So? Some people dispute it. People also dispute the Holocaust and the moon landing. Does that mean they shouldn’t be taught as such?
To get back to the op, Bush is not notably anti-science, but he is no better educated than most American college graduates. Even supposedly well educated people utter statements like:
Do the physical sciences not exist anymore? Bush agreed to double the NSF over a period of seven years, but some Republicans stopped that. (Politics and sausages …) Still, they got a nice increase. The DOE and DoD seem to be doing pretty well, and they fund science.
American science is doing quite well. Which is amazing, when you consider the level of science knowledge displayed even here.
How is it not ‘scientific’, as opposed to the other hypotheses? Science does not demand the origins of every element of every theory - where the first life came from has no bearing on the theory of evolution. The idea that to understand something we have to be able to know the origins of everything that led up to it is more philosophical than scientific. You can’t throw out the Big Bang theory because people dispute where the monobloc came from - you accept it because what it DOES explain fits the facts.
So, the hypothesis that the original life was created by some intelligence does not need the origins of the creator to be understood to become a theory - it just needs evidence that proves the theory. The reason it is not a theory is not that we don’t know what intelligence created life, it’s because we have no evidence that an intelligence created life. The nature and origins of the intelligence would not matter. It is not a logical fallacy, either. For one thing, the intelligence may have arose in a different manner than it arose on Earth - maybe life only spontaneously appears under certain circumstances quite unlike that of Earth, and all other life is seeded from that original.
Badtz Maru, please, please, please read what other people are telling you. Intelligent design is not a theory of biogenesis (or at least not only). It is a theory for the development of more and more complex forms of life from more primitive forms. As such, it is meant to compete with evolution.
How the first life formed on earth is, at least as far as I understand it (but my biology is weak), still quite speculative and so perhaps it would be reasonable to throw out a number of possible explanations that have been offered. However, this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether ID should be taught as a serious scientific competitor to evolution, which it obviously shouldn’t since the latter is a well-founded scientific theory (or even fact) while the other is a discredited hypothesis (or not even a scientific hypothesis at all, depending on how it is stated).
Urgh…Of course, I am not using the word “theory” here in the scientific sense since ID is not a scientific theory at all! The English language is messy, n’est pas?! Now I see how those folks who don’t understand the word “theory” used in the scientific sense can see “theory of evolution” and think “oh, it’s just a theory”!
You’ve answered your own question:
Without evidence that life was designed in the first place, ID of any flavor becomes little more than idle speculation.
I’m not exactly sure who you’re preaching to here besides the choir. No one here is implying that one needs to know the origins to understand subsequent processes. However, as I mentioned, ID proponents are not advertising “intelligent design” as an ultimate explanation of origins - they are proposing it as an alternative to evolution. Consider Michael Behe’s favorite example, “the bacterial flagellum” (I put that in quotes because Behe fails to dsitinguish between the multiple forms of flagella, each of which varies in complexity). This is a structure that is well beyond “the beginning of life” that is proposed as being too complex for natural selection to have created. Thus, that structure, and other similarly complicated structures for which we have no, or limited, current theories regarding evolutionary pathways, are claimed to have been designed directly. Not that life may have ultimately been designed, but that certain complex structures, even entire organisms, have been designed. So, again, ID is not simply a claim about biogenesis, but is intended, rather, to “debunk” evolution.
That is my quote above. I apologize for not qualifying “science.” The other poster (Ewiser) was talking about how private genetics work was 10 years ahead of public work. I took issue with that. Oh, and the NIH budget was doubled as well.
To qualify my other post above, I was not meaning to imply that the “alien designer” theory of biogenesis (which I was trying to distinguish from old school ID) lends anything to any theory. I was just disputing that it was “supernatural.” It is not beyond the realm of scientific thought, while an all-powerful Deity is.
Badtz Maru If your talking about a kind of ID that doesnt posit that certain organic structures couldnt devlop via evolutionary processes then your not talking about the normal ID structures. If your talking about an ID with no empirical evidence to support (which apparently you’ve admitted to) then why does it deserve even a mention in a science classroom? I can come up with a dozen theories that also have no evidence to support them do they also deserve a day of class?
Are you talking to me? Cus, I was talking about “Intelligent Design.”
Yes… but still, kinda the point is to figure out how intelligent beings could have arisen from chaos. Like I said, it’s just not very satisfying if step 1 is “First, find yourself an intelligent being somewhere…”
What we should go over is the evidence we have, and the best guesses to a MECHANISM that solves the problem. Speculating that “Bob did it, that rascal!” tells us squat about what science is all about: figuring out how it was done.
for starters: for what it’s worth i am Christian.
the begining of this thread:
i don’t think the goverment should try to censor science. i belive it’s the job of science to gather data in an unbiased way. it is the job of society to decide how to use that data. it’s hard to put data to use if it’s tainted. in this case it’s worse even more so. it’s bordering on goverment sponsership of religeon. when you look at history the 2 just don’t mix. corruption of both almost always results. i don’t belive the good lord wants anyone forced to him.
how nuclear is pronounced:
i have a simple rule for communication. if something and the person they were talking to understood. then they used langauge properly.
