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Kansas Challenges Definition of Science
nysus writes "Anti-evolutionists have made classrooms in Kansas a key battleground in America's culture war. Again. The New York Times reports they are proposing to change the definition of science in Kansas: 'instead of "seeking natural explanations for what we observe around us," the new standards would describe it as a "continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."'" From the article: "In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to here as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator."
...if there is a "supernatural" creator or force that has created the Universe (and the confluence of circumstances that led to its creation from essentially manifestly nothingness, and also life itself, could be considered on what I'd call a "supernatural" scale itself, but that's another topic), why must the scientific processes that describe any such events, and any potential forces that may transcend our understanding of the physical world, have to be mutually exclusive?
Many years ago, a student in my 7th grade biology class asked specifically about creationism during our section on evolution. My biology teacher gave a very short, thoughtful, and diplomatic answer. His answer, after quite a long pause:
"Well, some might say that the Bible tells what God did, and science explains how he did it."
Now, looking back as an engineer and scientist by education, I have always found the simplicity of that statement compelling, and have never had any trouble reconciling whatever beliefs I have in notions that could be described as "supernatural" with scientific fact and sound scientific theory.
I think the problem you have is with the people who literally believe that a white-bearded man in a robe literally created the Universe and Earth in 6 days around 6000 years ago, and then created the life to go on on it, and who discount valid science wholesale. Even though "creationists", and people who believe my last statement, may use "intelligent design" as a tool to further their agendas, that's not my interpretation of "intelligent design".
Personally, I rather liked Picard's response in "Where Silence Has Lease":
DATA:
I have a question, sir. What is death?
PICARD:
You've picked probably the most difficult of all questions, Data.
There is the beginning of a twinkle in Picard's eyes again. It is the sort of question that his mind loves.
Some explain it by inventing gods wearing their own form... and argue that the purpose of the entire universe is to maintain themselves in their present form in an Earth-like garden which will give them pleasure through all eternity. And at the other extreme, assuming that is an "extreme," are those who prefer the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all our experiences, hopes and dreams only an illusion.
DATA:
Which do you believe?
PICARD:
Considering the marvelous complexity of our universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, pattern, I believe our existence must mean more than a meaningless illusion. I prefer to believe that my and your existence goes beyond Euclidian and other "practical" measuring systems... and that, in ways we cannot yet fathom, our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality.
Really: what's wrong with seeing the Universe and the wonderful complexity of everything from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms - or smaller - and our very lives as something more than the sum of its parts?
I posted separately as well, but I feel strongly enough to do so again...The loophole is in
the "logical argument" part of the definition.
The way it is worded, it doesn't explicitly state that you have to do all these things for it to be science. Someone could [as ID proponents do] take existing "pure" scienctific research, use it to posit that there is order to the universe and use inductive reasoning [logical argument] to "prove" that a supreme being exists.
This will move science into the realm of philosophy, and IMO, muddle the heads of schoolchildren in Kansas for years to come.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
I can answer with an andecote.
During my undergraduate years I was in an honors program at a certain college in the middle of Arkansas. This honors program, by its very design, was intended to challenge the fundamental belief system of its students. It exposed students to a variety of new religious philosophies, explored the abortion debate, and took on a variety of other issues that most of the students had never been exposed to before.
The results where.. shocking. About 80% of the incoming freshman in my class had some attachment to religion (more often than not 'fundamentalist' in nature). I remember my first week there we tore into the evolution debate. I had spent the first 18 years of my life assuming that everyone had simply moved past creationism, and to my shock a large group of honors students where arguing for the 'science' of creationism. I came to realize just how blind I had been to the problem.
Over the next two years the fundamentalists went in one two directions. Some simply refused to accept what they heard, and went into a sort of isolationist denial. For the most part these kids didn't finish the program.
For the rest (most?) the classes challenged their belief system. They began to realize that the reality of the world they live in was far different from the one their preacher had laid out for them. While very few turned on their religion completely, they did begin to abandon the literal bible ideas that they had began with. Most became some sort of 'liberal' christians.
The most interesting part was the backlash from the parents of these newly enlightened students. As the change really took effect the parents literally paraded in and yelled and screamed at the programs director. For these people, simply exposing new ideas to their kids (and thus challenging their belief systems) was more or less the same as turning their kids into satanists.
I finally came to realize that these parents FEARED knowledge. Religion, to them, is a form of security. Having a convienent belief system that takes all of the complexity out of the world is so comforting and so comfortable that operating outside of that scares the living hell out of them. When you have something like that, you become almost irrational in defending it. That means that secular ideas must be avoided at all costs.. because it is those IDEAS that break down their religous beliefs. That's why there are so many Christian book stores, music stores, craft stores, restuarants, and everything else. These people NEED to be immersed in a mono-culture because without it they may find out that life isn't as convienently explained as they NEED to beleive it is.
Ignorance is truly bliss.
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An amazing book on this subject is "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. I read it because Douglas Adams recommended it in some of his writings.
The subtitle of the book is "Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design". It explains in great detail and clarity how in the long run natural selection allows only the mutations that are beneficial to continue to exist, leading to lifeforms that might *APPEAR* to have been designed, even though they were not.
One of the cases he looks at is the eye, with all of its complexity. Someone naively looking at it might easily assume that it is a clear example of something that must have been designed by a creator in advance. Dawkins shows how, over millions of years, tiny incremental advances could allow the eye to develop without any creator.
The only things required are 1) that whatever mutation that started as the eye, as simple as it may have been (perhaps a cell with the ability to detect light, for which brain cells have been shown to have the potential), gave at least a slight competitive advantage to the lifeform and 2) each additional mutation that took place over millions of years gave some slight advantage to the lifeform. Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
Complex biological systems work not because someone designed them to work, but because any deviation that does not work DIES. This naturally and inevitably leads to greater and greater complexity.