Creationism in American schools
Parents’ primary reason for sending their offspring to faith schools is because the standard of education there tends to be that much better than that in the mainstream. Now if you are the kind of person who would avoid such schools because they’re religious and you’re not then be glad you’re not educating the sprogs in the US:
THE GOD VS. Darwin debate went to the White House last week when President Bush weighed in, stating in a roundtable interview with reporters that ‘’intelligent design” should be taught along with evolution in public schools.
(Note: in America, a ‘public school’ is actually a government-run school - it’s not private as it would be in the UK).
Now ‘intelligent design’ is this circular argument that, in a nutshell, states: X works well so it must have been manufactured according to some pre-conceived plan. ‘Intelligent design’ takes the beauty and apparent perfection of the natural world as proof of supernatural intent. The reasoning is, ‘It’s awesome, it works and you can’t prove this evolution nonsense therefore there must be a god’.
Whereas, applied to biology, for example, the evolutionary view is that X works so well - or, to be more accurate, it works as well as this (because it could possibly work better) - because this is the version that helps get the organism as far as reproduction. X is ’successful’ therefore and is passed on to future generations.
So why might Bush be in favour of such teaching in taxpayer financed schools?
One such argument is intellectual diversity: Those who believe that only evolution should be taught in science classrooms are supposedly trying to stifle opposing viewpoints. A related claim is that a left-leaning, elitist scientific establishment, backed by aggressively secularist groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, is using taxpayer dollars to promote its own agenda in the classroom and teach children to despise their parents’ religious beliefs.
My concerns about teaching ‘intelligent design’ - the weak version of creationism - is not so much that it’s taught but where it’s taught - in which lesson. If it’s taught in Religious Education classes then fine, that’s an appropriate place to explain a religious description of life. If it’s taught in a science lesson then I object. ‘Intelligent design’ can have no scientific basis because the designer itself is only posited as the ‘well, so it must be god’ response when there’s a gap - real or perceived - in the scientific theory.
Whatever happens, we should not mix rigorous and disciplined scientific exploration with religious opinion. By all means live with both and respect the freedoms of proponents of each to air their views but the two should not be regarded as similar disciplines. They are very different and they achieve their conclusions in totally unrelated ways. ‘Intelligent design’ is not scientific.
Is evolution really that scientific? We have tiny tiny amounts of data on prehistorical humans and we somehow have enough for a cogent idea of how we came about?
I found this in Chesterton’s Everlasting Man, thought you might find it interesting:
(on the beginnings of religion and the beginnings of Man) “Man could already see in these things [’spring and death and even dreams’] the riddles and hints and hopes that he still sees in them. He could not only dream but dream about dreams. He could not only see the dead but see the shadow of death; and was possessed with that mysterious mystification that forever finds death incredible. It is quite true that we have even these hints chiefly about man when he unmistakably appears as man. We cannot affirm this or anything else about the alleged animal originally connecting man and the brutes. But that is only because he is not an animal but an allegation. We cannot be certain that Pithecanthropus ever worshipped, because we cannot be certain that he ever lived. He is only a vision called up to fill the void that does in fact yawn between the first creatures who were certainly men and any other creatures that are certainly apes or other animals. A few very doubtful fragments are scraped together to suggest such an intermediate creature because it is required by a certain philosophy; but nobody supposes that these are sufficient to establish anything philosophical even in support of that philosophy. A scrap of skull found in Java cannot establish anything about religion or about the absence of religion. If there ever was any such ape-man, he may have exhibited as much ritual in religion as a man or as much simplicity in religion as an ape. He may have been a mythologist or he may have been a myth. It might be interesting to inquire whether this mystical quality appeared in a transition from the ape to the man, if there were really any types of the transition to inquire about. In other words, the Missing Link might or might not be mystical if he were not missing. But compared with the evidence we have of real human beings, we have no evidence that he was a human being or a half human being or a being at all.”
