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?"

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

Yes. Oh God Yes (pun intended).

I went to a Catholic School growing, though here in Canada that doesn't mean a whole lot. Since there is such an unbelievable mix of culture, you get kids who are Half-Christian Half-Buddhist, or Catholic Jews, or just about any combo you can think of. Even people who weren't exactly Catholic could get in, there were kids who didn't have catholic parents, but said they weren't sure what they believed in, and were able to go.

In my High school year, one of the big projects was to research a religion you had little to no knowledge about, in small groups, and then present it to the class.

I think it was one of the most educational lessons I've ever recieved from High school. Not only do you see the differences between Eastern and Western Religions, but also why certain ones spark conflict, and the histories of how they've interacted.

I think most of all, it was interesting to hear a Jewish peer's view on Catholicism and Christianity as a whole, as well as a Buddhist and Hindu. Likewise, they found our explanations of their religions also valuable. I mean its easy to look at a hasidic jew and criticize their way of life, only to have someone point out how your holidays have evolved into some corporate spend-a-thon, since Santa Claus has nothing to do with Christ.

I dunno, it was kind of like taking a step back and seeing the big picture for once, and I wish more schools did this (and I hope mine still does)

Re:"Faith Science Basis?"

[qortra]

It's not even a disproved theory.

That much is right. By its nature, it would be basically impossible to prove or disprove.

The whole thing is a scam, and one that has lost considerable force since Dover.

I'm sorry to break up your rant here, but it isn't a scam. Many people sincerely believe in ID (or a variation thereof). Many of those people would acknowledge that it isn't science in any meaningful form, and nearly all of those people would willingly keep ID out of the science curriculum in public schools.

However, it seems to me ancient history is a perfectly fine place to present the fact that people have believed in ID historically. While ID in its current form is a fairly modern interpretation, the notion of an intelligent designer has been around for quite a while, and has had a profound influence on our world (for better or for worse).

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?"

[digitig]

That's not actually a hole in the use of ID. It's a reason why most Christians -- even many fundamentalist Christians -- don't need ID. But there are some Christian fundamentalists whose reading of Genesis leads them to conclude that God created all the species as they are now on whichever of the seen days it was. They believe in development within a species, so they accept that horse breeding programs can lead to faster horses, for example, but not that new species can emerge. For those fundamentalists the idea that the creator used evolution is acceptable for development within a species but not for the emergence of new species because (they believe) that doesn't happen.

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?"

[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?

"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.

Which VERSION?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There are at LEAST 6 different versions of this:
1. Biblical Creationism- the world is 6000 years old (maybe 7000 now) and was created in 7 days.
2. Darwinian evolution- life was created in stages by natural selection.
3. Intelligent Design Engineer/Scientist- Life was created in stages by an engineer-diety using natural selection as an engineering process to an intended end.
4. Intelligent Design Parenthood- God gave birth to the first DNA as an offspring and only interferes as a kindly parent guiding, but not influencing, the end result. God doesn't know the future in this version.
5. Quantum Mechanical Atheistic Evolution- Natural selection is entirely unguided and random- the only thing limiting evolution is death of bad mutations.
6. Intelligent Design Creationism- a bad quasi-scientific cover for Biblical Creationism.

And that's not even going into NON-CHRISTIAN myths, I'd expect in Australia they should at least be teaching the myths of the natives in an ancient history class!

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:Lots of textbooks!

[MightyMartian]

You're talking about Of Pandas and People, the infamous Creationist textbook which was rewritten via search and replace after Edwards v Aguillard banned the teaching of Creationism in public schools. The phrase was cdesign proponentsists, from an imperfect search and replace of "Creationists" to "design proponents" in one of the post-Ewards v Aguillard drafts.

It was that, coupled with the fact that the Dover Schoolboard were a bunch of incredibly inept liars (one even claiming an Oxycontin addiction to explain his clearly deceptive behavior) who perjured themselves multiple times during the Dover trial, that pretty much tossed it out of the water. The best bits were Michael Behe's time on the stand (William Dembski was too smart a fox to get involved), where his claims of irreducible complexity of bacterial flagellum were wiped out by article after article in the literature showing precisely how such a system could in fact evolve without intervention.

Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO

[MightyMartian]

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?

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution

The number of scientists, and more importantly biologists, who think there is any question about the factuality of evolution is so exceedingly remote as to pretty much be considered universal consensus.

As to how the world started, um, that's cosmology, stellar formation, planet formation and geology. Evolution is the study of genetic change in populations, not in how the world came about.

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

[Rantastic]

Yet, we still call it a "Theory" for some reason. And yes, I know about most of the evidence, and yes I buy that (more than anything else right now). I also understand that we might possibly be all wrong at any moment.

We still call gravity a "Theory" as well. You are making the common mistake about the scientific use of the word.

According to the United States National Academy of Sciences: Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time.

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.

Queensland

[benjfowler]

None of this stuff surprises me. There's lots of crazy religious whackjobs and woo-peddlers from Queensland, and besides wheat, coal and bauxite, Christian, right-wing and New Age crap is one of our biggest exports.

Having grown up in regional Queensland, I can testify first hand that this place is, as some wag once said, like Alambama with better beaches.

The place has a deep right-wing authoritarian streak going way back, and it periodically resurfaces in the form of the "Liberal National Party", a rabble of right-wing redneck farmers who occasionally scrape together enough votes to get into power and screw everything up. Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (USians, think Huey Long), was the closest thing to a dictator this country has ever seen, and presided over a thuggish and thoroughly corrupt ostensibly-Christian police state which followed around and harassed its enemies. I have friends who had Special Branch files a foot thick... which the Joh government conveniently had shredded Stasi-style when they were kicked out for being outrageously corrupt.

That kind of parochialism and petty right-wing nastiness breeds a xenophobic and superstitious outlook that hasn't changed a bit as long as I've been alive. Rural south east Queensland is a hotbed of cult activity, and our Christian fundamentalists are reknowned the world over; several of the world's biggest IDers and Creationists come fresh from beautiful and sunny Queensland to spread their vile ideas around the world. We also have export-grade racists and idiots like Pauline Hanson, who left Australia recently for London (without even a hint of irony) because there are "too many Asians" in Australia. We also have a lot of New Age silliness, and it tends to cluster in places like the New South Wales border. They're mostly harmless, apart from their embrace of dangerous silliness like the anti-vaccination movement, which has caused communities to lose herd immunity, and children to die from diseases thought eradicated 50 years ago.

Outside of the fairly vibrant and fast-growing south east corner, Queensland is a Mecca for all sorts of stupid, vile and ugly people, many who purport to call themselves Christian.

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%