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| 7/9 |
| 2005/11/8-9 [Science/Biology] UID:40499 Activity:nil |
11/8 What's the matter with Kansas, indeed:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/08/evolution.debate.ap/index.html
\_ Can someone please tell me what the BIG problem is w/ evolution
that is somehow not present w/ GR or QM? It seems to me that if
you accept GR/QM, you have to accept evolution.
\_ GR/QM don't contradict thw WORD OF GOD.
\_ "Intelligent Design" won the nomenclature war. For instance, I
believe life was designed by a Creator. However, when I looked into
the details of ID, I was stunned by how it basically says "this
stuff doesn't make sense, doesn't it make more sense that God^H^H^H
an intelligent agent designed it?" Seriously, that's their whole
argument. -emarkp
\_ ID works on the "N+1" theory. If our level of technological
understanding is "N", then anything with a technological
complexity of "N+1" MUST be divinely inspired. I work in
Kansas, and live next door in Missouri, and half of the
people on both sides (smart, educated, earnest) believe in
some form of N+1ism. Even those people who understand that
the whole thing is political posturing in the part of the
Kansas (Republican, grass-roots) political establishment still
also, somewhere in the back of their minds, believe that,
yes, Evolution is real, but underlying evolution is some
divinely-inspired impetus. --coganman
\_ my foot up their asses is divinely-inspired
\_ And they haven't tarred & feathered you yet? -John
\_ Say we accept for the sake of argument that life on earth
was designed by an intelligent agent. I do not see how
this refutes or disproves natural selection b/c (1) the
intelligent agent could have used natural selection as
the mechanism to create life and (2) the intelligent
agent itself may have arose due to natural selection
operating in a different environment.
\_ I agree. ID proponents however paint evolution as requiring
evolution to be a random process--explicitly forbidding a
creator. Thus setting up the straw man. -emarkp |
| 7/9 |
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| www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/08/evolution.debate.ap/index.html TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- At the risk of re-igniting the same heated nationw ide debate it sparked six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education appro ved new public school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the t heory of evolution. The 6-4 vote was a victory for "intelligent design" advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so co mplex that it must have been created by a higher power. Critics of the language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state. All six of those who voted for the standards were Republicans. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation , but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a K ansas City Democrat. Supporters of the standards said they will promote academic freedom. "It gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today," said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican. The standards state that high school students must understand major evolu tionary concepts. But they also declare that some concepts have been cha llenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology. The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life. In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is n o longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. The standards will be used to develop student tests measuring how well sc hools teach science. Decisions about what is taught in classrooms will r emain with 300 local school boards, but some educators fear pressure wil l increase in some communities to teach less about evolution or more abo ut intelligent design. Read how Kansas came to this point) The vote marked the third time in six years that the Kansas board has rew ritten standards with evolution as the central issue. In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution, a move Harvar d paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said was akin to teaching "American h istory without Lincoln." Two years later, after voters replaced three members, the board reverted to evolution-friendly standards. Elections in 2002 and 2004 changed the board's composition again, making it more conservative. Many scientists and other critics contend creationists repackaged old ide as in scientific-sounding language to get around a US Supreme Court de cision in 1987 that banned teaching the biblical story of creation in pu blic schools. In Pennsylvania, a judge is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit against the Dover school b oard's policy of requiring high school students to learn about intellige nt design in biology class. |