STEP ONE: Go and read this debate between NOW head honchette Kim Gandy and Democratic Party biggish-wig Phil Singer (link via Feministing). I was struck by this comment, by Gandy, about who is and who isn’t expected to take it in the teeth for the good of the Democratic Party:
I think the Democratic leadership is trying to say, ‘We have a big tent,’ and it’s my rights that are being used to demonstrate the big tent. I don’t see them out there recruiting anti-organized labor candidates. I don’t see them out there recruiting candidates that are opposed to civil rights or affirmative action. I only see them out there, as with Langevin and Casey in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania respectively, recruiting candidates who are opposed to women’s reproductive rights over good, solid statewide elected officials that support the whole range of democratic values.
STEP TWO: Go read the Left Coaster’s modest proposal for another compromise: Democrats Must Find the “Evolutionary Middle.”
STEP THREE: Laugh or weep? You decide. Hell, do both if you want. Rest assured, the Democrats don’t care either way.
(Optional step four: Take that “third party” idea out of the closet and give it a good dusting. Hey, it’s looking better now, isn’t it?)
(The Left Coaster’s piece is a modest proposal demonstrating, satirically, the appalling folly of such compromises. That it is being taken seriously in some quarters does say something about how bankrupt the “vital center” really is.)
It seemed like a reasonable suggestion to me. There is some common ground; why not identify it and build on it?
But hey, if the Democrats/liberals/leftists want to aggressively identify as pure-reason abortion absolutists – more power to ya.
There’s common ground between teaching biology as it is practiced and understood today and a cynically concerted effort to leverage the layperson’s vague, free-floating concern for religion into an attempt at rooting out or discrediting the teaching of the basics of biology as it is practiced and understood today?
Nope. That shit’s the devil. So sorry your spoon isn’t long enough.
OK. Lose in marginalized isolation, then.
Gets that bad, dear boy, I’m moving to a polity that isn’t so fucking insane it thinks it can legislatively declaim that pi isn’t necessarily equal to 3 and maybe schools should teach the controversy. [Takes off shoe, pounds on podium.] We will bury you! Hey, wait a minute. [Puts shoe back on.] I actually mean that. Anyone who walks away from science is doomed. Period. I appreciate a little moral perspective as much as the next secular humanist, but that ain’t what this is about. Wake up and smell the nutballs, Robert. For the sake of your dignity, if nothing else.
Need help packing?
Robert,
You may want to read Jared Diamonds most recent book, it could be very, very important to you and those who think/act like you. Well, if you are able to see yourselves objectively.
There are two distinct potential criticisms of the Democratic party. One is that it is not winning because it is not ideologically pure enough. The other is that it is not winning because it refuses to move toward the center. These are, essentially, empirical points. Bob Casey might keep two pro-Choicer NARAL volunteers at home in Phliadelphia on election day for every pro-Life working class swing voter in Allentown he gains — or vice versa.
I don’t know the answer to the empirical claim, but if the facts are that Bob Casey has a better chance of Santorum than, say, Barbara Hafer, then he’s gotta be the man.
Any pro-choicer should understand that the best way to protect women (and gay rights, etc.) is to get rid of Santorum. Even if the Democrat who replaces him is, factually, more evil (if that is possible), as long as he caucuses with the Dems there will simply be fewer votes votes held that will place rights at risk.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Robert.
And why on earth is it that whenever someone draws a principled line about this or that where they just won’t compromise—in this case, significantly diluting scientific and technological education to cater to the religious prejudices of a vociferous minority—why is it that when one of these comes up, your response is, fine, then lose? This isn’t a board game. Do you honestly think lying to students, teaching a controversy that doesn’t exist, bringing up ID (except as an example to demolish with properly applied critical thinking, and its advocates’ arguments as examples of rhetoric gone horribly awry) is worth the short-term political power you’ll gain by placating this crowd? Or do you hope that by tying up the public schools in such arrant bullshit, you’ll hasten their demise, and never again will your tax money go to help some poor but bright kid up out of a family situation they never chose into a worthwhile life? —Okay, maybe I overextended a wee bit with that last. Either way, you’re committed to destroying the last vestiges of a public education system that once was the envy of the world and was the engine behind one long economic boom; you’re damning your country to the technological also-rans and third-raters. This you’re fine with, so long as the people you think are on your side get to hold power?
