I am not saying evolution is untrue, nor am i saying that ID is untrue. I am saying that we have no method of verifying our "scientific" finding that life evolved and there was never any ID involved at all. To me, that means the science that is frequently put forward as truth is actually just a theory and not really a fact. This belief of mine is furhter solidified in my mind by the fact that we still cannot create life from lifelessness. We can create synthetic life using building blocks from existing life, but no one, to my knowledge has taking a bunch of inorganic material and make it a living and procreating life-form. Statistically, i believe that such life from lifelessness is very very improbable without some form of ID, somewhere along the line. I also believe evolution occurs without needing ID. That is, once life exists, it evolves to suit its environment, or it dies.
You understand that people are giving angry responses because it's obvious that you haven't done the first bit of research before throwing out those inane questions, right?
Please educateyourself about the theory and then come back and ask some sensible questions. Preferably some that aren't already answered here.
That makes it a historical fact, not a scientific theory. It's important not to confuse the two.
It means that it is likely possible to create life. It doesn't mean that life on earth was created that way. Nobody disputes that life could be designed, just that that's not what the evidence shows to be the case for life on earth. There is no competing scientific theory for evolution. If IDers would like to create one, they are welcome to do the research, but so far they haven't.
we're talking about a concerted effort by a relatively small number of individuals to strip Creationism of any overt religious claims with the specific intention of getting Creationism past the Establishment Clause, as well as building the Big Tent of Creationists of various strains (YECs, OECs, Theistic Evolutionists).
OK, then what's the problem? If you strip all religious from ID, what's the problem with it? As long as the principals stand up, there is no reason that some form of ID should be banned from discussion or curriculum. It's not necessarily a religious thing. Cosmologists are beating their heads against their desks trying to figure out why our universe exists at all. The more they learn about the laws of physics and the constants that define them, they realize the fact that anything exists at all happened with such narrow odds that to assume it happened by pure chance unreasonable, at best. The odds are narrow enough that the probability of a universal designer are actually greater than the evidence supporting pure chance. It has even been dubbed "The Fine Tuned Universe". Saying that something is tuned implies a "tuner".
Umm... got any evidence to back up any of that? That whole bit about the odds seems completely made up, as without an understanding of what existed before TBB, we have no idea what the odds are, so that bit about a designer having greater odds is complete bullshit. The problem with teaching ID is not just that it's religion in disguise, but that it's utterly unscientific. It's not a competing theory at all. It's just religious belief dressed up to look kind of scientific. There's no substance there. Attempting to poke holes in evolution is fine and all, but it's not a theory.
I understand that your fear is that it will be used as a wedge to get religion taught in the classroom, but anything could be used as that wedge. The Big Bang could easily be used as for that purpose, yet no one is suggesting that the Big Bang should be banned from discussion. If your main problem with ID is that it may lead to a religious discussion, then simply ban the religious discussion. Problem solved.
No, the issue is not that it's a wedge to introducing religious discussion, it's that it IS religious discussion. They just replaced "God" with "designer", so that when students ask who the designer was, they have an answer all ready for them, complete with mountains of dogma to go along with it.
I suspect that you're probably invoking some other definition of Intelligent Design, which shows that its creators have had some success in muddying the waters.
Yes, ID is much more than just evolution or "God did it". It is a thought that some things could not have happened purely by chance. And ID exists. My car is a product of ID. I speak of the purest, and broadest since of something, or anything being "designed" by "intelligence". Nothing more. Certainly I believe in a Creator (capital C) but like you, I don't want that taught in school. A school that can teach the Judeo/Christian explanation of creation can just as easily teach the Scientologist explanation. I don't believe that and don't want my kids forced to learn it, just as you don't want your kids learning my beliefs. However, I have no problem with a school acknowledging the facts that evolution does not explain everything concerning the origin of species and that some brilliant minds believe the universe was not created by pure chance based on the evidence. This can be done without religion.
