Cornell, and the rest of the Ivy League, has been attacking rational thought decades.
Posted on 10/21/2005 10:26:36 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University Interim President Hunter Rawlings III on Friday condemned the teaching of intelligent design as science, calling it "a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
"Intelligent design is not valid science," Rawlings told nearly 700 trustees, faculty and other school officials attending Cornell's annual board meeting.
"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights," Rawlings said.
Rawlings, Cornell's president from 1995 to 2003, is now serving as interim president in the wake of this summer's sudden departure of former Cornell president Jeffrey Lehman.
Intelligent design is a theory that says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. It has been harshly criticized by The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which have called it repackaged creationism and improper to include in scientific education.
There are brewing disputes involving evolution and intelligent design in at least 20 states and numerous school districts nationwide, including California, New Mexico, Kansas and Pennsylvania. President Bush elevated the controversy in August when he said that schools should teach intelligent design along with evolution.
Many Americans, including some supporters of evolution, believe intelligent design should be taught with evolution. Rawlings said a large minority of Americans — nearly 40 percent — want creationism taught in public schools instead of evolution.
For those reasons, Rawlings said he felt it "imperative" to use his state-of-the-university address — usually a recitation of the school's progress over the last year — to speak out against intelligent design, which he said has "put rational thought under attack."
Cornell, and the rest of the Ivy League, has been attacking rational thought decades.
I have to agree with him and I hope more - both on the right and the left - speak out.
Why are these guys meddling in religious matters?
Hahaha! And I condemn the Cornell president. So there!
>>>"a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
Sounds like a dictionary definition of modern environmentalism.
I completely agree with Rawlings on this.
He is an idiot!
"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights,"
Game over kids. Science can't be based on mystical metaphysics.
Am I missing something? When did Big Bang and pseudoDarwinism become "valid science"?
Guess you didn't get the memo :
"Intelligent design has nothing to do with religion."
Theory of Evolution is pockmarked with holes and unscientific yet it's being taught.
Hunter Rawlings III? My word, what a pish-toshy name.
When do you reckon Hunter last went to a church service?
ID is an effort to say that "if we don't understand it, then God did it". But if God did it, then why would science study an issue further. ID is a fire extinquisher on science.
People used to think that lightning was the direct hand of God. It's good that Franklin didn't leave it at that.
Humans have studied the natural world for 200 years now, and have not found scientific evidence of God yet. There's no reason to think that the current edges of our scientific understanding define where the natural world ends and God begins.
So why are they talking about it?
"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights,"
And how does Darwinism fit into this? There are no experiments to conduct, there is no renewed testing...there is no test of Darwinism. There is a collection of historical evidence in the fossil record, and there is evidence in biology etc. Intelligent Design looks at the same record of evidence and comes to a different conclusion than Darwinism. There is just as much science in developing the theory of Intelligent Design as there is for Darwinism. Darwinists believe the weight of the evidence points to chance and natural selection, ID folks think otherwise.
Rawlings is an idiot...but what do you expect from Ithaca?
That's got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Stop and think about it? How dumb do those ID fruitcakes think we are? I'll bet you that if you look a little deeper into their operation (follow the money), you'll find radical jihadists and Moonies and the like behind their agenda to dumb down science in our schools. I'll bet you!
So is our understanding of how gravity works, yet there's no doubt that gravity happens, and no doubt in science that evolution happens.
and unscientific
No, it is not.
yet it's being taught.
Good.
The problem is that it is not being taught as theory but as a natural law. Unlike the founding fathers of this country, these Ivy league relativists have no room for a supreme being in their lives.
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