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Kansas Challenges Definition of Science
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 06, 2005 10:34 AM
from the in-this-corner dept.
from the in-this-corner dept.
nysus writes "Anti-evolutionists have made classrooms in Kansas a key battleground in America's culture war. Again. The New York Times reports they are proposing to change the definition of science in Kansas: 'instead of "seeking natural explanations for what we observe around us," the new standards would describe it as a "continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."'" From the article: "In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to here as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator."
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You know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago, a student in my 7th grade biology class asked specifically about creationism during our section on evolution. My biology teacher gave a very short, thoughtful, and diplomatic answer. His answer, after quite a long pause:
"Well, some might say that the Bible tells what God did, and science explains how he did it."
Now, looking back as an engineer and scientist by education, I have always found the simplicity of that statement compelling, and have never had any trouble reconciling whatever beliefs I have in notions that could be described as "supernatural" with scientific fact and sound scientific theory.
I think the problem you have is with the people who literally believe that a white-bearded man in a robe literally created the Universe and Earth in 6 days around 6000 years ago, and then created the life to go on on it, and who discount valid science wholesale. Even though "creationists", and people who believe my last statement, may use "intelligent design" as a tool to further their agendas, that's not my interpretation of "intelligent design".
Personally, I rather liked Picard's response in "Where Silence Has Lease":
DATA:
I have a question, sir. What is death?
PICARD:
You've picked probably the most difficult of all questions, Data.
There is the beginning of a twinkle in Picard's eyes again. It is the sort of question that his mind loves.
Some explain it by inventing gods wearing their own form... and argue that the purpose of the entire universe is to maintain themselves in their present form in an Earth-like garden which will give them pleasure through all eternity. And at the other extreme, assuming that is an "extreme," are those who prefer the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all our experiences, hopes and dreams only an illusion.
DATA:
Which do you believe?
PICARD:
Considering the marvelous complexity of our universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, pattern, I believe our existence must mean more than a meaningless illusion. I prefer to believe that my and your existence goes beyond Euclidian and other "practical" measuring systems... and that, in ways we cannot yet fathom, our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality.
Really: what's wrong with seeing the Universe and the wonderful complexity of everything from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms - or smaller - and our very lives as something more than the sum of its parts?
Re:You know... (Score:5, Insightful)
And given that there is no proof of such a being, apart from events and instances attributed to it, it is a matter of faith, and thus not of science.
It is perfectly acceptable for people to believe God uses evolution as a tool. But it is not science.
Parent
Re:You know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You know... (Score:5, Funny)
I did. In Java, which is why he works so slowly.
seriously though, I think a lot of these people just don't understand what evolution really is. They instantly think "men came from monkeys" and thus see it as a threat to their faith, put their fingers in their ears, and start singing their hymn of choice.
Parent
Religion will continue to lose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is a shame.
There are things that science will never be able to teach us, that desperately need to be taught. Things religion could, if it chose to stop wasting time arguing over whether speciation will occur given no outside (read: supernatural) influences.
Science will never present us with a peer-reviewed study proving once and for all that you should be good to your fellow man, and treat him like a brother. Particle accelerator runs will never hint that we all have it within us to put an end to petty bickering, violence, and even earth-shattering wars.
Will the next economic theory show once and for all, that there is so much more to be gained if every child went to bed without hunger? That great things could happen if we ignored greed and lived lives unblinded by mindless pursuit of wealth?
Every time a biblethumper gets pissy about "larnin' evomoluzhun in ar skools" they've missed their mark so completely, I don't know whether to chuckle or cry.
Parent
Re:You know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, several elements of the human design simply don't support the hypothesis that a conscious entity engineered us. Evolutionary theory explains several useless features left over from our human ancestors (like the appendix and tailbone) and several glaring weaknesses in our anatomy. Tell me, what intelligent designer would design us so that we used the same tube for both respiration and eating, thus creating a potential choking hazard? That's pure idiocy, not intelligence. Humans like to think we're the cock of the walk and that our bodies are oh-so-perfect, but from an engineering perspective, that viewpoint doesn't hold water. Yes, Kristen Kreuk is a marvelous specimen of beauty, but she can still choke to death because of traits inherited from her evolutionary ancestors.
That's the flaw of intelligent design. It seeks to combine poetic (and frankly egotistical) views of the human body with a scientific view of the universe. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. Science is based on observed facts and natural mechanisms to explain those facts. To introduce supernatural or undefined mechanisms into an explanation is blatantly unscientific.
Parent
From Bloody Kansas to Backward Kansas (Score:5, Insightful)
New Kansas Method:
Intelligent Navel Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
"We're all afraid to change, and willing to fight against it. We don't want to have to admit that there are things we don't or can't understand. We need to be able to say 'This is absolutely true' if we're going to sleep at night."
I don't see the problem here.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many of them were atheists... or biologists for that matter.
Confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a little confused. I don't see anything wrong with the definition above ! I beleive its more complete and doesn't seem to be pushing any creationism around !
Re:Confused (Score:5, Insightful)
This is instead of natural explanation. How do you define "adequate"? Evolution by natural selection will be deemed "inadequate" and ID will take it's place.
Parent
Fundamental Fundamentalist question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fundamental Fundamentalist question... (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: Fanatism.
Fanatics brainwash their followers, but telling them lies isn't enough. They have to change their whole MINDSET. "Believe or be damned". This, with its implications: "Teach what I told you or be damned". In the end, they're just sputtering the lies that their human leaders have invented.