Except that ID doesn't support any of those claims scientifically, therefore it doesn't pass even the first test of being included in the curriculum. When IDers can create an actual scientific theory that explains the evidence, is falsifiable, and has predictive power on par with the theory of evolution, then I'll advocate including it. That's so ridicu
Actually, you don't have the full spectrum there yet. Maybe you even need another axis to accommodate people like Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, who is neither a creationist nor a fundamentalist of any kind. He is basically a catholic, though many of his works are shunned by official doctrine. For de Chardin, creation is not an act but a still ongoing process, evolution being part of it. What clashes hardest with catholic doctrine is his thinking that man is not remotely the "crown of creation", but a passing stage to something better, and that man has to work himself to further that development. Definitely a Theistic Evolutionist, but a quite unique and interesting flavour.
This is what gets me about religious folks. All of those beliefs might make for some interesting fiction, but they carry no more weight than any other Catholic belief, all of which are unsubstantiated. So honestly, who cares what anyone thinks about creation? If you don't have evidence, then you're just engaging in the spinning of yarns. Yet people base their entire worldview on this stuff.
The theoretical underpinnings of "chance" are shaky. All scientific theories assume that things happen in a predictable way (theories must make testable predictions). Due to complexities of small-scale phenomena, chance has been presented as an alternative partial assumption (quantum mechanics).
Some think that the randomness in quantum mechanics is actually brought on by unmeasurable or unknown variables. Others think that things are actually happening in a partially unpredictable way. Since the truth about chance isn't known, we shouldn't be teaching children that the universe, and all life in it, arose through random chance. It is only appropriate to present that as an idea.
Who is advocating teaching them that all life arose through random chance? Chance is only one element of evolution. One that we're all quite familiar with. If you have a another scientific theory to present, then please present it.
"However, you need to realize that for every Muslim that doesn't want the Western Oil companies there pumping the oil, there are probably three that do."
Inaction is not enthusiastic support, and redirecting that sweet oil money (as the Saudis have done) to Jihad isn't exactly news.
Some Muslims have the balls to fight.
Some Muslims don't have the balls to fight, but do money and logistics.
Some just stand and cheer.
Some are our enemies because they promote Islam thus helping the whole Jihadist movement.
Because Islam is, itself, profoundly anti-freedom and demands theocratic slavery, there can be no "non-toxic Islam". Islam, like Juche in North Korea, or like Stalinism, cannot be benign without ceasing to be. That's not a decision followers can even make, because the part supports the whole.
Islam, like Christianity and other religions has various interpretations by different groups, including some that seem quite contradictory to their scripture. Not all Muslims believe that everyone should have to live as they do. What percentage these people are of the whole, I don't know, but they do make it just as impossible to paint all Muslims with the same brush as it is to do the same with all Christians. There are violent, theocratic Christian groups as well. Christianity may have swung towards a more tolerant path over time, and perhaps Islam will do the same in the future. Political, societal and economic conditions often play a large part in determining how religions will be interpreted and how those interpretations will guide the behavior of adherents.
What she actually said (as reported) was " Classroom debate about issues encouraged critical thinking – an important tool".
The problem is that we've heard similar claims before, but with the goal of teaching that ID is a competing scientific theory with evolution, and that we should "teach the controversy" so that the students can decide for themselves. That almost sounds reasonable to some people, but it's based on a fundamental lie, which is that ID is a scientific theory at all.
Ahh, now I understand - I was having trouble parsing your previous comment, and my response was completely off-topic. I apologize.
I'm suspicious because they don't say specifically what they're going to teach about it.
Hey, at least it's just suspicion (a justifiable reaction). I've spent the last few hours of my life responding to the myriad of FUD here, coming from people whose mouths start to froth at the very mention of ID. I think they honestly want there to be a conspiracy so they can be angry and indignant about something. Has anybody considered the possibility that the school system is doing exactly what it ought to in this case? To ignore the roll of religion, creationism, and intelligent design in our history and philosophy is to provide a very revisionist version of our history. Given that it ought to be taught somewhere because of its significance in our culture, isn't "ancient history" the perfect place to teach it? And, if that keeps various religious groups appeased, isn't that a perfect compromise?
