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  Topic: The decision of Judge Jones., Scientific validity of ID.< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Stephen Elliott



Posts: 1776
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 27 2006,21:40   

After reading all the whining about Judge Jones saying ID is not science it got me wondering.

The Judge ruled that ID is not science, thus preventing it being taught as science.

However, if somebody actually wanted to research ID, this would not prevent them, would it?

What I am trying to ask is:
Could the ruling actually stop someone from doing genuine research (as in the way all other controversial theories were studied) on ID? IMO the ruling does not prevent this.

If I am correct, then it makes the complaining from the ID mob redundant. They are kinda saying:
"ID is as scientific as any other theory except, it should not have to do any scientific testing." ???

  
Alan Fox



Posts: 1556
Joined: Aug. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 28 2006,00:10   

Stephen,

I think there's a fundamental* first step that ID has to take before researching anything. Someone has to come up with a hypothesis which can be tested. Behe's "hypothesis" that some biological systems could not have evolved, because they are "irreducibly complex" cannot be falsified, because of the impossibility of proving all biological systems evolved.

Dembski's EF etc., have no relevance to biological systems and make no positive predictions that could be tested.

Until someone can think of a testable hypothesis, there is no useful research that can be done. And I think Behe and Dembski know that. But there is nothing to stop them or anyone else from trying.

Playing Devil's advocate, they could look for the designer's footprint somewhere, maybe in DNA code, but how would they know his shoe size?

*pun intended.

  
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 28 2006,00:58   

Stephen, you are correct, the KvD ruling has nothing to do with what somebody gets up to in a lab somewhere. It only has to do with what students in high school get taught.

The whining from the ID advocates that Judge Jones has declared ID research verboten is spin, pure and simple. It doesn't stop university classes from discussing it, it doesn't stop scientists from doing something to get actual research going. It only says that the process of convincing the scietific community that there is a good and useful idea somewhere there has not been done, and therefore the claim that ID is ready for 9th grade biology classrooms is simply nonsense.

But the testimony at the trial indicated that ID advocates don't really have any inclination to test their conjectures, so it's doubly puzzling what the fuss could be about. It's not like they've been doing anything that would be hindered by a ban on ID research.

Edited by Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 28 2006,07:04

--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 11 2015,18:00   

Larry Moran has a provocative post up, starting a critique of Judge Jones' decision concerning the scientific status of ID. Moran asserts that up in Canada, whether something is true or not counts for something in the courts.

I'm happy to hear that Canadian courts care about whether science education there is good or not. That isn't the way the legalities play out in US courts, though, and Judge Jones was speaking to the state of US jurisprudence. This is an "is and ought" sort of thing. Yeah, courts ought to care about truth, but the sad fact of the "is" down south means that what matters is whether there is a colorable secular purpose to teaching something, not whether the something is itself good or even true.

What I stated back in 2007 still holds, at least for the context in the USA:

Quote

It is an unfortunate fact that science content is not a protected entity under the law. When it comes to protecting public school science from incursions of religiously-motivated anti-science, the church-state separation provisions of the US and state constitutions are still our first and best lines of defense (modulo what I noted about what changes in the SCOTUS may lead to).


--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
Learned Hand



Posts: 214
Joined: Oct. 2009

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 11 2015,23:16   

Agreed. Courts are fairly well equipped to draw categorical lines: science does this and ID does that, therefore ID isn't science. Courts are very poorly equipped to actually determine questions of scientific fact. Judges don't have the training, time, or resources for it. Even if they did, they get their information from biased and adversarial parties.

  
Soapy Sam



Posts: 659
Joined: Jan. 2012

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,02:42   

Interesting that church-state separation does not even exist in the UK, yet ID-in-biology-class remains largely a non-issue. Most of us go to 'Church of England' primary schools, and religious education is one of the few (maybe the only) compulsory subject(s) in all 'state' schools.

Perhaps it's because (AIUI) our courts have no jurisdiction over syllabus that we don't see these kinds of challenges.

