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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.'"
So, why is it that the Kansas board of "education" will not allow science and religion to be separately taught? 1) Primarily because they have an agenda that is religiously biased. 2) Because if they allowed a religion class, they would be hard pressed to only teach their version of religion and not also teach Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc...etc...etc... which these types of people believe would not be acceptable. After all, thinking for yourself is scary.
Look, before all you ultra right wing whackos start modding me down, you should realize that 1) I am religious and 2) I am also a scientist and see no conflict between religion and science and 3) the Intelligent Design camp are absolutely and completely biased and corruptive of both religion and science. Schools teaching ID are absolutely doing a disservice to the students who are forced to take this curriculum.
And those in the Kansas government should know that this issue is making Kansas a laughing stock world wide. There is absolutely nothing that you could do to get me to move my family, science or business there. Speaking of business, we are in the initial stages of moving technologies we have developed into the privately funded domain and early estimates are that we are sitting on significantly large markets right out the door with significant expansion likely in a variety of areas. Kansas does not remotely have a chance of attracting businesses like ours given the educational climate required for our work. We need students and employees who are well prepared in the sciences and are capable of thinking independently, and if the school board succeeds in misleading their students, they are of no use to us.
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There are implications, I believe, for our present American situation: parasitic governments, namely, have something to fear from Darwin; what exactly, remains to be seen.
Wait, so if science isn't the study of explanations for natural phenomena, then what is?
Even intelligent design is an explanation.
Now it's up to the colleges/universities to teach Kansas schools about natural selection.
"Going for a science degree, huh? From Kansas, are you? Interesting..."
That they believe in Creationism. After all, living in Kansas they're probably convinced the world is flat, too...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Just wait till 2006 when the Kansas State Board of Education will have to face the voters on this issue.
I find it rather humorous that you can redefine science based on the word of some ignorant administration officials. Their definition brings voodoo, astrology, and hollywood into the realm of science.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!
-- The World
...noodly appendages.
Thank God we'd never elect a fundamentalist like this to a high government office; the do enough damage in the schoo.... fuck.
I think it is quite wrong to teach ID in schools, not because it's a weird theory but because children in school have learned to believe everything they are taught (I know I was) and don't have the critical thinking required to question those things and decide on their own (that comes later, about at the end of highschool/beginning of college). I remember some pretty outrageous things teachers told us (they obviously didn't know any better) that I believed until much later, and it's a sad realisation when you think that if something like this is false, everything else could be, as well.
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I have to say that this is truly sad for the students of Kansas. Not only do they have to waste time learning something as stupid as Intelligent Design, but as they move on into College, they will now be the laughing stock of their class...
poor, poor Kansas.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Evolution is not random. Mutations are random. Evolution is not just mutation. Evolution is the natural selection of beneficial mutations. The Kansas board of Education is promoting psuedoscience.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
"You don't know anything about the origins mankind! I *do*!"
And the seven-fold path to wisdom needs to be placed next to the ten commandments on public property!
allow science students in public schools to hear materials critical of evolution in biology classes.
This is not at issue here. You can have all of the material critial of evolution you want in any biology class anywhere in the United States. Criticism is a fundamental part of the scientific process. What you can't do is then turn around and say "because we don't have a good explanation, God did it."
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."
The ______ Agenda
Look at that last part again--the board rewrote the definition of science. That's astonishing--and by doing so, the board has admitted outright that "intelligent design" isn't science. If it were, they wouldn't have had to change the definition. They're now saying that science class should include supernatural explanations--everything from leprechauns to poltergeists to the balance of bodily humours is now a legitimate part of Kansas' science curriculum.
The Kansas Board did not adopt Intelligent Design. Instead it did two things:
1)It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
2)It redefined the meaning of science. According to the new definition, science is no longer is limited to searching for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
These changes are more damaging to education in the long run compared to adopting Intelligent Design alone.
The theory of evolution has some holes, and it's most likely not 100% correct, but it's a very good working definition. It's just like our understanding of the atom, we have a decent working definition that has need for improvement but that is not to imply that it isn't mostly true. Instead we don't call it too complicated and offer up a non-scientific theory. It all boils down to the fact that denouncing evolution with non-science is unacceptable in a science setting.
Why is this not in the Poltics section?
We all know this is just going to devolve (if it hasn't started there) into an "Christians are stupid."/"Evolution is wrong." forum.
Was there any new scienctific insight that merits inclusion in the Science section of Slashdot? No?
Or was is a political act by a political group?
mmmm.
Congratulations you got around my filters/preferences for the frontpage.
Of course I don't like Jesus--he still owes me 10 bucks!
English is easier said than done.
If you want to stop ID in it's tracks, get the ABET committee (the Higher Education Accreditation Committee) to do one of the following:
1. Refuse to accept students to ABET accredited college who have been schooled in ID supported school districts.
2. Allow students from ID supported school districts to attend college, but force them to take college level Biology, Evolutionary studies, and basic science as a pre-req to any degree; be it astrophysics or dance.
Watch a grass roots revolt happen in those districts as soon as the kids find out they'll have to repeat basic science education, perhaps increasing their overall time in higher ed. Watch ID get kicked out fast!
- The Crusades
- Republicans
- Focus on the Family
- Galileo and many others (their persecution)
Seriously, I'm sorry. Please don't think that someone cannot follow Jesus and try to be at peace with the world. Don't mod me funny, I mean it. I'm sorry.I'll probably get modded into oblivion for this, and I may indeed be quite wrong, but is there anything wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught? Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there really no scientific basis for any criticism of evolution? Isn't it only fair - and rather scientific - to explain both supporting and critical evidence? I didn't RTFA, so if they're teaching intelligent design in particular, then that's an entirely different situation...
Seriously though, it's pretty obvious if you study the theory that it really does have a lot of areas where uncertainty reigns.
... clear up our 'areas of uncertainty' with respect to the physical universe.
So?
That doesn't mean that an intelligent designer did it. The "God of the Gaps" argument holds no H2O.
All it means is that there are areas where uncertainly reigns. That's what science is supposed to DO
I'm happy, because this means that regions in the U.S. (not-Kansas) will have fewer difficulties attracting business than those fundines in Kansas (fundamentalists).
I'm sad, because as Kansas continues to deterioriate into a rabidly backward and conservative area, more and more destitute as each year goes by, government handouts will be seen as the only way out.
You reap what you sow. As the (some of the) rest of the U.S. watches Kansas deteroriate into nothing, I hope we have the intelligence to leave them in the gutter.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I look forward to an enlightened, civilized discussion about this controversial subject.
Awesome, just awesome. I saw one of these proponents speak on an episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, and his logic (or lack thereof) was amazing. "Wouldn't it be great if the state let the parents sit down with their children and choose as a family what they're going to believe?" Uh, no, simply for the reason that SCIENCE IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. You can't ignore facts just because you don't like them. Of course, given that this is the same Middle America (tm) that still believes there is a PROVEN link between 9/11 and Iraq, and that we've found actual WMDS...
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!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
I was born in kansas educated as an engineer and have been a devout atheist since I could crawl. Ironically my father (raised in kansas) is a molecular geneticist and director at arguably the worlds leading research institute. I can only imagine what may have come of him (and in turn myself) had he been influenced by the people at the reigns of education in kansas today. All I can say is someone needs to take back control out there.
I'm trying, but plane tickets to Sweden are expensive, and Australia is even more so. Canada's already packed with fleeing hippies, and France would lynch me.
' 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.'
on next week's agenda, they redefine education to be 'no longer limited by such trivial things as facts and the truth. Education will be a wholesome, enriching, and upstanding kind of thing.'
the week after that they will be voting on whether or not it should be mentioned in sex-ed that nocturnal emission's are the devil's work and if they should require that santa claus's personal history be included in every history curriculum.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
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.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Kansas will end up serving as an example for the other states. Any economy these days, be it that of a town, city, state or country, cannot exist without a strong scientific and technical foundation. This sort of action will only serve to deteriorate such a base. While the other states will advance technologically, and will thus propsper, Kansas will not.