Just curious. You know?
You’re a distinct minority, and you’re insisting “my way or the highway”. I’m suggesting that a compromise approach might get your values represented; you’re insistent that ONLY your values can be taught. Fine; bye. Pass on your values in your own schools.
To clarify: I am all in favor of teaching evolution. It is the currently accepted theory. But ID does not argue against evolution; it argues that evolution is a process that occurs in a context of creation. It’s a compromise approach that sets the scientific knowledge of the day in a frame that does not violate the fundamental right of Americans to hold their own religious beliefs.
If there MUST be an absolute decision made – if it is either going to be that we teach pure evolution and nothing else, or that we teach strictly the beliefs of the parents in each community, then it’s the latter approach that will win, on both empirical political grounds, and even on philosophical grounds. Evolution has had more than a hundred years to make its case to the public; it’s made the case, and been somewhat rejected by the populace.
So now adherents of evolution have to decide whether they want half a loaf, or none.
…That’s like saying there’s no difference between, “Cancer is a life-threatening disease,” and, “Cancer is a life-threatening disease God uses to punish the wicked.” Placing something in the context of religious interpretation involves (a) supporting that religious interpretation, (b) mis-contextualizing the available facts, and (c) giving religious beliefs a priority high enough to threaten any new information that can’t be interpreted to support them. Evolution is a theory supported by empirical evidence; creation is a theory supported by faith. They’re not on the same level.
And you’re wrong about ID advocates. Many of them believe that evolution is a blasphemous crock, which should be taught either as a discredited theory or not at all.
And you’re wrong about ID advocates. Many of them believe that evolution is a blasphemous crock, which should be taught either as a discredited theory or not at all.
Perhaps so, but that isn’t what they’re advocating for.
Your understanding of ID is rather lacking—most “mainstream” versions insist that evolution occurs on a macro level, but biochemical and cellular level changes are too complex to have come about any way but by design, which is not only disastrously and demonstrably wrong, but rather different than asserting that evolution happens within framework of design. That’s a mere metaphysical statement, as unprovable as the color of God’s hair, and has no bearing on how evolution works and how it’s taught; if that’s all there is to it, why the controversy in the first place?
But if you want to get into it, there’s ID folks who’ll insist speciation has never occurred, or maybe it’s occurred, but never in a laboratory context, so you can’t prove it, so neener. Every time you poke them, a falsehood knowing or otherwise pops out, and when you point it out to them, they retreat and demur and crop up a week later saying the same dam’ thing you’ve already disproved. This is why scientists get so cranky about “teaching the controversy.” This is why “fair and balanced” A-says B-says is bullshit. There’s no loaf to halve. Either we teach science, or we don’t. Either we teach our kids what we’ve learned about the world and how, and how to think critically about what people say about the world and its workings, or we tell them comfortable lies that a vociferous minority insists it needs unchallenged to feel good about itself. —I’m not going to deny that there aren’t raging areas of controversy within and without science and moral quandaries it raises and whole patches smugly accepted as gospel that are probably one discovery away from being rendered obsolete falsehoods, but that is how it works, and the religious qualms of some misguided Christianists don’t change the basic rules. Again: you’re acceding to mob rule something that isn’t susceptible to mob rule; so much for the wisdom of our forebears. Are you seriously okay with teaching kids that there’s some controversy about whether pi = 3 and kids should keep an open mind about it if enough people insist we must, dammit?
I had no idea you were so pomo.
…Yet. If a compromise will only be an invitation to the other side to push the envelope even further, how useful is it?
Are you seriously okay with teaching kids that there’s some controversy about whether pi = 3 and kids should keep an open mind about it if enough people insist we must, dammit?
You keep dragging this in. Is your position so weak that you have go to 100-year old “controversies” with no connection to the current question?
No, there should be no teaching about the controversy of pi, because there is no controversy. There should be teaching about the controversy of evolution, because there is considerable controversy.
