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Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design
An anonymous reader writes "The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science." From the release: "[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.'"
Do you consider astronomy a soft science?
Seems more like they're refusing to allow junk science and superstition to be cloaked in legitimacy.
Frankly I'd rather those kids were taught no science at all, than to be taught crap science. If we allow politicians the right to decide what is true in science, we are well and truly screwed.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They are making a point.
Do you think the parents of Kansas will allow their children to go to schools who do not have the materials to teach science? The idea is to make a ruckus, raise the profile of the idiocy of the Kansas Board of Education, who are basically quietly destroying science education as Dorothy knows it in Kansas.
Now, if Kansas parents collectively shrug their shoulders and say,"Well, no science is Ok.", then they deserve to have their children shut out of every known college/university/whatever-you-name-it in the world (not just the US). Of course, in this case, the children become the victims. But, chances are the KBE will be voted out post-haste before they have a chance to reach this level of idiocy.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
they're fighting for their ideals. people don't like to comprimise on those. Martin Luther King didn't have a dream about "mostly equality with a bit of racism thrown in".
why settle for "mostly science with a bit of creationism thrown in" if the bit of creationism undermines the entire scientific method?
I suppose you can dismiss the whole thing as "just political". I suppose you can dismiss almost anything, even plain questions of fact, as "just political." I can't see where it achieves much though.
Bullshit. One side is saying 'Scientific ideas should be taught in science class.' The other side is saying 'Christian ideas should be taught in science class.' These two statements are NOT equivalent. The first follows from the definition of 'science class;' the second follows from a christian political viewpoint.
In some debates, one side is RIGHT, and one side is WRONG. The truth is not political - it's just the truth. And that's what pisses off these intelligent design wackos so much.
The problem is not the content of the philosophy of Intelligent Design. The problem is including that content in the science curriculum. It has nothing to do with science; it's proper place is in Comparative Religion, Philosophy, heck maybe even an English class.
The reason this is in the courts is because religious zealots are trying to inject their I.D. doctrine into the public school system under the aegis of "science" -- which it ain't. It's an end run against the seperation of church and state.
I don't know the origins of the Intelligent Design theory, but in it's current manifestation the raison d'etre is to get camel's nose under the tent.
As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing. What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
I disagree with you entirely. Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theroy, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory, and as such it conforms to the standard for a scientifi theory. ID on the other hand is neither testable nor falsifiable, and therefore a lovely theory, but not a scientific theory. Whether ID should be taught in schools or not is not the discussion point, but whether ID should be taught along side scientific theories in science class.
By all means, Kansas, teach ID as much as you wish. In some social-study class or other where it can be taught along side of Astrology, Divination, tea-leaf reading and the theory of the Abominable Snowman. Just not in science class.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species.
Sophistry, again. How do you prove a given fossil is not half-way mutated? Oh, and if you'd like a living beastie, how about the duck-billed platypus?
The overall problem with your reasoning is that you're saying essentially: Since evolutionary theory can't be completely verified due to the absense of a working time machine (bidrectional), therefore any other theory that is not completely verifiable is also acceptable. Never mind that ID is 100% non-verifiable and is useless for precition, whereas evolutionary theory does have predictive value.
Remain calm! All is well!
"The Greeks believed in Aphrodite" is fine to teach in a social studies class, as are the effects of Christianity on the US, Islam on the Middle East, Judaism on Israel, and so on.
But here, we're talking about a biology class. Aphrodite has no place in that class, and neither does any other "intelligent designer". And I understand science perfectly well, thank you. Religion cannot, by definition, be scientific, because it requires an act of faith, not empirical testing. That does not mean the two are incompatible, it simply means that any "god" or "gods" are outside the scope of scientific endeavor.
As to the rest of your examples (book of Job for language studies, pagan rituals, myths) I have no problem with comparative religion being taught in a secular manner, and I don't think very many scientists would disagree. But I've sure never heard of the Egyptian creation myth finding its way into a biology class. Why should the Christian one be in there?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
That is true. Christian ideas are based on dogma and lore. Dogma and lore are not scientific.
No it isn't. If your scientific observation is guided by something other than a scientific process, then by definition it isn't a scientific observation.
Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for thousands of years. You can explore the idea that the earth is flat too if you want. Just because some people are exploring it doesn't mean we need to start teaching that to children in science class. Teach that myth the same place we teach the other myths - in religion or humanities classes or the like.