Kansas' economy will not be able to evolve as effectively as those of the other states. It may take some time, but that will be the result of taking a stance against science. There will be an exodus of talent from Kansas, in addition to a lack of new talent being produced from their anti-science school system. It will not become a theocracy, however, because without a solid economy a state fails to function. Thus it may very well become a deserted state.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
...but they don't know. And even if they knew, they wouldn't care. That is the problem with faith, being laughed at will reinforce their beliefs.
I can't beleive that they accepted a new definition for science. The definition is so open that explaining something with supernatural ideas is now valid. I guess that in Kansas dowsers, mediums and astrologists now have the same place as a PhD in physics or biology.
What is worst, is that people believe that science is a democracy, so this vote will reinforce creationism, giving it more strength among those that were not sure if they should follow creationism.
This shows once again that what "you know who" once said is true: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's okay to rewrite the definition of the word "science", but not the definition of "marriage"? All hail the double standard!
Evolution is the foundation of our current understanding of Biology. Everything from DNA to resistant viruses is predicted by evolution.Sure. The problem is FINDING anything that is both scientific and critical of evolution.
No, not good for them. The ID debate is merely an extension on religion vs. science, with intelligent design proponents attempting to mould established scientific theory to legitimise their own religious agenda. High school can be an arena for the discussion of scientific principles as an aid to individual learning, however unproven and opinionated versions have no place as a part of the curriculum.
From cnn "In August, President Bush endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution."
The very top of this country's leadership advocates ID; so begins the slow spiral into a dark age of education and science. Other then voting most of this addle-brained out of office there will be little the plebian society can do to stop this onslaught of dark age metality.
This *is* a sad day. As one with a very young child soon to start in the school system, the moment any School board in my area begins this debate I will pull her out of public education, as well I will campaign to stop this spread of illogical thought. Maybe it is time to promote the damn Speghetti monster theory of evolution in Kansas since they have opened the door for any crack pot scheme.
God Save the children of Kansas for their parents surely are lost.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
i've read else where that this is actually a serious concern... lets hope google can find a link quickly... this one looks okay: the university of california is fighting a lawsuit because they refuse to certify as "meeting university entrance requirements" high school courses that teach ID
It is a shame who happened but the outcome was never really in doubt.
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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...
As the son of a pastor, I am very dissappointed in this decision.
I'm no scientist, and I don't have any deep knowledge of evolution and the proof and theory behind it (at least that hasn't stuck with me from 10th grade biology,) but to my knowledge, evolution has deep scientific background, despite not being a proven fact.
In an alternative vein, Intelligent Design/Creationism does have a few specs here and there that support it, but not nearly enough that would indicate the theory without some religious notion already in place.
I am a big contendor of the seperation of church and state. I believe that anyone, religious or otherwise, should be. Why? While Christianity may be the leading religion in America right now, people should think about how it could be if Islam or other religions were the mainstream, and how their beliefs could affect Christians in that kind of world. Just as I don't want to follow their beliefs, I should not try to make them follow mine. This goes with atheism, too.
If there is another scientifically backed theory that states an alternative progression of life, then it should be taught alongside evolution. Intelligent Design is not that theory, and this "Board of Education" is using personal presumptions and beliefs to affect the education of thousands of children, many of whom will probably go on to perpetuate this.
And redefining science? That's just ludicrous. Next, they should redefine math to remove all calculus and algebra; this will make it easier for these children to pass standardized tests after going through a lackluster education.
And people wonder why America is looked down upon these days. Boo to you, Kansas. Boo to you.
(For the record, I believe in a mix of creationism and evolution; God created stuff, and evolution happened, with God nudging it here and there.)
Evolution is a phenomenon. It can be observed easily, even in something as trivial and obvious as dog breeding.
Natural selection is a theory that explains why we have the natural species that we do. Sexual selection is a different theory that explains, inter alia, the appearance of species that reproduce sexually.
Mutation is a theory that explains certain aspects of evolution, and is used in the theory of natural selection.
All of that aside, we all need somebody to ridicule as yokels. It makes is feel better. Europe has Austria, Australia has New Zealand, and the US has Kansas. It's the natural order of things, and must not be disturbed.
New bumper sticker:
"If you can read this, you are not from Kansas"
It's at times like these that I thank God that I'm an atheist.
Incredibly, this got passed. This is horribly wrong, and defeats the point of science.
:)... And I get really annoyed when people pretend that it's water tight..." (-Another slashdotter)
Unfortunately, the theory of evolution is that tight. It's a theory. "In scientific usage, theory is not the opposite of fact. Theories are typically ways of explaining why things happen, usually after the fact that they happen is no longer in scientific dispute." People misuse the word theory a lot, and it's common to misunderstand it as the opposite of fact. I think if more people were aware of the meaning of the word theory, and therefore what it means to say "the theory of evolution", there'd be less confusion.
... as a huge victory for their side," I'm a Republican, and I should hope I'm religious, and I will not be trumpeting this as a victory of any sort.
Let's review what science is based on. Known facts that have been determined through repeated testing. Things that we know work, and how they work. Science gives humans the knowledge to build building, bridges, fly into space, save human lives, etc.
And here we are, injecting what supporters fraudulently call the "theory" of intelligent design, into our school classrooms? Last I checked, America's schools weren't fairing so well. We don't need to increase this problem.
John Bacon, said the move "gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today."
Say what? We're not getting rid of anything. We're inserting a set of religious beliefs into the science classroom. Science is based on facts that can be tested. You can test evolution. You cannot test ID. ID is a religious belief.
The way my high school world studies teacher did it, and the method I personally agree with, was with a field trip. We took a day, and the whole class (about fifty of us (And not as in class of 2005, class, as in people in a classroom.)) rode the bus to a Muslim Mosque, a Jewish Synagogue, as well as Hinda and Buddist. At each stop, a person from that place would talk to us about their religion and their beliefs. It was wonderful, and, might I add, very educational. My point is, that is where ID belongs. In Social Studies. It's religion, and people need to get over religion being mentioned in school. It can, and should, be done, just in the right place. And we studied it. Along with the creation stories of many of the cultures on Earth, from Greek to Viking.
"Wish my teachers had to admit that Evolution isn't as solid as a Mac
"It will be marketed by the religious right
I can not understand why any intelligent parent would stay there and put their kids through school where they are actively teaching religion in place of a scientific theory. Anyone with half of a brain would move out of their and take their kids out of a school system like that...leaving Kansas with an incredibly stupid population in the end because of the exodus of high IQs...
Will that happen? Probably not...but I guarantee that if I lived there with children, I would be pulling my kids out of the system and getting out of the state.
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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It's amazingly silly. What's bad is apprantly kids are taken on fieldtrips there, and told that's what the science community believes.
Humans and Dinosaurs SIDE BY SIDE!!!
the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
What fossil evidence? What molecular biology? Did the school board even review this or did they just take it as given?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Can the children of Atheists (and other, non-Christians) be excused from science class because of this?
What about children that claim to be? It is their right.
If the words "under God" in can get the Pledge of Allegiance banned or reworded and the Ten Commandments, a work of art, can be removed from public places, why not?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
There is nothing wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught. There is also nothing wrong with allowing materials critical to Newtonian mechanics, plate tectonics or any other scientific proposition/theory/law. In fact, there is a lot wrong with teaching that such ideas are sacrosanct and above criticism.
Doing science does not involve verifying the truth of any proposition. Science works within a paradigm of falsification -- we try to demonstrate that a hypothesis cannot be the best explanation of a phenomenon. The inability to demonstrate this, along with the elimination of competing explanations, is what gives any proposition the weight it needs to be accepted as the best current explanation we have of a phenomenon.
