The Kansas Board of Education has, again, voted in favor of Intelligent Design instead of Evolution in high school classrooms. Two-page article…don’t forget to click “next” at the bottom… A few good quotes from that article:
?This is a sad day. We?re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that.??? said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
…and…
In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said that was akin to teaching ?American history without Lincoln.??? Bill Nye, the ?Science Guy??? of children?s television, called it ?harebrained??? and ?nutty.??? And a Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: ?Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, OK????
Also, Jerry shot me this e-mail with a note passed on by Dr. Lockhart at Truman, a Biology professor, essentially outlining “not-so-intelligent design” in humans…kinda amusing, really… Things like high blood pressure, colon cancer, etc…if we were so well designed, wouldn’t we have better defenses against such things? Who knows…not I…
Apparently, the Dover, Pa. school board members that were up for re-election have all been booted…and there were 8 of them… This is where the infamous Scope’s Monkey Trial took place many a year ago, and the site of a new trial where the board was trying to force ID on high school students…w00t!
And finally, there’s an essay in TIME Magazine this week written by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist that discusses his opinion on the issue…and I whole-heartedly agree… It tells us how ID does nothing really to forward scientific thinking and really hampers it by placing all of current knowledge in a box (with everything outside this box being in “God’s realm”).
You all know my opinion(s) on the matter, so I won’t rehash them… Actually, that last link is probably the best descriptor of my views on the subject that I’ve read yet, so if anything, check that one out… And if you go to school in Kansas, my apologies…start voting so that you don’t remain the laughing stock of the world, yo…
More on this later, I’m sure…this issue isn’t going away anytime soon…
Haha funny page but it’s not ID instead of evolution. It is ID alongside evolution. At least they’re still teaching evolution this time.
Although I dont’ agree that ID should be taught in science courses, I would like to be optomistic and point out that this is creating a lot of debate and reactance. Perhaps it is good for evolution and for science. There’s nothing like an opposing view to really make you learn your side eh. Maybe I’m just being hopeful.
Kind of makes you want to move to Dover, doesn’t it?
Only time will tell, Mike…only time will tell…
And yeah, Kate, I’d agree that the debate is helping…but only to a limited extent… As that final link says, ID really adds very, very little to science, while science can add a lot to ID. Science is built on looking outside the proverbial box, trying to expand horizons. ID seeks to limit that box by saying that everything outside is for God to determine and for us to accept. Science can’t work in a box, yo…it simply can’t…
Well…except Scientology…but hey, they’re worse than the Catholics as far as “pay money for your redemption” goes… 😛