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Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design
kwietman writes "The Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to allow science students in public schools to hear materials critical of evolution in biology classes. The new curriculum mentions that theories of life arising from similar building-block molecules through purely random processes can be challenged by recent findings in the fossil record and by molecular biology. Not all were happy, however. 'This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,' said board member Janet Waugh. The new standards will be used in statewide standardized testing; the students are still expected to know 'basic evolutionary principles.' As part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'"
It's very simple, really, and it has nothing to do with whether it's "right" or "wrong." ID is not science because it's not provable. Fundamentally, ID says "we can't don't know how this could have happened naturally, so it must have been designed." This is inherently unscientific. If you don't know how something works, all it means is that you don't know how it works! Scientists aren't allowed to make assumptions.
Besides, even if they did have evidence for ID (as opposed to merely lack of evidence to the contrary, which is all they actually have), it still wouldn't be science, because it explicitly requires an influence that's not bound by natural laws. No experiment can be designed to test the "theory," because the point of it is that it's untestable.
There might be an "Intelligent Designer," or there may not be. Who knows? But it doesn't matter anyway, because the issue is outside of science!
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Several religions, including the Vatican, have said that ID has nothing to do with religion. According to them Genesis is a story, telling how the world was supposely made by a higher being, and that only idiots would take it literally. The Vatican actually supports evolution as being compatible with their religion.
As a proud University of Kansas Jayhawk Alumni (1992 Bachelor of Science Computer Science) I have a perspective on this - Not all of Kansas is this conservative.
There are several isolated centers of liberalism (most notably NOT the oxymoronically named town of Liberal, KS) which include Lawrence, some of Topeka, the Kansas City suburbs, and parts of Wichita. However, the vast majority of the state is very Red.
This debate highlights several contrasts in Kansas culture. Many small towns resent the power that the bigger population centers hold over Kansas political power, and are more vehemently conservative because of it. They feel they must fight for their views to be heard.
Another factor here is the ever-more-computer-enhanced jerrymandered redistricting that has been taking place nationwide (most eggregiously in Texas 3+ years ago). As a result, since politicians are more secure in their political bases, they feel free to pander to their most vocal (and most extreme) constituents, since there is no need to appeal to the center. This also selects for more extreme views.
Lastly, this is a confusing trend in the light of the long Kansas tradition of progressive politics, starting wwwwwaaayy back with the Grange organization, which pushed for social-security-type platforms to support destitute farmers in the 1800's.
Even more confusing is the last-10-years trend towards confusing conservative social policies (less freedom for the individual to ensure compliance with moral laws) with conservative fiscal and governmental policies (more individual freedoms and less overall government interference). The freedom-to-farm act (an attempt to liberalize the agriculture market and reduce dependence that farmers don't want on subsidies) contrasts strongly with strong corporate farm interests that advocate for greater involvement, which also contrasts with traditional Republican less-government-is-better.
Also throw in there the strong German-American and now hispanic Catholic elements that, at the recently increasing behest of Rome, are catching on that Intelligent Design is contrary to scriptural meanings, that it confuses the spiritual (some would say 'religious mythical truths') and the scientific truths to the vast detriment of both.
All in all, things are a bit confused and I suspect that when the voters start pushing for actual policies to solve problems (during the next recession, let's say). I just don't know when they'll figure it out.
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There is nothing wrong with scientifically saying "your explanation is flawed," "that theory doesn't explain all phenomenon," or even "we don't know." But there is a problem, to quote Asimov, with saying that "Dragons must be pushing the moons."
Wish I could mod you up. 2500 years ago, Hippocrates (think Hippocratic Oath) promoted a quasi-scientific approach to medicine at a time when superstition and prayer were the dominant treatments. From the first chapter of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World:
"God of the Gaps." I always liked that description.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Just pointing out, you live in Utah. You go to a Utah college. And you think Kansas mixes religion and state?!?
1) I do not "go" to a Utah college. I am a professor at the University of Utah whose history in computer science, genetics and bioscience have made significant contributions to science.