Science is not a search for truths, nor is it a search for the Truth. This is the one biggest aspects of the nature of science that most people simply cannot comprehend, particularly like those on the Kansas State BoE who voted this in. While scientists may feel their work moves us closer to truths or the Truth, science itself is incapable of achieving that. So, by misinterpreting knowledge propositions like evolution as "that which is True", proponents of belief systems like Intelligent Design are guilty of a boundary violation -- they are bringing in rules from a non-scientific means of understanding the world into the realm of science. You want us to teach that evolution has holes in it? Sure thing! Any good bio teacher is already doing so.
The same problem would be true if things were going in the other direction. There is nothing in science that can prove or disprove the existence of God, no matter what the hyper-rationalistic-atheistic-lunatic-fringe might argue. The existence of a "Being" outside of that which can be experienced is outside of the realm of that which is scientific, and so trying to prove it one way or another is a boundary violation that makes such pursuits non-scientific, no matter how much the pursuer might claim he or she is doing science.
It all comes down to this, put as childishly as possible: If you want to play our game, you gotta play by our rules. Otherwise, go home. And leave the ball, it's ours. And we don't want to play your game either.
If there were no public education (conceived in Prussia during the late 1800s as an indoctrination system), this would be a non-issue. It's only a problem because the Government has it's tendrils all the way through education, at all levels.
If education were entirely private & unregulated, parents could simply send their children to schools of their own choice, which taught curricula to their liking. End of problem.
if they knew anything about quantum mechanics (indeterminancy etc) then the board of ed would have to come up with an alternative to that as well-- of course, then they might also have to ban p and n junctions and all that other semi-conductor stuff..............
Universities noticed that they can't gaurentee that graduates are up to spec in English and math so they started giving tests. When I went to school they factord in your SAT scores and then gave you a short writing test and a math test. They weren't very hard to pass, but if you didn't you had to take remedial courses.
If this ID thing spreads, you'll see the same for science. It'll be a simple test most likely, no acid titrations or anything, it'll just see if you have a basic science background, and if you understand what science is. If not, remedial science for you.
The thing I hate most is the statement that evolution is just a 'theory'. So is gravity. It doesn't mean we fall up if we don't 'believe'.
A law is fact has been established in isolation from all possible confounding variables, and which the limits of are included in the definition. A theory is a law that for one reason or another cannot be tested and confirmed in isolation. Every body with mass exerts a gravitational pull on every other, and vice versa. Hence, you cannot isolate two particles and determine their gravitational interaction, because the rest of the universe interferes. You can get damn close, though.
Likewise, evolution is a theory simply because we cannot go back in time to observe and record the process as it happens. We can take note of changes that occur during our miniscule existence on this planet (recorded appropriately, of course), but we can never say 100% for sure that this is how we went from pond scum to, well, Kansas people excluded, intelligent beings, because we can't observe the process as it already happened.
I don't believe we provide universal education because everyone has a right to an eduction. I believe we provide universal education because it is in everyone's best interest, both economically and civically. Where do you get educated workers for your business if poor people have nowhere to go to get educated? How much easier would it be to influence people's votes if those people have no education?
This is the scientific method in action. The scientific method:
1) Propose a hypothesis
2) Test hypothesis
3) Change hypothesis according to test results
Darwin's Hypothesis - life evolves with time and natural circumstances to become more and more complex.
Intelligent Design Hypothesis - life shows signs of design and not just adaptation
The problem I see with the Darwinist proponents is they are not willing to ever get to step #3. When life seems to have made a jump (for example the wing - what possible competitive advantage would a half developed wing have served) there is no change in the hypothesis - it is simply ignored (why not, no other theory is allowed to exist - there can be no other explanation). The proof start to become self-defining - evolution explains the development of the wing because the wing evolved. hmmmmm.
While many here are making parallels to Galileo and the heliocentric theory - I see a parallel as well -- the Church did not want a competing theory to their own. What is the harm in allowing more than one theory to exist.
I intend to. Not Scientology, but the Native American religions. We have a number of reservations here, including the largest in the US. I'll take a trip to meet with any tribal chief that will listen and try to convince them to come to the hearings. Based on the past, I'd say I won't have a hard time convincing them. Hey, if they are going to teach Christianity, they'd better teach the native religions too, and it varies by tribe.
They'd have a hell of a time squirming out of that one.
Quite seriously: I heard plenty of both evolution and intelligent design growing up, with an agnostic scientific father and a highly religious fundamentalist Christian mother. And like most kids in my situation I chose what made the most political sense at the time. In my case it was fundamentalist Christianity -- that side of the family was much more intense and proactive.
;) I got lucky. No disrespect to the teachers who bust their humps for insulting pay -- education is a noble goal, it just doesn't seem to be working that well the way we do it now.)
During school, I denounced evolution regardless of their teachings, and argued with friends, teachers, and my dad's side of the family. But I still learned critical thinking and by the time I was 19 and on my own, I proclaimed myself an athiest and started to grok the evolutionary, organic nature of our world.
Not that such is the ultimate goal -- go with whatever works for you. But I don't buy that school makes or breaks critical thinkers, and I don't think that hearing conflicting (even idiodic) ideas poisons the mind. Any of the kids in Kansas who are going to believe in ID are going to do so regardless of what the curriculum says. Ditto for evolution.
And I don't even think the blow to science matters. Education is pretty much a mess anyways. It's not like we ever taught critical thinking in school. Or even basic logic. It's mostly memorization, without even the context to make use of the info. Most people seem to pick up any useful knowledge on their own.
Cheers.
(PS - I'm a high school drop out who went on to a fairly successful tech career... my opinion on the matter might be a bit skewed
As a molecular biologist I am curious what part of my science actually supports intelligent design?
The problem is that intelligent design is NOT SCIENCE. Science is the logical analysis of observed data. Itelligent Design accepts that it is not possible to describe the emergence of species. At the point where you state that it is impossible to analyze things based on observable evidence you stop being science. If for no other reason that intelligent design is not science I think it should be left out of science classes.
There is an enourmous difference between pointing out the holes in a theory and abandoning the scientific process. That is what they appear to be doing here.
"Oh there are still things we don't know about evolution"
"That means that science can't describe what we see."
"I see... so lets abandon the scientific process because it hasn't really ever definitively described anything"
"Exactly like the 'theory of gravitation' which we also can't prove."
"Well lets still teach evolution but then teach 'crazy' along with it."
"Sounds good to me."
"Agreed!"
The "point" (if there is one) isn't really about whether ID is correct or not. The problem is that it's not a valid, falsifiable, scientific theory. It's just some ID that might explain things that we can't otherwise explain. ID really is no better than the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory, that's the problem.
If people want to believe in ID, fine (I lean that way myself), but it's ridiculous to let these religious fundamentalist nutjobs screw up the educational system and start redefining the very meaning of "science." But as it stands, there is absolutely no basis for teaching ID as any sort of accepted, favorable, or meaningful theory... all the people saying "if you're going to teach ID, teach FSM" aren't just being fascetious, they have a very valid point.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
As we see more and understand more of how our world works, that means (logically) that god is less and less powerful. Right now (according to ID), god is directly responsible for "X" amount of the world around us, where "X" is everything we don't understand, or haven't observed directly. As we are constantly learning, that means that god is less and less responsible for the world around us, up until the point where we understand everything, and hence god (to quote Douglas Adams) disappears in a puff of logic.
FYI, this is a common argument from the creationists, known as the God of the Gaps.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The funny thing about the controversy is that the people opposed to thinking independently are the ones who insist that a collection of ideas be taught as established fact, no longer subject to critical analysis.
Looks like you need a bit more stuffing in your straw man there, sunshine.
