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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.'"
Luckily, the offical text of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is published under a free license!
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.
[Taken from http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-d ebate-on-intelligent-design-that.html ]
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject
Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullpoop sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
That word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
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.
...than people had feared.
... and you ignored them?" he asked.
According to this article that was posted to Fark yesterday... the school administration, aka the ones who voted to include ID in the curriculum, didn't even bother to research the concept at all.
A couple of choice quotes from one of the Einsteins on that board:
"They said it was a scientific thing," said Geesey, who added that "it wasn't my job" to learn more about intelligent design because she didn't serve on the curriculum committee."
and
"The only people in the school district with a scientific background were opposed to intelligent design
"Yes," Geesey said."
Grade-A fucking scary.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
One can always tell that it is an ID-er when he/she starts to use the words theory in bold, and say that it is "just a theory".
An ID thesis has the following components :
(a) A slipshod definition of what the word "Theory" actually means to them.
(b) A promotion of ID into a Theory by assertion.
(c) With this promotion, directly compare ID to Evolution, with the hope that the reader will think that ID actually has as much evidence behind it as evolutionary Theory.
(d) Finally, a series of anecdotal evidence, usually presented in bullet form and almost always wrong/falsified, of ID.
Boy, putting those Bold tags is hard work. How do they get through life?
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A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design. It studies the science of intelligence or intelligent life.
This his simply a lie, and I thought Christians were not allowed to lie. Intelligent Design doesn't study anything, ID has postulated a set of theories that are beyond study and therefore not scientific, even if, by an astonishing miracle ID was a correct description of the world, it would be wrong to teach it in science class.
Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically.
This is another lie, the Christian is really going at it today. ID has never been tested simply because it is not testable. Also, the sentence above shows with utter clarity why you are so amazingly wrong, you are just ignorant. Science, outside of a rather narrow field, doesn't deal with proving things much, it deals with falsifying things, and the difference is enormous.
Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
This could probably said to be true, close to the first true sentence in your posting. There is a huge problem with it though, there is no characteristic signature in life that would imply intelligent design.
I propose the followers if the ID ideology change the name of it to BSD. The Theory of Bloody Stupid Design. You see, in all the life we see around us there is evidence after evidence of a Bloody Stupid Designer, if you look. A few examples:
The list goes on and on. There is no trace of any intelligence whatsoever in our design, but there is a lot of traces of random changes, adaptation of body-parts to jobs they are not particularly well suited for etc. If there was someone behind the design of humans, he would fail Human Design 101. Bloody Stupid Johnson.
The definition in the antecedent post was incomplete. If they're different species, they can't produce fertile offspring.
For example, when Kansas State Board of Education chairman Steve Abrams has sex with monkeys, I would not at all be surprised if offspring are occasionally conceived. And due to his views on abortion, they will of course be brought to term if at all possible. However, those sad little creatures will never produce children of their own, because Steve Abrams is a different species of monkey from those commonly available for fornication in Kansas.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
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
Ironically, one of the reasons I've sent my daughter to a Catholic school here is that they teach evolution. They also mention that people who view the bible literally don't believe in evolution; but evolution is taught in the science class as science. Being a Catholic school gives them the freedom to make the simple statement about the literalists without there being a problem with the separation of church and state.
If, however, there had been no school in our area that taught evolution, I would have taught it to her myself. After all, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Any idiot can make sandwiches. It's times like these when you get a chance to actually parent.
There's an important point that the creationists miss in all of that. Kids will still be taught evolution regardless of whether or not they get their way with the standards. 99 percent of the parents in this state will tell their kids that evolution is fact. Some of the rest will find themselves explaining evolution simply to inform their kids about the debate. Still more kids will simply hear it from eachother or from media, the internet, etc.
Everybody will hear or learn about evolution, and the standards won't change which side of the debate people fall on. This whole thing about changing the standards is not only idealogically questionable, it's not practical or effective. They're achieving nothing but ridicule.
I for one hope that the board members continue to vocally extoll their positions and beliefs here; because the more they talk, the more unreasonable they sound. Like most of the ultra-conservative movement in this nation, the Kansas Creationists are running headlong for a backlash.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
>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
We need a first generation of pioneers.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This is a silly game - for every intermedite form produced you'll simply shoehorn it into one category of the other and say "but what is between those?". The world's supply of discoverable fossil's is very much finite, while you can keep splitting hairs indefinitely.
In practice Archeopteryx is between lizards and birds. Between lizards and Archeopteryx are therapod dinosaurs. Between early lizard like therapods and Archeopteryx are late more bird-like dromaeosaurids and between early dromaeosaurids like Troodons and Archeopteryx are various feathered dinosaurs, which includes fossils that simply had feathers, apparently for warmth, through to later fossils that actually had clearly flight adapted feathers.
Want to try something different? How about whale evolution? We can start with a land dwelling mammal that looked fairly dog like but had certain ear structures not found in other mammals that are more suitable for hearing underwater. Then there's ambulocetus which was similar, but in practice was rather akin to a mammalian crocodile, with back legs obviously adpated for swimming, the same ear structures as our first creature, and a nose structure, similar to a crocodile, that was ideal for breathing while immersed in shallow water. Next there are things like rodhocetus which is remarkably whale like, yet still posses back legs, and still has a nasal structure placng the nostrils toward the tip as in ambulocetus. There's aetiocetus which shows the transition from snout tip nostrils toward nostils at the top of the skulls as in modern whales. Then there's basilosaurus which is decidedly whale like, but lacking in a few modern whale features, and retaining distinct, but quite useless, hind limbs similar to those of rodhocetus.
You can find similar sets of forms for the development of horses, the development of snakes from lizards, and even for the ape to man path, among many others.
Oh, I'm sure you can parse those and say "but what's between that?", but I think for most people who are not being mindlessly dogmatic that represents fairly reasonable evidence of transitions from lizards to birds, or from land dwelling mammals to whales, an, if they bothered to do the extra research and reading, the development of horses, snakes and man.
Jedidiah.
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It's funny, but this has been cropping up on Slashdot for ages now, and I haven't heard anyone mention surrealist arguments (this may not be the commonly accepted term - it's a while since I took the paper, and wikipedia doesn't know what I'm talking about).
A surrealist argument (iirc) is one that tries to explain some phenomenon by appeal to an undetectable power or state, e.g. the moon is moved in its orbit by invisible angels. The angels are completely undetectable (apart from their effect on the moon, of course), but they're there. Really. I swear. We can never see them, but they're there.
The problem with surrealist arguments is that they're not disprovable (they never make falsifiable predictions, which is something that DOES get mentioned in these discussions) and unfortunately defences against them usually have to be about lack of explanatory power... but that's another big can of worms. It could be that the moon really is moved in its orbit by invisible angels, but that state cannot be distinguished from the accepted scientific state by any experiment.
Now back to the topic at hand... Pretty much any argument that 'God did it' is a surrealist argument. If you don't want to accept the fossil record you can claim that God rigged to look like that, and the earth is really only 6000 years old. That state is is not experimentally distinguishable from the accepted scientific state.
Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster arguments are both surrealist too. The most important thing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that the logical arguments for his existence are exactly as compelling as for ID or the Christian God. The Noodly One is inherently ridiculous which helps reveal the flaws in arguments for His existence, but also unfortunately leads to people misinterpreting the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a parody in poor (or possibly tomatoey) taste.
.evom ton seod gis eht