--------------
SoapySam is a pathetic asswiper. Joe G

BTW, when you make little jabs like “I thought basic logic was one thing UDers could handle,” you come off looking especially silly when you turn out to be wrong. - Barry Arrington

  
Quack



Posts: 1961
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,05:00   

Quote (Learned Hand @ Feb. 11 2015,23:16)
Agreed. Courts are fairly well equipped to draw categorical lines: science does this and ID does that, therefore ID isn't science. Courts are very poorly equipped to actually determine questions of scientific fact. Judges don't have the training, time, or resources for it. Even if they did, they get their information from biased and adversarial parties.

Right, the this vs that between science and ID is what creates an ocean of separation between the twain and they never shall meet!

--------------
Rocks have no biology.
              Robert Byers.

  
midwifetoad



Posts: 4003
Joined: Mar. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,08:36   

Quote (Learned Hand @ Feb. 11 2015,23:16)
Agreed. Courts are fairly well equipped to draw categorical lines: science does this and ID does that, therefore ID isn't science. Courts are very poorly equipped to actually determine questions of scientific fact. Judges don't have the training, time, or resources for it. Even if they did, they get their information from biased and adversarial parties.

But courts do make determinations of scientific fact, all the time. It's called forensics. And the "fact" of evolution is an example of forensics.

Any case involving "what happened" is at some level, a scientific fact case.

ID is at something of a disadvantage here. I don't know of any court case in which the defendant argued that an act was done by disembodied spirits.

It is, however, often argued that the accused did not have the means or the opportunity. That seems to be the tack taken by Behe and Dembski. And that seems to be Larry Moran's position.

ID has argued that evolution is insufficient, and has not proved its case. Moran says that ID has argued the case on the facts and lost. Not unscientific, but wrong.

Where ID goes dirty pants is not admitting it is wrong.

I agree with Moran, that Behe's Edge argument is reasonable, provided you give it up when it repeatedly fails.

--edited for spelling.

Edited by midwifetoad on Feb. 12 2015,12:40

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Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.

  
k.e..



Posts: 5432
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,08:50   

Quote

ID is at something of a disadvantage here. I don't know of any court case in which the defendant argued that an act was done by disembodied spirits


Well there is the well known case of God defending himself against Lloyd's of London for an Act of God. Or did I just imagine that......

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"I get a strong breeze from my monitor every time k.e. puts on his clown DaveTard suit" dogdidit
"ID is deader than Lenny Flanks granmaws dildo batteries" Erasmus
"I'm busy studying scientist level science papers" Galloping Gary Gaulin

  
Soapy Sam



Posts: 659
Joined: Jan. 2012

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,19:29   

Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 12 2015,14:36)
I don't know of any court case in which the defendant argued that an act was done by disembodied spirits.

Meanwhile paternity suits turn on evidence of common descent - exactly the same kinds of tests as used in phylogenetic analysis. This is one thing that bugs the hell out of me - valid in the one, invalid in the other, no good reason given. All of a sudden, at some arbitrary remove from intraspecies descent, the self-same commonality markers elide from accepted common descent to hogwash 'common design'. The less like each other genome pairs become, the more commonly-designed they are!

Edited by Soapy Sam on Feb. 13 2015,01:29

--------------
SoapySam is a pathetic asswiper. Joe G

BTW, when you make little jabs like “I thought basic logic was one thing UDers could handle,” you come off looking especially silly when you turn out to be wrong. - Barry Arrington

  
Learned Hand



Posts: 214
Joined: Oct. 2009

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,21:15   

You're thinking like a scientist, and/or someone who understands the underlying principles. To most of us laypeople, evolution and paternity tests feel like two very different things, operating on two completely different scales. It's quite difficult to convince someone that apples and oranges are fundamentally similar, especially if they've based their identity partially on the conclusion that those are different things.

  
Quack



Posts: 1961
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 12 2015,23:41   

Quote (Learned Hand @ Feb. 12 2015,21:15)
You're thinking like a scientist, and/or someone who understands the underlying principles. To most of us laypeople, evolution and paternity tests feel like two very different things, operating on two completely different scales. It's quite difficult to convince someone that apples and oranges are fundamentally similar, especially if they've based their identity partially on the conclusion that those are different things.

Apples and oranges? They are somewhat more dissimilar than tigers vs lions. Or what about penguins and dolphins?

