Darwin's Influence

[asbestosman]

For those who approve of SETI as science, but disapprove of Intelligent Design, could you explain your reasoning?

[RenegadeOfPhunk]

For those who approve of SETI as science, but disapprove of Intelligent Design, could you explain your reasoning?

I think SETI is a 'working hypothesis' right now (I don't think I'd call it a 'theory'), but it's at least a perfectly testable one and they are going about it in pretty much the right way I think...

But they aren't there yet. And the reason I'd say they are 'scientific' is that most SETI proponents would agree with that statement.

If SETI were trying to force its way into high-school text-books and classrooms, or if there were already official lessons on 'The best places to point your antenna to find little green men' embedded into curriculums - I might have thought more deeply on the issue

Incidentally - I think SETI experiments - in many ways - are closely related to abiogenesis (as in moving it forward from the status of hypothesis to theory...). So all in all, I heartily approve of their efforts...

[thesometimesaint]

asbestosman:

I think that SETI is more a statement faith. Faith that something/someone has developed enough to communicate to us. I personally find the possibility intriguing enough to spend some money on it, but not hopeful enough to expect a recognizable signal.

[Rob Osborn]

Rob:

What a anti-science diatribe. This from you while you are using the most technologically/scientifically advanced machine known to man. Please either join the 21st Century or go live somewhere of the 5th. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

Ps. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

So are you telling me that Darwin's theories led to the development of microprocessors? I was not aware that evolutionary biology found a mutation code for developing silicone into microprocessors? I have no problem with including evolutionary theorists with soothsayers, tarrot card readers, and the like.

[thesometimesaint]

Rob:

That I am aware of.

[LeSellers]

I voted "No" because I firmly believe that this question should not be a problem since there ought to be no "classrooms" (which I interpret to mean "rooms filled with children forced to be there by a government that controls the content of the instruction, the "qualifications" of the instructor, the sequence of the instruction, the density of the instruction, etc).

Government has no more business running schools than it had running churches, and for exactly the same reasons.

We have fought the "math wars", the "reading wars", the "science wars", and "nearly-every-other-'subject' war" since government arrogated to itself the control of pedagogy in the 1850s. We got along more than "just fine" without government-run, tax-funded schools for the first century and a half of the existence of this country, even birthed this union without them. In the intervening time, after Horace Mann and his science (of phrenology) became the USmerican god of education, literacy rates have dropped and USmericans have lost their sense of independence in learning.

Schools are not about "education", they are about political power. That's why politicians love them.

The answer to the question, should Darwinism and alternatives to it, be taught in "the classroom? is "If the parents of the children in that classroom want it taught there."

Lehi

[Jason]

Rather than completely removing government from the classroom all at once, how about removing the Fedral government from the classroom - turning it back to the states? The Department of Education doesn't really seem to do a whole lot that is positive, in my opinion.

[thesometimesaint]

Welcome to the 5th Century.

[structurecop]

Welcome to the 5th Century.

Yeah. I've been in a country where the schools were run by donation. It was a really good set up. The "good" schools got Saudi money and taught Wahabism. The poor schools, usually the ones that allowed girls to attend, got regularly blown up.

[Daniel Peterson]

Yep that's just what we need in this country more religious dogma replacing actual science. Fully 20% of American adults believe the sun revolves around the earth, because it says so in the Bible. Do you honestly believe the US needs more of that?

No. No more than I think that straw man argumentation and caricature need to be taught as acceptable methods of argumentation in logic classes.

Plainly, we have more than enough of that already.

I have no problem with ID taught in a comparative religion class, or studying the Bible as literature in an English class. But to claim any false equivalency to actual science is sophistry to the max.

See above.

Our children need to learn dependable scientific theories and principles in science class not be confused and distracted by alternative, non scientific information and debating something that really isn't debatable.

I couldn't possibly agree more.

It isn't the school's function to teach our children religion. That is our function as parents and as a church.

Absolutely.

We are doing our children a great disservice if we don't teach them that God and science are perfectly compatible.

Quite so.

And if anybody is interested in discussing my actual position, I would be happy to do so -- though tonight will be rough because I have bishop's interviews from 6:30 until, mostly likely, after midnight.

If I were a biology teacher, I could have an enormous amount of fun, and create (I think) an absolutely fascinating class, teaching the debate between advocates of intelligent design and advocates of random Darwinian variation. I'm quite certain that the students would learn much more biology, and enjoy it far more, than they typically do in most high school classrooms in America.

