How the debate has changed . . .

_{William Dembski

December 8, 2005

Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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Twenty years ago: Darwinian biology teacher challenges students with “overwhelming evidence” for evolution, and students who believe in creation/design are left feeling confused and intimidated.

The present day: Darwinian biology teacher is forced to expend a lot of energy finding plausible answers to all the challenges that ID-informed students are levying against evolution.

Comments

Why are Darwinists getting so confused with word games? It reminds me of a traditional argument that we once heard from Bill Clinton, it depends on what the word 'is', is. The word game I am talking about is the word 'science' or phrase 'scientific process'. I have heard so many talk about ID as not being a science, of course most of them leaning on their false assumption of a great threat from the Christians. Scientific processes will always be in place for both the Christian and the non-theologian. There will always be some sort of order in which you will record information to come to a conclusion. Will someone please help me understand how the phrase 'scientific process' being a descriptor of our process to gather information is confusing our general Darwinist population?Charles_{December 20, 2005
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The complexity of the organic machinery inside even the simplest bacteria is really what's giving ammunition to the design argument. As our nanometer scale investigative and engineering toolbox grows we continue to experience overwhelming marvel at the machinery of life. Understanding this machinery has become the domain of nanotechnologists and engineers not biologists. Complex machines simply don't self-assemble without abstract planning in advance and abstract plans don't materialize out of thin air. To posit that basic cellular machinery self-assembled is far more ludicrous than saying your computer's microprocessor assembled itself without intelligent guidance.DaveScot_{December 9, 2005
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"Twenty years ago: Darwinian biology teacher challenges students with Ã¢â‚¬Å“overwhelming evidenceÃ¢â‚¬Â for evolution, and students who believe in creation/design are left feeling confused and intimidated." That pretty much describes my experience, and why I abandoned any pursuit of a career in the biological sciences.LCM_{December 9, 2005
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The only thing they have going for them is that people haven't identified their shockingly hypocritical freethought (as long as it's atheism) ideology. Oh wait, that's in their heads too, the truth's already out. Twenty years from now, who knows... maybe the Darwinist biology teacher will go the way of the dinosaur and the dodo. How ironic that all of the history of natural selection will culminate to a climax in which it consumes its own discoverers and proponents.jasonng_{December 9, 2005
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Intelligent design makes important predictions for medicine. For instance, it predicts that if you develop a vaccine for the polio virus, the virus won't mutate into a bacteria because of an irreducible complexity barrier. Similarly, if we develop an antibiotic against a bacteria intelligent design predicts the bacteria won't mutate into a fungus. And if we develop something that fights fungal infections we don't have to worry about it mutating into a parasitic animal. ID predicts that species barriers where irreducibly complex structure must be acquired to cross the barrier will not happen. What does evolution predict? It predicts that if you wait around long enough then maybe irreducibly complexity will be spontaneously generated. It can't say how long or what form it will take or even if it will happen at all. The thing I hate about NDE is it has no predictive power. ;-)DaveScot_{December 8, 2005
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Let's be honest- outside of trying to claim a defense of NDE, the mud to man evolutionary theory is pretty much useless. No field of study would, in any way, be damaged at all by not using macroevolutionary theory. Darwinists will claim that knowledge of mutations among viruses we need to fight makes evolution important, but that's absurd- that's mere adaptation that no one has any problem with accepting- it's obvious that life has the inherent ability to adapt, big deal. Outside of that, if the world lost all knowledge of mud to man evolution tomorrow- we'd all be fine, safe, healthy, etc. We wouldn't lose a min of sleep. Nor would it damage any field of science at all.Josh Bozeman_{December 8, 2005
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Gumpngreen, I'm not sure that the gloom and doom is really justified. I actually suspect that day to day science at the high school level in Kansas isn't going to change much, if at all. Basic general science, chemistry and physics have nothing whatsoever to do with evolutionary theory; and even biology probably won't change much either. Elementary genetics, anatomy studied through the dissection of frogs, the basic components of cells and how they differ between plant and animal, yadda, yadda, yadda... All this can be studied--despite the often strident rhetoric of the fundamentalist darwinist priesthood--without any real, practical dependence on macroevolutionary theory. The apocalyptic, end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it preaching peddled by the Trojan Horse folks and their ilk puts way, way too much stake in what happens in a few Kansas high schools, don't you think? -sbSteveB_{December 8, 2005
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More from the link provided by Gumpngreen in [2] above, from the Fordham Foundation Report on Science Stds 2005. "Science education in America is under attack, with "discovery learning" on one flank and the Discovery Institute on the other." --Tacit admission by Fordham of the effectiveness of The Discovery Institute. "Written by pre-eminent biologist Paul R. Gross..." --co-authored with Barbara Forest, "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design", a less than non-biased "attack" on real science. "The good news is that many of the [no-better-than-before-state-science] standards are easily fixed. More involvement by bench scientists, and better editing, could greatly improve what's out there." --In other words, a)we aren't getting the support we need from the true-believers (where are they?), and b)our public statements aren't making sense to people.Red Reader_{December 8, 2005
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There ya go! Now who's dumbing down science education!!! :)crandaddy_{December 8, 2005
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http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=352&pubsubid=1178 http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/05sci_KS.pdf.pdf "The early warnings have been justified. Kansas has adopted standards whose treatment of evolutionary material has been radically compromised. The effect transcends evolution, however. It now makes a mockery of the very definition of science. The grade for Kansas is accordingly reduced to Ã¢â‚¬Å“F.Ã¢â‚¬Â" Interesting how the treatment of one subject greatly affects the grade the state school system receives....Gumpngreen_{December 8, 2005
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Rock on. Let the revolution continue. Amen. *Rarrit! I think Gabby Johnson is right!Bombadill_{December 8, 2005
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