Fighting Back For Science
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Democrats across the country should start doing this. I bet we could get good legislation like this passed here in Maryland.
Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a plan Tuesday that would ban public schools from teaching intelligent design as science, saying “pseudo-science” should have no place in the classroom.
The proposal is the first of its kind in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and comes as a debate over how to teach the origins of human life rages in local school districts.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, acknowledged the measure faced an uphill fight in a Legislature where Republicans control both houses.
The measure would force material included in science curriculums to describe only natural processes. The material also would need to follow the definitions of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.
23 Responses to “Fighting Back For Science”
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When I first read this I thought it sounded great, but the truth is, science needs to leave room for the unexplained, lest it become overly dogmatic. How about we just pass a law leaving it up to the science teachers to decide what’s in the curriculum, instead of the school boards?
And finally, long before democrats were against intelligent design, republicans were against intelligence… do we want to just look like we’re jumping on a bandwagon?
Oliver, I don’t quite understand the fever aroused in you by the mere mention of “Intelligent Design”, but, nonetheless, do you really welcome the government into a dispute over what constitutes science?
What about some future time, when decisions are more subtle and dangerous, e.g., who should live and who should die in a country where people are living to be 100 or 125?
You’re gonna live longer than me, Oliver. I hope you’ll still be laughing in 2050.
Excellent! We’ll be able to do away with all this “global warming” pseudo-science horseshit, too!
Frank, I agree completely that the government should not be involved in a dispute as to what constitutes science. I also feel that religious fundamentalists shouldn’t be allowed to determine what constitutes science either, and that is precisely why this kind of law is utterly necessary.
There is NO DISPUTE at all in the scientific community as to what Intelligent Design is. It is Biblical Creationism with a thin coat of paint to disguise it. All the blowhards trying to force it into our schools know that they can’t get Genesis taught directly, so “Intelligent Design” is their scientifical-sounding attempt at an end run. The claim that it isn’t religious is quickly belied by the actions of people like Pat Robertson, who loudly proclaim that when citizens exercise their democratic right to vote out officials trying to push this pablum on their kids, they are voting to “ban God from their community.”
When Darwin first wrote “The Origin of Species” and later “The Descent of Man”, he and fellow like minded natural philosophers didn’t immediately rush to try to get their ideas taught in primary schools. It was debated and refined over years in university laboratories and scholarly journals before it was widely accepted enough to be taught to children as the prevailing scientific paradigm. But the creationists and ID’ers feel that any idea they come up with off the top of their heads deserves to be taught to primary school children FIRST, to teach the so-called “controversy”, and then maybe it will get in the fancy journals later. There is no one doing any research in ID to use it to, say, explain something we didn’t know before, or provide previously unknown links between disparate areas of knowledge (such as paleontology and molecular biology). Serious research and study be damned, the only thing the IDers seem to care about is getting it in the hands of the little school children. Why is that? They know they are on the losing side of the debate, because “Don’t think too hard, God did it” stopped being a satisfactory explanation for everything sometime during the Renaissance. They only way there can be a “dispute” is if they MANUFACTURE it, and that is accomplished by wedging it into our primary schools.
Oh, and Oliver, sorry to break in here… I’ve been reading the discussions here for a long time, but seeing Frank’s post here I was too inflamed to leave well enough alone.
Because I don’t like people perverting science, especially not wacky religious folks who ignore the fundamentals of man’s origins. These people are undermining the advancement of humanity. And your scenario is hilarious when you consider that the right is trying to enshrine “intelligent design” as law as we speak.
If “intelligent design” is dead by 2050 I’ll be positively giddy.
Rheinhard: So are you saying that even though the government shouldn’t be making decisions as to what constitutes science, it would be better for the government to decide what both religion and sclence can teach, than for ID and evolution to engage in a “fair fight”?
What are you heathens afraid of? “Biblical Creationism with a thin coat of paint to disguise it.”? What harm would that do?
Have we come so far from “religion in the public square” that the very idea that perhaps God made the world sends chills down your spine?
Gimme a break!
I grew up believing God made the world, and then I learned about evolution and “mitigated evolution” and then I learned about “anti – evolution” and then I learned about “Intelligent Design.” (By the way, anybody know what happened to punctuated equilibrium?)
I grew up reasonably conservative, reasonably scientific, and reasonably spiritual, and I don’t recall from my childhood any Jews or Muslims protesting to City Hall when there was a creche on the lawn in front of City Hall.
Now you want a Congressional sub – Committee on Quantum Mechanics and microbiology.
Ooooh – kay!
Rigt, pgg2! Bring back the Inquisition!
Im willing to throw out or include information on global warming, as long as we accept the scientific fact that it exists – something the GOP says is in dispute.
Frank: In case you forgot, we already have a law relating to what religion can teach. It’s called the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” etc. It’s absolutely 100% okey-dokey for a religion to teach whatever its creation myth is to its adherents 24/7. The problem here isn’t about that. It’s about the religion wanting to ALSO teach its creation myth as part of the science curriculum in public primary schools. Not so good.
Unless maybe you’d be OK with me and PZ Myers being able to teach alternative views in Sunday School? Come to think of it, why hasn’t anyone proposed that yet? If all they want is to examine the “controversy”, why not do it in the Sunday School classroom as well?
No. However, that doesn’t mean I can accept Genesis as a science text.
There’s no “fair fight” between “intelligent design” and science, there’s no equivalence. Evolution is. Intelligent design is best discussed with other myths, like fairies and elves. Keep it the hell out of our science classes.
