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.'"

Comments

Re:You are only hurting yourself you know....

[evought]

There is an old quote from Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring, among others) from when she was visiting the ocean with her grandmother. The grandmother, exasperated with all of young Rachel's questions said:

"You know, Rachel, God created all of this."

"I know that Grandma. What I want to know is *how* God created it."

The idea or belief of Intelligent Design does not excuse someone from trying to understand the design and our place in it. As you say, most ID supporters use faith as a cop-out to try to prevent people from asking questions. To somewhat paraphrase Kant, saying that God is good and what God commands is good is circular; it does not provide a foundation for moral thought or right-action. Belief in God does not free us from the need for either moral or scientific reasoning.

Re:You are only hurting yourself you know....

[be-fan]

To this day, philosophers debate what "science" is.

Yet scientists don't, and regardless happily go about improving hte world.

I'm not convinced that scientists should have control over our public schools' science curriculum any more than I'm convinced that priests should set the curriculum for (comparative) religion classes.

Your analogy is flawed. Comparative religion isn't a subject in which a priest is an expert. Comparative religion is, depending on the exact nature of the class, either a branch of cultural study (anthropology, etc), or a branch of philosophy. Personally, I think an anthropologist or a philosopher who has studies cultural philosophy would make a fine person to set the cirriculum for a comparative religion class.

Public education is so crucial to our society that it should be set by the people or their duly elected representatives, not some unelected technocracy.

That presupposes that democratic processes are always better than their alternatives. This has shown to be emperically false (most corporations and households are not democracies), and indeed is hardly the principle under which our country was founded.