Where else am I supposed to go to argue with someone who apparently believes science and technology are susceptible to popular whims, Robert? Your position is so outrageous I have to go back that far to find something that compares. Except—no, wait, it doesn’t: the legislature in question decided it wasn’t a fit topic for them to rule on. Would we were so wise today. —Look to the devil you’re supping with, Robert. The only “controversy” is one ginned up by people strategically stupid enough to think that extirpating evolution from our basic scientific repertoire will put another nail in the coffin of liberalism. If you poke the “science” they advocate with a sharp piece of critical thinking it deflates like a rotten souffle. There’s no there there, and any polity that bets its educational farm on such bullshit is doomed and deservedly so. The only reason ID hasn’t crawled off to die an ignoble death is that its advocates refuse to argue at all honestly.
Oh: it also has the support of useful idiots such as yourself. (I do use the term advisedly.)
Now, re: the “middle ground” on, say, abortion: the one the Democrats negotiated in the ’90s is slowly but surely rendering it an all-but-impossible procedure for most women in this country. Why on earth would the other side want to deal out a new hand?
There are two distinct potential criticisms of the Democratic party. One is that it is not winning because it is not ideologically pure enough. The other is that it is not winning because it refuses to move toward the center.
And the third claim, which seems accurate, says that Democrats lose because they haven’t made it clear what they stand for, nor have they defended themselves well from the constant attacks of conservatives.
On creationism: not to put too fine a point on it, but I haven’t seen any competent arguments that would create a ‘controversy’. Science seems fairly clear on this point. Now, if we want to teach a healthy skepticism about theories in general, we could teach the scientific method. To show they grasp the principles, perhaps students of science could explain in their own words why Christian scientists adopted Darwin’s theories in the first place.
There’s political and religious controversy, not scientific controversy. There is healthy scientific inquiry and debate around evolution and all the particulars of evoluntionary science*, but that’s true of all scientific theories. That’s why they’re called theories. Evolution is the best working theory we have at this point; it has been supported by a great deal of data. It has proven its case to the scientific community.
*I’m not referring here to ID proponents.
On creationism: not to put too fine a point on it, but I haven’t seen any competent arguments that would create a ‘controversy’.
And yet the controversy exists. Odd that tens of millions of people haven’t acclaimed Omar as the final arbiter of these questions. :-)
Piny, there isn’t scientific controversy because science has ruled itself out of the most important and interesting question. It’s legitimate that science has done this; the question of ultimate origins is not soluble by the scientific method.
But that still leaves the question of ultimate origins. Which means that evolutionary theory must be taught as part of some kind of conceptual framework. This can be a purely atheistic framework, or an explicitly Creationist framework, or some kind of Deistic middle ground. But the question of “what ought the frame to be” is not answerable by science. Arguing against the ID frame on the grounds that evolution ought to be taught in an atheistic or creationistic or deistic framework is fine – arguing that science has answered the question of what frame to use is just silly. It hasn’t; it never will.
And Kip, you can have as much contempt for the beliefs of your fellow citizens as you like – but the beliefs remain, and the people have a right to believe and live as they see fit, if it harms no one. You are not harmed by my neighbor’s belief that God made the Earth in seven 24-hour days; you are annoyed by it. You believe things that annoy him, too. Neither one of you has the right to bar the other’s view from the public sphere.
Robert, please. Don’t put words in my mouth, and don’t retreat so alacritously. We were just starting to have fun. —The belief itself harms no one, everyone here knows that, no one has come close to arguing it. I have no contempt for it. —It’s insisting that belief be taught as fact that harms people who don’t share it. It’s insisting that the mantle of science be applied where it mainfestly does not belong that harms us all. I have no contempt for someone who truly believes God created the world and invested us alone of all His creation with the spark of sentience; I have contempt for someone who wants to play at scientist and yet refuses to understand or adhere to the scientific method.
As for someone who’d just as soon see clarity muddled and science diluted as something they themselves concede isn’t the case is taught as fact, solely because otherwise they think they’d lose political power: there, I’ve got nothing but disappointment.
“You are not harmed by my neighbor’s belief that God made the Earth in seven 24-hour days…”
We are harmed by it. We are harmed by it when your neighbor creates a “controversy” over whether or not evolution should be taught. We are harmed by it because that destroys the education (scientific method, etc.) that made our public school system as good as it has been. When you destroy public schools, you are well down the road to destroying the economy. That is the harm in it.