What does that have to do with the Bible? NOTHING! They're just using the bible as an excuse to justify their twisted beliefs. They've forgotten that the Bible was written by MEN (inspired or not, that's beyond our scope), and must remember that. And more important, non-scientist men.
We've reached an era where superstition and fanatism have surpassed science and reason. To put it simply, fanatics can't accept science because that would mean their entire belief system is WRONG (cognitive dissonance anyone?).
Ironically, a passage of Bible speaks about people shutting their eyes and covering their ears so they wouldn't listen to God's Truth. Yes, pretty ironic.
Parent
And the problem with that is...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I need to check my eyes, but what about that definition even suggests a "supreme being"?
Tell me this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell me this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Either way, I don't see a problem with the definition of science as presented in the article. It sounds a lot like what I was taught in public school in New Mexico - a state not known for its conservative education policies.
Parent
I like it (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the astronomers of yore tried to explain the planet movements with natural answers that were not based on good scientific methods. Same with the people who wrote the Bible. The new definition actually outlines the methods that are essential to science, such as experimentation and theories.
government monopoly on education (Score:5, Insightful)
The big issue in U.S. science education is not evolution anyway, it's the lack of competent science teachers. K-12 teaching is simply not an attractive career to most people who have good math and science training, partly because of the low pay.
I work less than a block from the "hearings" (Score:5, Informative)
One of the irritating things about this is that while I believe in evolution, I also believe that it's God's method for our developement. So, in a since, I believe in an intelligent design type of concept; but I can't say that now without being associated with those who say they are for intelligent design but are in fact proponents of creationism.
Anyhow, the hearings are being conducted and "judged" by the proponents of ID. The scientists and evolutionists have boycotted the operation as being a farce. I have to agree with them. The witnesses will all be from the ID side, and the 3 school board members who are running the hearings are all ID proponents also.
It's an embarrassing joke.
God's evolution and the evolution of God... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an inescapable law of nature. Everything from our software and computer designs (meme's) to music, language and DNA based life is affected by evolution.
Not only that, it's impossible to create something not effected by it.
Even our views of God and our religions evolve. (what blasphemy)
After studying evolution for some time, I became a believer in GOD! Because only god could have created something as powerful as evolution.
My argument goes like this. If we are made in Gods image, and we make machines and tools to build more complex things. Then shouldn't God also? If God were to what would that tool look like. EVOLUTION....
So all this arguing over GOD vs. Evolution is totally stupid. No Evil.
I see science as the study of God's creation. It's sort of our responsibility to understand is and in doing this we can come to know God better
My question to the ID guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet for some reason we fall back to this "theory" because we don't understand what's going on? Ridiculous...
Just because we don't fully understand an aspect of nature yet doesn't mean that a natural process is so complex and impossible that a higher power had to make it... it only means that we are flawed and must wait until we fully grasp what is going on.
I'm sick of people filling in the blanks with "god did it!" without thinking "well... maybe we just need to study it more." Before you call me atheist, realize that I am a roman catholic, yet I can easily conceive how our life came to be after the big bang (let's not debate that right now) without any nudge from a higher power.
You are quick to argue that life could not have been created in nature, but forget the fact that God created nature itself.
A Word to the Wise (Score:5, Insightful)
Undoubtedly someone will notice that this comment might equally well apply to those who "worship" Darwinism. That would be true. The key difference is, of course, that Darwinism can be understood and is continually being updated to reflect what we observe. Therein lies the key difference: we can update Darwinism to make it more correct. It's awful hard to update received wisdom.
Thankfully, Kansas and Ohio are leading the charge against the atheistic forces of E-Ville that seek to make critical thinkers out of our population. I'm sure that they will also "balance" their curricula to include classes that critically analyze received wisdom.
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
I heard an excellent talk about the strategies of anti-evolutionists from the director of the center for science education recently. Two of her major points were that: (1)creationists seek to circumvent the usual curriculum review process and insert themselves directly into school board decisions politically, because they have come to realize that on careful examination, their ideas are untenable; and (2) the fundamental misunderstanding about the words behind the debate.
More specifically, in order for an idea to become incorporated in to a scientific education curriculum, it first must be proposed, examined by scientists, published, reviewed, tested for flaws and counterexamples, and then it becomes accepted as a theory (which by the way, means an idea that ties together consistently all aspects of the evidence, NOT just a "theory", or guess). Creationists, or intelligent design advocates, simply come up with an idea, and go right to the school board. Where are the checks and balances? The testing? The oversight?
And secondly, about the language. Normal people commonly feel that at the top of the hierarchy of importance are Facts. To them, facts are facts, immutable. You can't debate fact, as in "evolution is not a fact, so it doesn't occur." Observations are next, things that you see with your own eyes. And Theories? Theories are at the bottom of the scale, almost comparable to hopeful guesses. This is in part the fault of the language, that "theory" has come to mean "I, crackpot, have a theory about that."
But in fact, in science, Theory is at the top of the scale -- an idea that has consistently shown to uphold all the observations, and has been tested. At the bottom is just the opposite from what is commonly believed -- facts. Facts are things that you see every day, and carry no unifying meaning in themselves.
If we are to succeed in educating the population about the process of science, and *especially* why it is valuable to us a country, we need to get involved in the debate about the language and politics. Other countries, who don't have the luxury to squander valuable resources, are beginning to capture and exploit the wonders of science much more than we are -- and it is showing.
Re:Laughingstock (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent