Posted on 04/26/2005 2:15:00 PM PDT by gobucks
A Christian-oriented law center says it may sue Gull Lake Community Schools unless two middle school science teachers are allowed to include an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution in their classes.
The specific theory involved is called "intelligent design," which holds the universe is so complex it must have been created by an unspecified higher power. Critics say that is a secular version of creationism, which regards God as the creator of life. They say teaching the theory in public schools violates the separation of church and state.
The Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center says that for two years teachers Dawn Wendzel and Julie Olson included intelligent design theory in seventh-grade classes which also featured Darwin's evolution theory. But early this school year, the center says, the district superintendent ordered the teachers to stop teaching intelligent design and ordered related textbooks to be boxed up.
Thomas More president and chief counsel Richard Thompson said Thursday that violates academic freedom to teach and students' right to learn about controversy over evolution theory. He wrote a letter to the district's school board last week, and said he'll take the case to federal court if the district does not respond or take action by April 28.
Intelligent design theory is accepted by a growing number of credible scientists, the center says. Thompson said that the Gull Lake teachers stay away from religion in their teachings.
The center has said comparing intelligent design to Darwin's theory of evolution pits science against science, not science against religion.
"Just because a theory happens to be harmonious with religion does not make the theory unconstitutional," Thompson said.
The American Civil Liberties Union disagreed in a federal lawsuit filed last year against a school district in Dover, Pa. The Pennsylvania district may have been the first in the nation to require students hear about intelligent design in science classes.
The Thomas More Law Center also is defending the Pennsylvania district.
Lisa Swem, a Lansing-based attorney for the Gull Lake district, said she is drafting a response to the Thomas More letter.
The district has formed a committee — including the two teachers and the superintendent — to examine the issue and make a recommendation to the school board, perhaps by the end of the academic year, Swem said. Gull Lake schools are in Richland, about 10 miles north of Kalamazoo.
"The approach being taken is steady and calm, taking a look at the issue without being influenced by emotions," Swem said.
Thomas More Law Center says it is a public interest law firm with a mission to defend traditional family values and the religious rights of Christians. The center does not charge for its services and is supported by donations.
That is base line intent designed for kids ... making sure all disharmonies with religion are trumpeted, and all harmonies silenced.
Mr. District Superintendent ... please, keep up the good work. Keep boxing up those evil textbooks. Home Schools are better for the kids than the schools in your 'district', clearly, and decisions like this will just add to their growth. (Michigan, of course, needs all the help it can get.)
"The [Intelligent Designer] moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform" is not science.
"The center has said comparing intelligent design to Darwin's theory of evolution pits science against science, not science against religion."
Nonsense. Intelligent design is NOT science because it is impossible to carry out an experiment that could potentially falsify the theory. Any scientific theory must possess the property of potential falsifiability; this is the cornerstone upon which all progress in science rests. Intelligent design is an article of faith, one that I personally find appealing, but it is absolutely not science. People who find their religious faith threatened by science need to do some introspection about the nature and depth of their relationship with God.
Equally it is impossible to carry out an experiment that could potentially falsify the theory of Evolution. So at worst it would be pitting non-science against nonsense!
Please identify the experiment which could falsify the evolution theory. If you cannot, please officially renounce it as unscientific.
Wow, great minds think alike, I guess!
I am using experiment in a broader sense. Scientific theories enable us to make predictions which can be verified or refuted either via experimentations in the lab OR observations in the field which are independent of the original formulation of the theory. The important point is that the prediction is made independently of the observation that is being used to potentially refute the theory - regardless of whether the observation is from an experiment or from the field. So for example, suppose I observe an interesting phenomenon in the lizards in Zogolandia which leads me to develop a theory of natural selection/evolution upon which I predict similar phenomenon in the birds of Foofoogeria. Later I can visit Foofoogeria to ascertain whether my theory gave correct preditions. My theory is scientific in the sense that it possesses the property of potential falsifiability. On the other hand there is no experiment or observation that one can make that could potentially falsify intelligent design simply because intelligent design does not enable one to make any sort of predictions about the observable world. This doesn't mean that intelligent design is false, it just means that it is not science.
In any case, if the fact that intelligent design does not meet even the most basic requirements to be considered science (i.e. enables one to make predictions which can be tested either via experimentation or observation independent of the original formulation of the theory) is not sufficient, then I would like to pose challenge: please give a scientific definition of intelligence. Do you think an amoeba should be considered intelligent? What about a computer? Before we can even begin the address the issue of intelligent design in a scientific manner we need to have a scientific definition of intelligence.
