Intelligent Design in the classroom
--posted by Tony Garcia on 12/22/2005
I am about to piss off the secular fanatics and the religious fanatics. Both of those groups are not capable of openly discussing the following topic and will maintain that anything but their own positions are immoral/wrong/etc. The honest and thoughtful ones will at least understand what is being said here.
I am tired of this discussion. The hypocrisy is maddening. The Right is wrong, but the Left is hypocritical in their position.
What should be taught in the science classes of schools? The Big Bang? Creationism? Darwinism? Intelligent Design?
The answer must be found in first understanding the Scientific Method.
The essential elements of a scientific method are iterations, recursions, interleavings and orderings of the following:The secularists and anti-religious people use this as the reason that Creationism should stay out of the schools. Nothing in Creationism is able to undergo the "experiment" step of the Scientific Method. They are correct.
* Characterizations (Quantifications, observations and measurements)
* Hypotheses (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements)
* Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from hypotheses and theories)
* Experiments (tests of all of the above)
Where their hypocrisy comes into play is they hold up the Big Bang and Darwinism as valid theories to be taught in schools. Sadly, these are also NOT able to be reproduced through the "experiment" step of the Scientific Method.
Which of these should be taught in science? None of these. None of these theories can be replicated thus rendering all of them unscientific. Where do they belong? Theology class, mythology class (sorry, but without evidence perhaps theology & mythology should be subsets of the same topic), anthropology class, archeology class, history class...but NOT in science classes. NOT in biology classes. NOT in astronomy class (and that means no Big Bang in astronomy!).
So, the courts are rejecting Intelligent Design in the school curruiculum. The courts may be a little overbroad in their ruling. Intelligent Design (and all of the aforementioned theories) have no place in a hard science class. They have a place in the other classes, the social "sciences".
So, the Right is howling and the Left is celebrating. But they are both wrong.
2 Comments:
The Big Bang isn't reproducible? What about all those fancy atom smashers and linear accelerators scientists are using to probe the atom? With these, scientists are recreating conditions that are very close to the conditions at the Big Bang, and guess what? No need for invisible sky buddies! Plus, we have the fact that the Big Bang explains the fact that the universe is expanding, background microwave radiation, and so forth. Can't be reproduced? Please.
As for evolution (it's not called "Darwinism" any more than relativity is called "Einsteinism", but nice try there), I hope you read Sunday's Doonesbury and elect to use the old drugs if you ever catch something, because clearly you don't believe that bacteria can evolve.
Very well, evolution. Can you reproduce the evolution of pond goo into humans?
Is it possible to observe the recreation of those conditions? No. So it should NOT be in any hard science class.
Big bang...what you are talking about is like pouring water from a glass and claiming to be "very close to the conditions" of a Category 5 hurricane. Again, can you recreate the conditions of the big bang? No.
So the universe appears to be expanding...without the reproduction or RE-observation any of your little theories are not in line with the Scientific Method and thus should be tossed into the same academic category as Creationism and Intelligent Design. Wherever you toss those they should NOT be in any hard science class.
Nice try defending the hypocrisy, though. Little surprise that instead of confronting the hypocrisy you try to justify it.
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