pig

i am deeply concerned about all of you posting in this thread.

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tecoyah

You super birthday powers of Piggyness have no effect on me, I am immu....imm...

God Created Life, God is Great, God is Good, let us thank him for this Food

raveneye

On a more serious note, arguments by ID supporters tend to be 99% attacks on evolution, from various directions. So we can ask: can you analyze these attacks profitably within a science course, say a high school biology class in a public school?

Well let's look at some of them. The most fundamental attack is the Argument by Design, which has been around for centuries. This is a big subject, take a look here:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/design.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument

This isn't all theology, there is some important biology here: Darwin wrote his book Origin of Species partly as a rejoinder to the argument from design, as did Dawkins his book Blind Watchmaker. So you could spend considerable time in a science course describing exactly how natural selection can produce highly adapted "designed" structures like Darwin and Dawkins did. This would be a scientific rebuttal of the ID argument from design. And it would be a very interesting course. It is perhaps a little ironic that Darwin himself did a damn nice job of demolishing ID already way back in 1859 (see for example Organs of Extreme Perfection in Chapter 6).

Other attacks are various. There is really nothing in science that ID supporters or creationists aren't willing to distort, misinterpret, or lie about apparently so that you'll think ID is the only alternative left standing. There is tons of stuff. Check it out here (scroll down to Biology):

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

You could try to address all these arguments in a biology class I suppose, and it would still be a biology class, not theology. It would take more than one term unless the students are already pretty knowledgeable.

It would be exasperatingly inefficient way to teach biology though, because you're spending most of the time talking about other people's ignorance of the subject rather than the subject itself.

And of course it wouldn't matter how many of these claims you debunk, you still can't kill ID because it's not falsifiable. So what's the point? Many of the points still argued today were originally demolished by Darwin over a century ago, yet they still live on like zombies.

It might be worthwhile to give students a related term project though within a normal biology class, like requiring them to use their biological learning to debunk some of these claims. That would be reasonable, but probably not what the ID supporters want

Willravel

Tec, I thought I remembered reading that you were of the Druid faith.

tecoyah

There was a time....yes. I have tried on many suits over my life, mostly as a means to understanding. In truth I have found nothing in any of them to give me a faith in God. Instead I have taken a bit from each, and come to make up my own direction for faith in a higher power.......The universal existance of us all, and the ability to recognize and accept that life just.....IS.


That way I dont need to hate anyone

pig

i think that would an interesting section raveneye...but the proponents of ID would go apeshit if you had a 3 week mini section in a highschool bio class explaining how the ID concept is superfluous, although certainly possible.

equal time to all theories! present both sides of the 'debate'!!!

pretty soon you'd be weighing people against ducks...

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Taltos

That's really fallicious reasoning and outside the scope of the topic, isn't it? I mean, the topic is about whether or not ID should even be mentioned in a classroom, whether you can have a paragraph about it in a book, or whether we should blacklist the information, regalating it to a form of mysticism akin to the moon landing.

On another level, perhaps more importantly, it's an argument about whether or not a devout religious person should be allowed to hold a position of scientific authority, regardless of his academic achievements or prior record.

And on yet another level, it's about the absurdity of the election system in the Kansas education system. (Surely this was changed by now...?)

It's not really a topic about ID, and it's certainly not a topic as to whether or ID is better than mainstream evolution theory.

Honestly, I think we've talked way more about it here than anyone would have thought to put in the science books or course lectures.

__________________
Though we are not now
That strength that in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven;
That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and flesh
But strong in will
To seek, to strive, to find
And not to yield.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

archetypal fool

My first reaction to this was "Absolutely not." Not in the topic of a real science, to which the devout religious person might be biased towards because it defies their faith, not their scientific authority. Proponents of ID have very little scientific authority, if any at all. They're the ones keeping this debate from being closed, for no other reason than it defies their faith. I see no evidence for ID, nor do I believe there will ever be, and not because of my lack of religion, but because it's science, not faith. Mind you, I'm speaking strictly within the confines of evolutionary biology, and in no way am I implying that religious peoples aren't intelligent, but in this case, there's bias, a variable which shouldn't play into scientific realms.

