Florida teachers shouldn’t have the right to teach “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution, writes Education Gadfly. The proposed “Academic Freedom Act” would let teachers “objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views” of evolution. Advocates believe “intelligent design” is a scientific view. Gadfly writes:
The “Academic Freedom Act” is an insult and fetter to principals, who will see their autonomy over school operations and personnel further diluted if the bill becomes law. They would have no way to discipline teachers who are, say, presenting to students inaccurate scientific information (”who says it’s inaccurate?”) or deviating from the state’s academic standards.
The bill also bans penalizing students for subscribing “to a particular position or view regarding biological or chemical evolution.”
So when little Johnny receives an “F” for an essay in which he has proclaimed the earth was created in a week, little Johnny’s teacher better watch out — the lawyers are coming.
Science is not supposed to be a matter of personal opinion.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone who works around kids could believe in an alternative to evolution.
Although, I have to say, there are days after dealing with disruptive kids that I question whether evolution has actually occured at all…
Bart, it’s not that hard to imagine when you take into account that a majority of Americans do not believe that evolution is a fact.
I think the number is 65%.
There was a Harris Poll last November that put evolution believers at 42% of American adults. This isn’t great, but it’s actually a few points more than the percentage that actively disbelieve in evolution. The “undecided” vote is about 20% and has been growing in recent years.
“Intelligent Design” is advanced as science by its promoters, but the institute George Gilder funded a few years ago that was supposed to come up with testable hypotheses based on Intelligent Design notions has produced nothing. I don’t see much likelihood this will change.
What I’ve always found odd is that Intelligent Design - at least as I’ve seen it explained - doesn’t hold that the Genesis account of creation is literally true or that the Earth is really only ca. 6,000 years old. It doesn’t even deny that evolution occurs, only that God had to be there at a few putatively awkward points to help poor Darwin get past some alleged rough patches. It seems, at best, a minor variant of the “God of the Gaps” (i.e., “missing link”) arguments that have been a staple of creationists since the time of William Jennings Bryan. That being so, I fail to understand the enthusiasm Intelligent Design engenders in certain religious quarters. It provides no real aid or comfort to Genesis literalists or “Young Earthers.” I don’t get the attraction this quite marginal doctrine seems to hold for self-defined fundamentalists as it seems to yield most of the religiously important ground to evolution up front.
Whatever else it may be, however, Intelligent Design is not a doctrine that can be described in any credible way as scientific.
Intelligent Design doesn’t deny evolution. It proposes that the process is in some way guided by intelligence–perhaps in setting the initial conditions, for example. It’s not a view accepted by most mainstream scientists but it’s hardly a stupid viewpoint.
Lots of scientists believe in God and believe that he somehow directs evolution, though most understand this as a religious rather than a scientific view. Many reasonable people see evolution and Genesis as compatible.
The intelligent design people are trying to see whether science can detect in life signs of intelligence. They’re willing to live or die by scientific standards, and they don’t seem particularly threatening to me.
Young earth creationists do reject evolution. Theirs is a strong religious view that doesn’t seem able to accommodate some of modern science.
I think science teachers in high school classrooms would do well to stick to mainstream science, though I would have little problem with them briefly talking about what Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents are saying, if they take care to represent it accurately, then getting back to what most scientists believe.
Part of the trouble in high schools is that lots of biology teachers, probably following the lead of biologists such as Richard Dawkins, are hostile to religion and don’t disguise it much. Dawkins is quite ignorant about religion and quite weak and fuzzy as a philosopher, but his arrogant atheism is not rare among science teachers–or so it seems to me on the basis of my admittedly limited experience with biology teachers.
Just tell the truth, both about what mainstream scientists believe and why they believe it, and how others view the questions.
The extreme hostility and dogmatism this topic provokes seems a problem to me. For a while I sided with the Intelligent Design people, not because I’ve studied the issues deeply or have any interest in believing anything except what is shown to be true, but because the rhetoric of the science people was so extreme, so full of ad hominem arguments, so dependent on appeals to authority that I suspected their arguments must be quite weak. They seem to me like dogmatists defending dogma more than truth seekers objectively reporting on what they know and now they know it and where the limits of their knowing are.