To my mind, it's a pity that basic history of science and history of religion is not taught in schools. It might come as a shock to a lot of Americans to discover that a lot of the people who discovered that Creationism was bunk were mostly ordained clergy in the Church of England (==Episcopalians), working in Cambridge in the 19th century. As they gradually understood the geological history of the Earth and the fossil record, as they took on the ideas of evolution, the sheer weight of evidence caused a lot of them to re-think the basics of their faith. In other words, it was the people with the theological background - men who could easily read the Bible in the original, which is more than I imagine the Kansas Board of Education can do - who accumulated and accepted the evidence that the Bible could not be literally true, and had to think out their theology based on the new discoveries. The -I choose the word with care- garbage that is Intelligent Design is part of a trend of thought that any well educated student of theology will know is fatally flawed. So why is this discussion still going on?
The problem, of course, is that a lot of religion in the US grew in a cultural vacuum. It took place on the frontiers, well away from the academic world in Europe (and the East Coast.) That's how ludicrous religions like Mormonism were able to evolve: uneducated people with limited vocabularies didn't realise that prophets with names like Moron and Ether were either the result of ignorance or exploitation. It hurts me to say this, because I have relatives descended from a family member who was on the first of the Mormon treks to Utah and they are fine people. But they have also not had the educational opportunities of the English side of the family, who in recent history got their educations at Cambridge, Oxford and London and as a result regard both Mormons and Southern Baptists in much the same light as Wahabis or Hassidim. It's extraordinary that George Bush senior, for whom I have a lot of time, is an educated man who knows that Christian fundamentalism is deeply flawed, while his son claims to embrace it. But it's just like an educated Pakistani or Iranian struggling to understand why his son is picking up aggressive (and regressive) ideas down the madrissah.
Until I found that people were still taking this stuff seriously, I used to think that Richard Dawkins and Jay Gould protested too much. But now I realise that there is a huge tide of reaction in the US, and that it needs to be stopped and reversed or it will ultimately lead to new wars of religion. It's absurd to watch American politicians attacking reactionary Islam and claiming to spread democracy while being prepared, in support of reactionary Christianity, to reduce women's rights. Theologically, I suspect all fundamentalists are much the same at bottom, and they are never happier than when they are either fighting fundamentalists of different religions, or fighting non-fundamentalists of their own religion.
Pining for the fjords
>I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact.
h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3
Actually, species have been created in the lab (a type of californian seaworm and many new fruitfly species) and others have speciated in the wild under historical observation - flowers, rats, mice, others. Check out the talk.origins link below, they have plenty of cited examples of speciation. Natural Selection allows both accurate prediction and domestication - we wouldn't have dogs, brocolli or corn if "evolution" didn't work.
>All that needs to be shown is several fossils demonstrating gradual change from 1 species to another.
Very well. Please observe the change from Australopithecus to the various species of Homo, currently represented by H. Sapiens. The shades of variation are so slight through the fossil record, yet obviously showing a several million year span of evolution and change. Paleontologists will fight over whether a skull is Homo Ergaster or just a big-brained Habilis, but they will all agree that the fossils show structured, reasonable, natural changes that can be predicted by applying Natural Selection. There, fossils showing gradual, species-changing modification. Somewhere (probably at change to Homo?) the human lines lost chromosomes among other radical shifts. A modern H. sapiens could not breed with an Australopith, or no moreso than with a chimp. Unless you deny the actual existence of our ancestors, this shows both micro and macro evolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.
The link has an example of what I'm describing, I also recommend the excellent "Extinct Humans" for further reading.
Akgoatley, I'm not sure where you fit on the opinion section, this is not personal: I don't understand where the controversy is, honestly. Anyone that passed high school biology should understand the basic processes of life, including Natural Selection and modern evolutionary concepts. "It's only a theory" is a bullshit argument, that people buy this shows the dire lack of scientific literacy in this country. This is people trying to deny reality and using fairy tales to placate themselves. If you need God to get through the day, I don't hold it against you. Don't turn this country into a 3rd-world theocracy because you're scared to know things. "Evolution" is only the first thing these American Taliban are after- they also question plate tectonics, the physics light and I'm sure plenty of other scientific concepts. I know this, because as a child I thrived at a 7th-Day Adventist school, but what they claimed was science, was not.
Science and technology drive this world. We are roadkill if we try to deny this - shame on Kansas for trying to shackle their children with theocratic garbage. I definitely support the AAAS in putting the copyright screws to them - this is effective political conflict.
Josh
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