Even if your suspicions are well founded and there is a bias in the curriculum towards certain religious views, can that not be corrected in subsequent revisions?
I think the anger comes from the fact that religious groups (especially in the USA) have tried repeatedly to sneak ID into science and social studies courses as a way to get public schools to teach creationism as a competing theory to evolution. This leads to the distrust of anyone trying to include ID, because of all the bad faith attempts to do so.
Even if your suspicions are well founded and there is a bias in the curriculum towards certain religious views, can that not be corrected in subsequent revisions?
That won't help the students that will be subjected to it before it can be corrected. We should be vigilant against introducing religious indoctrination into the classrooms. The thinking is that it's better to have no mention at all than the form of proselytizing that has been the goal in past attempts to introduce it. I can't disagree with that.
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.
This is what scares me about introducing something like ID into the curriculum. Most students aren't equipped to evaluate it properly. Introducing it before they have learned how to apply the scientific method and critical thinking to an idea is basically teaching them something that we have no reason to believe is correct, knowing that they have no way to determine this for themselves either. Seems like a very bad idea to me.
Which is the context Queensland History Teachers' Association head said it was in. I think it's also valid in the context of history (although that's more precisely evolution v. creationism, not it's more recent ID formulation -- and if 19th century controversies are ancient history then I'm feeling really old).
That's really not what she said. I can't even tell what they're going to teach based on what she said. I wonder if they're being intentionally vague about it, or if they just didn't get asked more specific questions.
I not quite sure what you're suspicious of. If you need evidence that ID has been around in some form or another for thousands of years, it is readily available. Have a look through Plato's Timaeus. Just because the term was invented recently doesn't mean that the idea hasn't existed for quite a while.
I'm suspicious because they don't say specifically what they're going to teach about it. I'm guessing that the religious groups supporting this know more about it than is presented in the article. Without knowing more about what they're going to teach, I can't say whether it's a valid decision or not.
That's interesting, but it still doesn't explain why people care about evolution (which really, as far as scientific evidence is concerned, doesn't conflict with religion. There is no part in the bible that says species can't change) and not geology, since geology states that the earth is quite old, and has a lot of evidence to back it up.
A lot of religions don't dispute evolution. It's typically the more fundamentalist religions that take a more literal view of their respective holy texts that have the problem with it. These are the groups that tend to push for ID to be taught in schools.
ID (in some form or another) has been a very large part of our history, and it is most certainly controversial. Thus, this seems like the perfect place for it. If you want to pretend that people never believed anything other than evolution throughout history, you are more full of shit than the people you so flippantly criticize.
The fact that religious groups are supporting this leads me to believe that it isn't being presented as just some belief that originated thousands of years ago and has since been supplanted by scientific theories that are actually useful to us. So suspicion is highly warranted in this case.
You're trying to disprove ID as a scientific theory by quoting Wikipedia?
Oh no... we have already lost...
As long as the necessary sources are cited, it's fine to use Wikipedia to make a point. Especially when the point is requires no real deep explanation. If you have specific reasons to reject its use in this case, I'd like to hear them.
Odd that the bible, including creation, was taught in public education until approx 1948.
Why is that odd? Lots of unconstitutional things have been done throughout our history, and continued until they were successfully challenged in court. Creation is obviously a religious belief, and public school teachers are obviously employees of the state, so it's quite evident that teaching creationism is the advancement of specific religious belief by the government. This is quite plainly unconstitutional. Unless we are going to teach all of the other religious creation myths alongside it, it has no place in public schools. Even if it were to be taught alongside other religious beliefs, it should not be in a science or history class, as it has no evidence to support it as either science or history.
Seriously, why is this still an issue 150 years later? Why do people feel that evolution needs to conflict with religion, and not say, geology?
Religion is resistant to change by its very nature. A lot of the change happens by groups breaking away and forming new sects with somewhat different beliefs because its very difficult to change beliefs from within the group. When the changes do occur within the group, then you still often get a part of the group that wants to stick to the old beliefs, so they break off anyway.
Design theories go all the way back to ancient Greece. There is plenty to teach about.