Comment by Dumb Brit — August 10, 2005 @ 3:44 pm
It’s minor, but I wanted to say I smiled when I read the comment on public/private schools. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve explianed why a public school is the one you pay for. I’d almost given up! Seems I can blame ‘US English’ for the confusion ;o)
Comment by debi — August 10, 2005 @ 5:57 pm
@Dumb Brit:
“Is evolution really that scientific?”
Yes.
Comment by Frank O'Dwyer — August 10, 2005 @ 7:29 pm
Frank, your eloquence never ceases to astound me, nor does the quality of your arguments begin to.
Comment by Dumb Brit — August 10, 2005 @ 8:35 pm
“Frank, your eloquence never ceases to astound me, nor does the quality of your arguments begin to.”
Do you even know what ’scientific’ means? Hint: it never means ‘proven’. Some hallmarks of a scientific theory are that it is falsifiable and that it makes predictions which can be tested.
Evolution meets those criteria. From a talk.orgins FAQ:
“Darwinian theory rules out quite a lot. It rules out the existence of inefficient organisms when more efficient organisms are about. It rules out change that is theoretically impossible (according to the laws of genetics, ontogeny, and molecular biology) to achieve in gradual and adaptive steps (see Dawkins [1996]). It rules out new species being established without ancestral species.
All of these hypotheses are more or less testable, and conform to the standards of science.”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/tautology.html
As distinct from the theories expounded by the Intelligent Design & Creationism crew. Where those are falsifiable, they have been. Where they are not falsifiable, they are not scientific.
Comment by Frank O'Dwyer — August 10, 2005 @ 9:11 pm
Nice one Frank!
Believe in Gods and Monsters if it helps you feel better, but please don’t attempt to ‘disprove’ science using scientific process. Evolution is like all science a theory that is current and held up to constant rigorous scrutiny, like gravity or quantumn theory. I.D. is a crock.
Comment by driverchris — August 10, 2005 @ 10:12 pm
Nice. Evolution is ’scientific’, therefore anyone who has the audacity to believe in the metaphysical is an idiot on a level with a 6-year-old believing in the Easter Bunny. And WE’RE the intolerant ones?
Comment by Dumb Brit — August 11, 2005 @ 4:51 pm
A differing viewpoint from yours can be found here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan31.html
“As distinct from the theories expounded by the Intelligent Design & Creationism crew. Where those are falsifiable, they have been. Where they are not falsifiable, they are not scientific.”
Evidence? Come on, let’s see it.
“Evolution meets those criteria. From a talk.orgins FAQ:
“Darwinian theory rules out quite a lot. It rules out the existence of inefficient organisms when more efficient organisms are about. It rules out change that is theoretically impossible (according to the laws of genetics, ontogeny, and molecular biology) to achieve in gradual and adaptive steps (see Dawkins [1996]). It rules out new species being established without ancestral species.”
Non sequitar. Darwinism is (supposedly) testable, as evidence I will provide a clip of an article telling you what Darwinism has ruled out.
Comment by Dumb Brit — August 11, 2005 @ 5:45 pm
Good evidence for never leaving education to men who wear skirts.
Evolution is a fairly solid scientific theory - Creationism is on the exact same footing as Voodoo.
Comment by DE — August 11, 2005 @ 6:48 pm
“A differing viewpoint from yours can be found here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan31.html”
Buchanan’s main argument is the argument from design, which is a very old argument that has been discredited over and over. It has been done most brilliantly (IMO) in Dawkin’s book “The Blind Watchmaker”. Here’s a summary of the argument, from Buchanan’s article:
“If, for example, we are told a forest is uninhabited and, while walking in it, come across a garden, with plots of tomatoes, beans, corn and cabbage, reason tells us someone lives here. The garden presupposes the existence of a gardener, for it reflects intelligent design. As does Stonehenge, that millennia-old marvel of gigantic stones placed one upon the other in a fashion that is not accidental. Though we know not how it was done, an intelligent being did it.
