I have an idea to settle this intelligent design controversy

Why not teach it in a class called pseudoscientific bullshit? It can be a subject of its own.

You can teach all the great fundie RW lies. Play Bush speeches, feed 'em Fox News, and teach about great stuff like intelligent design...and hey why not teach astrology as well? Hey maybe that guy that speaks to dead people can teach that part - John Edward (not the VP candidate)!

I'm sure some professors bring this up as a pseudo-science issue. But, of course, high school is a different issue.

I look forward to my horoscope every morning! :D

The best thing to do to disprove ID is simply ask the students "If the universe is only 6,000 years old, how could we see light from stars and galaxies that take millions of years to reach us?"

I see you are now sharing the wisdom of Steve with others.

What a glorious day!

:)

:D

in 1978, when I was a college student. (He's a leading young-earth creationist.) This was after a debate staged between the creationists and a biology prof at the college I attended. His answer: The Bible says that God created the lights in the sky for instruction and to mark the seasons for man, and it would hardly suit his purpose if we couldn't see them, so he must have created the light in transit. I found this answer to be oddly reassuring, since I had just come out of the fundamentalism of my mid teens, and I knew then and there that that religion no longer had any hold on me.

By the way, during the debate, the pro-creationist side had slick professional slides, and a well-honed folksy style that registered with the audience (hordes of church-goers that filled the ballroom). But the biology prof spent his 45 minutes explaining radiometric dating -- complete with logarithms, writing as he lectured on an overhead projector. I can tell you this, from long experience as a college mathematics professor: most people don't understand logarithms.

I should note, however, that young-earth creationists now claim light was much faster a few thousand years ago, so we can see galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away even though the universe is only 10,000 years old.

I should also note that young-earth creationism has largely been supplanted by the new intelligent design movement, which acknowledges deep geological time and even (for at least some ID writers) descent with modification from simple anscestral forms.

Its very easy for a well prepared Creationist to wipe the floor with a Scientist defending Evolution in a public debate. Such debates are held before largely uninformed members of the public. To throw a scientist off one merely needs to toss out a seemingly innocuous observation that requires a complex answer for the Scientist to deal with honestly.

The public bases its descisions on who wins a debate not on the merrit of the facts. They will never gain sufficient information during the course of a debate to come to fully educated conclusions. Instead they form their opinions based on their feelings of who did a better job of addressing their concerns. And the creationists are typically better prepared for this sort of argument.

"The public bases its descisions on who wins a debate not on the merrit of the facts. They will never gain sufficient information during the course of a debate to come to fully educated conclusions. Instead they form their opinions based on their feelings of who did a better job of addressing their concerns."

to hold a "trial" of evolution, calling witnesses to testify and to be cross-examined. I think that would just be a media circus. They held a meeting to discuss the process last night.

... Steve Case, chairman of the committee revising the standards, questioned how the witnesses would be selected and if they would have expertise in the area they covered. He also said many scientists would feel uncomfortable speaking in a trial format.

Plus, Case said many of his colleagues see the outcome as a forgone conclusion. It is widely expected that the state board will deviate from the science standards written by Case's committee as board members did in 1999. That year, the board removed references to the age of the Earth and macroevolution, or changes from one species to another.

"That is the perception in the science community: because of the politics, because of the controversy, it is a rigged hearing," Case said.

http://www.cjonline.com/stories/022405/loc_science.shtml

DIFFERENT creation myth.

Then we'll see who wins.

:(

Unfortunately science has traditionally been on the side that tends to humiliate and humble humans. Most of the major discoveries have toppled us from positions of grandeour. Where once we were the center of the universe science pushed us further and further away until we became an obscure speck in the distant arm of a minor galaxy.

Where once we were the special creation of god science pushed us off that pedestal and relegated us to just another species in the animal kingdom.

Critical thought is seldom popular. It doesn't tell us what we want to hear. It strips away the glitter and the veneer to reveal whatever truth happens to lay below. In a popularity contest there is not competition with those that wish to create an illusion of grandeour. Which would you rather be, a primate species struggling for survival with no one but ourselves looking out for us and mortality nipping at our heals? Or the beloved creation of an omnipotent being of pure goodness who truly wishes to bring us into an eternal heaven?

Science is not a democracy. It is not a popularity contest. It is not open to a vote of those not invested in the study of it. Yet just today when I logged on I was offered a vote on MSN to decide what the leading cause of the autism outbreak was. As if the public has the ability to diagnose complex social and neurological conditions?!?

I expect the worst.

... see, for example, Kant's nice phrase concerning the "starry heavens above".

There's plenty of dignity left for people - even if we're not the center of the universe. There's absolutely nothing to the idea that we're JUST another species. That's hardcore-reductionist mantra that next to nobody buys.

LOL - come to think of it, that what IDers want everyone to think about people who believe in evolution - that evolution destroys any dignity that one might try to attribute to man. We (evolution people) shouldn't let them do this. While evolution and religion are 100% antithetical, evolution and dignity are most definitely NOT.

Personally I find the discovery of our nature to be a wonderous journey. But science has always been plagued by those that claim we are unweaving the rainbow. This term came about when Newton discovered the properties of light by passing white light through a prism. It revealed the colors of the rainbow. Critics claimed that Newton had destroyed the beauty of the rainbow by unweaving it.

But the truth is of course the opposite. The rainbow maintains all its beauty. And from what we have learned vast new arenas of beauty have been introduced to us that we may never have discovered without unweaving the rainbow.

It is the fear of and the need for a sense of specialness that creates the rejection of science. Science punctures our hubrous. It does not allow us false pride. And unfortunately there are many that cling to these things and demand they remain intact.

... but I'm with ya....


(and it's "hubris", btw)

...the neo-con policies. They market them to the least common denominator, no substance but a lot of flash. Just like they were trying to sell them a brand of beer.

...how many of those do you ever see in high schools?

The religious right does not simply want ID or Creationism taught in school. It has been offered comparitive religion courses that would be able to talk about such ideas. But this is simply not what they want.

They want nothing less than having their doctrine taught as the truth. They don't want to share the stage. They don't want it taught as a comparitive belief. They want it defined as the unquestionable truth.

"Why don't we just teach it in a class titled, 'Psuedo-scientific bullshit?'"

You know, "You mean the tapes were rolling when I said that?"

It would be great to see them lose their shit over it.

and it would rock!

The MSM would be flipping out and various people including DLCers would try to make him resign.

It is philosophy, and should be taught as such. If it wants to be called a science, I invite it to make a refutable claim...

How about home economics?

--IMM

or if that's too specific for the IDers, a literature course.

I'd like them to get comparative religion, but the fundies hate that.

--IMM

Here's a link to a website that posts papers on Intelligent Design and where you can discuss it with the big boys instead of continuing on with your circlejerk:

http://www.iscid.org/

--IMM

Of course, it would just be a two-day, intensive course that would prepare them to be experts in their field. Like the J-school Gannon went to. ;)

The Dragon In My Garage
by
Carl Sagan
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floates in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

More: http://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm

I get some strange lookes from the Hankians.

Americans are so stupid these days that they *actively seek* to become even stupider. ID is just the latest, greatest incarnation of that phenomenon.

As children, they all needed a healthy dose of *real* science, math, and history courses - and not the crap that passes muster in our schools.

You see it on DU all the time - at least 1/2 of "us" think ID is perfectly reasonable. Few if any of "us" have any serious background in realistic subjects like math & science. ID can *totally* win this war, because it's a war of attrition.

Love it.