Posted on 01/17/2008 7:42:51 AM PST by ZGuy
People who question the premise without advancing any solid evidence against it, or in favor of an alternative, are equivalent to people who rant about Bush and Cheney and Halliburton without offering any plausible alternative strategy for dealing with Islamic Fundamentalists. In both cases, they have a right to express their opinions, and everybody else has a right to ignore them (and sensible people excercise the latter).
I’m somewhat confused as to how this is a First Amendment issue. I wasn’t aware that the First Amendment required me, or any group I belong to, to publish or disseminate the views of people I disagree with.
Does the First Amendment require FR, for example, to publish the rants of democrats; does the First Amendment require schools to give equal time to NAMBLA; does it require science classes to give equal time to proponents of Velikovsky or Lysenko?
I’m somewhat confused by that claim that possible medical discoveries are being thwarted by ignoring the claim that some unidentified entity or entities having unspecified capabilities and limitations, did some unspecified thing or things at some unspecified time or times, using unspecified methods for unspecified reasons.
The founder of the Discovery Institute is on record in a recent interview as saying that there is no theory of intelligent design, no explanatory hypothesis that competes with evolution. There is, in fact, no content to intelligent design, no body of research, no hypotheses that can, for example, tell where to dig and what to look for in the way of fossils. There is no hypothesis that guides research into genomic similarities and differences among species. No theory that would guide medicine in choosing suitable animals for drug and vaccine research.
There is one bright and shining light in the world of Intelligent Design, however. Ben Stein will pay any student ten dollars to see his movie. Student tickets in my area are only $6.50, so there’s money to be made. Schools and churches are being urged to sign up for this free money.
I’m unaware of Pasteur crediting ID with his progress in science. Maybe you could show us “the memo”.
Like you say, science should be open to testing any testable hypothesis, irrespective of its source, but ID proponents offer none that support ID. They claim “irreducible complexity” in various places supports divine intervention, but that’s just another radical leap of faith. At best it only shows that we don’t know something yet. That’s not science; it’s just “blame divine intervention first”. That has its place, but not in science class.
People fighting the introduction of ID into science classes can’t legitimately be compared to those promoting Global Warming. It would be more accurate to compare proponents of ID in science class to man made GW evangelicals, both pushing the teaching of their beliefs beyond the evidence and into places where they don’t belong. Criticism of evolution does not require the promotion of divine intervention.
Resistance to scientific explanation’s not new. But it’s ironic that it’s now coming those who want to promote their purely faith based surrender of science as a science in science classes. That’s why it’s so fervently attacked, not because it threatens evolution as many of its supporters delude themselves into believing, but because it undermines scientific reasoning. Can’t find a scientific answer, just call it divine intervention, quit thinking about it and call it science … That’s so clearly and profoundly degenerative that it verges on evil.
That’s the closest thing to a good explanation I’ve heard. Maybe some ID proponents could form a genetic research institution or two and staff it with those who don’t believe in evolution to see how their productivity compares.
The closest is the Discovery Institute, staffed with lawyers, PR flaks, journalism majors and the like.
(ps. They haven't discovered anything yet.)
There are hundreds of qualified researchers in biology who are skeptical of the details of any given theory. One doesn’t have to have an agenda to do research. One simply has to follow the evidence.
Lots of people who have signed ID petitions are working in legitimate areas of research and publishing papers. The problem for skeptics is that their research supports evolution.
The idea that there is some sort of conspiracy that excludes people from Big Science due to their personal beliefs is belied by the number of skeptics actually working in the field.
What I'm saying is that your main argument is non-scientific. Who is correct concerning the ultimate "whys" of creation actually doesn't matter in science. Does everyone who benefits from Newton's Principia Mathematica agree with him on theology—which, according to Newton, was the foundation of his work? Undoubtedly not. Is everyone who loves Bach—who dedicated every on of his works "To the glory of God"—a 17th-century, high-Church Lutheran like him? No.
