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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."
It's nice to see they have taken "seeking" out of the definition, but it's too complicated. Science is easy. ...continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.
Science: The overcomplication of human perception.
Effective Treatment: Unknown
Suggested reading: Carlos Castaneda, because he's a total nut!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...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?
New Kansas Method:
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This makes me so angry, and more than a little sad.
"We're all afraid to change, and willing to fight against it. We don't want to have to admit that there are things we don't or can't understand. We need to be able to say 'This is absolutely true' if we're going to sleep at night."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I wonder how many of them were atheists... or biologists for that matter.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm a little confused. I don't see anything wrong with the definition above ! I beleive its more complete and doesn't seem to be pushing any creationism around !
This must be taught in our schools: "Before time began there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. A vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of night. A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. He was watched over by the mighty serpent. Everything was so peaceful and silent that Vishnu slept undisturbed by dreams or motion. From the depths a humming sound began to tremble, Om. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy. The night had ended. Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu's navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu's servant, Brahma. He awaited the Lord's command. Vishnu spoke to his servant: 'It is time to begin.' Brahma bowed. Vishnu commanded: 'Create the world.' A wind swept up the waters. Vishnu and the serpent vanished. Brahma remained in the lotus flower, floating and tossing on the sea. He lifted up his arms and calmed the wind and the ocean. Then Brahma split the lotus flower into three. He stretched one part into the heavens. He made another part into the earth. With the third part of the flower he created the skies. The earth was bare. Brahma set to work. He created grass, flowers, trees and plants of all kinds. To these he gave feeling. Next he created the animals and the insects to live on the land. He made birds to fly in the air and many fish to swim in the sea. To all these creatures, he gave the senses of touch and smell. He gave them power to see, hear and move. The world was soon bristling with life and the air was filled with the sounds of Brahma's creation."
Laugh all you like - these people are in control of a major nuclear arsenal.
The thing that I have never really understood about the anti-evolution Christian types is why it matters to them if their kids understand what the rest of the world is thinking? Its like the goal is absolute ignorance of everything not in the Bible. Nothing that I read in the Bible supports that viewpoint. Can anyone explain this?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Maybe I need to check my eyes, but what about that definition even suggests a "supreme being"?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If everything of any significant complexity was deliberately created, who created the creator?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Hey, I have no problem with people having faith in their religion, or believing things according to faith. But that's all it is - faith.
If you want to teach creationism, do it in religious studies class, not science. Creationism or whatever euphemism you want to use (Intelligent Design) has no scientific basis at all. So by all means, if you want to teach it go ahead, but please don't do it in a science class. If you are willing to consider it as science, then I propose we should teach creation myths of every single culture in science class. I mean seriously... in this day and age it surprises me that people try to push creationism as a science.
Anyway, here is a good site that includes rebuttals to a lot of creationist arguments:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cefac.htm
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Ever been to Kansas (you know, the state where this trial is taking place)? It's SO FLAT there that there is nothing to obstruct your view (like hills and mountains). Basically, everyone there is crazy because the can see to infinity, which would drive anyone mad. "We're so crazy, we ignore observation and reproducible scientific evidence!"
In Kansas, you can watch your dog run away for ten days.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I am very anti-creationist, but I actually like their definition more. It recognizies that there isn't always a "natural" answer to the problems that science faces given the current information. In fact, looking for natural answers can be very unscientific.
For example, the astronomers of yore tried to explain the planet movements with natural answers that were not based on good scientific methods. Same with the people who wrote the Bible. The new definition actually outlines the methods that are essential to science, such as experimentation and theories.
The big issue in U.S. science education is not evolution anyway, it's the lack of competent science teachers. K-12 teaching is simply not an attractive career to most people who have good math and science training, partly because of the low pay.
Find free books.
Many of us are horribly embarrassed by this fiasco. Please don't hold this against all Kansans.
One of the irritating things about this is that while I believe in evolution, I also believe that it's God's method for our developement. So, in a since, I believe in an intelligent design type of concept; but I can't say that now without being associated with those who say they are for intelligent design but are in fact proponents of creationism.
Anyhow, the hearings are being conducted and "judged" by the proponents of ID. The scientists and evolutionists have boycotted the operation as being a farce. I have to agree with them. The witnesses will all be from the ID side, and the 3 school board members who are running the hearings are all ID proponents also.
It's an embarrassing joke.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Has anyone ever stopped to think about how well evolution works? And that it's all encompassing.
It's an inescapable law of nature. Everything from our software and computer designs (meme's) to music, language and DNA based life is affected by evolution.