And, please, argue what the ID people are arguing (see Kip’s comment at 12:57 PM today), not your own version of what ID should be.
Also: ID isn’t a frame. It’s a unprovable assertion that insists it’s specifically at odds with evolution as it is taught—though where, exactly, it’s at odds depends on which IDist you talk to, and who’s listening when they answer.
Nor do you need such a “frame” to teach or understand evolutionary theory. If you did, well, damn. Christian biologists would have a much harder time working with all those atheist biologists. To say nothing of the Buddhist or Hindi biologists. Or neopagan biologists. Et fucking cetera.
>>Piny, there isn’t scientific controversy because science has ruled itself out of the most important and interesting question. It’s legitimate that science has done this; the question of ultimate origins is not soluble by the scientific method…Which means that evolutionary theory must be taught as part of some kind of conceptual framework. This can be a purely atheistic framework, or an explicitly Creationist framework, or some kind of Deistic middle ground. But the question of “what ought the frame to be”? is not answerable by science.>>
The question of ultimate origins is not “soluble” by anyone at the moment. That doesn’t mean that science will _never_ be able to provide an answer–or at least a well-supported theory–to the question of ultimate origins. It means that scientists do not yet have enough information. Unlike creationists, scientists are willing to admit as much. The question of what ought the frame to be is not only not answerable by science; it is not answerable in a science class. Scientific thought depends on the admission of ignorance where appropriate. “We don’t know,” is the most important lesson any science student can learn. ID is not a speculation, nor a frame. ID advocates insist that there was some architect behind our existence on the planet, either because the Bible says so or because we can’t (yet) prove different. They don’t think of “ultimate origins” as a wondrous or interesting _question_. They don’t see questions as wondrous or interesting.
Well, you guys are certainly entitled to your own opinions. And I’m entitled to mine, which is that your opinions are doomed in the political arena. And thus, I heartily encourage you to proselytize them as widely as possible in that arena. ;P
“You’re gonna get stomped by the ignorant, neener neener neener,” is not an argument against evolution or in favor of an ID “compromise.” But as Kip was saying, fine. Sure. It does seem more and more likely that the American public will not suffer imposition of science on its schoolchildren. The evidence supports that political opinion of yours. That’s not a good reason to compromise science. They can have their faulty logic and argument-from-ignorance fallacies. What they won’t have is the complacency of thinking, wondering, questioning scientists.
Eppure si muove, remember?
…That’s St. Galileo, mind you, not his historical counterpart.
So we’re back where we started: we are expected to compromise on matters of fact in return for political power.
Once more: when did you get so pomo? So relativist? I had no idea Oberlin’s influence was still so pernicious…
(PS: You’re ahead—and if you’re going to wed yourself to this disastrous idea because you think its stick is so terribly big, so be it—you’re ahead on certain scoreboards right now because you managed to stack the occasional local school board and the textbook buyers of Texas with fellow travelers and useful idiots. But check the survey questions on the polls you think support an anti-evolution stance on the part of most Americans, and watch the frame: we nudge it just so to do you want your child to get the best education possible and watch my supposed minority turn into the majority; your supposed majority crumble into the minority it already is in all but some imaginations.)
…Or not even any set of facts in particular so much as an investigative framework for separating fact from hopeful fiction. ID isn’t rejected because scientists have a beef with creation theories as opposed to others; the problem is that its proponents are so little concerned with available evidence or the need to find any.
Kip, when people answer “the best education possible”, they don’t mean “as defined by Kip Manley”. They mean “as defined by me, Mom and/or Dad.” (Now there’s someone with some gender confusion issues.) There’s no movement in the political situation from that pseudo-reframing, just a move in the perception of the reframer (“I can get them to agree with me by deluding myself about what I’m asking them!”)
I’m not being postmodern or relativist; I’m being libertarian. People don’t believe in what the science says. Does the state:
a) force them to learn the science at gunpoint
b) let them stew in their own juice
c) pretend to teach the science but actually don’t push it (the status quo in most places – my HS biology classes talked an awful lot about cells and reproduction – not so much with the Darwin-Darwin)
d) find some compromise that respects their belief but continues to teach the science
I pick “d”, and not only because picking “d” grants us d-pickers some street cred with the electorate. You (it appears to me) insist on purity – if I can’t dance, there will be no revolution. So be it.