I think the way the science community has handled both the challenge from Intelligent Design theorists and the extraordinary politicization of the global warming debate has justifiably harmed their credibility. Nonetheless, science will, in the long run, correct itself if need be.
> I don’t get the attraction this quite marginal doctrine seems to hold for self-defined fundamentalists
Perhaps you’re under the impression that this an education or science issue? If so then the confusion is understandable. But it isn’t either, it’s a political issue and in politics if you can’t get what you want you get what you can.
The courts have made it repeatedly and abundantly clear that anything that smacks of Genesis won’t fly. Rather then give up on the opportunity presented by the public education system to proselytize kids the more pragmatic religious fundamentalists - probably utterly unaware of the irony of the course they’ve chosen - prefer to adapt.
Michael L wrote:
> The intelligent design people are trying to see whether science can detect in life signs of intelligence.
Come on, there’s nobody here but us chickens. Everyone on both sides of the issue knows that Intelligent Design is creationism delivered in a plain, brown wrapper.
“It proposes that the process is in some way guided by intelligence”
This is an untestable hypothesis, therefore, ID is not science, and does not belong in a science curriculum.
There are two issues here.
One is the relation between intelligent design (and the opposite proposition) and biological science. The question of intelligent design falls outside the realm of biological science but unfortunately evolution is often taught in such a way as to deny the possibility of intelligent design or to ignore the fact that we can address the question in a reasonable way outside the limited methodologies of natural science. We are educating human beings, not biologists. Random variation and natural selection are all that biology can offer us in the way of an explanation for the variety and development of life forms. This doesn’t satisfy any more than Newtonian physics satisfies as an explanation of basketball.
The second issue is what we do with the student who claims that the earth was created in 6 days. We have to understand that he believes this on the basis of the authority of people he knows, loves and trusts. Those of us who reject this kind of creationism should understand that most human knowledge comes to us in the same way including our knowledge of the natural sciences. We can expect this student to present the mainstream position of the scientific community accurately and summarize the evidence behind it. There is no need to give him an “F” for rejecting it and that would indeed be a kind of educational malpractice in a public school setting.
Ugh, as a former staffer for the Florida House of Representatives, I find this bill personally embarrassing. Oh well: it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
Let me start off by saying that any relationship between creationism and science is purely coincidental. Religion is all about belief; science is all about fact, or to be more precise the ability to carry out experiments to test the validity of a particular theory. One makes predictions based on the theory and tests to see if those predictions are correct. If so, then the theory remains as a valid representation of reality. If not then the theory must be modified or replaced with another theory that can be shown to be consistent with reality.
So how does intelligent design relate to the science of evolution? Intelligent design attempts to provide a reason for why life has evolved the way it has. There is absolutely nothing wrong with such speculation. However it is just that, speculation; it is not science. Science deals with identifying how thinks work and not why they work the way that do. If someone believes that God created the Big Bang (in the beginning God created the heavens and earth …) it is not up to science to dispute that belief. They are (or should be) mutually exclusive. If one wants to attempt to give meaning to life by believing that there is a greater force, i.e., God, who directs our existence that should not concern science in the least. However, those beliefs should not be taught in a science class. They should only be taught in a religion or a philosophy class.
I have never understood the why their should be so much rancor between fundamentalists and scientists when it comes to the Theory of Evolution. Of course I expected the fundamentalists to reject the Theory of Evolution as the work of the Devil or whatever, but I was surprised that the evolutionists should responded in kind. Creationism, other than stating the fact that it is absolutely wrong, should simply be ignored by scientists. Why should they waste their time arguing with people who cannot or more precisely refuse to understand the factual evidence? Basically by arguing with Creationists they in effect give them more credit than they deserve. Unfortunately there are militant atheists in the science community who are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists. They insist upon using evolution as a way of attacking religion. What the rest of the scientists should do is to tell these militant atheists to take their personal battles outside. Science should no more attack religion than religion attack science. It is not the job of a scientist to disprove religion. If a religion is inconsistent with science then let those religious people worry about how to explain away those discrepancies. That is their problem, not the problem of the scientists.