Not only that, it's impossible to create something not effected by it.
Even our views of God and our religions evolve. (what blasphemy)
After studying evolution for some time, I became a believer in GOD! Because only god could have created something as powerful as evolution.
My argument goes like this. If we are made in Gods image, and we make machines and tools to build more complex things. Then shouldn't God also? If God were to what would that tool look like. EVOLUTION....
So all this arguing over GOD vs. Evolution is totally stupid. No Evil.
I see science as the study of God's creation. It's sort of our responsibility to understand is and in doing this we can come to know God better
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Here's an article overviewing this bullsh!t (pdf) from Scientific American. Clearly there are limits to the scientific method... but that doesn't make non-science science.
... the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator
Yet for some reason we fall back to this "theory" because we don't understand what's going on? Ridiculous...
Just because we don't fully understand an aspect of nature yet doesn't mean that a natural process is so complex and impossible that a higher power had to make it... it only means that we are flawed and must wait until we fully grasp what is going on.
I'm sick of people filling in the blanks with "god did it!" without thinking "well... maybe we just need to study it more." Before you call me atheist, realize that I am a roman catholic, yet I can easily conceive how our life came to be after the big bang (let's not debate that right now) without any nudge from a higher power.
You are quick to argue that life could not have been created in nature, but forget the fact that God created nature itself.
That's not how it works. You don't prove a negative, you present evidence for a positive. You say there's a god or gods making all this cool stuff, present your case.
In the meantime, here's The God FAQ
Trolling is a art,
Undoubtedly someone will notice that this comment might equally well apply to those who "worship" Darwinism. That would be true. The key difference is, of course, that Darwinism can be understood and is continually being updated to reflect what we observe. Therein lies the key difference: we can update Darwinism to make it more correct. It's awful hard to update received wisdom.
Thankfully, Kansas and Ohio are leading the charge against the atheistic forces of E-Ville that seek to make critical thinkers out of our population. I'm sure that they will also "balance" their curricula to include classes that critically analyze received wisdom.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a little frustrating to realize, but I guess the cost of maintaining an intelligent, civilized society is a constant battle against ignorance. It is important that ordinary people speak out against attempts to change the science curriculum through political processes that are not subject to oversight (ie. inserting their own agendas into science curriculums without checks or balances).
I heard an excellent talk about the strategies of anti-evolutionists from the director of the center for science education recently. Two of her major points were that: (1)creationists seek to circumvent the usual curriculum review process and insert themselves directly into school board decisions politically, because they have come to realize that on careful examination, their ideas are untenable; and (2) the fundamental misunderstanding about the words behind the debate.
More specifically, in order for an idea to become incorporated in to a scientific education curriculum, it first must be proposed, examined by scientists, published, reviewed, tested for flaws and counterexamples, and then it becomes accepted as a theory (which by the way, means an idea that ties together consistently all aspects of the evidence, NOT just a "theory", or guess). Creationists, or intelligent design advocates, simply come up with an idea, and go right to the school board. Where are the checks and balances? The testing? The oversight?
And secondly, about the language. Normal people commonly feel that at the top of the hierarchy of importance are Facts. To them, facts are facts, immutable. You can't debate fact, as in "evolution is not a fact, so it doesn't occur." Observations are next, things that you see with your own eyes. And Theories? Theories are at the bottom of the scale, almost comparable to hopeful guesses. This is in part the fault of the language, that "theory" has come to mean "I, crackpot, have a theory about that."
But in fact, in science, Theory is at the top of the scale -- an idea that has consistently shown to uphold all the observations, and has been tested. At the bottom is just the opposite from what is commonly believed -- facts. Facts are things that you see every day, and carry no unifying meaning in themselves.
If we are to succeed in educating the population about the process of science, and *especially* why it is valuable to us a country, we need to get involved in the debate about the language and politics. Other countries, who don't have the luxury to squander valuable resources, are beginning to capture and exploit the wonders of science much more than we are -- and it is showing.
In it's ill-considered fight against science.
Which is a shame.
There are things that science will never be able to teach us, that desperately need to be taught. Things religion could, if it chose to stop wasting time arguing over whether speciation will occur given no outside (read: supernatural) influences.
Science will never present us with a peer-reviewed study proving once and for all that you should be good to your fellow man, and treat him like a brother. Particle accelerator runs will never hint that we all have it within us to put an end to petty bickering, violence, and even earth-shattering wars.
Will the next economic theory show once and for all, that there is so much more to be gained if every child went to bed without hunger? That great things could happen if we ignored greed and lived lives unblinded by mindless pursuit of wealth?