The same is true of our universe. ”
There are at least two problems with that:
1) If that is the case, precisely the same argument applies to the creator. Since the creator is an intelligent being, therefore if we accept Buchanan’s argument, we must also conclude that an intelligent being must have created the creator. And so on, ad infinitum.
2) In fact is not the case that the appearance of design or order implies an intelligent designer (though it doesn’t preclude one). There are numerous examples of random/chaotic/unguided processes resulting in order. Natural selection is one, but it’s not the only one.
For example, think about a tree lined avenue in autumn, with cars going up and down the road. Invariably you will find the leaves piled up at the kerbs. Buchanan and I.D. would say “that proves somebody must have swept the leaves up!”. But in fact the movement of cars going up and down the road is enough to make that happen, and is in fact what makes it happen.
Another example is the food supply in any major city, say London. Nobody is in charge of it, nobody designed it, yet it works in a fabulously complex and ordered fashion and food winds up in your fridge. According to Buchanan’s argument (which is actually not his), we would be forced to conclude that there is an intelligent being who designed that entire process. But we know there isn’t. The apparent intelligence in London’s food supply is entirely emergent.
More from Buchanan’s article:
“to believe an explosion created an ordered universe is like believing a hurricane roaring through a junkyard can create a fifth-generation computer”
Did you know that genetic algorithms can in fact be used in software and hardware designs, and have been? You can even get a genetic algorithm to write a program, something that is normally associated with human programmers. That is another example of something extremely ordered and designed-looking coming out of a process that is driven by randomness and has no designer at all - it is guided only by the same principles as natural selection.
So despite Buchanan’s incredulity, there is no need to speculate about this. It is demonstrable that a process of natural selection can work to produce order. Buchanan’s analogy is also based on a misconception - natural selection isn’t random, and it occurs over many, many, MANY generations. It’s not remotely comparable throwing a few airplane parts in the air and expecting a jumbo jet to assemble itself.
You also asked for ‘evidence’, but I’m not sure what is you’re looking for evidence for exactly. If you mean of creationist theories being falsified, the ‘young earth’ theory is the most obvious example. There is oodles of evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 years.
“Non sequitar. Darwinism is (supposedly) testable, as evidence I will provide a clip of an article telling you what Darwinism has ruled out.”
I’m not sure what you meant by this. Did you mean the Buchanan article or did you mean to put a second link?
Comment by Frank O'Dwyer — August 11, 2005 @ 7:56 pm
Me, quoting t.o. FAQ: ““Darwinian theory rules out quite a lot. It rules out the existence of inefficient organisms when more efficient organisms are about. It rules out change that is theoretically impossible (according to the laws of genetics, ontogeny, and molecular biology) to achieve in gradual and adaptive steps (see Dawkins [1996]). It rules out new species being established without ancestral species.”
Dumb Brit: Non sequitar. Darwinism is (supposedly) testable, as evidence I will provide a clip of an article telling you what Darwinism has ruled out.
I misread this last time, I think I know what you mean now.
What that clip is getting at is that Darwinian theory predicts that you will not see any of those things; therefore if you observe any of those things, Darwinian theory is wrong and needs to change or be tossed out. That is what testable means. There are different versions of it, but that’s the basic idea, anyway: there must be some observation that you could make that would cause you to have to modify or dismiss the theory.
In short, scientific theories put it on the line, they say “the theory says X won’t happen, and Y will. if X does happen, or Y doesn’t happen, then we are full of it”.
You never hear anything like that from creationists or ID exponents. There is never any observation or piece of evidence that if it were made would make them say “hey, you know what? this means we were wrong about this intelligent designer thing. forgot to carry the one. our bad. back to the drawing board.”.
Whereas you do hear scientists saying that kind of thing, reasonaby often too. And indeed many have seen their life’s work dismissed by some experiment or another.
Comment by Frank O'Dwyer — August 11, 2005 @ 10:03 pm