ID isn't critical analysis at all. It offers no testable hypotheses, no avenues for further study, allows for no modification of its own precepts in the light of new evidence, etc. Basically, ID in its entirety is nothing more than a very verbose "Nu-uh!" to evolutionary theory.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As a precedent to the Kansas Board of Education redefining science, I recall, in my days as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, learning that the Illinois legislature (or was it the Indiana legislsture?) had once redefined pi to be exactly 3. (This must have been many decades before Intel tried a similar stunt with the Pentium divide malfunction.)
Also, I recall a short-lived comic strip in the U of Illinois student newspaper which was based on the premise that the laws of nature are legislated and the laws of man are fixed. It was hilarious beyond description, but liberal arts students wrote letters of complaint to the editor because they didn't get the jokes and felt that the strip made fun of them, or something like that. I shit you not. An example of what the writer dealt with was the meaning of red shift in the world of his characters--it dealt not with Doppler effects on light from receding stars, but the tendency of democratic governments to move towards Communism.
If anyone recalls this most excellent of comic strips I would love to hear their recollections. I believe it appeared for only a few weeks in the Daily Illini sometime between 1984 and 1989.
not necessarily " days", but "periods of my Father" (referring to God)
So that's why he's so cranky sometimes!
In my humble opinion, schools should teach neither "intelligent design" nor evolution. Instead, what they should teach is that:
Of course, the schools should also go over the mechanics of evolution.
My point is that schools should not present any point of view on a controversial subject like this as truth. They should present facts, and it is a fact that some people believe evolution is the explanation of the origin of life, so it is fair to teach that and to explain what evolution is. It's also a fact that a lot of people don't believe in evolution, so they should present that fact as well.
In other words, when it comes to the veracity of evolution and other hotly-disputed topics, schools should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Teaching, for example, that evolution is a fact and that the fact of evolution means there is no need to believe in God would be improper, because you are telling the students what to believe. And so would teaching evolution in a way that tacitly implies that there is no God. And, so would teaching evolution in a way that tacitly implies that it's inferior to intelligent design. Schools should be telling students what they could believe, not what they should believe.
Now, having said all that, if the Kansas government really did define science, then they are going way off course, because they are not teaching facts to the students. They are lying to the students about what science is, which is dumb.
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.
Parent post is among the most keenly insightful I have read in several years of reading Slashdot. Please mod up to +5, Insightful. Too bad it's AC.
Now, post below with ideas for T-shirt designs and bumper stickers associating the term "American Taliban" with Kansas. Jokes are good, but ideas of a serious nature would be a better way to communicate the gravity of this problem to those who see these designs.
This sort of thing truly is the start of a local theocracy in Kansas. If it isn't contained and/or destroyed it could actually threaten the rest of America the way things are going in the national government. Scary stuff.
While creationism (of the Answers in Genesis variety) depends on the bible as a source of information, ID in general does not. Even though many ID scientists and theorists are Christians, ID logically comes from ideas/observations like the anthropic principle, irreducible complexity, information theory, and so on. If ID were true, it would lead to a deistic sort of god, if it led to any god at all. Please see my sig.
I assume you mean a "rather twisted and specific branch" of Christianity. However, there are ID supporters who aren't Christians, and those who are come from all different traditions. Michael Behe, for example, is a Roman Catholic and believes in a form of theistic evolution.
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.
Maybe. We think we're observing things (like "echos") of the Big Bang but that is far from evidence. Others have said that science should be able to predict things and/or be falsifiable. The Big Bang is neither.
Direct and indirect evidence is completely lacking for Intelligent Design.
The Bible is a source of evidence that supports the possibility of intelligent design. Of course, people want to reject it just because it's a religious document even though nothing in the Bible has ever been demonstrated wrong and, time and time again, the Bible has been found to be an accurate about historic events. If the Bible is wrong about God creating the universe, it'd be the first time it has been wrong about anything.
Yet scientists refuse to even look at it. Truly amazing considering that scientists have been far less accurate over the ages.
ID is more akin to an interpretation of a myth, than it is to a scientific theory.
As far as I know, ID doesn't state that a Christian God was the intelligence behind creation. It could be a Christian God, it could be an Islamic God, it could be little green aliens from Alpha Centauri.
ID is a simple recognition of the fact that science hasn't adequately explained how the universe began, how order came from chaos, and how life began and became more complex. You want to debunk ID? Science has it's work cut out for it.
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
Maybe Astronomy classes should give equal time to the Ptolemaic system. And what about Tycho Brahe's system? Copernicus Shopernicus, it's just a plot by telescope manufacterers to sell fancy schmancy equitorial mounts and clock drives.
Math classes could spend a little time working on Squaring the circle and finding a counter example to the Four color theorem. The students could even use crayons or finger paints.
This could all make school so much fun! And the students so stupid. One second thought, maybe those are really bad ideas. They could grow up to be President of the United States .
Close all universities for all kids from Kansas. Let them life with their Intelligent Design, alone. Let their parents deal with this nonsense. Schools in the US are bad enough. The last thing we need is more waste of time to deal with what is leaving Kansas' schools. All university professors already have to work overtime. Enough is enough. Sorry.
Amen, brother!
Let's start with
Yeah, right.
There's nothing wrong with being critical of evolution or any other theory. There is active debate in the community about the mechanisms of evolution, including Phillip Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" model. what Kansas has done, however, is used the blanket of "criticism" to espouse a belief system that requires supernatural intervention, and required that this supernatural force be included in the teaching of science. I have nothing against teaching religion, philosophy, etc. Just don't teach it in SCIENCE classes. It isn't science, can't be science, has no place next to science. It's religion, no matter what blanket you wrap it in.
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
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."
No. The noisy majority believes that the lack of evidence to the contrary does not turn certain ideas into scientific theories, which has nothing to do with truth. For instance I could tell you that elephants can perfectly hide behind flowers when they really want to and you could not prove me wrong. It could be true, but it's not science. This is not an attempt to be unpolite nor sarcastic.
The mistake you make is to believe that science equals truth, which is a huge and enormous misconception. God could exists, but science can't test it: hence it's not a scientific theory. Does it mean it's not true? No, it just means it's not a scientify theory.
If you fail to aknowledge this, then you are simply trying to change the objectives of science.
diegoT
As an atheist, I hold no quam. So many good things have come as a result of level headed religious people that I could never damn an entire religion based on it's zealots.
Zealots are generally weak minded people who need a guiding force to find purpose in life. People who use religion as a tool to enrich an otherwise rational existence are doing themselves a service. I may not agree with the conclusion but I respect it. I just reach enrichment in different ways.
So thanks for all the soup kitchens, the homeless shelters, the beautiful architecture, the scholars, the scientists, the teachers, and so forth.
But, yeah, these Fundamentalist wackos leading the charge in Kansas give your religion a shiner...
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
All 8 of the Dover school board's intelligent designers just had their asses handed to them by the voters today.
Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design
... the Inquisition is already here.
The New Dark Age is almost upon us.
Hell, in the wake of the Patriot Act, what with privacy violations, National Security Letters, legalized torture of foreign nationals
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Evolution is testable, falsifiable, and even demonstrable.
- Evolution makes some rather stringent predictions about the sorts of plants and animals we should expect to find, and the ones that we shouldn't. For just one example, we should expect to see animals that are systematically willing to die for a chance to mate, but not for something to eat or drink. And that is in fact what we do see. There are hundreds of such predictions, and they have all turned out to be correct,
- Darwin himself pointed out several ways in which his theory could be disproved, and many others have been discovered since. Yet for all the ways it could be falsified, it has not been.
- We can actually see evolution happening, in everything from domesticated animals to germs. Why do you think doctors worry about overuse of antibiotics?
--MarkusQAs an atheist, I hold no quam. So many good things have come as a result of level headed religious people that I could never damn an entire religion based on it's zealots.