In other words: science class is for science. You would think that would be self evident, but the right doesn’t get it, so we have to make it a law.
How typical a liberal response. See something you don’t like, make a law.
Wonder why we don’t write laws then to control what collegs teach. How many taught, probably still teach, that Alger Hiss wasn’t a Commie spy. That Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent. Lets have laws today to prevent colleges from teaching those lies.
The real answer: keep government out of it and fix it within.
Dugger, Whittaker Chambers Was Right!!
Dugger,
What was that about laws for things we don’t like? *cough* Terri Shivo *cough* Sorry, I got irony stuck in my throat…
Rheinhard: How conveeeenient that you left out the “etc.” “prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, not to mention the fact that in 1789 “establishment of religion” didn’t mean “existence of religion”; it meant congregation or denomination. But I digress.
Dugger is absolutely right, and he doesn’t go far enough…
“the right doesn t get it, so we have to make it a law.”
Are you kidding me? Is that what minority rights means to you? The right doesn’t “get it” so we need a law?
No wonder the average guy, in his eternal wisdom, puts Republicans in leadership positions.
By the way, what I find interesting about this “controversy”, is that when I first heard about it, it wasn’t a controversy at all. It was actually a formulation for scientists who believed in a God of some kind, with or without dogma.
I don’t know how or when it became political, or controversial.
LB, Spare me. Absolutely anyone can find an issue and find differing liberal or conservative positons on them.
Dugger
Um, explain to me again how not teaching your religion’s creation myth as science in the public schools constitutes “prohibiting the free exercise” of your religion (which I, maybe erroneously, interpret as prohibiting the existence of your religious organization or preventing you from attending the religious service of your choice)?
And you’re correct, it wasn’t a controversy at first, because people sometimes do publish incorrect interpretations of data or bigus theories in scientific journals. But with peer review, errors can be pointed out and examined. This is what science is about, and why the IDers detest it so much, because to them other people should not be allowed to criticize their hypothesis (I won’t reinforce the “just a theory” meme by applying that word to ID), because doing so constitutes religious bigotry.
It became a “controversy” when ID’s propents decided to get their hypothesis taught on an equal footing with real science in primary schools. When thoughtful people rightfully objected, it then became “controversial”, thus making the news headlines and getting far more attention among the hoi-polloi that it could ever have gotten as an scholarly academic debate.
The text of this bill is posted at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and I think it’s really extraordinarily well written. It doesn’t, in fact, even mention ID explicitly. It only says that the only thing that can be taught as science are things that happen by natural (as opposed to supernatural) processes, and must be empirically testable. In other words, the only thing that should be taught in science classes is, um, science. I don’t see how any reasonable person could disagree with this, unless they had the religious indoctrination axe to grind; “How dare you say that I can’t teach my magic alongside your science! That’s bias!”
Rheinhard: Enough with the smug “um’s”, already! Holy crap!
I have a better idea. Explain to me how it is that acknowledgiing, accepting or just hypothesizing that evolution isn’t entirely random (an incredibly difficuly pill to swallow, at best — Guess who said, “God doesn’t throw dice”?) will somehow bring the Earth’s rotation to a screeching halt?
And if “we already have a law relating to what religion can teach,” then why do we need one that says what they can’t teach?
From the Law:
The material is consistent with any description or definition of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.
So, the National Academy of Sciences will define what is science for the state’s curriculum?
You’re not telling us that the NAS will become, sometime soon, the arbiter of all things scientific for the nation?
Here’s an interesting Division of the organization:
Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies
A unit of the
Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
Welcome to the homepage for the Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies (CEGIS). The Center is a program unit of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council. This site is updated on a monthly basis. Please bookmark this page and return often for updates regarding the Center’s projects, publications, workshops, and more!
The Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies of the Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education includes in its portfolio a broad range of important, policy-related research. This is reflected in its four standing committees: The Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, the Committee on Law and Justice, and the Committee on Population. In addition, ad hoc committees conduct work in the areas of racial dynamics in the United States, urban issues, environmental decision-making, and international conflict resolution. The Center addresses the nation’s most pressing problems, using the knowledge, analytical tools, and methods of the behavioral and social sciences.
Please click on the links below to learn more about CEGIS’s different program units:
* the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change
* the Committee on Law and Justice
* the Committee on Population
No chance for ideological creep there… Riiight!
I agree that government should not legislate what is science; however, ID fails the test as to what is scientific. ID has not yet done the work to earn a place alongside the teaching of mainstream science in public schools. If ID has anything to offer science, then it needs to be vetted through the scientific method (e.g., research, peer review) and not receive a political pass to be injected in public schools simply because it fits people’s personal (and mainly religious) beliefs.
QUOTE: “I have a better idea. Explain to me how it is that acknowledgiing, accepting or just hypothesizing that evolution isn t entirely random (an incredibly difficuly pill to swallow, at best Guess who said, God doesn t throw dice ?) will somehow bring the Earth s rotation to a screeching halt?”
First off, the theory of evolution does not state that evolution is a totally random process. Aspects of it may be random (e.g., some mutations) but major components such as natural selection and heredity are certainly non-random.
Second, hypothesizing a designer is one thing, but declaring it is scientifically proven is quite another.
QUOTE: “By the way, anybody know what happened to punctuated equilibrium?”
P.E. is alive and well as one of the competing theories (as part of the overall theory) to explain the rate of evolution.