“Darwinists have rejected Texas’ effort to “encourage critical thinking by students.”
You mean, their freedom to make a decision on their own? I’m so tired of this PC BS and persona that Christians are cramming their beliefs down the throats of individuals.
In reality it’s the other way around...evolutionary and Godless theories have been running rampant in the schools since the 1960’s!
The problem, as always, is that alternative hypotheses ARE welcome in science.....but at the moment, there are none.
Your predicted rebuttal will be “Intelligent Design is an alternative hypothesis.” To head this off, I simply ask this: what predictions about the origins, evolution, development, or current state of life does the hypothesis of Intelligent Design make that are DIFFERENT than the theory of evolution? If the answer is “none” then it is simply not a valid scientific theory, and has no place in the science classroom.
If it makes all the same predictions, then it is the same theory. In most circumstances, it wouldn’t particularly matter what you call a theory, as long as the predictions are all the same. For instance, if the theory of gravity had its name changed to “The Theory OF Shnewglarvs” I couldn’t particularly care less. However, calling the theory of gravity “The Theory of Magical Attraction” changes its connotations by using a word with charged meaning; Magic.
Even if ID has all the same predictions as evolution (which, as far as any IDers have been able to tell me, it does) it basically IS evolution. However, just like gravity and magic, Calling the driving force of evolution “intelligent” is misleading if it predicts that things will simply obey physical laws. Evolution is a function of basic natural selection, which obeys all known physical laws and chemical reactions.
If you wish to posit that the reason any of these laws and reactions EXIST is because someone (something?) intelligent designed them that way, I suggest you take your views to the philosophy classroom. However, science is about predictions and data, not philosophy.
Until Intelligent Design comes up with (and successfully tests) some predictions that are DIFFERENT than evolution via natural selection, it is simply philosophy, and any attempt to insert it (WITHOUT peer review) into scientific curriculum is circumventing the entire scientific process, allowing it an unfair advantage granted to NO other scientific theory. THIS is why people are upset about beliefs being “crammed down people’s throats.”
In science, unlike in common parlance, theories are about accounting for the data, not sitting back in an armchair and wondering about why things happen. If your theory can’t account for the known data any better than evolution, it’s not a valid theory. If you can find some data to add to the datapool that MAKES it better than evolution, I’d love to see it.