2) You are assuming that because I live in Utah and "go" to a Utah college, I must therefore be a part of the moral majority here. You would be mistaken in that assumption and fairly ignorant to suppose it. However, I will tell you that the Mormon contributions to genetics through their recognition of genealogy and genetics has made many advancements in medicine and biology possible.
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No scientific theory is provable. The only way to test a theory is to try to disprove it. If you fail, the theory is stronger.
ID is not a scientific theory because it is not disprovable. I suspect this is why they had to change the definition of "science".
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Nah, four of the six wacko board members are up for reelection. They are from western Kansas, and that is pretty much what you get from that part of the state.
The board will never go completely nutjob, there is the KBOE district that includes Topeka and Lawrence that will never turn.
end all, be all
First, you should look up the meaning of the word 'theory'. There you will see that in the pure and natural sciences (but not in maths) a theory cannot be proven. No theory can therefore be the 'end all, be all'.
Second, there are currently no scientific theories that explain the development of life as well as evolution does. It is the most widely accepted theory by a huge margin.
Thirdly, the issue here is that they want to teach religion in a science class to further their ideological goals. Inteligent Design should not be given 'fair weight' in a scientific context, as it has nothing but the slimmest scientific backing.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
It's true! The transcript is online
The University of California at Berkeley won't accept for credit high school biology courses that teach intelligent design. If you want to get into the life sciences or medicine, get out of Kansas schools.
Do yourself a favor and get yourself a good Hebrew concordance. The word in question is "yom" (יום), which is most definately the word for day. It is also used occasionally as "a period of time defined by an associated term," exactly like our own word "day" -- if I say "the day of our suffering is upon us" or refer to the times after Christ as "the year of our Lord," I'm not referring to literal days or years.
I'm not sure what you mean by "original translation of the Bible." We've got the thing in it's original language, and the copy of an "original translation" is only meaningful if (a) we didn't have reliable copies of the source language (and the means to translate it) and (b) if we didn't have multiple reliable sources in parallel with unprecedented degrees of mutual confirmation. Neither is true.
The issue that the person who 'explained' this to you was trying to get at, or should have been trying to get at, is that the Bible is a piece of Hebrew literature -- much of it poetry. We have a pretty good understanding of Hebrew poetry, literature, and histories, and there are whole hermeneutic sciences devoted to the correct interpretation thereof. Most scholars worth their salt will concede that much of what appears in the Bible is figurative or at least hyperbolic. However, just because the word "יום" is translated 'Day' does not mean some gross oversight has been committed. In general, Bible translators go to great lengths to leave everything intact -- including unclear passages. That's why there are so many footnotes and parens providing alternate translations in any Bible.
"Day" is the correct translation. Whether or not we are to take it as a literal 24-hour day or as a metaphorical term is another issue, and a pretty petty theological one at that. I'm not aware of a single confession of faith on earth that requires one to affirm that the Earth was created in 168 hours, with 24 hours for lunch in there at the end.
Taken from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s14932 25.htm
Robyn Williams: Professor Derek Denton from the University of Melbourne has just published something of a critique of intelligent design in The Age newspaper, suggesting that some parts of our bodies are so botched that it's an insult to poor old God to hold him responsible.
Derek Denton: There is obvious evidence against such an idea operating in living creatures. The gut is supported by being enclosed in a big membrane called the peritoneum. The peritoneum is attached to the backbone. This is fine for a four footed animal, however, given an animal with an upright posture, for example us, the gut falls to the bottom of the abdominal cavity. The common outcome may be various types of hernia, prolapse of the uterus and vaginal wall and haemorrhoids.
The big maxillary sinuses or cavities are behind the cheeks on either side of the face. They have the drainage hole in the top, which is not much of an idea in terms of using gravity to assist drainage of the fluid. Ear, nose and throat specialists sometimes have to knock a hole through the side of the nose near the bottom of the sinus to help drainage of puss. Apart from horses, which have a very small opening, most four-footed animals operating with head down rarely get sinus problems. It would seem that knowledge of gravity has not been a strong point in the repertoire of the intelligent designer.