I like to think of relatedness in biology as a continuum with every creature being more or less related to all other within a nested hierarchy. I trust nobody ever tested the human-chimp connection.

--------------
Rocks have no biology.
              Robert Byers.

  
Soapy Sam



Posts: 659
Joined: Jan. 2012

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 14 2015,05:07   

Quote (Learned Hand @ Feb. 13 2015,03:15)
You're thinking like a scientist, and/or someone who understands the underlying principles. To most of us laypeople, evolution and paternity tests feel like two very different things, operating on two completely different scales. It's quite difficult to convince someone that apples and oranges are fundamentally similar, especially if they've based their identity partially on the conclusion that those are different things.

Well, molecular phylogeny uses pretty much the same techniques as forensic DNA testing, and neither rely on superficial 'appley/orangey' characters. They operate on different scales, but like radioactive isotopes with different half-lives, different genetic elements change at different rates, and so can probe to different depths.

One such are SINE elements, which transpose around the genome while functional, but often break on landing. Once inserted, the insertion site and its inserted element generally change at the neutral rate, so the flanking region with and without the element can often still be identified for a few tens of millions of years. But it starts with an individual and its immediate descendants.

When an element has only just transposed, there will be variation within the population, so you can separate closer relatives on this basis, on the presence or absence of the SINE in the flanking region.

Any given element is destined to either become fixed or lost. If fixed, it's a clear binary signal for a species - it either has the element with flanking sequence, or it has flanking sequence alone. Those possessing the element are more closely related to each other than they are to those with flanking region alone, in much the same way as a parental relation.

So, SINEs can be used as probes from parents right down to whale/hippo/ruminant relations. Many other markers are available.

Even for functional elements, Common Design cannot readily explain the pattern. There is no clear functional reason why every common part of a hippo genome should be more like a whale's than a pig's, for example.

--------------
SoapySam is a pathetic asswiper. Joe G

BTW, when you make little jabs like “I thought basic logic was one thing UDers could handle,” you come off looking especially silly when you turn out to be wrong. - Barry Arrington

  
k.e..



Posts: 5432
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 14 2015,07:59   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 12 2015,02:00)
Larry Moran has a provocative post up, starting a critique of Judge Jones' decision concerning the scientific status of ID. Moran asserts that up in Canada, whether something is true or not counts for something in the courts.

I'm happy to hear that Canadian courts care about whether science education there is good or not. That isn't the way the legalities play out in US courts, though, and Judge Jones was speaking to the state of US jurisprudence. This is an "is and ought" sort of thing. Yeah, courts ought to care about truth, but the sad fact of the "is" down south means that what matters is whether there is a colorable secular purpose to teaching something, not whether the something is itself good or even true.

What I stated back in 2007 still holds, at least for the context in the USA:

   
Quote

It is an unfortunate fact that science content is not a protected entity under the law. When it comes to protecting public school science from incursions of religiously-motivated anti-science, the church-state separation provisions of the US and state constitutions are still our first and best lines of defense (modulo what I noted about what changes in the SCOTUS may lead to).

Goal post shifting. Is this the start of the Moran gallop? Or the Moron move?
The premise "That the god of the Fundy Bibliolator Oligarchy sets a legal precident over Jones' rulling" is Moran's rallying dog whistle politics which plays well in foreskin collection houses on Sunday mornings.That is his only aim. That and the fear of Women demanding abortions and all that goes with it.

--------------
"I get a strong breeze from my monitor every time k.e. puts on his clown DaveTard suit" dogdidit
"ID is deader than Lenny Flanks granmaws dildo batteries" Erasmus
"I'm busy studying scientist level science papers" Galloping Gary Gaulin

  
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 14 2015,20:05   

Quote (k.e.. @ Feb. 14 2015,07:59)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 12 2015,02:00)
Larry Moran has a provocative post up, starting a critique of Judge Jones' decision concerning the scientific status of ID. Moran asserts that up in Canada, whether something is true or not counts for something in the courts.