Darwin's argument is many ways theological/philosophical and is trying to falsify design theories. So I guess if design arguments of any type isn't worth teaching and isn't science, Darwin shouldn't be taught either. How can a negative answer to design be considered science but a positive answer (even if you think it is false) is science? It just doesn't work unless you simply want to say any argument we find wrong or fault "isn't science", which opens its own can of worms.
You apparently have no idea what the theory of evolution actually is, or of the evidence for it. Please educate yourself on it before making further ridiculous statements.
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.
"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.
Just a random thought. If basing your worldview on stories written thousands of years ago is problematic...what about basing your system of Government on a framework that was written a few hundred years ago?
Basing things like government or your code of ethics on something that came before is fine, as long as you're not tied to what came before, and are free to modify it as needed. That's the problem with "fundamentalist" religions that want to stick to those old stories rather than acknowledge that morality changes with society. This is likely the reason that there are so many variations of the major religions. If you can't change the religion itself, you have to break away and form a new one that interprets things differently. So now we have Christian religions ranging from hardcore fundamentalism to sects like the Unitarians Universalists, which seem to have finally broken the chains of the religions their beliefs are based on. Of course this makes them hardly recognizable as a Christian-based religion, but I don't consider that a bad thing.
There is a significant difference between asking me to post something myself and simply posting something up on a site that claims it is for you to say what you like simply because someone else said they don't like it.
Facebook makes no claim that you can say whatever you like. Game over. You lose.
I, a catholic, at the same time, Taoist, believe in god creating the universe.
At the same time, I also believe the Taoist believe of a beginning of "nothingness". And nothingness to its extreme flip around and turn into "somethingness", which is "chi", the energy source that eventually form everything. As the lighter energy (chi) rise and heavier energy sink, the energy cloud is splited into yin and yang. And the mixture of them in different degrees creates everything.
At the very same time, I take in all scientific theories. Much like most eastern Asians.
I don't see religions and faiths contradicts with science. Religion describes things that are pretty much out of science's hand, or simply describe things scientifically in a different way from the existing "scientific methods" (which, scientists categorize anything diff from their method as "faith" or "religion"). While science deal with "existing stuff" that either "just exist" or "created by god and operates in the scientific/mathematical way defined by god" depending on your believe. Really no point to argue about it. It's a fight that neither side will ever win because you can't proof it nor disproof it. At the end, no matter which side you're on, you're just "believing" it without proof, both, are faith and religion.
What a bunch of garbage. Religion is just made-up stories to explain things that science hasn't explained, or that some people don't accept the scientific explanation for. It's certainly not verifiable, and usually there's no evidence whatsoever to make anyone believe it's correct. Science doesn't require faith because it depends on evidence. This may seem like a much harder and more tedious method of getting answers, and it is, but it actually arrives at useful answers, whereas religion allows you to arrive at whatever answer you would like to arrive at. I can see how that would make some people happy, but it certainly doesn't make them right.
I am certainly not religious but I think there is some wiggle room for Religion in terms of our current scientific knowledge. The origins of the universe can be explained pretty well by the big bang theory, but it doesn't really explain how/why/where this extremely dense singularity came into being/where it was exactly. Perhaps someday we will understand more, but for now Religion can try to explain it. To think that there is NOTHING that our current scientific knowledge cannot adequately explain makes it seem as if we already know everything there is to know, which in itself is somewhat of an anti-science stance.
The funny thing is, religion still doesn't explain anything about the origin of the universe. Various religions are just different sets of made-up stories about it. We might as well just say we don't know and leave it at that. I'm fine with sci-fi and fantasy stories, but when you start basing your worldview on stories written a few thousand years ago, you're going to run into some serious problems.
Does not make them less responsible; but, does raise issues.
Was the regulator told to go easy on them because of the large donation? Tim S.