[RenegadeOfPhunk]

If I were a biology teacher, I could have an enormous amount of fun, and create (I think) an absolutely fascinating class, teaching the debate between advocates of intelligent design and advocates of random Darwinian variation.

Maybe you'd end up enjoying some post-class discussion with the physics teacher about the debate he hosted between 'Steady State' advocates and the 'Universe was once so small I could tuck it into my top pocket' Big Bang advocates...

Maybe he'd also delight you both with recollections of his previous 'debate' between the 'Newtonian' advocates, and the 'theoretically there are parallel universes - and one could [theoretically] go back in time to murder ones Grandfather!' General Relativity advocates...!

Sounds marvelous. Genuine educational value, stimulating and fun. I actually agree.

You might want to save this for the odd day though - not 'standard practice'. Maybe.

Wouldn't want potentially half your students leaving the school thinking that the 'Steady State' theory represents the best scientific thought of the current era...

Or would you?

Or is it the students responsibility to work out for themselves 'what the best scientific thinking of the day' is?

Would that be akin to saying a high school student should be required to write as well as Shakespeare before they could study his works?

[Daniel Peterson]

Wouldn't want potentially half your students leaving the school thinking that the 'Steady State' theory represents the best scientific thought of the current era...

Or would you?

I think it would be fascinating for them to work through the debate between "Steady State" and "Big Bang," to see why the latter triumphed (e.g., through the work of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson).

Or is it the students responsibility to work out for themselves 'what the best scientific thinking of the day' is?

To the extent that students work through the scientific reasoning themselves, rather than merely memorizing factoids, they will understand the science better, and they'll grasp scientific method more completely. And, I think, they'll learn at least as many facts, and probably many more. Especially if they have to debate the issues.

[WalkerW]

To the extent that students work through the scientific reasoning themselves, rather than merely memorizing factoids, they will understand the science better, and they'll grasp scientific method more completely. And, I think, they'll learn at least as many facts, and probably many more. Especially if they have to debate the issues.

This is an interesting point, especially the part about just "memorizing factoids." If this approach was taken, though, I would still support the teacher showing why evolution "triumphed" (or at least why it is currently triumphing). Nonetheless, a thought-provoking comment.

[katherine the great]

There is no place in science class for "alternative" theories Are you kidding katherine? Where do you suggest alternative theories be discussed?

In philosophy class. I'm sure you understand what a scientific theory is. Unless a theory can qualify as "scientific" (by following the scientific method), it has no place in science class. It is not the appropriate venue for what you suggest.

[structurecop]

To the extent that students work through the scientific reasoning themselves, rather than merely memorizing factoids, they will understand the science better, and they'll grasp scientific method more completely. And, I think, they'll learn at least as many facts, and probably many more. Especially if they have to debate the issues.

Have you been in a high school class recently? There's hardly time to get through the basics, let alone "debating" anything. Certainly, you understand time constraints and how they keep educators from getting into "deeper" subjects. If students are interested, they can learn and discuss these matters outside of class. Debating minority theories is beyond the scope of a high school biology class.

[RenegadeOfPhunk]

Daniel Peterson,

I honestly don't disagree with the essense of what you're saying.

The kind of in-class debates you are refering to - I agree - are a great idea.

But I'm trying to get an idea of what kind of time ratio these kind of 'debates' would take up in these classroom lessons.

I remember having these kind of 'debates' in school now and again - in science class and otherwise. But they weren't every class. Most days in fact, the teacher just got up and explained what the current thinking was - or got us to run experiments based on only one theory - without making 'equal time' for alternate views / theories.

I have the feeling that if they'd have had to do that every time they tried to teach something (make 'time' for the alternate view), they would have had to cut quite a bit out...

You've only got so much time to go over so much stuff - right? Something would have to get lost if you did that...

One of the points being tackled here in this thread is:

If you are going to introduce something like ID into classrooms - how do you do it?

Does it take up literally 50% of the classroom floor time Evolutionary theory 'would' have had? Is it taught as if it is an 'equal' theory? (If not, are you being 'fair'?)

So I'm interested in some detail on these kinds of points. Saying you would 'debate the issue' isn't much as far as detail...

I think it would be fascinating for them to work through the debate between "Steady State" and "Big Bang," to see why the latter triumphed (e.g., through the work of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson).

Right. So how much of your class-room time get's dedicated to explaining 'Steady State' theory.

Instead of teaching 100% Big Bang - you'd do more like 50% Big Bang, 50% Steady State?

80% BB, 20% SS?