Every time a biblethumper gets pissy about "larnin' evomoluzhun in ar skools" they've missed their mark so completely, I don't know whether to chuckle or cry.
Alice Walker? Who is that? Alice Walker, best known perhaps as the author of The Color Purple, was the eighth child of Georgia sharecroppers.
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her first book of poetry in 1961 while attending the University of Toronto. She later received degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a career in teaching at the university level.
Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The Handmaid's Tale falls squarely within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or "dystopian" novels, exemplified by classics like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.
Yes I agree that the US seems to be trying to develop a theocracy in recent years. Of course the nice thing about democracy is that the madness comes in waves. At some point the pendulum should oscillate back and the US will calm down.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Last night, I read the essay A Philosopher's Day in Court, by Michael Ruse, a philosophy professor and expert in evolution called by the ACLU's legal team to the 1981 challenge of the Arkansas law mandating equal time for creation science and evolution in classrooms. It's an absolutely thrilling read and apparently it was a wonderful debate; they called in all the experts and prepared a beautiful case, putting together all the stuff that's often not available in casual debate. They had experts on radiocarbon dating, biology, the philosophy of science . . . by the time the defendents got to Stephen Jay Gould, the final witness, they didn't even have the energy for half an hour of cross-examination. Gould was terribly disappointed.
It's wonderful to read, a great story of rationality and science triumphing over ignorance and propaganda. The text doesn't seem to be available online, but you should be able to track down the essay. I found it in the collection Science and Creationism, edited by Ashley Montagu, which has a number of other essays -- including a particularly scathing denunciation and call to arms by Isaac Asimov. Great stuff.
(Note: when googling for specific text, I just learned, sometimes the "omitted results" are precisely what you want; the Asimov article only showed up there.)
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
The Intelligent Design proponents had better be careful, or they might end up proving God out of existence.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
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.
No, the nuclear arsenal is blessedly safe. The nuculer arsenal, however...
what intelligent designer would design us so that we used the same tube for both respiration and eating?
Yea, and who put a sewer line in a recreational area!?
A few problems:
1) Kansas isn't in the south, or even in the South.
2) The South isn't landlocked.
3) Bush is from Texas. That's more West than South.
4) There are idiots and conservatives everywhere.
5) As others have pointed out, you got both the title and the author of The Handmaid's Tale wrong.
Painting all Southerners with the "ignorant, theocratic redneck" brush is as accurate and useful as painting all Northerners with the "rude asshole" brush or painting all West Coasties with the "flaky New Age neo-mystic" brush. It's just not that simple.
If you continue to perpetuate the myth that living in the South automatically and without significant exception indicates that that person is uneducated, superstitious/religious, or inherently unintelligent, then you are showing even less capability for logical, rational thought than those dipshits in Kansas about whom this story was written.
Your comment isn't being modded insightful (as of this writing) for the simple reason that it ISN'T insightful. It's wrong-headed, factually incorrect, and blames the wrong people for the wrong things.
The people you're mad at are the religiously conservative, and they're everywhere. We in the South simply have a larger infestation of them than you appear to, wherever it is you live.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
If creationism can be accurately described 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" then it is science.
If creationism doesn't meet that definition (hint: it doesn't) then that definition can't be used to claim that creationism is science.
Personally, I think that's a pretty good definition to use, although I'd replace "adequate" with "accurate".
I am a fan of Sir David Attenborough, whose documentaries for the BBC are simply fantastic. In my community, you can borrow most of them from the local library.
The following is a section from wikipedia, showing his rather sharp response to questions about creationism. It is quite possibly the best answer I have seen regarding the relationship between evolution & creationism.
From Wikipedia:
When Evolution Is Outlawed
Only Outlaws Will Evolve
#!
Personally, I don't really see the creationists as being too much worse than that particular demographic of atheists who worship Darwin as God. *Excessive*, irrational veneration ...
Thanks for providing us with a poignant example of excessive, irrational, statements. Speculating that there is any significant faction of people on this planet who, in any way, "worship Darwin as God" is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
If there's one thing that really annoys me, it's an intellectually deficient side's desperate attempt to compare the end of a cigarette to the surface of the sun and claim they both put out the same amount of heat and therefore negate each others' significance or severity. Intelligence insulting hogwash!
However, another group who I think desperately need to get lives are those who are frantically seeking life on Mars, purely/primarily because they hope they can use such proof to discredit creationism altogether.
Huh? Are you kidding me? Are you wearing tin-foil underwear?
I believe the best way that evolutionary advocates can win this particular battle is simply by not fighting it.