The regulator was already being investigated by the administration because it had been discovered that they'd been going easy on them for years, as well as engaging in all sorts of conflicts of interest, such as taking gifts, having sexual relationships, discussing jobs with the companies they were investigating, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
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I am not saying evolution is untrue, nor am i saying that ID is untrue. I am saying that we have no method of verifying our "scientific" finding that life evolved and there was never any ID involved at all. To me, that means the science that is frequently put forward as truth is actually just a theory and not really a fact. This belief of mine is furhter solidified in my mind by the fact that we still cannot create life from lifelessness. We can create synthetic life using building blocks from existing life, but no one, to my knowledge has taking a bunch of inorganic material and make it a living and procreating life-form. Statistically, i believe that such life from lifelessness is very very improbable without some form of ID, somewhere along the line. I also believe evolution occurs without needing ID. That is, once life exists, it evolves to suit its environment, or it dies.
You understand that people are giving angry responses because it's obvious that you haven't done the first bit of research before throwing out those inane questions, right?
Please educate yourself about the theory and then come back and ask some sensible questions. Preferably some that aren't already answered here.
I.D. is a valid scientific theory. Case and point: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958
That makes it a historical fact, not a scientific theory. It's important not to confuse the two.
It means that it is likely possible to create life. It doesn't mean that life on earth was created that way. Nobody disputes that life could be designed, just that that's not what the evidence shows to be the case for life on earth. There is no competing scientific theory for evolution. If IDers would like to create one, they are welcome to do the research, but so far they haven't.
we're talking about a concerted effort by a relatively small number of individuals to strip Creationism of any overt religious claims with the specific intention of getting Creationism past the Establishment Clause, as well as building the Big Tent of Creationists of various strains (YECs, OECs, Theistic Evolutionists).
OK, then what's the problem? If you strip all religious from ID, what's the problem with it? As long as the principals stand up, there is no reason that some form of ID should be banned from discussion or curriculum. It's not necessarily a religious thing. Cosmologists are beating their heads against their desks trying to figure out why our universe exists at all. The more they learn about the laws of physics and the constants that define them, they realize the fact that anything exists at all happened with such narrow odds that to assume it happened by pure chance unreasonable, at best. The odds are narrow enough that the probability of a universal designer are actually greater than the evidence supporting pure chance. It has even been dubbed "The Fine Tuned Universe". Saying that something is tuned implies a "tuner".
Umm... got any evidence to back up any of that? That whole bit about the odds seems completely made up, as without an understanding of what existed before TBB, we have no idea what the odds are, so that bit about a designer having greater odds is complete bullshit. The problem with teaching ID is not just that it's religion in disguise, but that it's utterly unscientific. It's not a competing theory at all. It's just religious belief dressed up to look kind of scientific. There's no substance there. Attempting to poke holes in evolution is fine and all, but it's not a theory.
I understand that your fear is that it will be used as a wedge to get religion taught in the classroom, but anything could be used as that wedge. The Big Bang could easily be used as for that purpose, yet no one is suggesting that the Big Bang should be banned from discussion. If your main problem with ID is that it may lead to a religious discussion, then simply ban the religious discussion. Problem solved.
No, the issue is not that it's a wedge to introducing religious discussion, it's that it IS religious discussion. They just replaced "God" with "designer", so that when students ask who the designer was, they have an answer all ready for them, complete with mountains of dogma to go along with it.
I suspect that you're probably invoking some other definition of Intelligent Design, which shows that its creators have had some success in muddying the waters.
Yes, ID is much more than just evolution or "God did it". It is a thought that some things could not have happened purely by chance. And ID exists. My car is a product of ID. I speak of the purest, and broadest since of something, or anything being "designed" by "intelligence". Nothing more. Certainly I believe in a Creator (capital C) but like you, I don't want that taught in school. A school that can teach the Judeo/Christian explanation of creation can just as easily teach the Scientologist explanation. I don't believe that and don't want my kids forced to learn it, just as you don't want your kids learning my beliefs. However, I have no problem with a school acknowledging the facts that evolution does not explain everything concerning the origin of species and that some brilliant minds believe the universe was not created by pure chance based on the evidence. This can be done without religion.