As a cthuluist I just pray that I am last to be devoured by the eldric horror in the ocean.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yes, instead let's have politicians choose what material they'll be forced to learn! That will allow them to think independently! /sarcasm
Where do you get educated workers for your business if poor people have nowhere to go to get educated?
You could train them. Internships are quite common, other places will pay part (or even all of) your educational expences if it would directly help with the job you're doing (or are going to be doing).
Just another perspective on the issue. :)
Let the board members know about it:
http://www.ksde.org/commiss/bdaddr.html
It is easier to believe in an all-powerful creator instead of the mathmatical improbabilities of evolution: So why would ID not be treated as valid science, when it is easier to understand and vastly more probable?
There is an awful lot of Kansas bashing going on here. While it is warranted in my opinion, I think you all should be aware of what Kansas has given to science and engineering.
- Clyde Tombaugh, who grew up in Kansas, discovered Pluto. He actually got into some amusing arguments with the administration while he was in the Physics and Astronomy department at KU, but later went on to graduate from KU.
- Helium was discovered in Kansas by Hamilton P. Cady and shown to be abundant, not a rare element found only in the sun as was earlier thought.
- Two astronauts hail from Kansas. NASA maintains an office at KU and assists students researching in the aerospace field.
- Your favorite text based web browser, lynx, was developed at KU. Michael Grobe, an organizer of the project, still works at the university.
- Boeing, Bombardier/Learjet, Raytheon/Beechcraft, and Cessna all have made significant contributions to the aerospace industry through their accomplishments in Kansas. Learjet, Beechcraft, and Cessna are all originally Kansas companies.
- Every American commercial passenger aircraft had some design or manufacturing work done in Kansas.
- The world's fastest commercial airplane, the Cessna Citation X, is manufactured in Kansas.
- Garmin, a world leader in GPS technology, is based in Olathe, Kansas, a Johnson County suburb of Kansas City.
These are just a few items that I thought up off the top of my head. My background is in engineering physics, digital electronic systems, and aircraft design, so that is what I am most aware of. I live in the wonderful city of Lawrence, Kansas, and work for one of the world's foremost aircraft design companies. It makes me sad to see what is happening to this state. Before you condemn Kansas, remember what positive things it has given the world.
We have both Newtonian and Einsteinian math to solve problems in gravity, but we still wave our hands and mumble "gravitons" and "gravity waves" when we discuss the vector of this mysterious force. Obviously gravity is a tougher nut than the other physical forces that we have encountered. It didn't help that Newton actually devote a lot of time to the occult field of alchemy.
I think that education does overemphasize the "facts" of science and history at the expense of the process. I had a few classes in college that really opened my eyes to the holes in our knowledge of these fields. But we won't fix these holes by just waving our hands and mumbling "intelligent design". In fact ID is the EXACT equivalent of saying "we don't know how this works". That's not an explanation; it's a placeholder for further work. Our educational system just needs to work harder on saying "we're never really sure how everything works, but here's our best explanation so far."
Taken from The Abstract Factory
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 bullshit 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.
UPDATE (22 Oct.): If you're a creationist or IDiot [0], and you're suddenly possessed by the urge to comment on this post, please don't bother. I know what you're going to say. When I was an undergrad, I read talk.origins for a while, and I have seen every single creationist argument under the sun. I spent many an hour watching people knowledgeable about evolution debating creationists: patiently debunking the same tired arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, responding in good faith to arguments that
Is Evolution testable? Is it falsifiable?
Yes. And in 150 years, it has been changed somewhat by data that comes in -- but surprisingly not as much as you'd think, given our poor state of biological knowledge in the 19th century. We barely understood the concept of the cell when the theory was first published, yet now even our ability to sequence the entire genome of a species and design our own custom lifeforms has not provided any information that contradicts evolution.
Evolution predicts many things, such as what fossil forms will exist at certain layers and in certain areas, it predicts that certain organisms must exist and what their specific characteristics are, even though nobody has ever seen one (and later, such organisms have been found exactly where they were predicted to be!). It also states that many combinations of things will NOT EVER be found, and if any organism with that combination was ever found the theory would have to be completely discarded.
Evolution predicted that there would be some fundamental but durable biological mechanism for inhereting traits, but also some way in which those passed-on traits would be unpredictably changed from time to time. 75 years later, we discovered DNA and found all about the variety of things that can cause mutations.
There is nothing in ID that is predictive, and nothing that can disprove it. It just says "and this place where we aren't sure what happened, it was an intelligent supernatural force". It uses scientific-sounding phrases like "irreducable complexity", but it all boils down to the God of the Gaps.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but what follows is a link to the full text of the article referred to in the parent. PDF WARNING.
/ Bio343/papers/Greig.pdf
Hybrid speciation in experimental populations of yeast.
And also, the requisite CoralCache mirror:
http://www.bio.davidson.edu.nyud.net:8090/Courses
"[Physics] has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending." -- Robert Wilson
Here's the new map of the US.
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...
You need to understand exactly what a theory is, from a philosophical perspective. If I wanted to, I could claim that nothing, not even your own knowledge of yourself, is real knowledge, because it is based on observations you make as a human, which are subject to error. You're taking a similarly radical position when you claim that ID is not falsifiable. In this case you do the best you can to come to a rational conclusion, and many of the foundational questions in science have been answered with weak arguments. You go ask a true skeptic about either of the two topics and he/she will tell you there are two many unknowns at this point, to come to a solid conclusion, whichever side you take. There are a lot of good books on the subject, The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview, The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup, I've read the latter and recommend it, the former is next on my hit list.
You have a hard case selling intelligent design as not being a theory. It is a very minority theory, I grant you. And yes, it is proveable. All we need to do in order to prove intelligent design is to find the people who designed and seeded life on earth.
That could be $deity. It could also be aliens who are watching our progress from a secret base on Venus that the EU Venus probe could discover in the next couple of years.
This is another of those nonsense arguments that IDers put forward when they're cornered about testability. If life really did come about from another planet (and yes this is a testable theory, although so far there is no evidence to support it) then where did that life come from originally? No matter how many recursions you go through at the end the original 'Intelligent Designer' always has to be something supernatural - ie. outside the physical universe and therefore untestable.
Intelligent design is just an item on the list, although one that is not well supported. Evolution is an item, although one that is well supported. Tomorrow, that could all change. That is beauty of science.
The 'Intelligent Design' you are talking about is completely different from that being advocated by the religious right and taught in Kansas schools. Its also not an opposing possibility to evolution as it explains nothing about how life came about - ie. where did the aliens/asteroid/whatever come from?
Insisting that ONLY evolution CAN be right and ONLY evolution CAN be taught is just as wrong as saying that ONLY intelligent design can be right.
Science does not deal in absolute explanations. It deals in best explanations.
No one's insisting that ONLY evolution can be taught - you can teach ID or whatever you want in a religion class or church sunday school where it belongs. However at the moment the only scientificly valid theory with significant real evidence to support it is evolution.
It worries me more that so many
Although I can't speak for others on this site I think you've seriously misread and misunderstood most of the comments posted if you think that. People just don't want non-science like ID taught as science for political reasons.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
First of all, evolution is falsifiable. It was one of several competing theories where evolution won out because it explained more and was not proven incorrect. Evolution has three basic statements:
Any of those statements is falsifiable. You can demonstrate that all individuals are functionally identical (variation does not exist), that they do not pass on their traits to offspring, or that premature death of an individual has no effect on traits passed to the next generation. Before we knew as much as we currently do about biology, any of those negatives might have been a sensible statement. Now that we can see mechanisms of inheritance in action, evolution is very hard to counter. Over time, it has gone from a predictive theory or guess to more of a simple description of what we see happen. Contrast Lamarkianism:
This is also a falsifiable alternative to evolution. The first statement is obviously true, but the second statement, that individuals can pass aquired traits on to their offspring, has been demonstrated as false. If a mouse gets its tail cut off, this has no effect on the length of its offsprings' tails. What is Intelligent Design's falsifiable statement?
