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Gah.
As someone who is planning to go into education in South Carolina, the ongoing attempt to push intelligent design into our classrooms is of intense interest to me. And, of course, you know my opinion of intelligent design's validity. So, when I read this story from our local paper, it makes me wish to weep.
"A lawmaker pushing to give teachers alternatives to evolution won’t identify the people he has asked to advise a state panel.
State Sen. Mike Fair has invited two experts to advise the school reform oversight agency, which is evaluating the standards for teaching the origins of life.
Fair said he promised the two advisers he would protect their identities to minimize scrutiny of their views and credentials prior to their appearance before an EOC subcommittee next week..."
Now why, I must wonder, if these to are experts in their fields, would they wish to MINIMIZE scrutiny of their credentials? If they have good credentials, relevant to the science of evolution and the practice of public education, then they should be proclaiming them loudly and proudly. Credentials sell opinions...unless, of course, you don't have any.
"Fair has emerged as the leading voice to modify lesson guidelines for high school biology by advocating for the inclusion of language that gives teachers more leeway in discussing alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Fair insists he is not advocating teachers present lessons about creationism, which draws on the Bible to explain the origins of life, or “intelligent design,” a relatively new theory challenging evolution because it cannot fully explain some of life’s mysteries."
...then what /is/ he proposing? What 'alternatives' does he wish to teach? The world sprung from the loins of the Great Mother Goddess (God, if I were a teacher who did not value my job, I would /love/ to teach that as an 'alternative')? For that matter...
It's not Darwin's theory! Darwin was one of the /original/ theorists, and certainly the father of evolutionary biology, but the theory of evolution has gone far, far beyond his work. It has been adapted for new evidence, expanded, revised through experimentation and study, and held up through decades of intense scrutiny by brilliant minds of many different disciplines. Evolution, in some form or fashion, is the /only/ theory we have that adequately explains what we see in the world around us. "God did it" is not an explanation. It tells us nothing about our world, it gives us no areas for exploration, and it helps not at all with the development of new technologies and knowledges. It's not a bloody alternative, no matter how you phrase it, or what kind of mealy-mouthed pretty psuedo-scientific language that you put it in.
Damn it all.
"A lawmaker pushing to give teachers alternatives to evolution won’t identify the people he has asked to advise a state panel.
State Sen. Mike Fair has invited two experts to advise the school reform oversight agency, which is evaluating the standards for teaching the origins of life.
Fair said he promised the two advisers he would protect their identities to minimize scrutiny of their views and credentials prior to their appearance before an EOC subcommittee next week..."
Now why, I must wonder, if these to are experts in their fields, would they wish to MINIMIZE scrutiny of their credentials? If they have good credentials, relevant to the science of evolution and the practice of public education, then they should be proclaiming them loudly and proudly. Credentials sell opinions...unless, of course, you don't have any.
"Fair has emerged as the leading voice to modify lesson guidelines for high school biology by advocating for the inclusion of language that gives teachers more leeway in discussing alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Fair insists he is not advocating teachers present lessons about creationism, which draws on the Bible to explain the origins of life, or “intelligent design,” a relatively new theory challenging evolution because it cannot fully explain some of life’s mysteries."
...then what /is/ he proposing? What 'alternatives' does he wish to teach? The world sprung from the loins of the Great Mother Goddess (God, if I were a teacher who did not value my job, I would /love/ to teach that as an 'alternative')? For that matter...
It's not Darwin's theory! Darwin was one of the /original/ theorists, and certainly the father of evolutionary biology, but the theory of evolution has gone far, far beyond his work. It has been adapted for new evidence, expanded, revised through experimentation and study, and held up through decades of intense scrutiny by brilliant minds of many different disciplines. Evolution, in some form or fashion, is the /only/ theory we have that adequately explains what we see in the world around us. "God did it" is not an explanation. It tells us nothing about our world, it gives us no areas for exploration, and it helps not at all with the development of new technologies and knowledges. It's not a bloody alternative, no matter how you phrase it, or what kind of mealy-mouthed pretty psuedo-scientific language that you put it in.
Damn it all.
no subject
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2640&program=CSC%20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science
They claim a whopping 4 peer-reviewed scientific articles that show support for ID...for a very /old/ theory, that's not exactly impressive. And it gets even less impressive when you actually look at what's there.
Stephen Meyer is, for the record, a geophysicist, not a biologist. His article in that journal was published contrary to the normal practices of that journal (without multiple peer-review mandated by the journal's constitution), and the Biological Society of Washington has published a statement (http://www.biolsocwash.org/) essentially apologizing for the inclusion of that work, calling it 'not up to the standards' of the journal.
The Max Planck Institute has published disclaimers on Lonnig's work, but he's the most solid thing that they have.
Wells admits that he went to school from seminary specifically to "destroy Darwinism" (http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm) at the order of Reverend Moon. Also, this article is published in Biology Forum, a journal of theoretical biology. The articles within do not reflect the results of actual experiments, but rather hypothetical experiments that illustrate the authors' theories. Also, you will notice that the /actual/ abstract here (http://www.tilgher.it/(4mi0go45sj1fyc45wkyl4455)/index.aspx?lang=eng&tpr=4) is different in the end from the 'quoted' abstract on the Discovery Institute page, which is set off as if to reflect the actual words of the paper. The Discovery Institute suggests that a true experiment has been defined and ran successfully...that's entirely untrue. A theoretical experiment has been designed, and never run.
Two of the 'peer reviewed' books in that section were not, in fact, peer-reviewed. Popular trade books are largely useless from a scientific perspective...they're published based on the number of copies they're likely to sell, not the rigidity of their research, and classified according to what the publisher wants to classify them as.
...I was going to say more, but discovery.org is no longer opening for me. I think it's down for the moment. But I don't have the list of articles before me. More later, once I can get it back in shape.