Australian Schools To Teach Intelligent Design

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that schools within the Australian state of Queensland are going to be required to teach Intelligent Design as part of their Ancient History studies. While it is gratifying to note that it isn't being taught in science classes (since it most certainly isn't a science), one wonders what role a modern controversy can possibly serve within a subject dedicated to a period of history which occurred hundreds of years before Darwin proposed his groundbreaking theory?"

Comments

"Faith Science Basis?"

[eldavojohn]

"We talk to students from a faith science basis, but we're not biased in the delivery of curriculum," Mrs Doneley said. "We say, 'This is where we're coming from' but allow students to make up their own minds."

I really wish they had gone into detail on what exactly a 'faith science basis' is. I'm not saying they're completely walled off from each other but attempting to give your children solid foundational logic should not be approached from an angle that contains any sort of faith.

If they are indeed teaching intelligent design in much the same way as Niels Bohr's atomic model or -- perhaps more apt -- motivation for slavery then I have little problem with this. But if they spend anymore than a few hours discussing how it was flawed then I would consider this a waste of time instead of 'critical thinking.' It's great to see all the sides of a historical issue but that's all intelligent design is to me and, much more importantly, the peer reviewed journals and scientific community at large.

If you want to teach it as a disproved theory, I got no problem. If you want to teach it to my kids as an outstanding theory or hypothesis, I'm going to sit down and have a lengthy discussion with them. If you do you teach it in the United States, I'm going to be there arguing that you spend just as much time on Native American origin stories or even better the original Hindu creation story followed by Swami Vivekananda's logic of compatibility with Darwinism and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness's decision to largely reject it.

Intelligent Design is an attempt to absolve the scriptures of ever being wrong in their creation story and salvage what is possible when presented with fossil evidence and short-term evolution evidence in smaller celled organisms. Other religions have similar damage control, why do the Christians only get theirs mentioned in state schools?

They are arguing that this helps critical thinking and allows the child to make their own conclusions ... but curiously this "critical thinking" that presents an opposing view is curiously the view that the localized religion adheres to. If you want to teach critical thinking, expose the child to more views than what the adults are already largely marketing to them in the home and at religious services.

This article bounces between acceptable and a BS facade to market Intelligent Design. Australia's a sovereign nation but I will speak up if this comes anywhere near my public schools.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[MightyMartian]

If you want to teach it as a disproved theory, I got no problem.

It's not even a disproved theory. At its core, ID is simply "somehow something somewhere is wrong with evolution". Other than a rather vague claim that some structures are too complex to have evolved naturally, ID makes virtually no positive claims at all, and I don't even that vague claim can possibly be considered positive.

It's a smoke show, just Creationism stripped of any direct references to God, designed to fool idiotic Fundy-populated school boards, but in its only test in a Federal court, it got laughed out the door. One of its most important formulators, Michael Behe, made a fool of himself, and, unforgivable for a molecular biologist, showed an extraordinary ignorance of the literature on the evolution of complex systems like bacterial flagella and the vertebrate immune system. It's other major formulator is William Dembski, who, being considerably smarter than Behe, keeps away from ever having to defend his own notions of Irreducible Complexity and the outright nonsensical Information Filter (which, if it actually worked, would represent a quantum leap in the statistical study of information and would make Dembski one of the most lauded mathematicians in history, but is, in fact, just a load of pseudo-statistical mumbo jumbo).

Who exactly ever believed in Intelligent Design? So far as I can tell, the two chief camps that promote it our Creationists and a small group of Theistic Evolutionists (mainly of Behe's mindset). The latter may even be sincere in so far as they believe that God's hand is in the mix somehow, but the former are only using ID cynically as a way around the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and don't actually buy into any of it. In fact, as witnessed by the rubes in Dover, they don't even really care about ID, they just want to get Creationism in the classroom. They aren't even Theistic Evolutionists, they're out and out Creationists.

The whole thing is a scam, and one that has lost considerable force since Dover. The Discovery Institute, which is pretty much the leader in the ID charge, had already started moving to the bait-and-switch Teach the Controversy scam even before ID collapsed in court. The real problem here is that there are a lot of really stupid Creationists who themselves don't even know what ID is, and just assume that the scam artists who created it actually produced a scientific theory of Creationism.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[interkin3tic]

If you want to teach it as a disproved theory, I got no problem.

I do, because intelligent design being taught in schools is little more than an attempt to allow prosthelytizing in the public school system. The goal there is to replace education with saving the children's souls from us evil secular scientists.