__________________
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet

Martian

Wait, what?

The original post and the topic as I've understood it so far isn't just about intelligent design in schools. It's about intelligent design in science class. Religion is not science and does not belong there. Nobody's advocating censorship here, just recognizing what the appropriate time and place is.

And on the second point, which I don't see as relevant to the current discussion but will address anyway, what does one have to do with the other? Albert Einstein firmly believed in God, claiming the He doesn't play dice. Stephen Hawking as well has expressed a faith in God. Many scientists hold to specific religious beliefs, which is fine so long as it doesn't affect their work.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

tecoyah

Dilbert1234567

would you want a section of holocausts deniers in your history class? how about the guys who don't think we landed on the moon? history belongs in the history classroom, and science belongs in the science classroom.

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Willravel

ID doesn't really stand for intelligent design, it stands for irreconcilable deism. All tenured members of the biology departments at the nation's 50 top-rated universities agree 100% that life on Earth developed from single-cell organisms through evolution. The Vatican accepts evolution. Most protestant denominations accept evolution.

This is a simple matter of theism bleeding over into areas where it probably doesn't belong, at least in the for it's taking. Most Christians believe that evolution is scientific fact and that god is responsible for natural law (in other words, evolution was god's idea). A few misguided Christians have incorrectly assumed or been misled into believing that the Bible is somehow against evolution.

I'm saying that not only does ID have no place in the classroom, I'm saying it has no place ANYWHERE. Creationism should be taught in church and evolution in classrooms, and their bastard love child ID belongs in a historical blooper reel.

Infinite_Loser

I don't see what the big deal about teaching ID in school is. Simply because you're being taught it doesn't mean that you have to believe it. Quite simple, isn't it?

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pig

well, i'd say the fact that a school is supposed to teach 'facts' while educating our children, in line with accepted knowledge in the field of study germane to the classroom, and that ID has no factual basis is a rather good reason not to teach it. shall we make a list of things we could teach our children about that they don't have to actually believe in? do you want all that taught as well?

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Willravel

If you were a science teacher, would you teach the children you're responsible for about how Pangaea was once habited by Hobbits and orcs as scientific fact, backable by fossil records and dna testing?

Science is for science class. Religion is for bible school or church. I can respect each of those as being important and separate, or they can be combined without negating one another necessarily. My dad, a pastor, believes in both god and evolution. I respect that. ID is for IDiots. Only a fool can look at carbon dating and say, "Oh...that's god testing us. The Earth is clearly 6000 years old."

Dilbert1234567

should we teach that the holocausts never happened to please the holocaust deniers? the only thing that belongs in our schools is the truth, if there was serious debate that the holocaust did not happen, it would be given time in the history classes, just like ID, there is no serious debate of it's authenticity, thus it is not taught.

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"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

archetypal fool

Just a quick interlude, and merely for the sake of accuracy, I'll add that neither Einstein nor Hawking is a theist. Einstein was an atheist, and his references to "God" were merely a way to generalize the workings of the universe ("[God] doesn't play dice," referring to his doubts on quantum physics and the fabric of the universe).

Hawking...No one's sure about. From what I've heard, and the things he says, and what his ex-wife says about him, it's implied that he's an agnostic, leaning slightly towards atheism.

__________________
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet

Martian

I might concede Einstein - I was admittedly short on time when I posted that and used his references to God in his writing as a basis for the premise that he held to a religion. Hawking has publicly claimed an affiliation with Christianity (not specifying a denomination) and also stated that he doesn't see any irreconcilable contradictions between his work and religious faith. He may have changed his mind on that in recent years (I haven't read any of his writings more recent than mid-nineties, and I should imagine that a scientists belief structure would be more fluid than most due to the nature of their work and the necessary thought processes that go into it), but as of what I last heard he was a marginal deist.