The digestive system of grass and herbage eating animals includes a large organ next to the secum, the vermiform appendix in which cellulose is digested. In the human it's rudimentary, it gets matter caught in it, becomes inflamed sometimes causing sever peritonitis and death. Why the intelligent designer put it in at all is conjectural, unless in fact it is an evolutionary remnant from an earlier beneficial function.
One of the marvels of backboned animals is the eye. Indeed, Dr William Paley, a clergyman, whose writings were used to challenge Darwin considered it as the shining example of intelligent design. Paley likened the situation to that of finding a watch abandoned in an open field: it must have a maker who formed it for a purpose. The eye might be compared with a designed instrument such as a telescope, he concludes, 'that there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it'. That is the eye must have had a designer just as the telescope had.
In considering the eye as the marvel, there are facts now known which were not known in Paley's time, about 1801. In our eye and of all other vertebrates the optic nerve carries over a million fibres each leading from a cell in the retina. It is part of a system receiving data from about 125 million photocells. Whereas it would seem a designer would point the photo cells towards the source of light with the wires leading back to the brain, it would be poor design to have the photo cells pointing away from the light with their nerve processes departing on the side nearest the light. This is what happens in all vertebrate eyes, the wires or nerve processes have to travel across the surface of the retina to a place where they all go through a hole, creating what is called the blind spot, to form the optic nerve. The design principle is really not very good. The extremely interesting fact is that with the octopus the wires from the photocells don't point to the light but do indeed go backwards. The octopus eye in this respect is a better-designed effort by the putative intelligent designer than the eye of mammals. How did this come about?
Well, Ernst Mayr, the great Harvard biologist argued that photo receptors in some form evolved independently some 40 to 60 times in animals ranging from worms, molluscs to vertebrates. In the octopus eye it is formed by an infolding of the surface cells on the head, which become thickened to form eye components and it i
I have to say, to an Atheist like myself, all religions pretty much sounds like a chorus of stupidity. At some point a person indocrinated many otherwise rational people with a crazy notion-- in every part of your life but ONE, you will use rational thought to critically think. Why? It's so unbelievably obvious that religion is a good way to be in tune with your fellow man, and a terrible way to describe the empirical world. Faith, in this context, is another word for "lazy."
The difference between Atheists and religious fundamentalists is that it's a rare day you find an athiest pushing their point of view on another person. I don't care what you think. I *want* you to think what you feel is right, and I want you to leave me the F alone. Fundamentalists (not speaking of level headed religious people) insist on making everyone else believe what they believe. They will lie, steal, and cheat their way at any cost under the belief they are working for a great good. This country was founded on freedom of speech, religion (or lack of), and diversity. Live and let live. Sadly, this mentality was driven into them in one of two ways: as a small child or in a time of weakness. In both cases these are times in people's lives when they are vulnerable to suggestion. Sounds abhorrent to me.
At it's core, Fundamentalists dig their heels in about Evolution because it challenges the single most important principal in their worlds-- humans are at the center. We're created in god's image, and "he" is the creator of us. (Yes not all religions, but let's go with this in the context of the Kansas situation.) So, if we're not all that special, where do fundamentalists find their purpose? Their entire worlds come crashing down. Nothing seems more "secular" to me than thinking you're the only unique speck of life in the universe. The sad twist is that people like myself, who believe in Science as a way to understand our conditions of existence, rarely think our place and the world around it is any less special. It's amazing! It's wonderful. We're wonderful. And we should damn well let our neighbor think what they want. That goes for anything shy of inflicting bodily harm on another. I don't think teaching the evolution of humans counts as bodily harm, do you? How about we keep Religion at home, where the Bible thumping Fundamentalists are supposed to be indoctrinating their children with creation myths.
So now we sit and watch Kansas, a state my Aunt and Uncle live in, become the laughing stock of the developed WORLD. I just sit back and think on all the other recent evangelical religion based events that have been so similar, and backfired so badly. Now we can add one more to that endless list. This is the new Monkey trial, folks. It will take some time, but this won't last for long. Reason will prevail.