They don't care about science, this is all about "I have it in my little head that God wants me to spam everyone with advertising, and I'm willing to destroy education to do so."

Frankly, I'd prefer students be exposed to advertising for coca-cola or McDonalds. Even though that's generally less healthy than being a christian fundamentalist, it's far less annoying.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[MightyMartian]

I don't really think anyone seriously believes in Intelligent Design. There are lots of Creationists who will wave it around, but generally to them ID==Creationism. As was pretty clear from Dover and other attempts to teach it, the school boards in question were populated with Creationists who had been scammed by DI into believing that Creationism was going to be taught in the classroom.

As to the ID formulators, considering the amount of work they put into formulating ID as a neutered replacement of out-and-out Creationism, I think it's hard to accept any claim of sincerity. ID is a legal creation, a fabrication with but one purpose, to get Creationism past the Establishment Clause.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[DrgnDancer]

I'm curious about these Theistic Evolutionists. One of the major holes I've always seen in using "Intelligent Design" as a counter to Evolutionary Theory by the Religious Right is that it's not inherently incompatible with Evolution. If the basic theory behind "Intelligent Design" is that life is to complex to have evolved randomly and therefore must have a designer, who's to say that the designer doesn't simply use Evolution as a tool to accomplish Its goals. From inside the system it would appear to us that such small tweaks and experiments were random mutation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this is the case, just pondering how the two concepts are theoretically compatible.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[qortra]

I don't really think anyone seriously believes in Intelligent Design.

Then you don't really understand people very well. From the Center for Science and Culture (a pro-ID organization) here

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Even aside from religious beliefs, it is very difficult for many people to believe that the world and people as they are came about because of chance. Just look at the number of references in popular culture to fate and "the meaning of life". Going back even as far as the Greeks, it was a major theme of their literature and plays. The notion that natural selection determines that outcome of the universe is, to many people, a profoundly unsettling explanation. None of this should be taken as a challenge to natural selection or a defense of ID. However, your assertion that nobody actually believes in ID is naive.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[jimicus]

I'm not American, so you'll have to bear with me here.

I gave up physics, biology and chemistry at 16, so that's a few years ago now, but I don't think we were once told that the word "theory" has a slightly different meaning in science to its colloquial meaning. The colloquial understanding of the word "theory" is probably closer to "hypothesis" - and it's absolutely crucial to understand this because without it the creationist "it's just a theory, we don't know for sure" argument is much harder to refute.

At least if you know the definition of the word "theory" in a scientific context, you can understand that the statement "it's just a theory" is utterly fatuous.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[Daniel Dvorkin]

it isn't a scam. Many people sincerely believe in ID

Many people sincerely believe that someone in Nigeria wants to give them a million bucks, too. Many people sincerely believe that wearing magnets will cure everything from foot pain to cancer. Many people sincerely believe that the politicians they vote for will live up to campaign promises. Etc. Belief has nothing to do with whether or not something is a scam.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[Blenster]

I never understood why evolution is such a threat to religion.

It is often considered a threat to Christianity because without a literal Adam and Eve there was no "fall" and therefor we didn't inherit a "sinful nature" from them making the need for God to sacrifice himself, as a child of himself, to himself, to save us from himself, unnecessary. You are correct, though, that it is often literalists who take the most offense to the notion of evolution. I find that most Christians (people in general, really) are startlingly ignorant of the content of the bible and the actual mechanisms and theory of evolution.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[ArcherB]

I never understood why evolution is such a threat to religion. How does us evolving from apes say anything about the existence of God? What does it even have to do with it? Hell, if I was God, evolution and natural selection actually seems like a pretty damn good way to design an ecosystem! It's resilient and adaptive and I don't have to micromanage it. It's only a problem if you believe in an absolute literal interpretation of the Bible. You know, that book that was written down by men 2000 years ago and translated and re-transcribed God only knows how many times (pun intended).

It really has nothing to do with religion or belief in such, although many will believe otherwise. There are those that think the theory of evolution is proof of no God. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about those that see no conflicts between their faith and science.

Scroll up and look at the way people who believe that "God created the universe" are described. I am relatively religious and see absolutely no conflict between anything I've learned in science class and personal research and what I've learned in church. God is a mathematician. The threat that some see is from those that use evolution as a club to bash anyone who believes in any form of creationism whatsoever, even if that person believes that God created my via evolution. Here are some examples:

Not really. There's no need to include more than one or two simple examples of a complete lack of critical thinking in such a course.

I don't really think anyone seriously believes in Intelligent Design.

ID isn't just a non-science, it is an anti-science.