And all of that is really beside the point, which is that there's absolutely nothing that prevents a scientist from having a deistic worldview. The fact that most of them don't is simply a by-product of the hyper-rational thinking required to succeed in any scientific field.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

ProfessorMayhem

That depends on what you mean. ID is a religious viewpoint, and scientifically unsound. It may have a relevant place in some sort of comparative religion or social studies class, but by the standards of science if falls way short.

Then should we devote equal time to alchemy in regards to chemistry? How about magic as an "alternative theory" to physics? Should we devote any class time to Holocaust denial in history?

roachboy

ok wait: what's with this assumption that different disciplines operate without contact with each other? you cannot seriously believe that history operates without reference to politics, philosophy, literature, visual culture, etc., or that the sciences operate without reference to philosophy, sociology, politics, etc..

you think you can define where history starts and stops? go for it: i'd be interested--certainly more interested in that than in the question of under what possible circumstances id can be taken seriously.

as for revisionist asswipes: i have had a couple in courses that i have taught--i dont really care if they are present or not in principle--fact is that their positions are so easily demolished that it is not really much fun to have them around--it's not like they bring an interesting perspective into play, really, and this because the center of such revisionist horseshit is generally racism and that the people who adhere to these indefensible positions are almost inevitably simple racist fucktards, they generally act as though their positions are not falsifiable--this because these folk treat their racism operates as an a priori, you see: a matter of faith, a cherished object the contemplation of which they enjoy--and so it gets transposed as an axiom which they will use to dismiss anything and everything that would cause their positions to the troubled. so evidence--clear, uncontroverable, unavoidable evidence that their position is not worth the breath they expend to say it--is dismissed--and the way they typically dismiss it is to avoid the evidence altogether and instead to impute some fatuous category like "jew-lover" to the source of that evidence.

the problem with the last few posts is in the making of a parallel between id/"creationism" and revisionist views of the holocaust. in the latter case, the evidentiary situation is obvious. these positions are simply false. there is no room for speculation about them. they are simply false. in the former, the question at hand is much more complicated and the arguments to be made are themselves more open-ended. because there *are* interesting questions that can emerge through debates on this--like what exactly a scientific theory is, what the relation between a macro-scale scientific theory and history is, what conceptions of causation underpin id assumptions regarding evolution (and it is here that the id/"creationist" position is so weak as to not hold up under scrutiny AT ALL...the notion of biological systems that opponents of evolutionary theory use is a simple tranposing of a superficial notion of mechanical causation onto biological systems---the complication in this is that many of the proponents of evolution do the same thing...but evolution can be understood as obvious if you adopt a complex dynamic systems model for thinking biological systems...but this same position creates all kinds of trouble for not only people who are committed to id but also for folk who adhere to any worldview rooted in a determinist ontology...)

and--again--taltos' argument above that to oppose id/"creationism" is to oppose christianity--or relgiious committments in general---is simply idiotic.
it presupposes that the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant verbal tick of referring to themselves as "christians" as if the term only applied to them was somehow true. it isnt. and because it isnt, his entire argument falls in. it requires no further discussion. it doesnt hold any water.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Taltos

I must have missed that when reading his posts. He said that? Wow, what an ass.

Well... they sort of score a point here, although it's an odd one. At high school, level, yes, the different disciplines are seperated, and the emphasis is on the distribution of solid facts underlying the basic concepts and terminology of each discipline. I hate this.

The general understanding seems to be that the basic high school structure, as they are, are required in higher studies and to a certain extent this may be true, but I've found that most college instructors at the freshman level have to train their students to "unlearn" a lot of high-school habits. High schools are designed to produce workers for the occupational professions, not to encourage thinkers and leaders.

Furthermore, studying the humanities (philosophy, humanities, visual culture, etc.), while seeing as critically vital in most public colleges and universities, tends to be severaly downplayed in high schools, unless you are fortunate and skilled enough to find yourself in the honors and AP classes.

