Posted on 04/11/2006 10:34:58 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Intelligent design goes Ivy League
Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory
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Posted: April 11, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Cornell University plans to offer a course this summer on intelligent design, using textbooks by leading proponents of the controversial theory of origins.
The Ivy League school's course – "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" – aims to "sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole."
The announcement comes just half a year after Cornell President Hunter Rawlings III denounced intelligent design as a "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
Proponents of intelligent design say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. Supporters include scientists at numerous universities and science organizations worldwide.
Taught by senior lecturer Allen MacNeill of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, Cornell's four-credit seminar course will use books such as "Debating Design," by William Dembski and Michael Ruse; and "Darwin's Black Box," by Michael Behe.
The university's Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness club said that while it's been on the opposite side of MacNeill in many debates, it has appreciated his "commitment to the ideal of the university as a free market-place of ideas."
"We have found him always ready to go out of his way to encourage diversity of thought, and his former students speak highly of his fairness," the group said. "We look forward to a course where careful examination of the issues and critical thinking is encouraged."
Intelligent design has been virtually shut out of public high schools across the nation. In December, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' gave a stinging rebuke to a Dover, Pa., school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class to hear a one-minute statement that says evolution is a theory, and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."
Jones determined Dover board members violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on congressional establishment of religion and charged that several members lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs.
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
"About a 1000 centuries ago they must have had some real gas guzzlers."
You posted that to me like you think I said human emmisions were causing global warming. My position is that global warming is real whether its human caused or not.
I oppose the Kyoto treaty because its enormously expensive for something that has not been proved.
On the other hand if the temperature were to continue to increase at the current rate or greater for the next 30 years it will break the record for the last 5,000 years.
Me:"It sends the message to new generations of students that science is decided by school boards, societal pressure and faith."
AndrewC:"No it doesn't. It sends the message that free people get to decide what they teach their children."
Thats not a contradiction - it can send both messages. In the end, society at large decides the pace of scientific advancement, not a small minority of scientists from the previous generation.
The only advantage the Chinese have over us are sheer numbers, and more individual drive because they are a "hungry" people. Whereas Americans have become lazy. This has nothing to due with one's views on TOE.
Teaching that "evolution is just a theory" is a technique for destroying all science just to throw out evolution. It teaches that "theory" is just guesswork, and "what do those scientists know, anyway?" And it is wrong!
You can't have it both ways. The methodology is the same in evolution and in geology and in a host of other fields. The fact that some, for religious reasons, attack evolution as broadly as they do is a detriment to all of science.
You can't have it both ways.
If a person disputes science, he/she should bring scientific evidence, not philosphical/religious belief to the discussion.
What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
"OK, you have now made even more unproven and unjustifiable claims. How is TOE superior science when it is not proven and contradicts other proven science?"
I'm not focused on TOE. Scientific theory is determined by the scientific community. It is interference in the teaching of scientific theory based on non-scientific concerns by non-scientists that is the problem.
(If a person disputes science, he/she should bring scientific evidence, not philosphical/religious belief to the discussion.)
Agreed. The belief that evolution could be by design is also held by some on these threads.
My dispute is with Orionblamblam's need to make statements like this.
(People can indeed choose to believe in utter superstitious rubbish. And in a way, that's for the best. We need stratification in society. While some will choose to discover facts and will go to the stars, some will choose to disbelieve facts, and will serve a useful role scrubbing toilets and sweeping the streets, and wondering why it is that their prayers aren't curing their diseases.)
Another time to scrub a toilet bowel placemarker
No, quite the contrary. I believe you and I agree in this area. I was just using your post to address the subject. Just how did the folks back then cause the global warming?(being sarcastic again).
I do not see the anti-science message. I love science, but I see its limitations. I just don't believe that Darwinian arrogance is a fruitful path.
"No, quite the contrary. I believe you and I agree in this area. I was just using your post to address the subject. Just how did the folks back then cause the global warming?(being sarcastic again)."
My apologies for misunderstanding.
So if scientists teach ID, the problem is solved. Now if we can just get scientists to stop teaching about God.
Perhaps you could explain exactly wherein it is stated that the origin of the first life forms was to be included with the theory of evolution. Demonstrating that the initial proponents of the theory -- including the theory's author -- had an interest in also explaining the origin of the first life forms does not mean that the origin of the first life forms was a part of the theory.
Science can't explain the origin of life. If it could, wouldn't the evolutionists have presented a different one once their primordial soup theory was discarded as being impossible?
What does science explain?
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