Australian Schools To Teach Intelligent Design 714
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that schools within the Australian state of Queensland are going to be required to teach Intelligent Design as part of their Ancient History studies. While it is gratifying to note that it isn't being taught in science classes (since it most certainly isn't a science), one wonders what role a modern controversy can possibly serve within a subject dedicated to a period of history which occurred hundreds of years before Darwin proposed his groundbreaking theory?"
Lots of textbooks! (Score:3, Informative)
There are many textbooks available on Intelligent Design, and it is really easy to make more.
First, you get one of the wishy-washy creationist textbooks written in the 1980s, before the Discovery Institute decided that actually calling creationism creationism wasn't going to fly.
Then you do a search and replace, substituting "intelligent design" for "creationism."
Then you add a chapter at the end with the nuggets of sophistry that ID supporters came up with, and add some references to other ID textbooks and tracts in the bibiliography.
Voila! ID textbook!
Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO (Score:5, Informative)
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution [talkorigins.org]
The number of scientists, and more importantly biologists, who think there is any question about the factuality of evolution is so exceedingly remote as to pretty much be considered universal consensus.
As to how the world started, um, that's cosmology, stellar formation, planet formation and geology. Evolution is the study of genetic change in populations, not in how the world came about.
Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO (Score:5, Informative)
Yet, we still call it a "Theory" for some reason. And yes, I know about most of the evidence, and yes I buy that (more than anything else right now). I also understand that we might possibly be all wrong at any moment.
We still call gravity a "Theory" as well. You are making the common mistake about the scientific use of the word.
According to the United States National Academy of Sciences: Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time.
Re:load your headlines much? (Score:3, Informative)
Ah yes, argumentum ad dictionarum. Dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive, and are meant only for cursory definitions.
ID is not science. It makes virtually no testable claims at all, beyond overly expansive ones, and the two cases where it has been attempted to use it; bacterial flagellum and the vertebrate immune system, there were decades worth the literature already in place demonstrating how those systems evolved.
Evolution no longer a "theory" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What "Intelligent Design" is... (Score:3, Informative)
Odd that the bible, including creation, was taught in public education until approx 1948.
Why is that odd? Lots of unconstitutional things have been done throughout our history, and continued until they were successfully challenged in court. Creation is obviously a religious belief, and public school teachers are obviously employees of the state, so it's quite evident that teaching creationism is the advancement of specific religious belief by the government. This is quite plainly unconstitutional. Unless we are going to teach all of the other religious creation myths alongside it, it has no place in public schools. Even if it were to be taught alongside other religious beliefs, it should not be in a science or history class, as it has no evidence to support it as either science or history.
Re:"Faith Science Basis?" (Score:4, Informative)
Our higher education system is being destroyed by keeping dissenting viewpoints out when science has the intent of examining everything.
Your very premise is faulty. The word "viewpoint" is just another word for opinion. Science isn't about opinions. It is about evidence, experiments, and a rigorous commitment to setting presumptions aside.
The areas where scientists tend to disagree are those where there is not yet sufficient evident to establish a widely accepted, verifiable conclusion. Evolution is not one of them.
The evidence for Evolution is vast and well defined. If you want to falsify Evolution, you need more than a dissenting viewpoint. You need to provide some clear, repeatable, and scientifically testable evidence.
Re:"Faith Science Basis?" (Score:2, Informative)
ID==Creationism with the God tags removed so they can pass Constitutional muster (in the US..yes I realize this is a story about Australia...)
Re:This comment (Score:3, Informative)
It's a stupid old creationist argument based on the erroneous notion that evolution is random. The only significant part of the evolutionary mechanism that could be said to be random is the relation of mutation to fitness. Mutations aren't random, and selection certainly isn't.
Re:Evolution no longer a "theory" (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ [talkorigins.org]
You're either an ignoramus or a liar. There really are no other choices.
And just to put it in your pipe and smoke it, macroevolution (speciation) has even been observed:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html [talkorigins.org]
Re:Need a statistician here... (Score:2, Informative)
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
around 4.5 billion
Likelihood (Probability) = 1
100%
Open your eyes.
Re:"Faith Science Basis?" (Score:3, Informative)
I don't really think anyone seriously believes in Intelligent Design.
Then you don't really understand people very well. From the Center for Science and Culture (a pro-ID organization) here [discovery.org]
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Right. Every statement from an advocacy group's website is an honest statement belief, and not disingenuous in the slightest.
Are you acquainted with the evidence that was introduced in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District?
It was discovered that the ID text that Dover sought to introduce was originally written as an advocacy tract for creationism, which called it by that very name. Then, to try to do an end-run around a Supreme Court prohibition on teaching creationism in public schools, they simply did a mechanical search-and-replace to change "creationism" into "intelligent design", and "creationist" with "intelligent design proponent".
"Intelligent Design" is a transparent construct invented in the 1980s by people who self-identify as "creationists".
Re:Need a statistician here... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This comment (Score:3, Informative)
Mutations are random with respect to fitness, but they are in themselves constrained by the laws and processes of organic chemistry, so cannot be said to be entirely random. Some base pairs are more fragile than others, for example.
Re:history is a good place for it IMNSHO (Score:4, Informative)
After reading about this a bit more, I have to say that you are right. Why the change of usage and why the deprecation of the word "law"?
Because "law" implies that it is absolute, unchanging, and untouchable. Everything in science is up to repudiation because scientists concede that we don't know everything. The revision was made because "laws" like gravitation were modified showing that they are not absolute.
Re:"Faith Science Basis?" (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but they want to teach it as a "controversy" in "Ancient History", which is clearly bullshit.