Unbelievable. You advocate not standing up for what you believe in, and this will somehow make everything rosy? Have you not studied even a sliver of history of any civilization in the world?
Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
So much, in fact, that the idea was hit upon several times during evolution - we don't have one type of eyes on this planet, but well over a dozen. That's a crazy designer if you ask me ("now the insects, I think I'll give them completely different eyes, just for fun").
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Please mod parent down. He speaks from ignorance.
/.ers out there more enlightened than me. I humbly invite your corrections.
Buddha's philosophy does not see treating other people kindly "in a negative light". Buddha would not condone seeing this in a "negative" or a "positive" light. Buddhism would not condone doing kind deeds while thinking in terms of a "negative" or "positive" light. Let me explain: Buddhism is concerned with seeing things *as they are* and seeing how the mind creates our many "life's problems"--i.e. to see how humanity's problems are not metaphysical (some ancient curse from some supernatural being because of eating some ancient fruit, etc.) but personal (are you being greedy? impatient? ignorant? letting desire overcome you? etc.). With this comes the realization that we are, despite all our differences, the same. We were all born young and innocent, and have a core that remains so despite the experiences and struggles of later years. Compassion arises naturally then, for you see the same person in every stranger as well as in the mirror. Everyone is close to you like a family.
Christianity was like this once. That is probably why they tried to preserve it by using family titles: "Father" John, "Sister" Mary, "Brother" Joe. Unfortunately, the introduction of a god into all of this puts one thing above everything else in status: an unknowable being. That is all right, because younger or "weaker" people need something to hold onto before they can start making realizations and spiritually maturing on their own. The trouble is, what was a tool along the way became a fixation. Now you don't do good because you FEEL compassion for all sentient beings, but because if you don't some powerful being will punish you and make you suffer eternally.
Note: I am only 25, and this is merely what I've learned and realized so far. I'm still maturing and growing spiritually, and know there are literally millions of you
If you want to learn more, I would recommend "365 Tao" by Deng Ming-Dao. Don't worry, Taoism and Buddhism are, ultimately, the same thing: mere names and aspects for the same universal truth (barring cults and perversions... they pervade the world).
I'd talk about Confucius too (he was greatly misunderstood to be a strict disciplinarian who emphasized conventions, which is too bad), but I'm late for my tutorial! This is especially bad, since I am the TA!
imho, it appears they are explicitly trying to give equal value to exercises in "logic" as is given to the other criteria.
this is properly called philosophy.
sum.zero
You don't know much about evolution, do you? Before you dismiss the entire field you should study it little more.
For example, evolution nicely explains the following:
If you want to see evolution in action, read up on the evolution of the AIDS virus. Just be cause you can't understand it, it does not mean it is wrong.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Gotta start using preview ;-)
Santa Claus is claimed to live at the North Pole and common lore dispells his existence as nothing more than a story. We can go to the North Pole and we won't find him, we can observe out chimneys and we won't see him.
God is claimed to be all around us and a large segment of current thought dispells his existence as nothing more than a story. We can go to a church and we won't find him, we can observe into the heavens and we won't see him.
OK now that the post looks better I ask again, what is the difference in these two?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
God's cool. God created us. God tried to mollycoddle us in the Garden of Eden. What did we do? Told him to STFU and did our own thing.
Actually, Douglas Adams' take makes more sense to me:
"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting `Gotcha'. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it."
"Why not?"
"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."
But you leave out the real answer to "why". Kansas is mostly rural. Science class is one of the only places a young mind is exposed to scientific, i.e. logical, thinking. If they can teach ID instead of science, the chance for the student's thinking to evolve along rational lines is removed.
Why is this good? Conservative ideology, especially of the Christian Right, is hard to swallow completely if you're a rational person (same goes for any ideology to some extent). Rational people typically question authority more than those who swallow simple sound bites and go back to watching the Country Music Channel.
So this tempest is REALLY ABOUT KEEPING PEOPLE STUPID AND EASILY MANIPULATED.
There. That's how I see it.
The thing that bothers me the most about what is happening is that the entire scheme for the propogation of knowledge is being subverted. I would tend to say that until some serious articles on a given new grand theory have pass peer review and been printed in the likes of Science or Nature then the theory has no business showing up in the highschool classroom.
Was quantum mechanics taught in highschool just as it was being initially developed? How about evolution? Was plate techtonics? NO! These topics survived brutal peer review and were accepted as valid explanitory theories by the scientific establishment first. THEN they made their way to the middle and high schools for the teachers to teach.