I'm happy to hear that Canadian courts care about whether science education there is good or not. That isn't the way the legalities play out in US courts, though, and Judge Jones was speaking to the state of US jurisprudence. This is an "is and ought" sort of thing. Yeah, courts ought to care about truth, but the sad fact of the "is" down south means that what matters is whether there is a colorable secular purpose to teaching something, not whether the something is itself good or even true.

What I stated back in 2007 still holds, at least for the context in the USA:

     
Quote

It is an unfortunate fact that science content is not a protected entity under the law. When it comes to protecting public school science from incursions of religiously-motivated anti-science, the church-state separation provisions of the US and state constitutions are still our first and best lines of defense (modulo what I noted about what changes in the SCOTUS may lead to).

Goal post shifting. Is this the start of the Moran gallop? Or the Moron move?
The premise "That the god of the Fundy Bibliolator Oligarchy sets a legal precident over Jones' rulling" is Moran's rallying dog whistle politics which plays well in foreskin collection houses on Sunday mornings.That is his only aim. That and the fear of Women demanding abortions and all that goes with it.

Larry Moran is a different sort of provocateur. He established himself as a curmudgeon on talk.origins and continues in that vein on his blog.

--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
k.e..



Posts: 5432
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,02:54   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 15 2015,04:05)
Quote (k.e.. @ Feb. 14 2015,07:59)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 12 2015,02:00)
Larry Moran has a provocative post up, starting a critique of Judge Jones' decision concerning the scientific status of ID. Moran asserts that up in Canada, whether something is true or not counts for something in the courts.

I'm happy to hear that Canadian courts care about whether science education there is good or not. That isn't the way the legalities play out in US courts, though, and Judge Jones was speaking to the state of US jurisprudence. This is an "is and ought" sort of thing. Yeah, courts ought to care about truth, but the sad fact of the "is" down south means that what matters is whether there is a colorable secular purpose to teaching something, not whether the something is itself good or even true.

What I stated back in 2007 still holds, at least for the context in the USA:

     
Quote

It is an unfortunate fact that science content is not a protected entity under the law. When it comes to protecting public school science from incursions of religiously-motivated anti-science, the church-state separation provisions of the US and state constitutions are still our first and best lines of defense (modulo what I noted about what changes in the SCOTUS may lead to).

Goal post shifting. Is this the start of the Moran gallop? Or the Moron move?
The premise "That the god of the Fundy Bibliolator Oligarchy sets a legal precident over Jones' rulling" is Moran's rallying dog whistle politics which plays well in foreskin collection houses on Sunday mornings.That is his only aim. That and the fear of Women demanding abortions and all that goes with it.

Larry Moran is a different sort of provocateur. He established himself as a curmudgeon on talk.origins and continues in that vein on his blog.

Thanks for the heads up Wes appreciate it.

--------------
"I get a strong breeze from my monitor every time k.e. puts on his clown DaveTard suit" dogdidit
"ID is deader than Lenny Flanks granmaws dildo batteries" Erasmus
"I'm busy studying scientist level science papers" Galloping Gary Gaulin

  
Cubist



Posts: 559
Joined: Oct. 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,05:47   

What Wes said. Dr. Moran consistently refers to ID-pushers as "Intelligent Design Creationists", and hammers on Creationists' pseudo-arguments, and in general is every inch a supporter of real science. He does, however, believe that the best way to deal with Creationist incursions into the science classroom is to teach what Creationism actually is, rather than to erect legal barriers to the teaching of Creationism. In principle, Dr. Moran's tactic might actually be the best way to go; in practice, Dr. Moran does not appear to have any viable strategy for dealing with the unfortunate reality that there's just a whole lot of teachers and administrators who are openly Creationist and/or sympathetic to Creationism.

It may be worth noting that Dr. Moran is Canadian, and therefore may not be fully conversant with the situation that obtains in the US.

  
midwifetoad



Posts: 4003
Joined: Mar. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,06:49   

In the real world, probably half of high school biology teachers either skip over evolution or teach it badly. Quite a few teach some form of creationism.

--------------
Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.

  
Seversky



Posts: 442
Joined: June 2010

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,09:23   

Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 15 2015,06:49)
In the real world, probably half of high school biology teachers either skip over evolution or teach it badly. Quite a few teach some form of creationism.

