Posted on 10/28/2005 3:29:36 PM PDT by Crackingham
A bitter debate about how to teach evolution in U.S. high schools is prompting a crisis of confidence among scientists, and some senior academics warn that science itself is under assault. In the past month, the interim president of Cornell University and the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine have both spoken on this theme, warning in dramatic terms of the long-term consequences.
"Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation," said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3.
Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his "state of the university" address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by "intelligent design" which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed. Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. "When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers," he said.
Adherents of intelligent design argue that certain forms in nature are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must have been created by a "designer," who could but does not have to be identified as God.
In the past five years, the scientific community has often seemed at odds with the Bush administration over issues as diverse as global warming, stem cell research and environmental protection. Prominent scientists have also charged the administration with politicizing science by seeking to shape data to its own needs while ignoring other research. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have built a powerful position within the Republican Party and no Republican, including Bush, can afford to ignore their views. This was dramatically illustrated in the case of Terri Schiavo earlier this year, in which Republicans in Congress passed a law to keep a woman in a persistent vegetative state alive against her husband's wishes, and Bush himself spoke out in favor of "the culture of life."
The issue of whether intelligent design should be taught, or at least mentioned, in high school biology classes is being played out in a Pennsylvania court room and in numerous school districts across the country. The school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, is being sued by parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union after it ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it. The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternative theory and recommended students to read a book that explained the theory further.
Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller believes the rhetoric of the anti-evolution movement has had the effect of driving a wedge between a large proportion of the population who follow fundamentalist Christianity and science.
"It is alienating young people from science. It basically tells them that the scientific community is not to be trusted and you would have to abandon your principles of faith to become a scientist, which is not at all true," he said.
On the other side, conservative scholar Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, believes the only way to heal the rift between science and religion is to allow the teaching of intelligent design.
"To have antagonism between science and religion is crazy," he said at a forum on the issue last week.
When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known.
"When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known"
If you don't require any evidence to teach something then there are not two sides but thousands.
That's why science prefers teach the stuff that's backed up by evidence.
"When you don't know, you don't know. Teach both sides, the truth will someday be known"
If you don't require any evidence to teach something then there are not two sides but thousands.
That's why science prefers teach the stuff that's backed up by evidence.
I don't know about the US, but government schools are certainly hostile to science, indeed to education and children altogether.
"It is alienating young people from science. It basically tells them that the scientific community is not to be trusted and you would have to abandon your principles of faith to become a scientist, which is not at all true," he said.
"alienating young people from science..." - You mean the way "evolution" has been alienating people of faith for many years now?
No.
Is the US becoming hostile to science???
Not at all, it IS however, HOSTILE towards the Christian faith.
So basically that is a "yes" evangelical conservatives or anybody else who insists, despite evidence to the contrary, the bible is literally word for word true must become hostile to science.
But it does not help for science to become hostile back. Scientists need to recognize the combination of sincerity and fear behind the anti-science movement and act appropriately - by stressing that science doesn't claim to know how life originated and that nothing in science exclude the possibility of intelligent design.
On the other hand you don't compromise on know facts like the earth being billions of years old and more complex life evolving from simpler life.
Sure it does. Genomic evidence strongly supports common descent, and shows features that are hard to reconcile with design, intelligent, or otherwise.
Science is also discovering more and more about how life originated.
"You want to teach me there's no God!"
That's another source of the anti-science sentiment - ignorance about science - attacking things that science doesn't say and yet blaming science.
Nothing evolves like Evolution.
It became a science how? By designing experiments that are repeatable? You don't have to believe in ID in order to have deep suspicions about the TOE.
When the two best things the US had going in the general area of science, the Apollo program and the Supercollider, were killed off in one generation, it was obvious that the US was, sooner rather than later, no longer to lead the world in science.
"Sure it does. Genomic evidence strongly supports common descent, and shows features that are hard to reconcile with design, intelligent, or otherwise.
Science is also discovering more and more about how life originated."
Science has not proved where the very first life came from.
How does common decent (shared common ancestors), which is a fact, eliminate the possibility of the process being guided somehow?
" Having said that, there is no shortage of prominent scientists who us their public platform to mock the very idea of God."
They are entitled to mock or not mock but they cannot say they have proved there is no God.
Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in evidence.
How does common decent (shared common ancestors), which is a fact, eliminate the possibility of the process being guided somehow?
Guided how? Which physical law would you like to suspend?
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