Now, note that the statements about evolution above do not say anything about where life came from or how it happened. You can infer from watching evolution in action and looking at common gene sequences that life has a common origin, but this is not required by evolution. If we discover that space aliens created cats (I live with cats; this is believable ;-) ), it does not derail evolution, it merely asserts that cats came from different stock.
Now, as to your statement that knowledge is not real and therefore any theory is as good as another, science deals with this very nicely: Occams Razor and the Doctrine of Utility. Put together, it comes down to this: one theory is better than another if it affords the most utility (explains and predicts the most) with the fewest assumptions. Science aknowledges that assumptions come in somewhere. Now, lets look at ID. It has one non-falsifiable statement, that (all) life was created by an intelligent agent. Great. What does that explain or predict? Absolutely nothing. Does knowing that life was designed tell you more about how frogs work? No. Does it tell you whether there is potential
The flying spaghetti monster does exist. In reality it is a proven fact that after visiting an Italian restaurant and consuming spaghetti, beer, port, anisette, beer and at times tequila the legendary flying spaghetti monster will appear. However its most natural habitat seems to be (oddly enough) the same as the porcelain god's. Its other possible habitats include concrete, tarmac, carpeting and cars. In either case, the flying spaghetti monster usually will return to it's ancestral homelands within 24 hours through a "water disposal system".
~S
Here the intelligent folks ... who brought intelligent design to Kansas.
http://www.ksde.org/commiss/bdaddr.html/
I wonder if writing to them would change their minds. I wouldn't count on it, however it might be worth a try.
While this is a truly sad decision, nature essentially remains untouched by it. Whether politicians aim for higher votes, or people cannot cope with the idea of our ancestors being just apes and carbon based lifeforms as such, rather than a designed species of their own does not really matter in the big picture. Also, science or not science is a question best addressed in the academic community, which spreads all over the world, where in some sane places discussions of that kind are safely locked away in lunatic asylums. Have a little confidence guys. The upshot is just that in Kansas, there won't be any great science for the next few years.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
We should also point out that radioactive carbon is completely irrelevant on an evolutionary timescale. Carbon dating only works on a timescale up to tens of thousands of years; it's great for putting dates on Saxon spears and Egyptian burial masks and mummies and maybe even mammoths, but is completely useless if you're dealing with a T. rex.
This is, of course, a common mistake among the creationist crowd. I suppose it comes of the mindset in which six thousand years is the entire history of the world...
BTW, /. editors: can we put a link to talkorigins.org in the summary of any future articles on this subject? The 'common creationist mistakes' page would do quite nicely. It would save having to repeat the same explanations over and over again...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The last time they did this, if i remember correctly, was in the year 800. it marked the beginning of 1000 years of mental darkness on this planet, ending in the renaissance. we will have people transcribing web pages onto vellum and hiding them in monasteries. let's hope that the next renaissance comes sooner than the last one did *sigh* ...
You can bet that mom and pop have prayed the gospel right into Junior Sixpack from birth through puberty.
I'm of the firm belief that people simply shouldn't be allowed to do this. A child is completely dependant on its parents for just about everything. An unscrupulous person can get a child to believe just about anything. You could get a child to believe the world was doughnut shaped and made by the great pastry chef in the sky. Essentially, this is what most religions more or less actually do.
The tradgedy here, is that when a child is indoctrinated in this way, it is more or less permanent. Forever more, for the rest of their lives, that person will believe what are essentially complete fantasies. Gods creating the eartg in seven day or out of their dreams. People seeing angels or coming back from the dead. Gods and Godesses battling on earth through human proxy. It's terrible.
Not only that, but a considerable amount of doublethink will be required on the part of that person to maintain these incredible beliefs. This will in turn lead to a very cognitively dissonant person who secretly, even to themselves, realises that it's all hogwash anyway, but is so insecure about it that they torment themselves into believing it. Whenever I see a religious person, I see a tortured soul.
I view religion like I view gun control. There may be some spurious benefits, but overall, religion has far more cons than pros and we'd be better off without it. Religion promotes intolerance, bigotry, tribalism, ignorence, hatred, sexism, etc, etc, etc. Some people argue it promotes love and kindness, but from what I've seen, this appears to be a purely random event. What's worst of all, being religious means obeying the will of unelected clergy, and anethema to any democratic society.
To indoctriate your children into such a nonsensible and divisive thing as a religion, I personally view as a morally repugnant act. Let them choose when they reach majority if they wish to join you or not. But to essentially yoke their minds forever to the will of someone else is something which cannot be viewed as anything but wrong.
We're supposed to have freedom of religion. But where is a child's freedom from religion?
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
Sorry, it's been happening for several years already, like the breakup of the Antartic ice.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Oh, we're supposed to waste time debating fairy stories? Why do we have to make the effort to deal with your delusions? How does it become the responsibility of the scientific community to cope with fictional and fairly random explanations of the world made up by people with no idea of what they are talking about? It's like letting your dog crap on the neighbour's lawn and then writing to him to complain about the mess his lawn's in.
The document you linked to is garbage by an idiot. The abstract establishes this, with his self-defined idea of "irreducibly complex" and systems which collapse if one component is removed. This is ancient stuff and is just a rehash of the watchmaker argument, which has long since been dealt with.
Even if it hadn't been, the idea that someone can say "I don't understand how that works, therefore God exists" and not be laughed out of the room says a lot more about the room than his childish argument.
they don't know how to respond to the ID people
Well, that's the whole point of the ID scam. By putting forward totally irrational arguments the supporters of this superstitious drivel can then point to the inability to build a rational rebuttal as "proof" that there's something to it. The correct response to ID is Pauli's famous quote "This isn't right. It's not even wrong". It is nonsense in the literal meaning of that word.
Trying to engage its "arguments" is doomed to failure. If I tell you that I believe that Winnie-the-Pooh was a real bear who could walk and talk and really did live in the Hundred-acre Wood, there is no point in entering a debate as I am clearly mad and no argument would suffice. The same holds true with ID. There is no evidence whatsoever for it; it is simply a statement of faith: I don't understand this, therefore it can not and will never be understood by anyone therefore something greater than even my titanic mind must have designed it. Like I said: garbage.
Your education was truely wasted if you've fallen for this con-trick.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Only because you can't think up anything we didn't come up with first
If we can't duplicate with intent that which is theorized to occur through purely random processes, then that should tell you all you need to know right there. The next thing someone is gonna say is that their AMD64 X2 CPU came about via "natural selection". Get your head of your ass and read the first part of Psalms 14:1,
You appear to be very confused.
Microprocessors do not reproduce. They do not grow. They are inanimate objects. They are very different to living organisms.
Also, you appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of evolution. It is not a random process, it is a highly directed process using filtered randomisation. As an analogy (not to evolution, to filtered randomisation), fill a box with balls. Cut small holes in the bottom, and shake randomly.. what do you find? the small ones drop out. Wow! Isn't that amazing! A completely undirected random process of shaking the balls in a box caused them to seperate themselves into collections of big and small. Must be the work of God!
Now, on to your biblical reference:
Psalms 14:1: The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
I see. And you accept everything the bible says as true, do you? Putting aside your circular reasoning ("It's true because it says it's true") I assume then that you also stand by the following:
Psalms 137:9 - "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones"
Killed anyone for breaking the Sabbath recently? I'm sure it can't be THAT hard to find someone who works on Sunday, just try your local mall or shops, and as a good Christian, it's your duty according to...
Exodus 31:14 - "Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people."
That's the great thing about the bible. It'd damns itself.. as Penn & Teller said, I wish more people would read the damn bible. We need more atheists.
