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Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
...we all know how Christianity feels about slipping things in through the back door.
Makes sense...after you've experienced the great flood (Katrina), why shouldn't you believe everything else in the Bible?
.. as it also opens the door for the teachings of our noodly saviour
Gotta love how LA lawmakers wasted LA taxpayer money creating, discussing, and passing legislation that will be struck down entirely in a matter of months, having had no one actually follow the law during those brief months of effect.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
So, when are they going to give equal time to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Kevin Smith on Prince
As a member of the Church of FSM, I am insulted. If they are allowed to teach ID in the classroom, then the story of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be allowed as well. Blessed be his noodly greatness!
priests should do it, but not talk about it?
intelligent design (ID) - the proposition that life is too complicated. Go go Ganesh!
Stop believing, start thinking.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
they are almost always at the bottom of the list when it comes education in this country or are the butt of jokes about being backwoods hicks.
If they like being laughingstocks, that's no skin off my nose. They have no one to blame but themselves.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
The Long Now Foundation
Dear Louisiana,
Please do not slip anything through my child's back door. Intelligent design or otherwise.
Yours,
A Parent.
PS: I look forward to a pirate-based global warming curriculum.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
... right where ID belongs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.
It seems that in Louisiana the Bible thumpers have gained some pretty big influence, if the 94-3 and unanimous votes mean anything. A veto would have no chance to stand, so Jindal took the easy way out and signed the law.
However, he might have lost a lot in the process. By not challenging the majority, he just stands in the middle of the mainstream. If he had vetoed the law, he would have stood as a voice for reason. He might have lost the next election, but he's liable to lose it anyhow, since he seems to be indistinguishable from at least 94 other politicians.
are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Is it "afraid" to not want my children taught an out-and-out lie, which is precisely what creationism and its bastard offspring, ID, are?
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Evolution is both a theory and a fact. (un)Intelligent design is pile of crap sugar coated to look like science. It is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it doesn't have an valid data or methodologies to back it up. I don't know what state or school you were taught in, but in most classes I have attended, the focus isn't on the theory but on how and why the conclusion was reached, it a sad day when politic have driven education to put the focus on the conclusion rather than how the conclusion was reached.
Why is the act called the Science Education act while no science at all is involved?
The problem isn't proving that evolution is true. The problem is that ID can't be proven false. It's like demanding Scientology be taught in schools because it can't be proven false even though most sane people know it's just bad science fiction.
No, because the whole point of science is never knowing for sure. You can never stop investigating and experimenting, because there are always things you don't know that you don't know and you have to question everything.
Yes, you can have a significant body of evidence that supports a theory, which can reliably predict outcomes. Classical Newtonian Physics, for instance, works for most things you encounter in your daily life, but is hardly the last word on Physics. Hell, field theory and quantum mechanics pretty much undo it, at least at the microscopic level.
Similarly, Mendelin heredity more or less works, but is hardly the last word on genetics. Even since the discovery of DNA, we've learned all sorts of new things.
Evolution is an observable natural phenomena. Natural Selection seems to explain it, but there could be other things we don't know and so we have to search them out.
Hell, God *could* exist and *could* have intelligently designed the universe. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible. What *IS* certain however, is that the certainty with which ID/Creationist proponents cling to that crap belies any scientific credit that their approach has.
Certainty is the antithesis of science, at least in my view. I'm sure some PhD will come along and bitch slap me down now.
As soon as the ID crowd can provide proof of any sort to move their take on things from fairy tale category to testable theory, then they can begin teaching it in classrooms.
Wonder if I'll be reading about this in 20 years from the prospective that this is what allowed religious fanatics to create generations of religiously indoctrinated Christianized children that jail and execute intellectuals.
You're missing the point, ID is not science and shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's perfect for a class on religion or christianity, but don't even try to present it as some sort of equally plausible alternative to evolution.
When I was a kid in school I had classes on all the major religions, and their creation myths, including christianity. I've read the old testament in literature classes. I've had physics classes that taught about the Big Bang. And I've had biology classes that taught evolution.
Noone is saying that we shouldn't teach everything, but each thing has a place, and biology classes is not the place for ID.
I hear this excuse for ID all the time. "We need to teach both, for the children to have a well rounded education".
I'll meet them half way. Go ahead teach your ID in schools, For The Children. And because we care so much that the children receive both sides of the story, you start teaching evolution in Sunday School. After all, it's for the sake of the children.
While I agree with you, teaching philosophy in science class is not the way to achieve critical thinking.
ID is a philosophy, and not an alternative scientific theory. As such, I have no problem with it being taught - just with it being taught in science class.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Science education in this country is getting ridiculous. We go and try to teach scientific "facts" to kids before we actually teach critical thinking and scientific method. It's the NATURE of science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever. There is NO room for dogma in scientific thought, and we are seeing way too many people discount notions of the supernatural simply because it's supernatural. Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.
No one has ever claimed that Dawkins DOES have all the answers.
Also, it's very common knowledge that Science doesn't currently have all the answers. That's more or less the point.