I, myself, have been involved in setting up classrooms for children in participation with my college and local orphanages where the emphasis is on a more "academic" setting, delving deeply into inter-disciplinary issues, analyzing current events from different perspectives, and focussing on reasoning and debate rather than rote memorization. I've found that many of these 10-year olds hold their own in these discussions better than many college students, and attack complex issues enthusiastically.

Fortunately, this has been changing over the last several years and seems to change more and more. While I encourage this change, and my current stance in this topic isn't so much in favor of ID as it is against censorcism in classrooms, I don't particularly think ID should be the excuse to implement the changes in high school structures, so the current structure does have to be considered for purposes of deciding the classroom curriculum.

__________________
Though we are not now
That strength that in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven;
That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and flesh
But strong in will
To seek, to strive, to find
And not to yield.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

roachboy

i was bouncing off the implication of this (the second part in particular)
i was working from memory, which sometimes fails me i guess.
i mischaracterized your position.
mea culpa.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

pig

taltos, i'd guess he was referring to this part, but i don't want to put words in roach's mouth.

regardless, i like the cut of your jib. education reform, perhaps, would be a topic for another thread? i guess tec can specify that a bit in context of this thread. i certainly don't want ID used a sacrificial lamb in order to get cross-disciplinary studies into highschools. as i said earlier, i'd love to see some sort of intro to philo class offered in high schools as a part of the gifted or ap courses...

edit: i see that roach beat me to it. mea culpas all the way around.

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tecoyah

seems this thread could use a change of direction at this point, and would neatly tie into education reform if prodded. I see problems however in attempting to create yet another unfunded mandate, all the while expecting overwhelmed teachers to meet regency testing standards. Eating a huge dinner while sitting on a broken chair might be a bad Idea.

pig

seriously...i completely agree tec...i'm somewhat amazed that anyone still goes into teaching public schools anymore...all the bs they have to put up with in some of these areas. i don't think it would be possible in the general class settings, and that's unfortunate. i think it would have to be a unit that was taught within a framework where the kids were already sort of outside the general class settings...its been so long since i was in highschool, i don't even know if the gifted programs get to do all the cool stuff we did back in the day because of the no child left behind stuff..and then you've got the poor school districts. whole different problem.

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Taltos

This is the problem with using words like "ID" and "education reform". They're great for communicating a plethora of ideas and for identifying large groups of people, but they are absolutely terrible for any reasonably practical debate.

I don't think anyone here (except for the mentioning of introducing an Honors/AP Philosophy course) has mentioned "creating yet another unfunded mandate" in our discussion about "education reform". What we've been discussing is censorship and whether or not there should be restrictions about what can cannot be taught by teachers and textbooks in regards to evolution and the scientific views of the origin of, well, everything.

If you read the article that was the original subject of this topic, it talks about ideas that we haven't even discussed yet, and doesn't make mention to ideas that we have.

1) The article under question does not call for a new course curriculum to teach ID.
2) The article under question does not call for a mandate requiring the instructors to teach ID.
3) What it does do is expand the restrictions on what can be taught, allowing material that could not previously be introduced in a science class.
4) People are upset that an unpopular candidate was allowed to become a supreme authority in science education "by default".
5) People are upset that a person is allowed this esteemed position of scientific educational authority even though he is a creationist. (Or IDist, a makeshift term that I find particularly amusing.)

There's also a potential #6 not related to the article but relavent to the discussion, "6) The current situation can cause instructors backlash and trouble for instructors if they mention ID in the classrooms, or make public known that they personally are in favor of the ID ideology." Since I'm the only one to mention this though and no one else cares to discuss it, it's not really on topic.

Much of the contraversy in the discussion comes from people insisting that #3 above will "open the door" to #1 and #2 above, in terminology that vaguely reminds me of the red scare and how we should not "open the door" to hostile communist ideas).

#5 also strikes me as a bad position to hold, because the implication is that he won't (or can't) 'do his job' but will instead abuse his position to put forward his own personal agenda. Proponents of this view tend to suggest that allowing for #3 is just the first demonstration that proves #5 correct, though I disagree.