And if you don't agree with me-- fine. I want you to think for yourself. Just keep Religion at home, please.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
evolution has deep scientific background, despite not being a proven fact.
Evolution is not a proven fact in the same way that gravity is not a proven fact. The word "theory" throws people because the scientific definition is different than the plain English.
In plain English, a "theory" is defined as "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.". Pretty clearly not something you should put any undue trust into.
In Science, a "theory" is "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.". Note the emphasis on being repeatedly tested, and that it can be used to make predictions of natural phenomena.
In short, the Scientific definition of theory pretty closely matches the English definition for fact: "Knowledge or information based on real occurrences". Since a Scientific theory has been repeatedly tested, we can be pretty sure it's pretty factual.
Or, put another way, a scientific theory can never be proven 100% right because we can never be absolutely sure that all aspects of the theory are correct. Isaac Newton cooked up the first mathematically supported theory of gravity, a theory that works perfectly well on Earth and in simple circumstances. But, in space, with extreme velocities and accellerations, Newtonian gravity theory becomes ambiguous and inaccurate.
It was Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity that refined the older Newtonian theory and filled in the missing pieces.
If you ever have to deal with ID nuts, see if you can't get them to state that Evolution is "only a theory". Then, being very, very obvious and very quiet, hold out a pen, and let it drop on the table. Then, with the flattest, most rude, deadpan voice you can muster, say "Gravity is just a theory".
Slowly pick it up, and drop the pen again. And again. Let them blab their way to silence. (it might take a while)
Then, go click the lightswitch on and off again. Explain to them that electro-magnetism is more (gasp!) theory, not proven to be 100% true.
Then, ask them why they trust science when they drive their car, and they trust science when they swallow an aspirin, and why they trust science when they fly, or watch television, or drink floridated water, and why they trust science when they drive their tractors, and why they trust science when they drink homogenized milk, and why they trust science when they don their clothes made with nylon, and why they trust science when they talk on the cordless or cellular phone, and why they trust science when they swallow a vitamin pill, and why they trust science when they mow their lawns, and why they trust science when they watch dishes with their dishwasher, and why they trust science to identify the history of events when solving a crime, and why they trust science to identify the rightful father of a baby using DNA testing.
And then ask them why they don't trust science when to identify their other ancestry.
(PS: definitions come from Dictionary.com)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
All 8 of the Dover school board's intelligent designers just had their asses handed to them by the voters today.
FILTHY WORD ANIMAL!
You forgot to mention the 4-day Time Cube!
You are stupid and evil and you don't even know it because you're so stupid and evil. Equal time of the 4-day must be given to the Time Cube!
That is at best an incomplete understanding of evolutionary theory. It has come a long way since Darwin. Steven J Gould was a proponent of 'punctuated equilibrium': that species remain relatively static for long periods until something disturbs the equilibrium causing rapid speciation. An example would be a population which suddenly becomes isolated (disaster, changes in the location or depth of water, etc.), or a sudden pressure is put on one segment of the population (new predator, disease, etc.). This has become more or less mainstream evolution. An example would be a species spread over a large area with healthy genetic variability. In the species central habitat, a new deadly disease comes on the scene (carried by an insect which only does well in the central belt). Suddenly, the two outlying areas are isolated from each other and begin to drift genetically. Small anomalies in the genetic composition of the outliers means that those populations will be instantaneously different from each other. They can no longer interbreed to re-mix the drifting genes. A few individuals are resistant to the disease and can populate the central belt. The disease resistance comes at a cost; it is not uncommon for resistance to have negative side-effects. Resistant individuals cannot compete in the outlying (non-disease) areas, so their population drifts as well. Over a few generations, an eyblink in the fossil record, you end up with three new species. Now climate change comes along and wipes out the mosquito which had carried the disease. The disease resistant population dies out, out-competed by the outliers. The outliers come back into contact but cannot interbreed successfully anymore because of excessive drift (mules). Either they exist as separate populations in the same area (goats and sheep, sambar and samovar, etc. etc.) or they compete with each other and one wins (Neanderthal and moderns?). The point is, variations on evolutionary theory can explain a lot. The theory changes over time to match new data *as it should*. ID or creationism does not incorporate new data and does not deal with observable phenomena at all.