The argument quickly arrives that the scientific establishment is biased against new theories (Such as ID) and it would never accept them. MALARKY! Each of the above listed theories and others like them were also underdogs with establishment against them. But, they won out over the (at the time) current theories because they were good theories with overwhelming and crushing evidence to support them.
If something like ID really raised any serious questions for scientists involved in research on the origins of life you can bet that they will try to answer them since the scientist that did could be rewarded with immortality like the kind given to Einstein, Darwin, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, and others (not to mention a Nobel Prize).
The injection of unaccepted scientific theories into the school system for spongy minds to consume is just right out. Totally unacceptable.
All your attention are belong to my old internet meme.
I just read that book recently, and while I enjoyed most of it, I found the chapter on the theories about the emergence of DNA extremely "hand wavey". The clay mineral culture idea was only presented as one possibility, but it didn't sound very convincing. If anyone has pointers to more compelling theories, I would be interested in reading them.
I always hated biology / life science in school because most of it was name memorization, but at the molecular biology level, it all starts looking digital...
John Carmack
I've seen loud proclamations of support for retaining the 'true definition of science', much head-scratching about why these fundies don't get it, and even more hand-wringing about where the world (and in particular, Kansas) is going, I've not seen any sign that anyone has understood either the motivation that drives these people or the means that they are using.
I'm not sure if this is because Slashdot readership is mostly American, or because the readership is completely geek. (sorry, couldn't resist that, no flames please).
Full disclosure: I'm an Indian in India, was born a Hindu, and have been mostly atheist/agnostic in my beliefs. However, while I don't believe in God in a flowing white beard (or the hundreds of other varieties in the Hindu pantheon), I also don't believe the universe can be explained by space, time, and a set of classical or probabilistic laws.
First, their motivation:
Imagine (I know it's hard, but try) that you believe passionately in the sacrifice of Christ and that the salvation of everyone lies in accepting him and in being forgiven for their sins. How painful must it be for you to see children in their formative years acquire a world view and emotional make-up which makes it impossible for you to get them to see your way of thinking? And there's no point in saying 'why can't they see evolution as God's way of making creation happen?' The reality is that it doesn't work that way. If the mechanism of creation is itself a few simple principles (variation/natural selection), then is there really a need for a Creator to have set them in motion at the beginning? You could take Him out of the picture, and the simple principles can still be there, and will still work. What makes people believe in a all-powerful, personalized God they can accept as saviour is a clear touchy-feely demonstration of sheer, raw power, and in this department, nothing beats creating the universe in 6 days. Get children to believe that, and you'll never have a shortage of souls getting in line to be saved.
Next, the means :
I hear a lot of people saying : 'what's wrong with their new definition, it seems to make things clearer'. This is nonsense. The old definition is :
seeking natural explanations for what we observe around us.
This is actually a very precise expression of attitude and intent, and this becomes clearer if it's changed slightly to read:
seeking natural explanations for everything we observe around us.
This is a frame of mind, and this is the true spirit of science. Through the ages, there has never been a shortage of explanations:
- Eclipses happen because we anger the Sun God.
- The invisible witch cut off his breathing (a popular explanation in India, not a long time ago, for deaths by tubercolosis)
The key attitude which separates science is that it says : 'I will look for non-supernatural principles and predictable rules for everything. It may be hard, but I'll keep trying. I think I'll find such an explanation if I keep trying'.
Read the new definition again. There a lot of fancy wording about experiments and hypotheses which seems to clarify, but is actually being used to hide the key change to the attitude. It doesn't say that science should try to explain everything anymore. In fact, with the bit about explanations being 'adequate', there's an logical next step: Why doesn't science restrict itself to things it is 'adequate' at, such as planetary motion and momentum conservation, and leave other things, like the creation of life, to other, more 'adequate ' explanations?.
On second thoughts, and at the risk of being flamed, I think the reason Slashdot isn't getting this is not because
Evolution, or natural selection, is not a 'theory' but an obvious phenomena that we observe around us every day of our lives, on everything from dog appearance to human hereditary conditions to software products. It is equally obvious (to me anyway, your opinion may differ) that the universe, our world, and all life was created by God. If people want to believe, however, that life arose from electric arcs in a primordial soup, that's their choice (given to them by God) and there's no reason to condemn them, punish them, threaten them, or torture them until they 'change' their minds. Faith cannot be instilled with fear, pain, legislation, or peer pressure, although that will never stop unbelievers from forcing other unbelievers to see things 'their' way.
Anyone who is afraid of *anything* that science may discover has no faith, to start with. Science and technology are, themselves, gifts from God that should be used to their fullest.