There also seems to be a side issue here, unrelated to the article but important to the discussion, as to whether or not scientific classrooms should teach controversial topics that have not been adopted as mainstreams facts. I am unsure enough in my position that I have refrained from discussing this, the question being largely irrelevent to my case (since I don't hold to the position that ONLY facts can be mentioned in a highschool science class, or to the position that highschool children are too young/ignorant/whatever to make value/fact decisions on their own if all alternative viewpoints are presented and weighted in an academic environment). (I'm working on the premise that highschool is an academic environment, which I may not actually agree with, but don't want to discuss it on this thread.)

This is a summary of the topic as I understand it as it relates to educational reform, intelligent design, and the original article posted (along with my opinion on these issues). So it's not really about whether or not we should have educational reform. It's more of "this thing has happened, and how should we react?" It's more of a question of setting values and agendas for future practical decisions rather than deciding if we have funding for new mandates, or what kind of mandates we should have.

__________________
Though we are not now
That strength that in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven;
That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and flesh
But strong in will
To seek, to strive, to find
And not to yield.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

tecoyah

pig

taltos, my suggestion would be the following; if you want to take on educational censorship, work on getting the joy of sex or the kama sutra taught in health class. the problem with ID isn't simply some censorship issue; it's not at all like refusing to teach kids about something like, i don't know...birth control in sex ed, and instead telling them only about abstinence. we know that birth control / condoms work and do what they are supposed to do. on the other hand THERE IS NOTHING TO SUPPORT THE FUNDAMENTAL DEITY PRINCIPLE UNDERPINNING INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN A SCIENTIFIC SENSE. therefore, to teach it like it's science is WRONG in a scientific setting.

thus, if educational censorship is your beef; i'd suggest picking something that can be rationally defended on the ground where it will be taught, and frankly i'd pick something which doesn't appear to be a sneaky way to violate a core principle of our secular society. in my opinion, it would be as though i had a strong celtic family history ( i do ) and my grandfather was a little nuts (he was) and that he claimed to be able to dowse for water. now, if science class was talking about geology and the difficulty of finding clean water in new mexico, should i be able to get with my dowsing buddies and force that dowsing be given equal time with ways of finding water accepted by the us geological survey, or taught as though they were just alternate 'theories' of water finding? hey kids! make your own choices!

of course not! there's no proof to it other than the fact that i believe in it. which doesn't make it scientifically valid. that's pretty much the reason the scientific method was formulated; so you couldn't state things as 'facts,' without going through a tedious process to make sure you weren't concluding things based on personal bias. this ID shit is just a way to try to get rid of that whole pesky research and verify thing, because for some whackos that's just become inconvenient.

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roachboy

taltos: i do not see the basis for your censorship claim in the first place. so far as i can tell, the term "censorship" used in this context is a rhetorical device that functions to wedge the question over over over into a territory that it does no occupy. most of the debate at this point is really over whether you are going to be allowed, in the context of the thread, to shift the question in this direction. if you are not allowed to make that shift, it is because the arguments that you are presenting do not really make the case that there is any censorship. they are simple assertions. to demonstrate them, you make basically 2 moves.
1. you define censorship in a very vague way.
2. you work via analogy (x is like y).
3. the analogies are to do most of the work of defining censorship as you are using the term, and the situations within which it functions.
4. you go back to arguing that id is no better or worse than any other type of theory and so to not teach it is a form of censorship.
5. then the move is "and i oppose censorship. dont you?"

you can see all these if you unpack stuff like this:

so an interesting possibility for applying your logic would be: protestant fundamentalist schools should be required to teach thje work of alister crowley. they should take crowley's work seriously and give it the status of a "controversial topic that has not been adopted as mainstream facts." to not teach crowley is censorship. i oppose censorship. dont you?