I like that request, a 'scientific definition' of intelligence. It is revealing.
For it presumes that the ability to define ... or cut out if you will (a finished painting after all is a definition of an infinite number of things cut out of the possibility of the final work) ... can be accomplished 'scientifically'. That is, presumably, without bias. Scientists, however, are the most biased creatures, with the possible exception of the socialist democrats on Capitol Hill.
But defining is holy work. Holy ... a greek word in the original that in part means to 'seperate'.
OK, i've only had a minute to donjure this up, so it may need a little refining, but as a first shot here goes:
Intelligence = the ability to distill principles, rather than absolute rules, from experience, and the ability to apply those general principles to new situations not completely like the originals, with a reasonable likelyhood of success.
So, a computer, no. (I have no experience with AI programming, but with traditional procedural programming, no intelligence, only situations that have been foreseen by the programmer). An amoeba, I don't know, I'm not much of a biologist. I don't know how adaptable they are or if they can learn and formulate principles. I doubt it.
Your explanation sounds good in theory however in practice those that believe in evolution always alter their theory to fit the facts whenever they come across any evidence that does not fit the current predictions of the theory. The theory of evolution is just too malleable to be of any real use as an emperical scientific theory. Whatever does not fit is explained away. Evolution and intelligent design are certainly not emperical sciences on the same level as physics or chemistry.
In fact both theories have parts that are falsifiable and parts that are unfalsifiable.
I think that 99% of those that brush the theory of intelligent design off as a bunch of religious nonsense in fact have not really sat down and objectively looked at it. Thats just my gut feeling - I may be wrong.
Using your own requirement that "the prediction is made independently of the observation that is being used to potentially refute the theory" - One such prediction of the Theory of Intelligent Design is that the fossil record should show that life appeared on earth abruptly. If there are systematic abrupt appearances of complex life in the fossil record and there are systematic gaps between these records than the prediction made by intelligent design is true. If there is fossil evidence of a systematic non-abrupt appearance of life and of systematic transitional forms then the theory has been falsified.
Do you know any "scientist" that will objectively look at the fossil record and decide which is true?
"I think that 99% of those that brush the theory of intelligent design off as a bunch of religious nonsense in fact have not really sat down and objectively looked at it"
It would help if there was actually something to sit down and look at other than scientifically invalid attacks on evolution.
For some reason, "intelligent design" advocates have a really hard time telling the difference between actually stating their own theory and attacking a different one.
"Your explanation sounds good in theory however in practice those that believe in evolution always alter their theory to fit the facts whenever they come across any evidence that does not fit the current predictions of the theory."
The process of science is that we devise an theory, test it, reject parts of it, improve it, test it again, and so on. This is the way science progresses. Every scientific theory is an approximation - there will never be a perfect scientific theory - even the theory of gravity is an approximation: Newton's theory is quite accurate and stood its own for 100's of years and then came Einstein who added some small corrections. Doubtlessly some scientist will later find a better theory than Einstein. I don't think any reasonable and knowledgable biologist would claim that evolution/natural selection as it stands is a perfect and complete theory, just as no physicist would claim that the current theory of gravity is perfect and complete.
"In fact both theories have parts that are falsifiable and parts that are unfalsifiable."
If any part of the theory is potentially falsifiable then the theory is potentially falsifiable. I don't see that ID is potentially falsifiable and here is the reason: no matter how the process of life develops, one could always claim that the apparent random perturbations and fluctuations involved were actually influenced by some supernatural power and they only appear random to us because of their intractable complexity (actually this is what I tend to believe.) To be more concrete, say you toss a coin 100 times and you see: H T H H H T T H T T...It appears random to you but in fact it may have been subtlely directed by God and contains a hidden message which is beyond both human comprehension and any computational analysis. This is entirely possible and there is not any scientific test that could rule this possibility out because there is no computable test which can determine whether something is truly random. What this means is that all the seemingly random events of the world may actually be directed, perhaps even deterministically, by God and we would never be able to test it scientifically. So what we have is a very strong version of intelligent design (i.e. everything deterministically controlled by God) and we are unable to test it due to the mathematical fact that there no computable test for randomness.
"One such prediction of the Theory of Intelligent Design is that the fossil record should show that life appeared on earth abruptly."
What do you mean by life and what do you mean by abrupt? It seems unlikely that we could ever determine what the first form of life was and therefore it seems that it would be impossible to determine if its appearance was "abrupt." If you mean complex life then there is the problem of defining what complex means and you also need to be precise about what you mean by "abrupt." I am not a biologist but I think there is significant scientific evidence that human beings appeared quite some time after the appearance of single-celled animals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.