When it comes to Intelligent Design proponents, again there is no need for Evolutionists to get into a rancorous debate with them. The response should be straightforward. If Intelligent Design is a science, let these Intelligent Design “scientists†use it to make predictions. By testing these predictions they can determine if they are correct. Thus it is up to the Intelligent Design people to show that their “science†is valid, not the other way around. If an Intelligent Design proponent points out a weakness in some aspect of the Theory of Evolution that should not be a problem. If it turns out they were right, then of course that aspect of the Theory of Evolution should be modified/changed to fit the facts. A theory must be able to represent reality independent of where an objection comes from. Einstein spent a great deal of time trying to show that Quantum Mechanics was not a complete theory. However, all his challenges did was to strengthen Quantum Theory, because the proponents of Quantum Theory were able to show that his objections were not valid.
When it comes to Intelligent Design proponents, again there is no need for Evolutionists to get into a rancorous debate with them.
One would think so. But lots of evolutionists do respond with shrill rancor, quite like fundamentalists defending an orthodoxy. Their response has made me pretty skeptical of their position. When people have the facts on their side, they normally just give the facts.
Also, scientific theories go through stages of development and many activities that are accepted as real science don’t immediately yield testable hypotheses. The ID theorists are not trying to have public schools teach ID and they are not asking to have their work judged by other than normal scientific standards.
But they keep getting attacked with such statements as “everyone knows it’s just a cover for creationism.” Really? When you don’t like a position and can’t argue against it intelligently, just attribute a dark motive to those who hold it.
But when things seem strange, it’s natural for us to start trying to do psychology on our opponents, who must be mad.
For example: though I don’t care which theory advances, my sense right now is that the fervor against ID seems religious rather than scientific. Rarely does the controversy have much to do with science. So I suspect it’s a little religious war, springing not so much from the specific claims advanced thus far by the ID-ers, but by the larger inadequacies of Darwinism as a comprehensive answer to the question “what’s going on here,” and an unattractive and unscientific animus toward religious thought in general.
People who suspect Darwinism has huge flaws keep asking questions about why the fossil record so poorly supports the central claims of Darwinism (note I’m saying “Darwinism” and not “evolution.”) The ID-ers, as far as I know, don’t have testable hypotheses ready to “explain” such large phenomena as the Cambrian explosion, but such questions are on their minds. It seems to me that it’s the mere having of doubts about Darwinism that rile the Darwinists, along with fear and loathing that anyone might actually think religiously about anything.
I’ve “believed in” evolution my whole life and have never found it threatening to my religious beliefs, but I’ve run into so many Dawkins-like morons speaking nonsense under the flag of science that more and more I think of “science”–not the method but the cultural institutions–as just another tribe of zealots. I’m not there yet, but I do wish the real scientists would disown the partisans who speak for science while making all sorts of claims that go beyond what science has established.
I have never understood the why their should be so much rancor between fundamentalists and scientists when it comes to the Theory of Evolution.
Allow me to explain. The Theory of Evolution posits a transition, at some point remote in time, from non-living to living matter through entirely natural chemical proceses. At this point, said living matter began to variegate, diversify and complexify via the mechanism of natural selection (defined as survival when one’s slightly genetically different peers perish). Man, in this frame of reference, is simply one more animal species and shares significant genetic heritage with other animals both of current species and of those long since gone extinct.
The Biblical account of Creation in Genesis posits a creation in which humans are seen as an intentional special project by God having no necessary reference to other previously created forms of life. One of the new creations then disobeys God who reduces Man to a permanent Fallen condition that Jesus conditionally redeems much later by dying for the possibility of salvation for Fallen Man. Thus, if there was no literal Adam and Eve and no insubordination in the Garden of Eden, then the idea of Original Sin loses coherence as does the idea of redemption. Jesus will have, in essence, died and been resurrected to no purpose. Evolution as an explanatory framework for human origins, therefore, destroys the entire ontological/motivational basis of Christian belief. Hence the conflict.
