The Intelligent Design Fight--Round 6,592.
As the assorted dingleberries in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and the White House reject evolution and push for creationism Intelligent Design to be taught as an "alternative theory" to evolution, they forget a few minor points: it's not science, it's not a theory, and.......oh, right! It's crap.
Jack Marburger, the President's own science advisor labels I.D. as unscientific. The New Republic published an excellent review and historical essay to explain why I.D. is piffle, and how it is merely creationism in a new coat. What amazes us here at The Malcontented International House of Skepticism and Pancakes is that we are still fighting this fight some 80 YEARS after the Scopes trial. (Does each new generation of zealots for their flavor of the big Nobodaddy in the Sky have to refight the conflicts of their predecessors?)
The I.D. battle appears to be driven by two aspects--1) religiosity, and 2) a lack of understanding of what science is and how it works.
Why the religious folks can get and keep a toehold is a function of the second aspect. The Malcontent has had a number of well-educated, non-creationist friends essentially put forth the same position as the President--I.D. is just another theory and we ought to expose students to various theories.
Why would these folks say this? (other than to wind my frickin' clock-spring.)
Why? Because they don't have any idea about what constitutes a scientific theory and so they confuse "story" with "theory." Please, my few and faithful readers, if you care about this issue at all, take a few minutes and visit the fine people at the National Center for Science Education and arm yourself to prevent your much-beloved, well-meaning, science-ignorant, chemistry-class-skipping friends from being sold a load of crap wrapped in pseudo-scientific deceptive babble.
(And before I get the emails saying "You hypocritical bastard! What about your oft-repeated statements about how much you love the First Amendment?", let me say this: The creationists have an absolute right--which I fully support--to believe what they do, but the silly bastards have no right to integrate their religious beliefs into compulsory state education, and we, as citizens, have a right to prevent such religious beliefs from coming into our schools.)
Jack Marburger, the President's own science advisor labels I.D. as unscientific. The New Republic published an excellent review and historical essay to explain why I.D. is piffle, and how it is merely creationism in a new coat. What amazes us here at The Malcontented International House of Skepticism and Pancakes is that we are still fighting this fight some 80 YEARS after the Scopes trial. (Does each new generation of zealots for their flavor of the big Nobodaddy in the Sky have to refight the conflicts of their predecessors?)
The I.D. battle appears to be driven by two aspects--1) religiosity, and 2) a lack of understanding of what science is and how it works.
Why the religious folks can get and keep a toehold is a function of the second aspect. The Malcontent has had a number of well-educated, non-creationist friends essentially put forth the same position as the President--I.D. is just another theory and we ought to expose students to various theories.
Why would these folks say this? (other than to wind my frickin' clock-spring.)
Why? Because they don't have any idea about what constitutes a scientific theory and so they confuse "story" with "theory." Please, my few and faithful readers, if you care about this issue at all, take a few minutes and visit the fine people at the National Center for Science Education and arm yourself to prevent your much-beloved, well-meaning, science-ignorant, chemistry-class-skipping friends from being sold a load of crap wrapped in pseudo-scientific deceptive babble.
(And before I get the emails saying "You hypocritical bastard! What about your oft-repeated statements about how much you love the First Amendment?", let me say this: The creationists have an absolute right--which I fully support--to believe what they do, but the silly bastards have no right to integrate their religious beliefs into compulsory state education, and we, as citizens, have a right to prevent such religious beliefs from coming into our schools.)
posted by The Malcontent at 8:19 AM
4 Comments:
If you think teaching creationist nonesense is the worst thing these people have up their sleeves, think again. The major proponents of ID - the Discovery Institute - plan on "destroying the materialist view of the world", ie getting rid of science altogether. I don't quite understand why they want to do this, but they do.
Dude, what the Jeebus? You never told me you came back to the dark side.
Good thing I only have to go back 6 posts to catch up.
What if we start with the null hypothesis that all things are entirely random and find that we have to reject that null hypothesis after duplicable, scientific testing because there appear to be at least some things that cannot be described as entirely random? Wouldn't that be some support for the idea that you can't completely overlook the possibility that there might be some direction to the universe? Not that I BELIEVE any of that tripe, but aren't there ways that those who did could scientifically test their theory -- not that they have, but that they could?
Here we go, in order:
Jay--I don't think it is the worst thing, but a good starting point for the anti-intellectual wing of the fundamentalists.
Jason--you scare me. Still, if you set up the webpage for the "Pastoral Institute of Scientological Discovery," we could make some real mischief. I'm just saying.
ACW--C'mon, bro. You know, lo-key re-entry. Less pressure.
Galactichero--could be.
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