One is that Behe is just a bad researcher (and there seems to be little evidence that he's that incompetent), or that Behe is a liar, and the latter seems to be the better explanation.

... and so on.

My main problem with the teaching of evolution is the attempt to actually ban the discussion of any criticism of the theory. Yes, I understand that such criticism could lead to the discussion of religion in the classroom*, but if you are going to ban discussion based on the possibility of that discussion moving to a discussion about religion, then all discussion should banned and anything can have a religion underpinning.

* There is nothing wrong or Unconstitutional about discussing or even teaching religious doctrine in a classroom. I learned about the Greek religions in History class years ago and never had the urge to bow to Zeus.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[MightyMartian]

My main problem with the teaching of evolution is the attempt to actually ban the discussion of any criticism of the theory. Yes, I understand that such criticism could lead to the discussion of religion in the classroom*, but if you are going to ban discussion based on the possibility of that discussion moving to a discussion about religion, then all discussion should banned and anything can have a religion underpinning.

If you're in a science class, you ought to be teaching science. Since the number of biologists who reject evolution is exceedingly small, teaching criticisms of the validity of the theory is essentially taking up a Creationist line.

There are actual controversies (ie. the relative importance of genetic drift via mutation, theories of abiogenesis, punctuated equilibrium etc.), but none of these controversies deny evolution happened, they are debates over very technical aspects of the theory. It's no different than the kinds of scientific debate one will see among linguists, archaeologists, physicists and so forth. I mean, because there is wide disagreement over implications of quantum mechanics, do you think QM is being criticized?

This is the problem with guys like you. You conflate debates within the scientific community as far as aspects of biological evolution with the idea that the theory itself is being seriously debated.

For the vast majority of the scientific community for the better part of a century, that debate has been closed. As much as any theory can be proven, evolution has been proven. There may be considerable debate along the lines of specific mechanics, or within very specific areas of evolution (ie. hominid evolution), but the scientific community long ago abandoned its objections, large portions of it in the decades after Origins was published, and the vast bulk certainly after the Modern Synthesis.

In short, there is no controversy over whether evolution happened or not, not in science. If you want to count all the various strains of Creationists trying to get their brand of Biblical literalism taught in science classes, well yes, that's a controversy, but a social and political one that has no bearing on the science itself. By that logic, one might call the Holocaust controversial, first of all because scholars can't agree on precisely how many Jews were killed, or more ominously, because a band of racist cranks and charlatans claim it never happened.

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[Urban Garlic]

> I never understood why evolution is such a threat to religion. How does us evolving from apes say anything about the existence of God? What does it even have to do with it?

You'd do well to research the cultural origins of creationism, as well as fundamentalism, as it's practiced in the United States. For the former, I recommend the introductory chaper of Laurie R. Godfrey's "Scientists Confront Creationism".

The short version is, it's at least partially a reaction against the *social* Darwinism of American uber-Capitalists in the late 19th century, people who ran factory towns and controlled almost every aspect of their workers' social lives, instructing them that the bosses were rich because they out-competed the workers in the capitalist system, and that the workers were valuable only insofar as they were cogs in the great capitalist machine, and that Science proved that this was so, and there was nothing the workers could do about it. The only institution the bosses did not control was the church, and in church, the workers learned that each and every single one of them was individually loved by God himself, and that their lives had intrinsic value insofar as they obeyed the scriptures. Unsurprisingly, the worker culture tended to value the church more highly than science.

There was a similar renaissance of new-age and occult thinking in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Soviet pretensions to "scientific socialism", and scientifically-rationalized oppression, left people distrustful of anything that came with a "science" label, especially things that were both un-intuitive and morally offensive.

It's vital in exploring these issues to remember that scientific rhetoric has often been a tool of oppression, and that when people react against it, they don't always separate the actual science from the oppressive rhetoric.

Teach it?

[Kenoli]

What, exactly, is there to teach about intelligent deign?

Double-you tee eff, mate

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

Australia's legislature seems to be riding some kind of runaway jesus train lately, with all the anti-porn initiatives and net-filtering. I can't imagine the majority of Aussies are behind this stuff. How is this happening? What is the election cycle like there?

"controversy"

[bcrowell]

The use of the word "controversy" here is taken directly from the creationist playbook. There is "controversy" about whether a big earthquake could cause California to fall off into the Pacific Ocean, but it's only a controversy between two guys sitting in a bar, it's not a controversy among geologists. When creationists say "teach the controversy," they're really asking teachers to present something that's not scientifically controversial as if it were.