Intelligent Design doesn’t deny evolution.
Quite so. Hence it is essentially worthless as a prop to biblical literalism.
It proposes that the process is in some way guided by intelligence–perhaps in setting the initial conditions, for example. It’s not a view accepted by most mainstream scientists but it’s hardly a stupid viewpoint.
No, it isn’t. It has been, though, a viewpoint characterized by a certain - how to put this nicely - almost gleeful assertion of lack of imagination on the part of its proponents. The normative statement of Intelligent Design is something along the lines of, “Look at the marvelous complexity of the human eye. Can you evolutionists propose some means of tiny incremental steps that would lead to something so functional, yet complex, in which every piece has to be there in order for the whole thing to work? I can’t imagine how that could have occurred except through divine intervention.” Substitute baterial flagellae or any other alleged “hard” evolutionary question raised by ID’s proponents for the human eye in the preceding statement and you have pretty much the entirety of Intelligent Design as a proposition.
The problem is that a self-confessed lack of imagination hardly constitutes a basis for proof of anything, especially divine intervention. Take the eye question. The trivial answer is to consider the simplest possible form of “eye;” some rudimentary biological feature that can do no more than reliably react when light of some given frequency band and intensity strikes it. Such an eye can’t “see” much in terms we could understand, but it could distinguish light from dark. There is an old saying that “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Any creature with a randonly created ability to distinguish light from dark - even poorly - has an enormous survival advantage over otherwise similar creatures who are utterly blind. Some now believe the massive species extinction known as the Cambrian Die-Off may be explainable precisely by this mechanism. Some lucky creature developed the ability to see slightly and his progeny rapidly ate everything else.
Some of the “how could this have happened” questions raised by Intelligent Design proponents have actually been of interest to evolutionary biologists. Working to answer these questions has led to some insights into evolutionary mechanisms and developmental pathways that might not have been investigated so intensely absent the skepticism of ID-ers. In essence, the biology community looked at the questions asked by ID proponents about specific features of specific creatures and collectively said, “Hmmm. Interesting question. Never thought about that before. Let me get back to you on that.” So far as I know, evolutionary biologists have now “gotten back” about all of the putative “hard cases” raised by ID proponents.
So, yes, ID is not “silly,” per se, but it is not successful on its own terms either and is also not, as noted, by me and others, science. No ID-er has yet formulated a way to scientifically test its central assertion. The peripheral questions ID has raised that are testable, or at least answerable, have all been answered in ways that eliminate divine intervention as a necessary mechanism of evolutionary change.
Part of the trouble in high schools is that lots of biology teachers, probably following the lead of biologists such as Richard Dawkins, are hostile to religion and don’t disguise it much. Dawkins is quite ignorant about religion and quite weak and fuzzy as a philosopher, but his arrogant atheism is not rare among science teachers–or so it seems to me on the basis of my admittedly limited experience with biology teachers.
Doubtless true to a degree, though my own high school biology teacher was an anti-evolution Catholic so go figure. Agree about Dawkins - quite an unpleasant man, really, and not just about religion-vs-evolution. He’s also a socialist and, thus, constitutes, all by himself, a self-refutation of the proposition that lack of religious belief is somehow equivalent to a state of having no irrational beliefs. As a non-evangelical atheist myself, I like to think of Dawkins as being my cross to bear.
Random variation and natural selection are all that biology can offer us in the way of an explanation for the variety and development of life forms. This doesn’t satisfy any more than Newtonian physics satisfies as an explanation of basketball.
Really? I’m perfectly well satisfied in both cases. As the philospher Jagger once put it, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some time you might find that you get what you need.”
The second issue is what we do with the student who claims that the earth was created in 6 days. We have to understand that he believes this on the basis of the authority of people he knows, loves and trusts. Those of us who reject this kind of creationism should understand that most human knowledge comes to us in the same way including our knowledge of the natural sciences. We can expect this student to present the mainstream position of the scientific community accurately and summarize the evidence behind it.
