http://www.dinofish.com/.
I know, "primitive" "living fossils". But how will the first live dino found be explained away? Argument from silence has proven tedious in the past.
BTW, whether the sun or earth revolves around one or the other is a matter of relative reference point, so Einstein could argue. However, heliocentric does offer a better mathematical model. :)
It is a theory, but it is not "just a theory". It is one of the most well-established and validated theories in all of science. Is there any reason you want to pretend that it's not, and mislead students into thinking otherwise?
As for "not without flaws", name me one thing in this world that isn't. Is *that* the thin straw you're going to cling to?
As far as I am concerned, the theory is too primitive to buy into hook line and sinker.
That's because you don't know what you're talking about.
The other two things that do not mix are religion and science for opposite reasons. In religion, one believes in what one cannot see; in science, one does not believe in what one cannot see.
However, intelligent design is not science, it is religion and should be approached from that viewpoint. That does not make its beliefs and concepts any less valid, but it does not make them any more valid than science. Therefore, in my opinion, because it is based on religious belief, its place is in a parochial school, not a public school.
As far as I am concerned, the theory is too primitive to buy into hook line and sinker.
That's because you don't know what you're talking about.
It sounds like you have bought into it without question. And that is not going on faith? Boy, that is real science. LOL
See the definitions I posted above, particularly the relation of belief to theory.
I want more solid proof myself before I believe it is correct.
See the definitions I posted above, particularly theory vs. proof.
I see stuff everyday passed off as good science when it is obvious that it is garbage, including global warming. I bet you guys all believe in that hook line and sinker as well. LOL. Well, believe what you like.
The earth is warming, and has been for 15,000 years. Do you dispute that? Sea levels have risen on the close order of 430 feet in that time, most of it prior to 5,000 years ago.
The argument is over how much humans are responsible for the warming, particularly the most recent 100-150 years. There currently are a lot of opinions.
Are you on the dole? Do you get to spend other people's money on yourself because you are incompetent, unemployed, or just plain stupid?
Gosh, thank you so much for your permission to reach a conclusion based on overwhelming evidence.
I want more solid proof myself before I believe it is correct.
Then go read some science journals -- do you expect us to spoonfeed it to you? There *is* vast and overwhelming evidence and research along multiple independent cross-confirming lines which validates evolutionary biology. Don't blame *us* if you haven't bothered to educate yourself enough to have a look at it.
I see stuff everyday passed off as good science when it is obvious that it is garbage, including global warming.
Okay, this should be fun -- demonstrate to us that you're actually familiar with the scientific evidence for global warming, and the actual scientific conclusions about it (as opposed to the non-scientific claims of partisans), and then explain to us why this evidence is "garbage". We'll wait.
More likely, all you'll demonstrate is that you haven't a clue what the science actually is, and you're just basing your partisan non-scientific notions on the partisan non-scientific notions of activists, then blaming it on science itself.
I bet you guys all believe in that hook line and sinker as well. LOL.
No, I don't, because unlike you, I know that I haven't researched it enough to have an informed opinion on it one way or the other. So unlike you, I reserve judgment on topics I don't have good enough knowledge about.
Well, believe what you like.
What I "like" to "believe" is that which has been established by sufficient real-world evidence. Here, read this: Do You Believe in Evolution?.
Your method appears to differ, as it seems to be based on what you would prefer to be true, based on cherry-picked and often irrelevant observations.
Dishonest Darwinists? I believe members of the Dover school board were caught lying under sworn oath in order to to advance their agenda. It was so blatant that the "Darwinist" attorney didn't catch them, the judge did!
"The argument is over how much humans are responsible for the warming, particularly the most recent 100-150 years. There currently are a lot of opinions."
Not according to what is in the press. The press is reporting that science is in near total agreement that humans are the cause.
That thing you're typing on, called a "computer". How much science do you think was involved in it's creation?
That think you drive, called an "automobile". How much science do you think was involved in it's creation?
Those medicines and treatements you receive at a hospital. How much science do you think were involved in their creation?
That thing in you house called a "smoke detector". Do you think there's any science involved in that thing?
You need to pull your nose out of the bible from time to time and try to get a basic understanding of how things work. Your ignorance is on display for all to see.
Darwinism is dying before our very eyes.
The surest sign is that they have to run deceptive campaigns and rely on judicial activism to stifle any word in the classroom that there may be doubts about Darwinism among scientists.
Is that you, Dan Rather?
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