The alarm over the Intelligent Design folks seems to me to arise from historical ignorance. People always have had their own reasons for doing their art or formulating their hypotheses. I also seem to detect a special alarm by liberals and libertarians about the ID folks, as opposed to the creationists, perhaps because the ID scholars have real degrees and no Southern accents that are easy for city-folks to dismiss as ignorant. Michael Behe, for example, speaks very well and writes very compellingly, following the rules of reasoning at least as carefully as Richard Dawkins.
It won't be proved in high school class whether God created man or flatworms did. As long as the kids do their experiments and write their papers by the rules and procedures of science (invented by believers in God, by the way), drawing their inferences according to logic, who cares whether the teacher tells them Darwin had it wrong? The practice of science, not the theology, is what counts.
What says Federal Judge Jones? Can I talk of intelligent design as science in classroom? You remember his ruling, eh?
Regardless of whose speech was being curtailed at Dover, it was not a First Ammendment (free speech) issue. It would not have been a free speech issue if the decision had gone the other way, and the teachers had been ordered to say something they didn’t believe.
The Dover case never involved freedom of speech.
I actually think it would help a lot. It would be darned convenient to have the Archangel Gabriel come and tell you which compound will knock out cancer.
A Judge, a federal judge, non-elected, having NO authority to represent the community in such a issue, ruled not only that the school board may not speak a certain thing -- speech by label on a book -- but ordered that we we speak of science or teach of science that only the orthodoxy of the modern Darwinism be taught and spoke of. The Judge overstepped, and stole rightful authority. He stole not only "free speech" rights, but many others.
ping
Actually, a school board does not have the right to impose religious doctrine on school curriculum, even though the board members, as individuals, have the right to write and publish editorials opposing this restriction.
(2) From a strictly survival viewpoint a school board has a natural law duty to inculcate some basic, keystone, fundamental religious ethics, morals and understandings in its students, without which many students are unable to learn to make their way safely in society and live. And many classrooms are bedlam-esque child-care facilities without ANY appreciable learning.
Without which such training look what is happening, my friend!
What is the rate of births out of wedlock? Such children are troubled all their lives for lack of a parent, and most by far for lack of a solid good father.
This bedlam in what should be a tranquil learning environment is a direct result, imho, of the religion of secularism which includes designer-less evolution. Education has devolved.
(3) Our nation's founders for generations were themselves taught in schools where "religion" was a core part of the curriculum. Such an education ELEVATED them, and their whole generation. Woe to us, under the foolishness of secularism.
and don’t dare study any other religion than Darwinism.
A school board, as an agent of the state, has the right to decide whatr the contents of a school curriculum shall be. The notion that one can separate morals from religious sanctions is a recent development. It is the right of the state completely to secularize the curriculum, but this is easier said than done, because there is a tendency to introduce elements of an ideology that may be hostile or disparaging of religion. Religious neutrality is the goal, but that means fairness to both religion and irreligion. In practice, it often means unfairness to believers. For instance, an anthology of English literature of the 17th Century would, to be representative, have a high religious content. Not to include this content would be to present a false impression of that literature. Since any system tends to justify itself, testing would then include only questions of the secular content, giving the impression that only such knowledge is important, that an educated person can afford to be ignorant of it. So knowledge of Donne’s poetry—not a good example—passes out of the public view and becomes esoteric. How quickly the content of a common education can change can be seen in a more trivial example, how students are no longer familiar with fairy tales.
‘Who is correct concerning the ultimate “whys” of creation actually doesn’t matter in science.’
True, but I did think of one other interesting issue this morning.
ID is frequently conflated with Christian theology. If one ignores (for the moment) Christianity, but posits ID, there is quite a pause between the creation of the Universe 13.7 billion years ago and the creation of life approximately 2 billion years ago (not to mention another big gap until potential worshipers a few million years ago). Cosmology, geology and paleontology all point to that timeline being generally correct.
So, if the Creator and the Designer were the same, what was it doing for the 10.3 billion years in between?
Haha, arithmetic correction - make that ‘11.7 billion years in between’. Sorry.
We want more freedom.
Ben Stein has captured the crux of it.
School boards do not have the right to replace the findings of science with the assertions of their churches. For one thing, only a minority of churches dispute evolution.
Even ID proponents don’t dispute common descent, which is the element of evolution that most of the Dover parents complained about.
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