Asked and answered, I’d say. And good on ya, mate. That’s exactly what my wife - a high school biology teacher as it happens - explains on the first day evolution is presented. “You don’t have to believe it, but you do have to understand it.”
Perhaps you’re under the impression that this an education or science issue? If so then the confusion is understandable. But it isn’t either, it’s a political issue and in politics if you can’t get what you want you get what you can.
Salient point, sir. The political utility of achievements with no, or even negative, practical utility, is not to be ignored. My own favorite example is curbside recycling, imposed on most of we U.S. urban dwellers by now by “green” zealots in the name of saving the environment. So now, instead of the single weekly visit by a fume-spewing diesel garbage truck to haul away undifferentiated trash, I am weekly awarded three such visits, one to pick up each of the three types of trash for which my fair city now provides mandatory, color-coded containers.
You may well be correct, that, despite Intelligent Design’s manifest incompatibility with fundamentalist biblical literalism, certain politically obsessed religionists see political value in “counting coup” on their ideological enemies by forcing something on them, even if the something in question isn’t their first choice or very helpful, or is even actively harmful, to the putative core cause.
I think this is all a sham, by both Education Gadfly and the Florida representatives involved to garner a little press time. The Fordham people can claim they stood up for science and the facts, and the Republican sponsors of the bill can claim they stood up for the First Amendment rights of teachers.
Nowhere in any of the links did they present proof of teachers wanting to teach intelligent design.
Evolution as an explanatory framework for human origins, therefore, destroys the entire ontological/motivational basis of Christian belief. Hence the conflict.
Dick Eagleson, I guess I didn’t make my point clearly enough. I understood why fundamentalists were upset by evolution. What I didn’t understand was why the scientists should care what the fundamentalists believe. If the fundamentalists are going to willfully ignore the findings of science, there is no way though rational debate to change their beliefs. In other words calling someone a fool is not the best way of winning him over to your point of view.
Quoth Michael L:
Because there’s nothing to teach. What they want “taught” are baseless attacks on evolution, drawn directly from creationist literature (the origins of these things have been documented; we have its “evolutionary history”, so to speak).
Do the normal scientific standards call for publishing textbooks and lobbying legislatures to adopt them before generating research and putting work through peer-review?
Two words: “cdesign proponentsists”.
Read the history and decision in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District and see if you can still hold that view. It’s all on-line.
Engineer-Poet: I wouldn’t really disagree with what you’re saying. The proponents of ID–Michael Behe et al–have suggested that trying to get ID in the secondary curriculum is not a good idea.
But obviously there are lots of “proponents” who do push it and for whom it is a newly packaged creationism.
What I didn’t understand was why the scientists should care what the fundamentalists believe.
The scientists should care because in Texas (and maybe in Florida?), the fundamentalists are in control of the school board. In Texas, that means they get to dictate/choose what goes into the science textbooks. Texas is the second (or third?) largest market for textbooks in the country, so whatever our fundamentalist school board decides may determine what’s in your students’ textbooks.
“Creationism, other than stating the fact that it is absolutely wrong, should simply be ignored by scientists. Why should they waste their time arguing with people who cannot or more precisely refuse to understand the factual evidence?”
Scientists can not ignore the drivel that is creationism or ID when it is being foisted upon ignorant parents be equally ignorant school boards (most likely initially elected by the self same ignorant parents). School boards, not scientists set the agenda in public schools. Hence the very real need for the constant vigilance.
Many times the IDers and Creationists have had their chance to prove their case (most recently in Pennsylvania) and every time they fail. Yet still they try again in another venue. What to you expect the rationalists and scientists to do?
What I didn’t understand was why the scientists should care what the fundamentalists believe.
Well, one reason is that if enough people come to believe nonsense because those who know better adopt a pecksniffian attitude of ivory tower non-engagement, the anti-scientific politics will eventually dry up the grant money said ivery tower lives on. As was said about another knowledge-based endeavor, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
If the fundamentalists are going to willfully ignore the findings of science, there is no way though rational debate to change their beliefs.