Of course, you might think I'm quote mining, picking up a few isolated things here and there, but there's plenty more where those came from
And before I hear any complaints about using the Skeptic's Annontated Bible, it's merely an ordinary King James Version with some annotations at the side.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
We haven't even found intelligent life on other planets...
Sometimes I wonder if there's any intelligent life on this planet, the GP post being a case in point.
-- Soruk
Being a neuroscientist myself, I'm a always a little ticked off that these ID advocates attribute such mysterious qualities to the concept of intelligence. At it's core, intelligence is the action of copying and blending directed by reinforcement learning and random circumstance.
If you compare this to evolution you have copying through reproduction, blending through sex and symbiosis, natural selection as a form of reinforcement learning, and of course mutation to equate to circumstance. It's probably not a perfect analogy but it's still close. In fact, one way of lookinng at the brain is that it affords us the ability to carry out the proccess of evolution during our own lifetimes, rather than having to wait over generations.
So anyway, to say that life is too complex for evolution to have produced it is in my book very much the same thing as saying life is too complex for intelligence to have produced it. The latter is falsifiable since intelligence has already created artificial forms of life, not to mention is currently toying around with creating new forms of biological life.
If you don't buy my definition of intelligence, I'd be happy to debate it here.
If you have faith in human nature and nurture human value, that's spirituality to me. It doesn't matter what you believe or disbelieve really. Why should it? In a few years, both of us will have a different set of beliefs than we have now anyways.
;-)
;-)
"Religion" and "Spirituality" can be thought of covering two different terms: If you think of a banana. It has a protective skin, which you can't eat. Now, that is the outer appearance of the banana. Without it, you might not want the banana itself..
Religion is like that outer layer. It consists of all things changing: traditions, symbols, scriptures, places, people. These are outer appearances to protect the inside, and to build a framework in which to interact with the inside.
While spirituality is the banana. It is the only thing really edible, and is what is coveted by everybody, wether they know it or not. It is love, it is all things good. It is playfulness, joy and abundant happiness, not really serious at all, not the way we can be anyways. It is all that is never changing, permanent knowledge, innate knowledge in human nature. We are always searching for it, in things, in relationships, in valuables, in status, everywhere but where it really is! If I only get this... and this...
What is really funny, is that many people have thrown away the banana and are holding on to the skin! They even argue about which skin is the best!
But this is not to say the banana-skin is worthless. You need to have a banana-skin to interact with the banana. It is just that when you put more value on the outer layers, which are always changing anyways, you tend to drop into conflict, self-defence and creating separation instead of unity. But the purpose of the skin is just to hold the banana itself!
This inner banana is the same, wether you are rich, poor, stupid, intelligent or whatever. This is why we enjoy unity so much, at the valuable opportunity that we experience it, because we are really all the same banana!
In programming terms I guess you can call Religion, God's API, although it is through humans it gets built so it doesn't always work as expected
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I've raised my kids to know they are Created, not simply overevolved pond scum. The how of our getting here is not so important as the why of it.
I never understand why Creationists keep insisting that they know how God did things.
How do you know that evolution by natural selection was not God's intended way of creating life? If God designed us as 'overevolved pond scum' who are you do disagree?
I don't believe that God was involved, but if He was, it seems incredibly arrogant to insist that you have special knowledge as to how he did it.
Also, If your children know this, why put them into science classes where there is supposed to be debate and discussion of alternatives?
We're here to do the right thing and to help those around us.
And this relates to the debate how? Anyone with a reasonable understanding of evolution knows that altruistic behaviour does not conflict with natural selection in any way.
They know that their children and their ideas are how they will be judged. Independent thought is a requirement, and can't be trained out of a person anyway.
Independent thought? You mean like them knowing that they are Created? How independent is that?
So take care when spouting off about things you don't understand.
Indeed.
These religious fanatics think that they need to preach to the world and the world needs to listen. Here in Dover, Pa, the board thought everyone would be behind them, that the community at large would support the introduction of ID into the science class. Well, the community at large gave every one of them the boot in yesterday's election. Not a single person on the board retained their seat. I guess all of their religious ferver blinded them to the reality of the situation that not everyone believes the same thing that they do. So Kansas, just wait. You'll get your choice to be heard. Start organizing now, make sure they hear you coming... Dave Nebinger, proud Dover voter!
It's delightfully thorough.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You are free to believe anyhting you want. But lets draw the line at trying to dictate the world of reality.
You're asking the impossible. If someone see a difference between their beliefs and reality, in what sense do they believe? Do you see the differences between your beliefs and reality? Or do you believe that you don't have beliefs?
You're assuming that genetic transmission is 100% accurate, i.e., if I start out with 10,000 base pairs, I'll end up with 10,000 base pairs. That was one of the earliest questions geneticists had - was that true? Turns out it isn't. There are all kinds of transmission errors that occur - translocation, repetition, transposition, deletion to name a few. Two of those transmission errors, deletion and repetition, change the number of base pairs in a genome. Sometimes an error kills the organism and sometimes it aids the organism. Start with an amoeba, roll the dice enough times, and you have enough genetic material to build a pooch.
What makes radiometric dating viable is that when you cross date a sample using different isotopes you tend to get agreement within the margins of error of the various isotopes. Kepler had a similar problem when he started out - he had to make some guesses as to the nature of the solar system. By discarding the guesses that didn't fit the data, he eventually arrived at the truth.
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.
It's not fear you're seeing - it's skepticism coupled with a disdain for promulgating sloppy thinking. Pushing God as a solution to our origin is another way of saying "It's too difficult a problem for you to understand so just take our word for it. By the way, don't forget to tithe." When a child recognizes the inherent recursiveness in Deism and wonders "Well if God created us because we're too complex to have arisen on our own, then who created God?" and is told by his "science" teacher - "that's an unsolveable mystery" then the child's intellect is being stunted.
The fear you speak of is within yourself. You're afraid that there's no deity out there watching over you and that there may not be a master plan that includes you. You fear that if there's no God, there's no meaning to life so you embrace a mythos that gives you emotional sustenance but leaves you intellectually empty.
There's a lot of truth in the aphorism - dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We arose from dust and will return to dust. Neither event needs a Creator.
Is there any reason to suppose that Intelligent Design is more or less likely than, say, The Flying Sphagehtti Monster or The Sneeze of the Great Green Arkleseizure
It is the nature of a theory to be "purely undeniable" in any context that involves it being provably true.
Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity is _not_ provably true. We can make observations that suggest it is true, and we can posit experiments that could potentially prove it false.
Quantum Mechanics is _not_ provably true. We can make observations that suggest it is true, and we can posit experiments that could potentially prove it false.
Evolution is _not_ provably true. We can make observations that suggest it is true, and we can posit experiments that could potentially prove it false.
Intelligent Design is _not_ provably true. We _cannot_ make observations that suggest it true. We _cannot_ posit experiments that could potentially prove it false.
Feel free to teach Intelligent Design. In either literature, sociology, or history. It has _no_ place in Biology. I believe I'm quoting Sagan, but if you taken an infinite universe, the chance of an infinitesimally small event occuring _repeatedly_ is 100%.
And theologically, I'm far more inclined to believe that the creator would have set the ball rolling towards evolution, rather than manufacturing the universe out of nothing in seven days several thousand years ago.
The bible should not be taken literally. If you read the bible literally, Jesus answers all prayers for healing, and PI is equal to _exactly_ 3.
Not that I'm even a Christian, but I don't understand why the concept of intelligent design is even necessary, except to advance a particular fundamentalist religious cause.
Even the Vatican has thrown its weight behind evolution.
Intelligent Design belongs with flat earth, earth as the center of the universe, and heaven as a literal place 800 miles up.
