24 October 2004
I to the D
Wired has an article on the attack on teaching evolution in schools. In 2002, the Ohio Board of Education was considering allowing Intelligent Design to be taught next to evolution. I've recently heard some very endearing stories about personal faith, but when events like this occur it nearly nullifies any tolerance I have for religion. The Centrifuge gets fed up when presented with religious hatred. My limit is when people try to bastardize science.
It really angries up my blood.
The debate included, on the side of science, physicist Lawrence Krauss from the physics department of Case Western Reserve University and biologist Ken Miller from the medical school of Brown University. At one point, the article quotes Krauss:
"Where the scientific community has been at fault," says Krauss, "is in assuming that these people are harmless, like flat-earthers. They don't realize that they are well organized, and that they have a political agenda."
In other words: by ignoring the ID people, simply because the science doesn't hold up and their papers are either never presented to science journals or don't pass peer review, scientists open the argument that there is a conspiracy against ID. Flat-earthers are condemned by the mainstream as crackpots. However, the majority of the nation believes in a god, generally Christian, so the non-science of ID is accepted more readily.
Ken Miller's evolution page contains his assessment of the debate from 2002. The final decision by the school board to allow critical analysis of the issues within the classroom went into effect this year. Although ID is not specifically stated, the lesson plans still contain fragments from the ID literature.
With over a century of support, a challenge to evolution is bypassing the scientific route to challenge it and instead is using a public forum. Scientific truth is not democratic.
- Posthuman dystopia posted by sstrader on 22 March 2015 at 10:21:25 AM
- Today's reading list posted by sstrader on 19 January 2014 at 12:10:54 PM
- Closing posted by sstrader on 18 January 2014 at 9:51:27 AM
- Info wars 2010 posted by sstrader on 13 February 2010 at 11:50:50 AM
- Limiting noise posted by sstrader on 15 December 2009 at 9:58:00 AM