as an explanatory theory of human evolution, id is worthless.
sure you can play the game of locating logical parallels in scientific method that rely on the application of notions understood as axiomatic, and say that these axioms amount to matters of faith--and in a way the parallel is correct--but it does not follow that therefore all types of axioms are equivalent.
if the defense of id moves through some (mis)reading of contemporary philosophy of science, it seems that something got erased along the way. what can function as axiomatic does so not because it is transcendently true (nothing is, least of all a signifiers given content by a dubious metaphysics) but because communities of agents accept them as legitimate as a function of their professional training, modes of thinking and operation, etc. intelligent design IS NOT accepted by any of the legitimate scientific communities that are concerned with either interrogation of biological systems (legitimate here in the sociological sense). period.

what the defenders of id do, then, is a kind of public-relations endrun: having no hope of getting their shabby theory accepted as legitimate science, they issue what amount to press releases that work the types of claims embedded in statements like that quoted above. that should end the debate.

but it doesnt, and explaining why it doesnt is NOT an epistemological matter, NOT a matter of the nature of scientific method as over against its intellgient design correlate/parody--it is a POLITICAL question pure and simple. the POLITICAL issue is whether fundamentalist protestants have adequate cultural power in particular areas to reshape the terms of legitimate (in the sociological sense) debate such that (a) their presentation of the scientific community and the dominant theories concerning the development of biological systems can be confused with fact and (b) within that to displace the question of id as scientific theory onto grounds parallel to those which you have outlined.

so at issue here is NOT anything about the transcendent value of scientific method and its definition, but rather the extent (and limits) of the cultural power of ONE (rather crude and uninteresting) version of christianity. the limits of the purchase of claims for id are the limits of the ability of that community to control the terms of debate.

variant:

in responses to your posts, you have been treated to a range of definitions of scientific method and a series of confessions of faith in that method. outside a context where the PARTICULAR version of christianity controls the debate, it ends there.

there is nothing you can say to these arguments, simply because what you are running into hierarchy of disciplines (reflected in the hierarchies of statements about them) particular to a different socio-cultural context. in that context, id looses. it will loose every time.

that is looses is NOT censorship: that it looses reflects the simple fact that id has not been and cannot be presented as a series of arguments that people find compelling outside of a very particular frame of reference. id is therefore NOT a legitimate scientific theory that is being suppressed unjustly-----it is not a legitimate scientific theory at all. the explanation for this is sociological first, then theoretical (the relation between these is circular).
but that's all there is to it.
the debate is over.

there are a host of conceptual problems that attend the philosophical underpinnings of darwin--most of these follow from the historical situation darwin occupied and the extent to which he simply inverted dominant conceptions of history and biology in his own work. so the claim would be that darwin did not go far enough simply because of when he was writing and the fact that he is a product of his historical circumstances--just as anyone else is. so pushing through these problems would push evolutionary theory entirely outside the purview where id would have shit to say about ANYTHING--because the formal symmetries between certain aspects of evolutionary theory and the crap that is id would disappear

(e.g. the assumption that all of evolution followed from a single moment....why single, why not multiple? why does it not make sense that there were any number of origins, any number of trajectories?)

but the fact is that this is not a theoretical discussion, and so to go into them would amount to a threadjack.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Taltos

Please, if you have time, go back and read the article and related articles. There are only three issues presented in them:

* Kenneth Willard is becoming the president of the State Board of Education by default because there is no one to run against him. (This is due, not to a lack of candidates, but because the laws prohibit new candidates from running after a certain date, even if all the other candidates have dropped out of the race.)

* Kenneth Williard has a history of supporting policy friendly to Intelligent Design. He voted to abolish some of the restrictions preventing some material from being introduced in the classroom. (That definition is summarized from CNN.COM, a link that I posted earlier. The article quoted says that he voted on legislation that included intelligent design in the classroom, which doesn't seem to be true. I think there's a world of difference between saying "we must include intelligent design in the classroom" and "teaching concepts like intelligent design should not be restricted".)

* People want to oppose Kenneth Williard's rise to presidency, although there's no legal prescident for it. He has done nothing wrong or illegal and has been very active within the State Board of Education.