Sadly, true

  
NoName



Posts: 2729
Joined: Mar. 2013

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,09:41   

Quote (Soapy Sam @ Feb. 12 2015,20:29)
Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 12 2015,14:36)
I don't know of any court case in which the defendant argued that an act was done by disembodied spirits.

Meanwhile paternity suits turn on evidence of common descent - exactly the same kinds of tests as used in phylogenetic analysis. This is one thing that bugs the hell out of me - valid in the one, invalid in the other, no good reason given. All of a sudden, at some arbitrary remove from intraspecies descent, the self-same commonality markers elide from accepted common descent to hogwash 'common design'. The less like each other genome pairs become, the more commonly-designed they are!

Dare I suggest that this would make an excellent topic for an article on The Panda's Thumb, or any number of "civilian" science-oriented magazines?
I for one would appreciate such an article, perhaps one that would start from paternity suits to the extended descent analysis required for genealogy, and then to the analyses used to identify the descendants of Genghis Khan, and the remains of Richard III, and on to analysis of population "pools" and their inter-relationships over time.

  
N.Wells



Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,17:26   

Quote (Cubist @ Feb. 15 2015,05:47)
What Wes said. Dr. Moran consistently refers to ID-pushers as "Intelligent Design Creationists", and hammers on Creationists' pseudo-arguments, and in general is every inch a supporter of real science. He does, however, believe that the best way to deal with Creationist incursions into the science classroom is to teach what Creationism actually is, rather than to erect legal barriers to the teaching of Creationism. In principle, Dr. Moran's tactic might actually be the best way to go; in practice, Dr. Moran does not appear to have any viable strategy for dealing with the unfortunate reality that there's just a whole lot of teachers and administrators who are openly Creationist and/or sympathetic to Creationism.

It may be worth noting that Dr. Moran is Canadian, and therefore may not be fully conversant with the situation that obtains in the US.

Creationist claims used to be one the best ways to teach about doing science, because it was a fully worked out counter-example, and students could do a comparatively small amount of original research and see through the arguments, whether they rested on misrepresentation of the evidence, misunderstanding, or outright lies.  This would nicely point out the importance of respecting the evidence, being honest, fairly representing prior work, bringing in all relevant data, constructing legitimate hypotheses and logical predictions, and so forth.

However, the intelligent design version of creationism is much more deliberately obscure and obfuscatory, tending to rely on jargon and complex arguments that their supporters are not supposed to understand but just be impressed by (like Dembski's math).  Conclusions are smuggled in dishonestly by subterfuge (design being the default conclusion in Dembski's explanatory filter, and the whole "the designer could be an alien extraterrestrial, nudge nudge, wink wink").  By the time one sorts through the piled-high-and-deep BS of a typical ID argument, typical students are confused and tend to be left only with the impression that science is too difficult to understand and that there may be grounds for experts to disagree.  Therefore, it is not of much use in a science classroom.

In short, old creationists wanted to convince their audience of their arguments, so they tended to present them plainly.  Modern IDists were instead hoping to slide under the radar in a cloud of apparent authority, dense incomprehensibility, and confusion.

  
midwifetoad



Posts: 4003
Joined: Mar. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 15 2015,21:18   

I think it would be best to start with Paley and show how Darwin responded yo Paley.

It's fairly easy to demonstrate that modern ID adds nothing to Paley.

--------------
Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.

  
OgreMkV



Posts: 3668
Joined: Oct. 2009

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 16 2015,20:47   

Quote (NoName @ Feb. 15 2015,09:41)
Quote (Soapy Sam @ Feb. 12 2015,20:29)
Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 12 2015,14:36)
I don't know of any court case in which the defendant argued that an act was done by disembodied spirits.

Meanwhile paternity suits turn on evidence of common descent - exactly the same kinds of tests as used in phylogenetic analysis. This is one thing that bugs the hell out of me - valid in the one, invalid in the other, no good reason given. All of a sudden, at some arbitrary remove from intraspecies descent, the self-same commonality markers elide from accepted common descent to hogwash 'common design'. The less like each other genome pairs become, the more commonly-designed they are!