Evolution from lower life forms indicates an increase of genetic material from the lower form to a higher.
Which is not true. Amphibians have more DNA in all than we do, and rice (of all things) has more genes than we do. Surely you would agree that we are higher lifeforms.
Sure, dogs are bred to weed out undesirable traits and to accentuate desirable ones, yet this is still a dog. In 100,000 years of breeding, I'm not going to get a dog that has the slightest bit more genetic material than the one I started with 10,000 years ago.
10,000 years is a rather short timespan during which to perform your experiment. Breeding of dogs hasn't been around even that long, so the fact that dogs are genetically similar to their predecessors acounts for nothing.
The basis for radiometric dating methods assumes three things: a constant rate of decay, an isolated system where neither the radioactive element nor the decay product is added nor removed, and third that the initial ratio of parent to decay product is known.
The rate of decay of elements falls out of nuclear science. Nuclear science is not something ID folks want to take on --- nuclear scientists can bury you in equations in a way evolutionists cannot. The other two bits are assumptions, but good ones. Barring unforseen vectors, radioactive carbon simply does not add itself to the system. Certainly not in ways that cannot be checked for in contamination tests. Tthe assumption aboout knowing the initial ratio of parent to decay product is a good one too. The chemistry of life, as compared to its genetics, is something that is remarkably constant throughout the biosphere.
For myself, I have many other pieces of evidence that provide me with a 'preponderance of the evidence' indicating the fallability of evolution.
Better than these sad examples?
I would hope, that creationism, pastafarianism, and others should welcome and stand on their own merit.
And their merits are poor.
Unless you're afraid of what you might find, that there actually is a God of universe.
Yep, I see a whole lotta fear out there.
The entertaining thing is that if there is a God, he's going to be far happier with the scientists for advancing the state of humanity than with religious-but-otherwise-unproductive. Yes, this a belief, like yours, but since it is a belief, there is no way for you to prove me wrong.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No.
You appear to be confused. Evolution is the (observed) change in species. Darwinian natural selection is the currently best theory to explain evolution. Neither of these has anything to do woth the big bang.
Huh? Like I said, cosmology. Nothing to do with evolution.
Huh? What are you talking about? Man is an ape, no bridge is needed.
Or maybe you think scientists are claiming that "man evolved from apes"? No, it is known that man and our ape cousins had a common ancestor.
Huh? What "NASA scientists"? Enrico Fermi didn't work for NASA. How have you calculated the "odds"? What has this to do with Darwin?
Well, evolution is a fact. Natural selection is a theory.
Huh? Darwin shouldn't have published "On the Origin of the Species" 'cos he didn't have "incontrovertable proof"? If you know anything about science you know that we can never have incontrovertable proof. If we could it wouldn't be science.
There are no alternate (scientific) theories at the moment.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
He was referring to Dover, PA, not Kansas. A link to an article explaining the views of the winning candidates is http://www.yorkdispatch.com/local/ci_3196053.
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Celtic druidism, given the little we know about them (mainly through Roman histories and tiny amounts of archaelogical evidence) weren't nice folks at all - human sacrifice was the least of it.
What do the students in Kansas Schools think? I live in Kansas and I interact with a large number of high school kids (friends' kids, fixing computers, etc). Here is their position, as I see it: They are taught by their parents "You were made in God's image, and are not descended from monkeys." (yes, I know). Any other belief would be frowned upon by parents (akin to changing religions or announcing you're gay). Nor can they imagine how life, complex as it is, could arise by chance. I too, was raised to believe this and didn't change my mind until about the age of 10. In my opinion, this stems from our fear of death. All life arose by chance molecular collision? What about the soul? Even now, I *want* to believe there is a part of my being that will continue beyond my death. A difficult pill to swallow, no matter how obvious it is.
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside." - Calvin