What is this if not a case for censorship?

People want to shut this guy up because they don't believe what he does. They feel someone with his beliefs rising to power and influence, even though there is nothing about this guy's personality, history, or agenda, that suggests he would abuse his position.

Personally, I don't think it's a fair election and that's the only reason I would oppose the issue.

This really isn't a matter of whether or not ID is scientifically valid. People want to make it the issue as a straw man argument because its easier to attack and people can get behind that emotionally easier than they can get behind an effort to reform the legal election system of the state board. It sells more newspapers.

__________________
Though we are not now
That strength that in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven;
That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and flesh
But strong in will
To seek, to strive, to find
And not to yield.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

roachboy

that effectively dovetails with the claim i have been making from my first post in this thread that this is not really a philosophical question at all---it is political and within that sociological (as the first generally devolves into).

further, outside a particular sociological/political context, the question of the validity of id is moot.

so i dont really understand what is being debated here any more.

as for the political question playing out in kansas: if i lived there, i would oppose the guy too. the censorship claim would mean nothing to me--no more than it means anything to me here--because i dont find the arguments that there is censorship to be compelling.

i dont think this result (that i dont find the arguments compelling) follows from your arguments per se, taltos: i think you are working with shaky material and have done the best you can with it. i just dont buy it. it is perfectly reasonable for folk who live in kansas to be horrified by the outcomes of an unfolding of electoral procedures that are in themselves legally proper.
ultimately the problem lay with the fact that folk were asleep at the switch, and willard was not.
so the people of kansas will probably have to live with this result and work through other chanels to limit the damage he might do if he begins using his office to impose id as in the kansas schools as if it were science, when it isnt.
and such dissent/opposition is perfectly legitimate.
to dissent is not to advocate censorship. it is what is usually referred to as an aspect of a healthy democracy. and it'd be nice if there was one in the states.

anyway, you are confusing dissent and calls for censorship.
i am not really interested enough at this point to speculate as to why that might be because of the thread. maybe in another one, we can return to it.
but this thread is finished, so far as i am concerned

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pig

no. taltos

you missed the point of the thread, i'm afraid.

this is the OP

this is not about fucked up voting protocols, or whether kenneth miller can be president, or whether he voted to remove "some" restrictions on "some" material from the classroom. (and those are might big fucking 'some's, btw)

its about ID and how it might be taught in a classroom, what that would mean, and whether it makes sense. the article was used to anchor the point of the OP. i'm fine with discussing the election protocols of a school district in wherever the fuck this happened, but that's not the OP. if you concede that ID is invalid scientific concept with no basis in verifiable scientific reality, i guess we can ask tec if he wants to move the thread to focusing on this one guy up in wtfth.

edit goddamn it roach. quit beating me to the punch. and i see you've already full force moved to the second point of discussion, and answered it too. fuck fuck fuckedy fuck fuck fuck. yeah, if some science-dowser wanted to head up my local school board, i'd try to get him out too.

'oh well, he's the guy on a technicality. guess i'll tell johnny to catch up on his snake handlin'. yes son, dinosaurs ARE god's way of testing your faith. i'm so glad you learned that in school today.'

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Dilbert1234567

this is no more censorship then making sure holocaust deniers don't get equal time in a history class.

furthermore, schools are paid for by taxes, by the people, we've got this funky thing called separation of church and state, where no religion can be given precedence over any other. since ID is a religious invention, and not based on science, it can't be taught in the schools as science. you are welcome to believe ID, you can teach your kids about it, but public schools must stick to science.

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archetypal fool

My friends, this is why we can't allow religious teaching to have any weight in science.


I'm a man, and yet I want to cry

EDIT: I just found out that the web site is satire (thank goodness), but the prospect frightens me none-the-less.

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Dilbert1234567

yeah that's fake, but this oen is sadly real

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?n...d=385210&rfi=6

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jorgelito

Supposed to, but "facts" are relative. I still remember my old social studies book that talked about the "races" and how negroes were sex crazed. My astronomy text book is now hopelessly out of date because the old "fact" of Pluto being a planet is no longer valid. Oh man, don't even get started on the history books, the "facts" contained therein are fodder for war....

