Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Now I know why we don't have primaries.

They always say that what the US is doing now we will be doing in x years x being a diminishing number. And it's pretty true.

I wonder why primaries are an exception?

In today's New York Times article about the Kansas schoolboard elections (subscribers only), there is repeated reference to "moderates" and their effect on the outcome. Maybe this is a stupid question, but what does it mean to be a moderate in this debate? Either you believe that god created everything 6000 years ago or you don't. You either believe that today's species evolved from earlier forms through descent with modification, or you don't. Whatever the merits of either position, I see little room to be `moderate' about them. So what kind of opinions would a typical moderate school board candidate hold?

The moderates are the ones who try to ride two horses at once, to use a Kansas expression. Folks know that you can't have it both ways, they know that, but they try anyway. It's the sweetness in them.

It's hard, you know, facing the truth. It nice believing that there is someone, er, Someone, watching over everything and that there is a purpose and a reason for this world and it's beings. It's safe.

Then along comes Charles and all the rest of the fact checkers and they say "Not so fast." and that throws a loop into your false sense of reality.

People fight to hold onto what makes them feel safe even though they know, they do know it, that what they believe is just a fiction. They look at the facts, the science, and it looks like a pretty cold unfeeling world. ('tis you know)

So they put their right foot in the left stirrup of Religion and the left foot in the right strirrup of Science and say, like the children that they are, "Look. This is doable."

Not for long.

Joe

Thomas-

Both those positions are immoderate. Debate between them is fruitless as you will see if you look back on this thread.

If there is a moderate position it is exclusively concerned with social consequences and, it must be admitted a good dose of cynical elitism.

I presume you accept the fact of a hierarchy of intelligence, education and experience and that given, you know that the higher end are in the business of managing the rest with a view to "progress".

A moderate would seek to minimise the obvious dangers of either camp having a triumph and take into account all the circumstances which includes the FACT that both extremes actually believe themselves to be right. Their problem is that they are thinking in the abstract and the problems they are addressing are concrete realities.

Intelligent Design has nothing to do with Creationism. In my view IDers are a bigger danger to Creationists than Darwinians are,

Joe makes a good post but he spoils it with his last remark.

I think ID is not only "doable" but the only thing that is doable. The choice in your polarities is between ridiculousness and pitilessness. The consensus will be neither. What people say about ID (back door this-back door that- science education will be harmed etc) you can take with a pinch of salt.

Science is bound to prevail in the long run. It is a question of getting there in a satisfactory manner. People have to pass away and anybody who wants definitive answers in their own lifetime is as silly as the silliest Creationist.

Okay, now I know what you think about evolution `moderates', and I suspect I would think the same if I knew what their positions were. But I still don't know their actual positions. Could you give me a one-paragraph soundbite of a typical `moderate' perhaps?

But ID is not real science, Spendius.

Not to mention that you fail to prove that evolution is any threat to the moral fabric of society.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

The above report shows that secularism and evolution have no dire effect on morality. Perhaps this is because most people believe in theistic evolution, which is like ID except that it doesn't state that some things are so complicated that evolution cannot account for its development alone.

Furthermore, spendius, you forget that science has no business teaching about God. Why should science mention God? It cannot prove God's existence or disprove it. Science has nothing to say on the subject, so that God be taught in a subject that has nothing to say on the matter?

It's like trying to teach students about black holes in a history class.

Wouldn't that moderate position be, "I believe in descent with modification but I also believe that some invisible hand (so to speak, of course) is guiding the process."

In other words, ID.

Oh. Looked at the article. In that context it's just a typically politicized term. (In other words, it's meaningless.)

From the article...


This is the stuff that gets me -- not this guy's view of science, but this guy's view of religion. He's got this very chauvinistic position that only his conception of his god holds any validity (which is to be expected, I suppose). Why is it inconceivable to him, as a man of faith, that a god might create a universe with conditions in which evolution might occur, and maybe nudge the process along a bit -- maybe sprinkle it every now and then with a little biochemical magic? Of course, because he's incapable of seeing the Bible as allegory, and, as spendi notes, there will never be any thought of arguing with or seeking a compromise with such a person.

What's a Kansas to do?







(Again, though -- 10th graders. Who cares what you teach them? Who learns anythng intellectual at 15? Best to follow the prime directive of child-rearing, and make sure the kid doesn't grow up to be an asshole, like the gentleman quoted above.)

Thomas,
I think you are asking what the political moderate would say on this issue. A political moderate in the U.S. would be against injecting a religious belief into the public sphere based on the long history of church-state separation in the United States. Under this point of view, government-operated schools should not inject a specific religious belief into the teaching of secular subjects such as natural science. I heard one parent say: "Science should be taught as science and religion should be taught as religion."

I apply political views to the public education issue only. As far as describing the support for a particular scientific hypothesis, I would leave politics out of it. Science works best when it is neutral ("value-free").

wande-

We have been through all that way back up the thread. Do you really want to start again?

Teaching Darwinian evolution is an issue when a politically significant section of the population are opposed to it. It becomes a religious issue whether you like it or not for reasons I have already explained. It is hardly scientific to pretend that a politically significant section of the population doesn't exist. It constitutes a head in the sand and, as such, has nothing to contribute to practical social organisation.

wolf wrote-



My reason is that I don't think you could take the explanation. Obviously evolution is no threat in a society which is socialised to accept its results. You haven't got that at the moment. Not by a long way.