I.D. is not a theory, it is dogma

[Anonymous Coward]

First, intelligent design is NOT a scientific theory.

On the other hand, Niels Bohr's aromic model IS a scientic theory.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model

Here is why this is the case,
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#Essential_criteria

Therefore it is incorrect to teach I.D. as a "disproved theory". It never was one in the first place. Where it can be mentioned is as a difference between theory and dogma, where I.D. is clearly an example of the latter,
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma

PS: Freaking slashdot reads my mind everything. CATPCHA: instruct

Re:I.D. is not a theory, it is dogma

[silanea]

[...] synthetic life forms created by human beings are by all accounts intelligent design.

I'd rather disagree. Intelligent Design basically means "too complex to have evolved on its own". Synthetic life form means "some person made it in a lab". That is not the same by a long margin. I concur with the AC: ID is a dogma.

Make up their own minds?

[Danse]

From TFA:

"We talk to students from a faith science basis, but we're not biased in the delivery of curriculum," Mrs Doneley said. "We say, 'This is where we're coming from' but allow students to make up their own minds."

Without a solid foundation in scientific methodology and critical thinking, students aren't equipped to determine what is evidently correct and what is not. I can't tell from the article what grade they're including this topic for, but unless their schools are a lot better than US schools, I doubt that any high school student is equipped well enough to determine the validity of an assertion such as Intelligent Design.

Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO

[Danse]

I think the evolution theory is the best we have right now, and the big band sounds plausible considering the expansion rate of the universe. Is that how it happened ultimately? No freaking clue and I think we fight and evangelize about it too much (myself included at times).

The problem with letting them believe that is that it validates all the other crazy crap they believe and that they try to get turned into law that the rest of us have to abide by.

Maybe teach creationism, ID AND evolution in school... teach them as the three most widely-accepted ideas on how the world started and push them forward as all *theories* and there is no scientific proof (there is evidence for some, but that is not conclusive proof) for any of it yet?

No. Evolution is a scientific theory based on the evidence. No scientific theory is ever proven absolutely true, but evolution is one of the strongest scientific theories out there. ID and creationism are not scientific theories. They aren't based on evidence, they don't make falsifiable claims, and they don't have any predictive power. They are simply myths that some religions have adopted as an explanation for that which they don't understand. To teach them as anything but that would be a lie.

Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO

[MightyMartian]

Yet, we still call it a "Theory" for some reason.

Yes, it's a scientific theory, which is something considerably different than the colloquial definition. Why you guys keep trotting out this faulty and fallacious argument is quite beyond me. In formal definition, what you've committed is the etymological fallacy. Because a word or phrase may have multiple meanings doesn't mean that every application of the word invokes the same meaning. In science, a theory is a considerably more rigorously formulated claim or set of claims than just "wild ass guess", which is where you appear to be going. But it's a standard Creationist and ID stunt to try to diminish the rigorous nature of scientific theories to give a sort of rhetorical bump to claims that aren't even remotely scientific (and ID/Creationism is not science by any useful definition of the word).

And yes, I know about most of the evidence,

I'm doubting that very highly.

and yes I buy that (more than anything else right now). I also understand that we might possibly be all wrong at any moment. As for the cosmology comment, I knew that was a veering off track a bit... but creationism and ID is a bit more broad reaching than evolution as they both tend to go over the concept on how "everything began" while evolution is more "the origin of species" - so I threw that in there.

And now you're inventing definitions for ID and Creationism to bolster your argument. Creationism may certainly be more expansive, but ID, as formulated by Behe and Dembski, is not about how planets form, but as a direct challenge to features of biological evolution.

I have a pretty good suspicion that you are not at all familiar with biological evolution and Intelligent Design. You certainly know nothing about science judging by the statement Yet, we still call it a "Theory" for some reason.

Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO

[MightyMartian]

I think we should teach science in science classes, and leave religious education to churches. ID and Creationism are not scientific theories. At the very most they belong in religious studies or philosophy classes.

Re:Need a statistician here...

[agbinfo]

Take a deck of cards. Shuffle as long as you want. Draw 52 cards in any order from that deck. What are the odds that it came up in that order? Before you drew the cards, the odds were 52! Once they are drawn the odds are 100%

Ridiculous

[JustNiz]

Scientists don't agree with Intelligent Design. There's no scientific evidence to support it.
Most Christians don't agree with ID. Nowhere in the bible is ID mentioned.
No other religions propose ID.
Most surveys indicate hardly anyone asked believes ID. (most either believe full religious creationism or evolution, not ID).

Why then is it being taught in schools?