Funny, I have the same problem arguing with socialists and for similar reasons. As the late Robert Heinlein once noted, “It’s pretty hard to reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into in the first place.” The point of arguing against nonsense is not to convince every last dead-ender zealot to see the error of his ways, but to keep the general public from joining his side.
In other words calling someone a fool is not the best way of winning him over to your point of view.
Quite so. That’s why Dawkins, et al, are such miserable public faces for the evolutionary proposition. People who seem unable to argue other than in this fashion are generally not nearly so interested in persuasion as they are in parading what they conceive to be their moral superiority.
Excuse me? Where have you been for the last 15 years!? ID has been doing nothing other than trying to get it’s “theories” taught in public school. They sure haven’t done any science to try and prove it at all. Where are their articles in peer-reviewed journals? Where are their experiments? Where is the actual science being done in their name? Nowhere because it is all a bunch of hooey that doesn’t deserve the airtime it gets but does deserve the constant opprobrium that it receives.
You know, I’ve come to a conclusion about this entire stupid debate.
ID is laughably stupid and wrong, just to get it out of the way. The modern theory of evolution’s explanatory power and fit with the evidence is so vast as to be effectively undoubtable.
But, you know what?
It doesn’t matter hardly at all what primary education teaches kids about the origin of man and of speciation.
I’d be happy with the topic not being mentioned at all. I’d even cope with mentioning ID as an “alternative”, though I’d prefer on principle that not happen.
Why? Because it doesn’t matter for pretty much any other purpose, much like teaching primary school cosmology.
If those kids don’t go to college and study biology, they’re never going to make a single decision about their lives or anyone else’s that hinges on the truth of evolutionary theory, nor is it going to destroy Science if they believe something stupid and wrong.
And if they do go to college and study biology, they’re going to find out right quick, aren’t they?
The amount of energy and mental effort spent attacking creationism is far, far, far out of proportion to the “threat” it poses, which is almost zero.
“So when little Johnny receives an “F†for an essay in which he has proclaimed the earth was created in a week, little Johnny’s teacher better watch out — the lawyers are coming.”
As it should be. Part of the “free exercise” of little Johnny’s religion may involve not denying the words of Genesis as he understands them. Schools are not there to change kids’ mind on their religion. They’re there to teach and test kids on facts.
By facts I mean things like “We found these fossils that look alike, and many scientists believe that the species are related” not “We found these fossils that look alike, and the Correct conclusion is that the species are related.”
We worship the scientific method, but really it can only prove an idea wrong; it can never prove that it is correct. (See the Wikipedia article on the scientific method if you think I’m unduly skeptical of the scientific method.) I’m a mathematician, and the scientific method is pitifully weak compared to mathematical proofs. All it gives us are guesses — very helpful guesses, but still just guesses.
One thing I’ve noticed here is that bias informs everything we say in this debate. The scientific method demands that before we can prove something, experiments must be observable, repeatable and predictable. Yet some of you scientific dogmatists speak as if evolution has been proven. The scientific community has set itself up as the arbiter of truth, much as the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo. There is too much rancor in your arguments, gentlemen, not to notice the anti-God bias that animates your viewpoint. Why don’t you just admit that you largely embrace evolution because it would be too odious for you to believe there is a Creator, and that believing would put you in the same camp as those ignoramus Christians you detest so much. Just admit it.
“So when little Johnny receives an “F†for an essay in which he has proclaimed the earth was created in a week, little Johnny’s teacher better watch out — the lawyers are coming.â€
This isn’t an issue if the question is framed correctly. Don’t ask “How did the Earth form?” Instead, ask “According to the theory we discussed, how did the Earth form?”
As it stands, while there is a general conceptual framework for evolution and the creation of the Earth, there are still multiple theories competing over individual details or mechanisms.