So yeah, "facts" really have no bearing here.

I think the better argument would be to keep religion in its own classroom and science in another. Seems reasonable to me. If people want to bring it up or mention it then good, they can have a nice debate in class.

But it is still imformative to mention that Holocaust deniers exist. So you could still feasably mention that an alternative theory called ID exists etc...

Holcaust denial debates are terrific in class and a great learning tool. I can't even count how many times I've experienced Holocaust denial discussions in class from the 8th grade on.

Likewise, ID would bring an interesting element to the debate.

I strongly disagree that religious people should be banned from teaching positions. I find that position to be highly idiotic as there is no basis to make that assertion.

My father is a devout evangelist and a highly respected professor (of science) at elite universities. According to the prevailing logic, he should then be barred from teaching? I disagree.

Here's the best part: My father, the devout religious man, believes in aliens.

Willravel

I'm sorry, but you just went from 0-100. Some history books are wrong, therefore it's okay to teach something we know is wrong? That's a rather dangerous fallacy. The idea would be to see the problem of mistakes in history books and try to bring FACTS back, not introduce more fiction. Taeching ID is like teaching that Abraham Lincoln was killed by Jesus. It's all sorts of wrong, and it's inappropriate.
Science is mandatory, world religion 101 should be an elective. I'd call that a fair compromise. Anything less is going to piss me off.

archetypal fool

Now, I don't think anyone said anything about barring religious peoples from teaching classrooms. As has been said before, it's not the fact that they're religious which should be looked down on. It's when they attempt to teach something which has NO evidence outside of religion. It's been said again and again. The ONLY reason there is any debate is because it's religious, and the evidence against it is ignored in favor of fairy tales, and so you end up with ignorance in the subject (like that Brian Benson, the eighth grader who won 1st place in Dilbert's link above, titled "Creationism Is the Winner!"...Oddly enough, his experiment has NOTHING to do with evolution, but...1st place?! )

How is it informative to mention that Holocaust deniers exist? Is there any evidence backing up their claims? No, so it has no place in an educational discussion, unless it's to test the subject and have the students use their knowledge to debunk the claims.

It's the exact same case as ID. Exactly the same. There's no evidence, and it has no merit outside of religion, so it should only be invoked for students to use their knowledge to debunk the claims. ID should not be taught along side with evolution. I don't understand how there's still debate over this.

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Willravel

I'd go as far as to say that it's more likely that the holocaust was fake than it is that the Earth was created in 6 days. Like if there was a scale of plausibility.

Dilbert1234567

Facts are never relative, never, those aren't facts, and they are opinion. A fact is, something that is verifiable, falsifiable and quantifiable. Things like, I was born on a Monday. It can be verified, it can be falsified, and it is quantifiable. The blue jays are the best team ever, is not, unless you give qualifications for 'best' that are measurable, 'they had the most home runs than any other team'

As for Pluto, it is a fact that Pluto is a stellar body that orbits our sun, we can quantify it’s weight, it’s distance, etc, but the definition of ‘planet’ is subjective. Like when does a shrub become a bush? For me, it’s around 2 feet tall. But that is subjective.

That’s fine by me, a religions class would be a great place for ID. It is possible that ID is true, however, all the evidence out there say’s it isn’t, but the premise that a supernatural being being able to do this is possible.

Id is a wonderful teaching tool of how science isn’t. it is full of bad science, logical falicies and other wonderful teaching opertunitied, just like the holocaust deniers, when I said equal time, I meant a lecture written by holocaust deniers to be given to the students, not just a they exist.


They should be allowed to teach, as long as they teach science and not let there personal views on the matter disrupt the learning of the students. The poor students that are taught ID are ill prepared to think critically about the world around them, and will be eaten alive when they get to college.


and will, where does the moon landing land in that scale?

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