Note that evolution may belong with the epicycle system; as in, a better theory may come up. But that _sure_ as hell won't be Intelligent Design.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What books are they going to use as reference when teaching ID? Däniken? Oh please, let it be Däniken! But I guess that wont fly, since his "teachings" are not compatible with the religious status-quo.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
As for me, I am able to accept that people are born homosexual
I can't accept that!
I can consider it, as an hypothesis, but I will NOT simply accept it outright, without any kind of proof. No thanks.
If we're gonna be talking about the scientific method, someone saying "I've been like this as long as I remember" is not proof of a congenital trait. Do you remember all of the significant developmental anecdotes of your first two, three years of life? You don't have to stone people for having sex with people of the same gender, but you don't have to buy all of their claims about how they came about being that way either. Middle ground, dude.
Maybe they were born that way, maybe they were exposed to hormones at an early age that affected their devellopment, we don't know.
You can't take the sky from me...
Q > Where are the missing solar neutrinos?
.. god did it.
A > Well, maybe my model is wrong.
A > Uh... yeah
You decide which one of these makes you sound incredibly stupid.
How can it be any easier than it is now? Politicians control the curriculum. Politicians control the textbook choices. Politicians control what teachers are and are not allowed to say (do not offend the majority orthodoxy). Politicians control what students are and are not allowed to say (remember all of the post-Columbine harassment of disillusioned kids? yesterday's story about student blogs being censored?).
Of course, I've ranted about this before.
I think our dear considerate friends in Kansas have missed a few points - so long as they are busy re-writing the curriculum, and all that:
1) Humans are important, humans live on earth => earth is more important than anything else => in particular, more important than the sun => sun revolves around the earth. Isn't that what an Intelligent Creator would do? This is the theory of Intelligent Spin.
2) The Intelligent Falling Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Falling
3) Intelligent Mathematics. Math is complicated. Therefore it must have been Intelligently designed. In particular, irrational numbers can't exist. An intelligent creator wouldn't invent them. After all, can you hold pi apples in your hand? No? Didn't think so. Therefore they don't exist
4) Intelligent Quantum Mechanics - all them particle things - see, they're not doing quantum mechanics. No electron shall decay to a stable orbit unless God's finger pushes it there.
5) Intelligent Chaos. Chaos is complicated. Hence it must have been Intelligently Designed.
6) Walking and chewing gum at the same time is complicated (for a proponent of ID). Clearly then, walking/chewing gum were Intelligently Designed activities.
7) Intelligent Thermodynamics - heat doesn't just "flow". It is "pushed" along by Angels of the Lord.
8) Intelligent Osmosis - particles are pushed through a cell membrane by the finger of the Lord.
*sigh* This is too depressing. I don't want to give those *string of contemptuous expletives deleted* any more new ideas.
Yay! A large and disparate collection of writings written over 2000 years ago, first assembled some 300 years after they were written, and selectively edited, deleted and organised into a single volume by a large collection of ordinary people, translated from a language that doesn't even share an alphabet with yours, into a book that exists in half-a-dozen differing versions, and you take the literal interpretation of one passage of one of these variations as literal truth?
Basic Common Sense 101? My friend, you fail it.
Just in case that doesn't convince you (because it won't), a quick question:
If Genesis is the literal and complete truth in every detail[1], who did Cain and Abel have kids with?
Come on - who did they fuck? Couldn't have been Eve, could it? And if God had created other people it's not detailed in Genesis, is it? And if you allow for a second for the much-translated Genesis story to not be the actual, complete, unadulterated word of God... what's wrong with assuming it's all a metaphor? Or that God "created" humanity through evolution, then took the "first two" of them into the garden of eden?
Sorry chum - your dogma isn't even internally consistent, and so collapses under the weight of its own BS.
[1] Which, given there are two differing versions in the modern Bible, pretty much proves your "literal, complete" answer wrong anyway...
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
We all know the expression..."opinions are like ********, we all have one and they all stink." What we don't all have is the chutzpah to act on our opinions. How many of us are willing to go the extra mile and homeschool our kids? How many spend time every night teaching perspective and objectivity to our children by discussing current events and topics other than those presented on ESPN or ET? "Be the change you want to see in the world" -Gandhi. Kwitcherbellyachin and act! Start that generation of "educated" voters in your own home! Quit relying on others to do your job as a parent! Take responsibility for the world and quit saying how "somebody should do something." Discussion /= action. Destruction /= improvement. Take a page from Nike and "just do it." Make the change in your own life, and build something that will compete with these inane "public" policies. /rant.
(mod me, shape me, anyway you want me - long as you read me - it's alright)
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
Point taken, but it's easier still to influence their votes if they have an education and *I* control that "education".
---
I'd worry; lefties will be a convenient target for genetic screening ... all in the name of better public health, of course.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8216870&dopt=Abstract
Being a lefty is an inherited trait.
http://www.canoe.ca/Health0007/06_hands.html
So, whether you're a lefty or gay or both, you can say you were born that way.
Other risk factors of being left-handed include being more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder http://www.acpmh.unimelb.edu.au/research/summary20 03.html
Higher risk of schizophrenia if you're a leftie ...http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/00 2346.html
Diabetes: http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read,1009,2592.html
Other connections:
So according to most of the above posts saying ID ought not be taught science is not the search for the truth. It is the search for natural (or material) explanations. Even if they are less likely or even perhaps demonstrably wrong.
Maybe Vince Foster was the victim of an errant lead meteorite, and the gun and suicide note had nothing to do with it as it might show design, so the CSI team using just "science" can't show any design or plan, only come up with "natural" explanations?
This is where I differ. I believe "Is X the product of design or natural causes" is both a reasonable and scientific question, and there is no reason it ought not be asked in Kansas biology classes, no more than if they were covering human physiology they should ask if the blackened lung tissue was caused by infectious disease, some internal breakdown, or smoking.
Should they also bring back eugenics, which Darwin also gave a big push? Remember the full title of his work. But if evolution is correct, then eugenics follow, though I think most people here wouldn't admit they are neo-nazis (or that the Nazis were only wrong in detail, not overview - we breed and engineer animals, and now want to clone, and if we are just beasts with large cerebrums where does ethics come in or at least how can you argue against using our knowlege of breeding).
While I agree "always has been" is a hard thing to grasp. I disagree that believing in God is any more logical than not believing in god.
Just because we mere mortals don't easily grasp things like forever and infinity. We are built with a sense of time and beginning and end. We live and die. The universe doesn't seem to follow those rules (at least not on our time scale). Our desire for order is the only reason I can see for belief in God.
For me just because I'd like there to be an answer isn't enough. I need something more. For me it's science. Lots of times science has to say "I don't know" where religion can easily come up with an answer. Like "God created universe in 7 days." I could just as easily say invisible magic gnomes created the universe. How can you dispute it? How can you confirm it? That's where scientific method comes in. If you can't disprove my gnome theory, does that make it true? Of course not. The mere fact that something can't be disproved ever is proof that it's not any more valid than any other myth.
For me Science is enough of a "Bigger thing" than myself. It deals with universal truths and huge ideas, yet it's flexible enough to change when something new is observed. Religion by definition can't change ever. I get more feelings of wonder considering science and the immense span of the universe than I ever got from religion. Plus all of humanity are my brothers not just those who share my beliefs. (Sorry I went a little Carl Sagan there for a minute.) That's pretty much the way I look at the universe and I still have a sense of amazement and wonder without the need to involve any god.
TODO create witty sig.
That's a complete misunderstanding of the ID position. Intelligent Design proponents don't just claim that a higher power set the universe in motion (a claim that some mainstream scientists might agree with), they claim that it had to intervene constantly during the evolutionary process, citing supposed phenomena such as irreducible complexity to make their point. The whole motivation of the ID movement is to deny that natural selection is a sufficient mechanism to explain the evolution of species on earth.