Posted on 11/08/2005 4:17:17 AM PST by PatrickHenry
For the past six weeks, the debate over evolution and intelligent design has played out in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Today, Kansas gets the national spotlight back — and with it, the possibility of a federal lawsuit here.
“What’s going on in Kansas,” said Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, “is much more radical and much more dangerous to science education” than the contested decision in Dover, Pa., to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in public school science classes.
Intelligent design speculates that the world is too complex to have evolved without the help of an unknown designer — an alien, perhaps, or God. Such teachings in public schools, the ACLU says, violate constitutional restrictions on the separation of church and state.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, when asked if the new science standards Kansas is expected to adopt today could be vulnerable to litigation.
An official with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which helped defend the Dover school board, said Kansas should be able to avoid legal scrutiny. Casey Luskin said the standards here critique evolution, but they don’t promote intelligent design.
“It’s definitely a different issue in Kansas” than in Pennsylvania, Luskin said.
‘More radical’
It’s a different battle, perhaps, but definitely the same war. Many of the participants in the Pennsylvania trial are veterans of the Kansas evolution debates, and are keeping a close eye on today’s meeting of the Kansas Board of Education.
Miller, for example, testified in the Pennsylvania trial against intelligent design. He came to Kansas in 2000 to campaign against conservative school board members the last time the evolution debate flared up here.
The new Kansas standards literally change the definition of science, he said, so that natural explanations aren’t necessary to explain natural phenomena. That opens the door, he said, for astrology to be taught in public school classrooms.
“Is this what proponents on the Kansas Board of Education have in mind?” Miller asked.
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University scientist, wrote “Darwin’s Black Box” — a touchstone text of the intelligent design movement. He testified in Pennsylvania, and before the Kansas Board of Education when it held hearings on the science standards.
“I think having students hear criticisms of any theory is a great idea,” Behe said. “I think in one respect, it’ll mean it’s permissible to question evolution. For odd historical reasons, questioning evolution has been put off-limits. If Kansas can do it, it can be done elsewhere.”
More evolution?
Luskin agreed.
“In contrast to what everybody has said, Kansas students will hear more about evolution and not less about evolution,” he said. “This is a victory for people who want students to learn critical thinking skills in science.”
But Gunn noted that the vast majority of scientists believed in evolution as a proven explanation for the origins of life. The “handful” who don’t, he said, have resorted to making their case through politics instead of through traditional scientific methods.
“Do we teach both sides of the controversy on astrology in science class? Do we teach both sides of phrenology?” Gunn said. “This is not a scientific controversy, it’s a political controversy.”
Testimony in the Pennsylvania trial wrapped up on Friday. A ruling in that case is expected in January.
not at all - just call it what it is and don't treat me like an imbecile because i don't believe it.
Isn't it fortunate for us that life did not start purely by random? Isn't it good that complex molecules tend to spontaneously develop through energy inequality according to the 2LoT?
BTW, those probability calculations are misleading, wrong and useless.
I do. But perhaps you would like to tell me about them?
Hint: stay away from the creation websites; they are full of nonsense on this subject.
I teach physical chemistry at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level, and I can assure you, I suppress dissent. People who use equations that are different from those found in the p. chem. books; people who employ 'alternative' definitions of conventional units; people who do 'non-standard' mathematics; all of them are brutally identified with a red pen and punished. Particular egregious dissenters fail the course, and in many cases this can deny them a lucrative career.
so you're saying the scientific certainty of evolution is the same as the concepts of physical chemistry. and people say that i'm brainwashed.
The implication in this post is that you believe gravity is a fact and evolution is not. This shows an underlying misunderstanding of the terms fact and theory as well as a misunderstanding of the fact of evolution.
Simply put, evolution is the variance of allele frequencies within a population through differential reproductive success. This is a fact. It is an observation that allows us to develop data points. Evidence from biology, genomics, geology, anthropology, paleontology, astronomy and others give us additional data points.
In you analogy, this is the same as the observation of gravity in action. Fall from a height and you've provided a data point that can be applied to the development of a theory of gravity, the explanatory model of attraction of masses.
The theory of evolution (ToE) is also an expiratory model for the data points the fact of evolution provides.
In other words, a fact is a data point and a theory is an explanation.
no more meaningless than someone's assertion that it evolved.
Nicely put. Kudos.
When there are scientifically confirmed data that counter evolution some sicentist is going to get a Nobel prize and be very, very, happy.
Pseudo-challenges by Biblical literalists are not relevant.
Where I live, in the Canuck Bible belt, it is flatter than even Kansas.
Just plain wrong too. The 'Akiapola'au is a Hawai'ian finch that has convergently evolved to behave like a woodpecker, there being no true woodpeckers on Hawai'i.
Just precisely what is your problem with woodpeckers?
How are they any more unusual than, say, armadillos, staghorn beetles or stinkhorns?
The ACLU has found a wedge issue to drive into the religious community. Like any other doctrine, literal Genesis creationism isn't shared by all Christians, the Catholics in particular don't have a problem with an old earth and evolution.
The idiots in Kansas and Dover charged out on a useless, impossible mission they were certain to lose. And in the end they've given credibility to the ACLU when they claim that all Christians are knuckle dragging idiots no better than the Taliban.
I hate the ACLU, but it's the IDers who are handing victories to them by fighting an impossible fight.
Yes.
and people say that i'm brainwashed.
Mostly just ignorant. It's a curable condition, if you have the desire.
Methinks thou hast taken a lawyer's manipulations to heart too honestly.
HIND LIMB MORPHOLOGY, PHYLOGENY, AND
Yes, woodeckers evolved. I'm offline for a few hours so this will have to do for now:
CLASSIFICATION OF THE PICIFORMES
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:wzzJtQs_dpEJ:elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v098n03/p0466-p0480.pdf+woodpecker+ancestry+evolution+phylogeny&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Piciformes are woodpeckers.
Kinda technical, unike creationist websites.
Which facts are ther that 'do not support it'? There are areas where knowledge is incomplete and physical evidence is in short supply, but as far as I've been able to find, no evidence against the ToE.
"the evolutionists act like these scientists don't exist and that these facts don't exist and, when confronted with the fact that they do exist, their response is to silence them. doesn't sound like science to me. i would think evolutionists would welcome the debate.
Scientists may or may not welcome debate, depending on how tired they are from disabusing the notions of the uniformed, but the definitely do what they can to make a name for themselves by trying to bust current thought. If any of this 'evidence' against evolution had any validity, it would be taken up by a number of mainstream scientists in an attempt to enhance the recognition of their own contribution to science.
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