90% BB - 10% SS?

What kind of ratio?

You might think these kinds of numbers are missing the point, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is:

Sure, you bring up the Steady State theory. You make sure the students are aware of it, and understand the history of it. You make sure that doesn't get left out - or dismissed. It's important.

But should that be allowed to distract too much from concentrating on the currently accepted theory - the Big Bang?

If you ended up spending 50% of the time you could have spent on the BB during the school year on a different theory that is pretty much universally considered 'dead', would that be a dis-service to the students?

[David Hume]

I'm not sure that's true. Certainly people like Michael Denton and David Berlinski would seem to count against your claim. Whether the former is still religious in any important sense is unclear; the latter describes himself as an agnostic Jew. And, for that matter, Michael Behe is a Roman Catholic who, he says, was taught in Catholic schools to have no problem whatever with Darwinism.

Screaming isn't evidence, I'm afraid.

My own suspicion is that American school performance in the sciences, which is pretty miserable, would be improved by the introduction of controversy into the classroom.

It doesn't really matter if ID is a religion or not -- more important is the fact that ID is not a science. It makes no predictions or postdictions, it doesn't account for any phenomena (at least, without introducing something that requires even more explanation), and it even explicitly appeals to something beyond human understanding as an explanation, which science qua science should never do.

[asbestosman]

Is ID compatible with evolution? It seems to me that ID proponents are fine with some things happening through natural selection, but some things are simply irreducibly complex like a certain bacteria's flagellum.

Would ID make sense in the context of abiogenesis? I don't think a lot of time is spent on that in biology class.

[David Hume]

ID is compatible only with the aspects of evolution we already know about. Remember that ID is the position that "whatever we can't currently explain naturalistically, an intelligence must have necessarily effected". If we knew how abiogenesis occurred, then ID wouldn't have anything to say about that, and would instead put a "Designer" in some other gap.

The poverty of ID can be shown by noting the numerous times that IDers have pointed to some organelle or phenomena as "irreducibly complex", only to have some scientist elucidate a naturalistic pathway later on. It's interesting that you mention the bacterial flagellum, because naturalistic pathways for its evolution have in fact been found. Because the flagellum was unexplained by naturalistic processes at some point, and an intelligence is not necessarily what brought it about, we can know that ID is false.

[David Hume]

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

ID is compatible only with the aspects of evolution we already know about. Remember that ID is the position that "whatever we can't currently explain naturalistically, an intelligence must have necessarily effected". If we knew how abiogenesis occurred, then ID wouldn't have anything to say about that, and would instead put a "Designer" in some other gap.

The poverty of ID can be shown by noting the numerous times that IDers have pointed to some organelle or phenomena as "irreducibly complex", only to have some scientist elucidate a naturalistic pathway later on. It's interesting that you mention the bacterial flagellum, because naturalistic pathways for its evolution have in fact been found. Because the flagellum was unexplained by naturalistic processes at some point, and an intelligence is not necessarily what brought it about, we can know that ID is false.

What if abiogenesis is only possible if there is an intellgent force manipluating it? I guess it wouldn't be abiogenesis. I find that the theory of abiogensis to be a week theory. I however don't hve oodles of time to debate this.

[David Hume]

You're not really responding to anything I said, Mola Ram.

[asbestosman]

I'm starting to think that abiogenesis is incompatible with the gospel. The Book of Mormon states that without God there could have been no creation. Abiogenesis is the hypothesis that life can spontaneously come into being without intelligent direction.

Even Ken Miller believes that God played a role in the creation of life. However, if I remember correctly, he believes that God worked at a quantum or sub-quantum level. Yet somehow he opposes ID. Maybe he believes that God did it but He wasn't strictly necessary? It's kind of hard for me to understand what role one believes God played in creation if one beileves that evolusion is sufficient to explain the existence of life.

[cdowis]

One of my most significant classes at college was the "History of Science". I learned that scietific investigation is full of potholes and detours.

I think the most signficant insight for me is the understanding that there is a difference between facts (data, observation, tests), and opinion (conclusions based on those facts).

It is a rampant belief that if I draw a conclusion based on observation, my conclusion then is a fact. I give a simple example of the observation of the sunrise/sunset, and the geocentric theory of the universe. I observe the sun revolving around the earth.

When I have pointed this out, I am then accused of being anti-science. How wonderful!

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

You're not really responding to anything I said, Mola Ram.

Bummer. I thought I offered a great point. I was talking to you but reflecting upon asbestosman's comments on abiogensis.