However, we ARE afraid that Science 'will lose the fight', and with good reason; It's happened before, with all the Islamic countries.
http://www.chowk.com/articles/9555
Basically, they had high points of Science and Technology, but their rabid spiritualists tried to force every little thing to be expressed in terms of religion (Just like this bill is doing) until they became what they are today. They were once top in the world, and now they are firmly at the bottom.
It can happen to us too, and will happen unless we fight back.
They are allowing it to be taught on equal footing (I think). That would be similar to allowing an alternate teaching of gravity. Nobody has proven the fundamental reason gravity works, though it has been demonstrated that the effect has certain parameters and is highly repeatable. Evolution has similar backing. Other theories, such as the various stories of creation by Christians, Pastafarians, et alias, do not have the base of scientific review. It is not "science." It should be taught in the appropriate class - i.e. Religion.
If some people want to call parts of science class a sham, that's fine. Science has been shown to be wrong in some cases over time, such as the model of the atom, but science is specifically about updating as new discoveries are found. Don't start teaching religion in science class, or literature in mathematics class for that matter.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's the real problem. We need to teach critical thinking so that people can recognize the morons when they see them.
No sig today...
I remember when I was in school (non-US), we had an "alternative creationist theories" lessons, but I remember our teacher saying: "The problem is, there is not much to tell about other theories, because they are ... well, not theories in scientific sense of the word." So we had like half of the single lesson (~ 20 min) dedicated to all other theories (I don't even remember them now :) )
May Peace Prevail On Earth
neither is there any concrete scientific evidence of evolution, apart from the strong surviving over the week, which can hardly be used to back up macro-evolution.
Dude, you might want to get your facts right : http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
As for teaching alternative views, I have nothing against that, as long as they are presented exactly as that: alternative. If a teacher presents the "ID" theory in class, it should be shown why ID is not a reasonable alternative to evolution. Children should be aware that ID exists, because they will find it mentioned outside of class, but they should be aware that a well-informed and intelligent person would have absolutely no doubt that evolution is the correct alternative.
Evolution is a fact. The theory element is the historical path, which makes sense (we obviously can't test the past 65M years). Ask any biologist, who work with evolutionary principles on a daily basis, whether evolution is a fact or not.
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I find it very, very frustrating when the state legislature decides the particulars of what I should teach in the classroom. This bill does not specifically force me, a LA teacher, to teach ID, or the mythical status of global warming, but it does represent law makers meddling in an area they are not experts.
This would be like the legislature directing doctors on the proper methods of suturing a wound, or instructing how to treat a form of cancer. Doctors wouldn't stand for that for more than a second because they are highly trained professionals that know how to do their job. Teachers are also highly trained professionals that know how to do their job without the state meddling directly in the goings on of the classroom.
The new law does not force teachers to teach ID, only makes it acceptable to teach ID as science. This bothers me. This bothers me almost more than I can stand. ID is NOT science. Science is a process of developing TESTABLE theories that can checked and re-checked for error. Until someone creates a litmus test for God, ID is completely unprovable. One might also argue that there is a giant invisible, undetectable yet all powerful beetle that pushes the earth around the sun. If we can't create a test that supports a theory, it's NOT a theory (nor is it science), it's just a nice story.
As a science teacher, my job is to teach science. I teach how to do science, not just words and definitions. I can't even begin to teach ID as science because it is not testable. I teach science as a method of answering questions through experiment and analysis of result. There is no way to do this reliably or reproducibly with ID because God doesn't settle down into a test tube very well.
Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
Normally, I don't feed trolls, but here goes just once...
Proofs exists only in the abstract world of mathematics and logic. In the real world there is no such thing as a proof... only very, very compelling evidence, and theories that spot-on predict experimental outcomes. And of course, evolution being an intractable algorithmic process, you by definition can not predict the exact outcome of any evolution. But again, if you have ever bothered reading anything on evolution, you would have known that Darwin and evolution is not about the "why" or the "where to" question. Only about the how...
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
What I find weird about these first few comments is that Catholics have nothing to do with intelligent design. It's a born-again thing, and they utterly hate Catholics.
In order to be a legitimate scientific theory you have to be able to create tests that prove a theory as false or inaccurate - not tests that establish the theory as fact.
Once you beat the hell out of a theory from many different angles over a period of time, AND you can begin to accurately predict the outcome of your tests before you execute them, you get CREDIBILITY. It still isn't a FACT. In fact, it's still referred to as a theory by scientists.
The only facts are the results of your TEST.
Now, develop one falsifiable test on a theory of life that has ALL of its function wrapped up in the abilities of an Omnipotent, Omnicient, Omnipresent entity that does not present itself but only lets itself be known to those who demonstrate "faith"?
Now tell me why an Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent entity needs a fucking plan? A plan gets you from state A to state B while minimizing risk and maximizing efficiencies. What part of that is needed by something that can do DO ANYTHING, KNOWS EVERYTHING, AND IS EVERYWHERE AND WHEN?