evolution in schools:
i have a simple view about education. it should be up to parents. if little timmy’s mom dislikes how the math teacher teaches long divition then little timmy’s mom can can ether make or buy study materials of her prefered method for little timmy. by extension if little timmy’s mom disagrees with what the school is teaching about the origin of species. then she shoud be allowed to send in her her version of the origin of species for timmy to learn from. granted if timmy had some questions about the provided learning materials he would have to wait till he got home to ask his mom, but that is the price you pay to shift from what the school teaches. seems fair.
by the way, what is this?;j
This is the happy orthodox jew icon. ;j
I’m confised as to what your advocating here. Is the kid allowed to bring any book he wants to class (assuming its not got some unpatriotic slogan on it)? Or should the school provide textbooks based catered to each group of parents beliefs. I’d be worried about the latter you’ll end up with more then a few copies of the satanic bible and dianetics.
oh ok. i was wondering.
what i’m saying is if a kids parents disagrees with a school schoice of study the parents can buy a text book. the parents would have to bring the book in them selves. when the class was working on the disputed courses the student would be doing what his parents wantd him to learn. i don’t belive the school should have to provide the materiels for what timmie’s parent want him to learn, how ever if they disargee with what the school is teaching. i think they have a right to have there kids learn what they agree with.
I think that’s a fair alternative: I agree that parents should not have the state forcing them to send their kids to a school where they are taught things they don’t agree with.
netscape 6 how is this plan going to work, everyone in the class has a real text book except for little billy? Which book is the teacher lecturing from? Does little billy get seperate exam too? If my kids failing math can I insist on getting a textbook that leaves out trig? man I really would have appreciated that last one. Goddam trigonometry
timmy’s mom would have to provide the education materials, so i belive exams would fall under that. the teacher would lecture from what the school deemed good. while she was lecturing timmy would quitley read from his own book, and do the work. if he had any questions he would have to wait till he got home. as for trig. you could find a text book that has a different method for teaching trig. different people learn differently. perhaps a different approche might help.
Net, while I agree that parents should be able to opt their kids out of learning things they don’t want them to, I don’t think that schools can give imprintur of academia by letting them take alternate exams or giving them alternate grades. If they don’t want to take science, then they should opt out of it, and that should go on their transcript. Alternative learning that replaces the opt out can also go on their transcript (to show that they weren’t just slacking off), but it should never be equated as the real thing. Colleges should not be fooled into thinking that someone learned and passed biology when what they really did was learn and passed tests on creationism.
** netscape 6** But I dont liek trig and under your system I dont see why I should have to take it or be tested on it all. Hey I know why dont I throw out everything but counting then I’ll get my parents to make up their own counting exam. that should bring up the old GPA. Damn wish this system was in place when i was a kid. Hell my mom could make up all the exams, i could read comic books in class and what can the teacher say?
I made it clear from my first post that I was talking about ID as a hypothesis for biogenesis, not evolution. At no point did I say that ID should be taught as some fundamentalists believe it should be, but that it should be mentioned as a possible explanation for biogenesis. It is not a valid alternative to natural selection because we’ve already got a proven theory that explains that without relying on intelligent design.
I don’t think you understand science very well. Science is a way of finding explanations for the world around us, and proving or disproving the explanations. Coming up with an explanation for life, the universe, and everything, that goes all the way back and explains everything is not science, that’s religion. The hypothesis that life came to be on this planet originally due to intelligent design is not invalid because it does not explain where the creator of the life came from, just as the big bang theory is not invalidated because it does not explain where the monobloc came from.
Science compartmentalizes itself, and a theory that stands on it’s own may still be valid even if our understanding of some of it’s elements was incorrect, if the incomplete understanding of said elements did not hinder the accuracy of how we understood the way they work. It is entirely possible that we might find evidence that makes intelligent design a valid theory for biogenesis without understanding where the designers came from. For instance, let’s say we start exploring the universe and find life with DNA like ours on various planets, and studies of the similarities of our proteins show that we are all related, and archaelogical and/or paleontoligical evidence showed that the primitive life was intentionally seeded. Even if we knew nothing about the nature or origin of these hypothetical life-spreaders, the theory would still be valid. Now, if in this hypothetical scenario someone hypothesized ‘The creators must have arisen on a non-Earthlike world, because we have seen no evidence that life can come about naturally on worlds like ours’ this would be just a hypothesis, not a theory, because in this scenario we don’t know anything about the designers, and for all we know they did arise on an Earthlike world that hadn’t been found yet, or the origins of the creator species might be different than that from other biological species. You could have a lot of speculation as to where these aliens came from without invalidating the theory that they planted life on Earth.
It’s certainly OK to have opinions on things we have no true theories on yet. I personally haven’t decided on biogenesis whether life arose on Earth through natural processes, arose on another planet due to natural processes and was transfered to Earth naturally, or whether life on Earth was transferred here by unnatural processes, but some people lean towards one of these explanations over others, because it fits with their preconceptions of how the universe works. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think we should allow those preconceptions to influence what we teach when we are teaching hypotheses, not theories. For years people didn’t believe evolution, not because they had evidence to the contrary, but just because they felt that it was unlikely that natural selection could cause such diversity in life, or because they believed in a supernatural creator, or whatever. The same thing happens with biogenesis - people think ‘So far, everything we know about the evolution of life indicates it is a purely natural process, caused by random changes that are selected for over time, so I think that the origins of life have the same kind of explanation’ - and that COULD very well be, actually seems fairly likely that life arose just from some chance combination of chemicals and conditions, but we don’t KNOW that.