ID and the Modern Thewory of Evolution answer different questions anyway. The first answers “why?” and the second “how?”, which is why many individuals have little trouble accepting both - one out of scientific theory, the other faith. Science is about the how anyways, not the why (which is in the dreaded realm of philosophers - ick).
Why don’t you just admit that you largely embrace evolution because it would be too odious for you to believe there is a Creator…
The possibility of a Creator is one thing, but ID’s implied necessity (and therefore proof) of a Creator _is_ rather odious.
No it doesn’t. The scientific method can’t prove anything. Instead, it subjects hypotheses to repeated tests. If the hypothesis passes the tests, it gets accepted conditionally and gets called a law or a theory. And, any new hypothesis that seeks to replace the old law or theory has to explain everything the old law or theory explained as well as something else that the old theory or law did not explain. This is as true of physics as of biology. For example, Newton’s Laws of Physics were eventually shown to fail to predict behaviour in some circumstances. Einsten’s Relativity Theory predicted everything Newton’s Laws did, and some other things besides. If the Law of Evolution is to be replaced, then it will need to be replaced by some theory that explains everything the Law of Evolution does and something else besides.
Secondly, observable and repeatable experiments in evolution have been performed numerous times. See http://biology.ucr.edu/people/faculty/Garland/ExperimentalEvolution.html for a list of labs doing experimental evolution.
This is a weird hypothesis. Numerous Christians embrace evolution. For example, over 11,000 clergymen signed a letter with this statement:
Source: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun.htm
Now if all these clergymen only embraced evolution because they didn’t want to be put in the same camp as the Christains they detest, why on earth are they clergymen in the first place? Surely, if you don’t want to be associated with Christainty, not being a Christain minister would be the first step?
And clearly any atheist or agnostic who embraces evolution in order to avoid being classified as a Christain deserves the name ignoramus, as they are clearly ignorant that this embracing simply aligns them with over 11,000 Christian clergymen.
Now I’m going to carry out an experiment of my own. I predict that if I ask BadaBing to provide a hypothesis that Intelligent Design or Creationism makes that could be falsified in a scientific experiment, he/she is not going to provide one. BadaBing - what hypothesis does Intelligent Design theory or Creationist Theory make that could be disproved?
Tracy W:
I just spent thirty minutes responding to your excellent post, but when I hit the submit button, all was lost in cyberspace. Shoulda typed it on Word first. I’m not going to do it over at this time of night, but I do want to thank you for the time and effort you put into your answer. I appreciate it, as well as the link you provided. Maybe tomorrow I’ll give it another shot if this topic is still here.
Quoth Sigivald:
Do you think that biology shouldn’t be studied in primary education, then? “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.†(Theodosius Dobzhansky)
It appears that what you want is already going on… and it’s not good. A proper biology course would have evolutionary connections noted everywhere they are appropriate. Instead, they are left out of the main text to keep the creatonuts from going ballistic, and shunted off into one chapter that is often skipped.
Would you teach English and omit the parts of speech? Would you teach algebra to students without giving them a grounding in fractions? That’s what’s already going on in biology, and you’d make it worse.
Hogwash. People do it every day, and it’s costing us in both money and lives. To give just one example: livestock farmers in the US feed antibiotics to their animals to increase weight gain, and the evolutionary adaptation of the pathogens is turning our best human drugs useless. Such feeding has been forbidden in Europe, with salutary results. What’s the difference between Europe and the US? The public there isn’t marinated in bogus objections to evolution.
Or using antibacterials in all sorts of every-day products, so that practically every bug we might need to fight is already adapted to them. I can’t even find liquid hand soap without them these days. Soap itself works great without them; it breaks down cell membranes and dissolves the oil film bacteria stick to, so they’re washed away. Stupid and wrong enough for you?
You’re assuming that they’ll be able to go to college and study biology after years of training in resistance to the facts. They’ll be about as successful as illiterates are in research programs. And while China becomes the biotech hub of the world and the US sinks into poverty, the god-bothering tub-thumpers will congratulate themselves on how many souls they saved from that Eeeeevilutionary theory.
I may not be able to stop it, but there’s no way in hell I’ll agree to it.