I am so sick of people spouting off "God's plan" like they have any fucking clue as to the mindset of a being as powerful as a true god. I'm no Atheist, I believe in a god, but not this anthropomorphic piece of social control zealots seem to know so well.
Science and god don't contradict one another, Science and RELIGION do. Its the one thing that religious nuts know and hate. You don't want the truth, you want your story to BE the truth.
ANY argument based on an idea that only becomes credible if you choose to accept DOGMA as truth lacks any understanding of how ANYTHING works. This becomes even more apparent when that DOGMA is focused on humans telling other humans what an OMNIPOTENT, OMNICIENT, and OMNIPRESENT beings's motivations are.
You lack the fundamental ability to even comprehend how such an existence would manifest itself, much less be able to map its quantity and depth of perception to your measly five senses (which happen to be temporally and locally bound).
And before you start ranting on how can I know a god with all this being true, let me say I can't. What I can do is immediately tell anyone who tells me that they know what God wants, or what God was thinking, that they can go fuck themselves.
how do you know it's a lie?
A pink giraffe was living in my back yard last week. Prove me wrong.
have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone?
Creationism can't be proven wrong, which is why it isn't science.
while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...
Ummm, evolution (as a process) is proven. There is no debate about this whatsoever. There is a tiny, vocal crowd disagreeing with that, but you'll find that with anything. Evolution (as the theory explaining the observed facts) can't be proven because nothing in science can be proven - that's not how it works.
By the way, I'm a conservative Christian.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Actually, the scientific world doesn't debate whether evolution is a fact or not. They debate the finer points. How fast did these mutations occur? What are the main trigger mechanisms? That sort of thing. But the basic "species change over time giving rise to new species" is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Some creationists get hung up on the word "theory." In science, virtually everything is a theory, not matter how well proven it is. There is a mountain of evidence that evolution happened (and is still happening). Creationism is a nice story, and if you want to believe that God is the one behind the curtains making it all work, go right ahead. But God has no place in a science class, just like science has no place dictating what (if any) prayers you say.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
gays and straights aren't competing for market share.
I'll say. I haven't been asked out by either side in months.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'd just start protesting about how "Gravity is only a theory" and demand that we teach "intelligent falling" until they realize how stupid their argument is, but I'm a cynical asshole.
Why don't the IDers slip in a different spin:
./big-bang ...
~/god# make
~/god#
** universe created
** planet Earth instantiated
** animal life evolving
** humans emerging
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.
Ugh - the NOMA argument. Listen: there are no questions "off limits" to science. Could love be chemicals? Could souls exist as energy clouds? If god exists what is he thinking? All of these fall in the realm of science if they can be observed. If they can't be observed now, that doesn't mean they automagically become the domain of religion - they just can't be tested by science yet. Even ethics can be broken down in a more scientific way (anthropologically and evolutionarily, it is statistically in our nature not to kill people who don't pose a threat... knowing that, what ethics can we build from it? How can we reliably assess and define threats to expand our consciousness to the possibility that it's never right to kill? etc.)
Point being - religion only matters if you want to believe in it. Beyond that, it's science all the way down.
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First, I highly recommend you read "Finding Darwin's God" by Dr. Ken Miller for an interesting treatise on the interplay between the realms of science and faith.
But more than that I recommend that rather than shoehorning the idea of spiritual faith into an idea of science you accept that for most people faith has little to do with making a metaphorical reference to natural phenomenon. It may turn out that you're precisely correct - that the idea of 'God' is best equated to the idea of the 'Universe as a whole'.
It may be - and probably is - that spiritual faith has little to do with 'using scientific tools' at all. It doesn't have to do with equations or with rigorous processes. Indeed, if you compare the modern conception of science to Buddhism's Noble Eight-fold Path, it fits pretty well into step five; begging the question of what the others are, or are for?
Traditionally the answer to that has been a very personal one. But I encourage you to recognize that while you can say that science is a way of examining God, this is not true for all people - that spirituality has little to do with the explanation of the material experience. Until there is that general acceptance there will be a great deal to fight about.
[Ego]out
ID challenges evolution as much as astrology challenges astrophysics. Just because thinking of something in a very shallow way ("Hey, the Flood must of produced a lot of moving water, so that's how the Grand Canyon was made.") doesn't mean there is any validity to it. I've read every document I could get my hands on to see what ID can bring to the table but I see absolutely no verified predictions made by it, nor do I see explanation for the facts that are discovered about the world with microscopes, telescopes and the power of modern day science. People who believe in ID are just lazy thinkers. There I said it. Sorry for being such a dick about it. Spend 15 minutes looking at the evidence for things like the Big Bang and evolution and it's conclusive. Are there better theories out there? Sure. But ID isn't one of them. Also, expecting a class room of students to be able to debate such things shows how ridiculous the ID crowd is. I can't think of one Nobel prize winner who had to force his theory to be taught in schools so it could be excepted. They *ALL* had to go through the process of convincing the (very skeptical) scientists that the evidence proved them right.