Dare I suggest that this would make an excellent topic for an article on The Panda's Thumb, or any number of "civilian" science-oriented magazines?
I for one would appreciate such an article, perhaps one that would start from paternity suits to the extended descent analysis required for genealogy, and then to the analyses used to identify the descendants of Genghis Khan, and the remains of Richard III, and on to analysis of population "pools" and their inter-relationships over time.

Done, but you'll have to wait for the book.

--------------
Ignored by those who can't provide evidence for their claims.

http://skepticink.com/smilodo....retreat

   
Quack



Posts: 1961
Joined: May 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 17 2015,01:33   

Quote (Seversky @ Feb. 15 2015,09:23)
 
Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 15 2015,06:49)
In the real world, probably half of high school biology teachers either skip over evolution or teach it badly. Quite a few teach some form of creationism.

Sadly, true

Sadly true, server not found.

--------------
Rocks have no biology.
              Robert Byers.

  
fnxtr



Posts: 3504
Joined: June 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 17 2015,08:46   

Quote
Topic: The decision of Judge Jones., Scientific vapidity of ID.


FTFY

--------------
"[A] book said there were 5 trillion witnesses. Who am I supposed to believe, 5 trillion witnesses or you? That shit's, like, ironclad. " -- stevestory

"Wow, you must be retarded. I said that CO2 does not trap heat. If it did then it would not cool down at night."  Joe G

  
Dr.GH



Posts: 2333
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 19 2015,02:18   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 14 2015,18:05)
Larry Moran is a different sort of provocateur. He established himself as a curmudgeon on talk.origins and continues in that vein on his blog.

"Curmudgeon" is a nice word for it. I would be glad to be called a "Curmudgeon."

   
Dr.GH



Posts: 2333
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 19 2015,02:22   

The idea that we are bound by law, and that law will change is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. How does law change? By the will of mankind. That is brilliant. It is dangerous, but brilliant ideas are dangerous.

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"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."

L. Susskind, 2004 "SMOLIN VS. SUSSKIND: THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"

   
Seversky



Posts: 442
Joined: June 2010

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 19 2015,19:11   

Quote (Quack @ Feb. 17 2015,01:33)
Quote (Seversky @ Feb. 15 2015,09:23)
   
Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 15 2015,06:49)
In the real world, probably half of high school biology teachers either skip over evolution or teach it badly. Quite a few teach some form of creationism.

Sadly, true

Sadly true, server not found.

Sorry about that.

Try this


And this is interesting

  
JAM



Posts: 517
Joined: July 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 22 2015,23:15   

Quote (N.Wells @ Feb. 15 2015,16:26)
Quote (Cubist @ Feb. 15 2015,05:47)
What Wes said. Dr. Moran consistently refers to ID-pushers as "Intelligent Design Creationists", and hammers on Creationists' pseudo-arguments, and in general is every inch a supporter of real science. He does, however, believe that the best way to deal with Creationist incursions into the science classroom is to teach what Creationism actually is, rather than to erect legal barriers to the teaching of Creationism. In principle, Dr. Moran's tactic might actually be the best way to go; in practice, Dr. Moran does not appear to have any viable strategy for dealing with the unfortunate reality that there's just a whole lot of teachers and administrators who are openly Creationist and/or sympathetic to Creationism.

It may be worth noting that Dr. Moran is Canadian, and therefore may not be fully conversant with the situation that obtains in the US.

...In short, old creationists wanted to convince their audience of their arguments, so they tended to present them plainly.  Modern IDists were instead hoping to slide under the radar in a cloud of apparent authority, dense incomprehensibility, and confusion.

Hi N,

Have you tried in a classroom setting? I would think that one could present something like the following:

1) Darwin on common descent
2) Produce a tree from protein sequences using BLAST online
3) Dissect the dishonest ID claims that this represents mere similarity (IOW, how does ID "theory" explain the pattern of the differences?)
4) Show an exception to common descent (horizontal transmission) and the resulting modification of theory
5) What are the IDers doing? Look at Bio-Complexity and laugh.
6) Why aren't they doing anything to test any ID hypothesis? They have no faith!
7) Present other shifts in dogma (prions, ulcers) and show how they shifted because of new data, not rhetoric

What do you think?

  
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