Except that ID doesn't support any of those claims scientifically, therefore it doesn't pass even the first test of being included in the curriculum. When IDers can create an actual scientific theory that explains the evidence, is falsifiable, and has predictive power on par with the theory of evolution, then I'll advocate including it. That's so ridicu
Actually, you don't have the full spectrum there yet. Maybe you even need another axis to accommodate people like Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, who is neither a creationist nor a fundamentalist of any kind. He is basically a catholic, though many of his works are shunned by official doctrine. For de Chardin, creation is not an act but a still ongoing process, evolution being part of it. What clashes hardest with catholic doctrine is his thinking that man is not remotely the "crown of creation", but a passing stage to something better, and that man has to work himself to further that development. Definitely a Theistic Evolutionist, but a quite unique and interesting flavour.
This is what gets me about religious folks. All of those beliefs might make for some interesting fiction, but they carry no more weight than any other Catholic belief, all of which are unsubstantiated. So honestly, who cares what anyone thinks about creation? If you don't have evidence, then you're just engaging in the spinning of yarns. Yet people base their entire worldview on this stuff.
The theoretical underpinnings of "chance" are shaky. All scientific theories assume that things happen in a predictable way (theories must make testable predictions). Due to complexities of small-scale phenomena, chance has been presented as an alternative partial assumption (quantum mechanics).
Some think that the randomness in quantum mechanics is actually brought on by unmeasurable or unknown variables. Others think that things are actually happening in a partially unpredictable way. Since the truth about chance isn't known, we shouldn't be teaching children that the universe, and all life in it, arose through random chance. It is only appropriate to present that as an idea.
Who is advocating teaching them that all life arose through random chance? Chance is only one element of evolution. One that we're all quite familiar with. If you have a another scientific theory to present, then please present it.
"However, you need to realize that for every Muslim that doesn't want the Western Oil companies there pumping the oil, there are probably three that do."
Inaction is not enthusiastic support, and redirecting that sweet oil money (as the Saudis have done) to Jihad isn't exactly news.
Some Muslims have the balls to fight. Some Muslims don't have the balls to fight, but do money and logistics. Some just stand and cheer. Some are our enemies because they promote Islam thus helping the whole Jihadist movement.
Because Islam is, itself, profoundly anti-freedom and demands theocratic slavery, there can be no "non-toxic Islam". Islam, like Juche in North Korea, or like Stalinism, cannot be benign without ceasing to be. That's not a decision followers can even make, because the part supports the whole.
Islam, like Christianity and other religions has various interpretations by different groups, including some that seem quite contradictory to their scripture. Not all Muslims believe that everyone should have to live as they do. What percentage these people are of the whole, I don't know, but they do make it just as impossible to paint all Muslims with the same brush as it is to do the same with all Christians. There are violent, theocratic Christian groups as well. Christianity may have swung towards a more tolerant path over time, and perhaps Islam will do the same in the future. Political, societal and economic conditions often play a large part in determining how religions will be interpreted and how those interpretations will guide the behavior of adherents.
What she actually said (as reported) was " Classroom debate about issues encouraged critical thinking – an important tool".
The problem is that we've heard similar claims before, but with the goal of teaching that ID is a competing scientific theory with evolution, and that we should "teach the controversy" so that the students can decide for themselves. That almost sounds reasonable to some people, but it's based on a fundamental lie, which is that ID is a scientific theory at all.
Ahh, now I understand - I was having trouble parsing your previous comment, and my response was completely off-topic. I apologize.
I'm suspicious because they don't say specifically what they're going to teach about it.
Hey, at least it's just suspicion (a justifiable reaction). I've spent the last few hours of my life responding to the myriad of FUD here, coming from people whose mouths start to froth at the very mention of ID. I think they honestly want there to be a conspiracy so they can be angry and indignant about something. Has anybody considered the possibility that the school system is doing exactly what it ought to in this case? To ignore the roll of religion, creationism, and intelligent design in our history and philosophy is to provide a very revisionist version of our history. Given that it ought to be taught somewhere because of its significance in our culture, isn't "ancient history" the perfect place to teach it? And, if that keeps various religious groups appeased, isn't that a perfect compromise?
Even if your suspicions are well founded and there is a bias in the curriculum towards certain religious views, can that not be corrected in subsequent revisions?