I suggest you familiarise yourself with Spengler's concept of "Historical Pseudomorphosis". Western society's religious and moral traditions go back 1000 years at the least. You cannot empty it all out just to suit a pedantic argument, a vested interest or a mere whim.

patiodog wrote-



It isn't so simple pd. There are 15-17 year olds with IQs in the South Park range and they might not just grow up to be ****s but to be powerful ****s. Try an analogy with how future sports champions are recognised and nurtured.

The ordinary ****s can be policed but what if the powerful **** is Chief of Police. A classroom has the potential to contain "anything".

A strict Darwinian evolutionist as President eh? Hold on to your hats!!

I was saying the same thing. Teaching Darwinian evolution can be a political issue:

To be more clear on my reply to patiodog-

Almost all the powerful posts in your country. which there are thousands of (to be vague) will be filled in 40 years time by people who are in classrooms now.

wande wrote-



In present circumstances you want "is" instead of "can" and it is also a religious issue.

Try me.



How so? What is the result of evolution being taught? Hm? I remember you once talked about how it would mean everyone would abandon Christianity, in favour of survival of the fittest and eugenics but there's nothing to support that.



Which kind of suggests that you can't really destroy the moral fabric of society if you teach Evolution.

wolf wrote-



It depends how effective the teaching is.



The fittest would support it and does anybody else really matter? Where is the evolutionary argument on drugs in sport or on football without referees.Have you ever seen the Eton Wall Game? There are no adjudications in evolution. It goes where it goes and will do but only at a pace the existing society can stand.



You must be joking!

Election Could Flip Kan. Evolution Stance

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; Page A03

CHICAGO, July 31 -- Evolution's defenders, working to defeat Kansas Board of Education members who oppose modern Darwinian theory, are challenging three incumbent Republican conservatives and the political heir to a fourth in Tuesday's primary.

A shift of two seats to moderate Republicans -- or to Democrats -- in November almost certainly would lead to a reversal of state science standards celebrated by many religious conservatives and reviled by the scientific establishment.

With turnout expected to be low, neither side is making confident predictions about the state's latest skirmish at the intersection of science, religion and politics. The board's majority shifted to the moderate side in 2000 only to swing back in 2004.

Impassioned players far removed from what is expected to be a sweltering midsummer primary day are watching the issue. The board's critical stance toward evolution prompted favorable comments from President Bush last year and scorn from the scientific community.

The Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank best known for backing "intelligent design," the idea that a creator plays a central role in natural development, is running radio advertisements in support of the standards.

An Institute-sponsored Web site said partisans are "using their voices to try to undermine Kansas' science standards and stifle discussion of the scientific evidence they don't like."

It is a charge that infuriates mainstream scientists who consider the question of evolution settled. The Kansas standards have been denounced by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The editor of Scientific American, John Rennie -- who has described the board's conservatives as "six dimwits" -- posted on a blog to urge Kansas voters to defeat board members "who have inflicted embarrassing creationist nonsense on your home's science curriculum standards."

Three members of the conservative majority are seeking reelection, as is the son-in-law of a fourth. Janet Waugh, a Democrat who opposed the new standards and lamented that Kansas has become an international laughingstock, drew a conservative Democratic challenger who supports the standards that allow for criticism of evolution.

Connie Morris, a member of the majority, defends the standards as "truly scientific." She said Monday, "There's plenty of scientific evidence that refutes the theory, and students deserve to know that."

The document approved by a 6 to 4 vote in November asserts a "lack of adequate natural explanations for the genetic code." It also dropped a phrase from the previous standards that had defined science as "a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena."

Critics said that opened the door to supernatural explanations.

The board's approach was in line with the thinking of Bush. He rejected the stance of his White House science adviser when he told reporters last summer that "both sides" should be taught.

Another issue in this year's race is the board vote, by the same 6 to 4 majority, to require students to get their parents' permission before taking sex education. Some board members said sex education should say only that people should abstain from having sex until marriage.

"It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry," the Wichita Eagle wrote in a July editorial, calling on voters to clean house.

"The whole debate about evolution in Kansas hurts the state's image," said Bob Beatty, a professor of political science at Washburn University. "You get cartoons in newspapers across the world, and I've seen them, where they have someone looking like a caveman and it says 'Kansas' on them."

Staff writer Kari Lydersen contributed to this report.

c.i. quoted-



Mr Rennie is evidently "unfit for purpose" (a buzz phrase here) if he did use that expression about six elected representitives of the people. Has he ever stood for election or was he, as is more likely, shooed in by his gracious forbears when no-one was looking.

The use of "moderate" is a bit iffy as well.

How low is the turnout expected to be?

Don't you just love it when scientists are infuriated?

Is Bob Beatty a little primrose? You should show him what has been said about me on this thread. Thicken his skin up a bit.

In the Kansas Republican primary, Republican "moderates" are trying to replace incumbent school board members who are considered "ultra-conservative" by other Kansas Republicans. In the context of Kansas Republicans, the moderates are actually "moderate conservatives". Moderate Republicans feel that their party should not pursue a fundamentalist-religious agenda.

Today's voter turnout in Kansas may be as low as 38%. However, if moderate candidates replace ultra-conservative incumbents, this would lead to a new school board configuration that would repeal the controversial science education standards.