I think the anger comes from the fact that religious groups (especially in the USA) have tried repeatedly to sneak ID into science and social studies courses as a way to get public schools to teach creationism as a competing theory to evolution. This leads to the distrust of anyone trying to include ID, because of all the bad faith attempts to do so.
Even if your suspicions are well founded and there is a bias in the curriculum towards certain religious views, can that not be corrected in subsequent revisions?
That won't help the students that will be subjected to it before it can be corrected. We should be vigilant against introducing religious indoctrination into the classrooms. The thinking is that it's better to have no mention at all than the form of proselytizing that has been the goal in past attempts to introduce it. I can't disagree with that.
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.
This is what scares me about introducing something like ID into the curriculum. Most students aren't equipped to evaluate it properly. Introducing it before they have learned how to apply the scientific method and critical thinking to an idea is basically teaching them something that we have no reason to believe is correct, knowing that they have no way to determine this for themselves either. Seems like a very bad idea to me.
Which is the context Queensland History Teachers' Association head said it was in. I think it's also valid in the context of history (although that's more precisely evolution v. creationism, not it's more recent ID formulation -- and if 19th century controversies are ancient history then I'm feeling really old).
That's really not what she said. I can't even tell what they're going to teach based on what she said. I wonder if they're being intentionally vague about it, or if they just didn't get asked more specific questions.
I not quite sure what you're suspicious of. If you need evidence that ID has been around in some form or another for thousands of years, it is readily available. Have a look through Plato's Timaeus. Just because the term was invented recently doesn't mean that the idea hasn't existed for quite a while.
I'm suspicious because they don't say specifically what they're going to teach about it. I'm guessing that the religious groups supporting this know more about it than is presented in the article. Without knowing more about what they're going to teach, I can't say whether it's a valid decision or not.
That's interesting, but it still doesn't explain why people care about evolution (which really, as far as scientific evidence is concerned, doesn't conflict with religion. There is no part in the bible that says species can't change) and not geology, since geology states that the earth is quite old, and has a lot of evidence to back it up.
A lot of religions don't dispute evolution. It's typically the more fundamentalist religions that take a more literal view of their respective holy texts that have the problem with it. These are the groups that tend to push for ID to be taught in schools.
ID (in some form or another) has been a very large part of our history, and it is most certainly controversial. Thus, this seems like the perfect place for it. If you want to pretend that people never believed anything other than evolution throughout history, you are more full of shit than the people you so flippantly criticize.
The fact that religious groups are supporting this leads me to believe that it isn't being presented as just some belief that originated thousands of years ago and has since been supplanted by scientific theories that are actually useful to us. So suspicion is highly warranted in this case.
You're trying to disprove ID as a scientific theory by quoting Wikipedia?
Oh no... we have already lost...
As long as the necessary sources are cited, it's fine to use Wikipedia to make a point. Especially when the point is requires no real deep explanation. If you have specific reasons to reject its use in this case, I'd like to hear them.
Odd that the bible, including creation, was taught in public education until approx 1948.
Why is that odd? Lots of unconstitutional things have been done throughout our history, and continued until they were successfully challenged in court. Creation is obviously a religious belief, and public school teachers are obviously employees of the state, so it's quite evident that teaching creationism is the advancement of specific religious belief by the government. This is quite plainly unconstitutional. Unless we are going to teach all of the other religious creation myths alongside it, it has no place in public schools. Even if it were to be taught alongside other religious beliefs, it should not be in a science or history class, as it has no evidence to support it as either science or history.
Seriously, why is this still an issue 150 years later? Why do people feel that evolution needs to conflict with religion, and not say, geology?
Religion is resistant to change by its very nature. A lot of the change happens by groups breaking away and forming new sects with somewhat different beliefs because its very difficult to change beliefs from within the group. When the changes do occur within the group, then you still often get a part of the group that wants to stick to the old beliefs, so they break off anyway.
Design theories go all the way back to ancient Greece. There is plenty to teach about.
Darwin's argument is many ways theological/philosophical and is trying to falsify design theories. So I guess if design arguments of any type isn't worth teaching and isn't science, Darwin shouldn't be taught either. How can a negative answer to design be considered science but a positive answer (even if you think it is false) is science? It just doesn't work unless you simply want to say any argument we find wrong or fault "isn't science", which opens its own can of worms.
You apparently have no idea what the theory of evolution actually is, or of the evidence for it. Please educate yourself on it before making further ridiculous statements.
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.
"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.
What, exactly, is there to teach about intelligent deign?
Well, I suppose you could use it as an example of what happens when you fail at science.
Just a random thought. If basing your worldview on stories written thousands of years ago is problematic...what about basing your system of Government on a framework that was written a few hundred years ago?
Basing things like government or your code of ethics on something that came before is fine, as long as you're not tied to what came before, and are free to modify it as needed. That's the problem with "fundamentalist" religions that want to stick to those old stories rather than acknowledge that morality changes with society. This is likely the reason that there are so many variations of the major religions. If you can't change the religion itself, you have to break away and form a new one that interprets things differently. So now we have Christian religions ranging from hardcore fundamentalism to sects like the Unitarians Universalists, which seem to have finally broken the chains of the religions their beliefs are based on. Of course this makes them hardly recognizable as a Christian-based religion, but I don't consider that a bad thing.
There is a significant difference between asking me to post something myself and simply posting something up on a site that claims it is for you to say what you like simply because someone else said they don't like it.
Facebook makes no claim that you can say whatever you like. Game over. You lose.
I take a different way from you.
I, a catholic, at the same time, Taoist, believe in god creating the universe.
At the same time, I also believe the Taoist believe of a beginning of "nothingness". And nothingness to its extreme flip around and turn into "somethingness", which is "chi", the energy source that eventually form everything. As the lighter energy (chi) rise and heavier energy sink, the energy cloud is splited into yin and yang. And the mixture of them in different degrees creates everything.
At the very same time, I take in all scientific theories. Much like most eastern Asians.
I don't see religions and faiths contradicts with science. Religion describes things that are pretty much out of science's hand, or simply describe things scientifically in a different way from the existing "scientific methods" (which, scientists categorize anything diff from their method as "faith" or "religion"). While science deal with "existing stuff" that either "just exist" or "created by god and operates in the scientific/mathematical way defined by god" depending on your believe. Really no point to argue about it. It's a fight that neither side will ever win because you can't proof it nor disproof it. At the end, no matter which side you're on, you're just "believing" it without proof, both, are faith and religion.
What a bunch of garbage. Religion is just made-up stories to explain things that science hasn't explained, or that some people don't accept the scientific explanation for. It's certainly not verifiable, and usually there's no evidence whatsoever to make anyone believe it's correct. Science doesn't require faith because it depends on evidence. This may seem like a much harder and more tedious method of getting answers, and it is, but it actually arrives at useful answers, whereas religion allows you to arrive at whatever answer you would like to arrive at. I can see how that would make some people happy, but it certainly doesn't make them right.
I am certainly not religious but I think there is some wiggle room for Religion in terms of our current scientific knowledge. The origins of the universe can be explained pretty well by the big bang theory, but it doesn't really explain how/why/where this extremely dense singularity came into being/where it was exactly. Perhaps someday we will understand more, but for now Religion can try to explain it. To think that there is NOTHING that our current scientific knowledge cannot adequately explain makes it seem as if we already know everything there is to know, which in itself is somewhat of an anti-science stance.
The funny thing is, religion still doesn't explain anything about the origin of the universe. Various religions are just different sets of made-up stories about it. We might as well just say we don't know and leave it at that. I'm fine with sci-fi and fantasy stories, but when you start basing your worldview on stories written a few thousand years ago, you're going to run into some serious problems.
Does not make them less responsible; but, does raise issues. Was the regulator told to go easy on them because of the large donation? Tim S.
The regulator was already being investigated by the administration because it had been discovered that they'd been going easy on them for years, as well as engaging in all sorts of conflicts of interest, such as taking gifts, having sexual relationships, discussing jobs with the companies they were investigating, etc.