(d) doesn’t actually continue to teach the science. ID requires students to think unscientifically. It places the basic theories of evolution into a context that divorces them from what they illustrate about empirical reasoning, and it gives creationist possibilities support that they don’t deserve.
“If we don’t know, we can’t say,” and “Wild speculation plus a FastPass will get you to Chinatown,” are points on which most scientists take a hard line. That isn’t purist. That’s basic.
Not just that, but most of the people whose beliefs mandate creationist caveats in textbooks aren’t going to be satisfied with the wishy-washiness of public ID’s “Or Martians! Maybe it was Martians!” shtick. For vastly different reasons, they’re not interested in compromise any more than scientists are.
And “best education,” where I’m from, means an education that will allow students to get good jobs, including jobs as research scientists. ID definitely doesn’t fall into that category.
Once more, Robert, there’s nothing to compromise on. I’m not insisting on purity; I’m defending a system that has worked quite well for centuries. Your side—to call it “libertarian” is to insult the ragged, tattered remains of the word—is the one barrelling in to wreak drastic changes solely for the short term juice you’ll squeeze from a vocal voting bloc; my side—and isn’t it delicious to find oneself suddenly a conservative?—sees absolutely no reason to make it easy for you.
Shall we go for Godwin? Oh, let’s. By your logic, then, were the discipes of Holocaust deniers to gain enough political clout, or at least volume, well, gosh darn it, we’d just have to find some common ground. Teach the controversy. Hell, that’s an even easier cause than evolutionary theory: after all, facts in history are far more slippery, far more subject to interpretation; the causal chain isn’t nearly so clear or well-established.
I’m sorry. Some things aren’t true, and all the political expediency in the world don’t make it so. This is one of the canaries in the coal mine: it gets so bad that ID gets some official imprimatur, I’ll know it’s time to start packing.
How do you know ID isn’t true?
And, do you genuinely equate the Constitutionally-protected guarantee of the free exercise of religion – which includes freedom of conscience – with disbelief in the Holocaust?
Which means that evolutionary theory must be taught as part of some kind of conceptual framework.
Huh? What about the framework of ‘what we conclude by following the scientific method, which consists largely of these rules from Newton‘? That seems pretty clear to me. Teach it as part of science, in other words, and make it clear what science means.
For the love of Eris, read the first Rule. Teaching religion as science constitutes flat-out lying, much like Holocaust denial.
See . . . I’m actually very much in favor of presenting Intelligent Design in every single science class from elementary school on. Hell, spend a month on it every year.
Every year, explain to the students the scientific method.
Every year, explain to the students the standards of evidence.
Every year, explain to the students what it takes to support a hypothesis.
Then, every year, divide the students up into two groups, a pro-ID group and a pro-Evolution group.
Every year, have them present any and all scientific evidence for their position.
Every year, watch as the pro-ID students can’t find a scrap of evidence to support their position.
Every year, explain what that means.
You want to put ID on equal footing in the classroom? That means that the gloves come off. That means it gets discussed like everything else. That means that like the “flat earth” and the “sun orbiting the earth,” and the “frogs are created from mud” (all much beloved of the church in their day, too) ideas it gets raked over the coals, discussed, examined, poked, and prodded until absolutely everyone understands that it’s just plain wrong.
Yes, let’s discuss ID.
Oh please, lets!
—Myca
“ID” is a host of theories, at least in its public form. ID advocates are mostly very careful to not privilege any one architect over another*; that’s what separates ID from its hairier, less-popular dad, creationism. This is an important argumentative gap: ID supporters say that every theory deserves equal time**. What they actually want in their textbooks is God. The open-mind argument survives exactly long enough to get a foot in the door, and then we never ever hear about aliens or Atlantis or crystal matrices again. The theories included under ID are not necessarily untrue, even the one about time-travelling martians. They’re just not any more likely than any of the other theories about which we know absolutely nothing.
And please note that Kip said nothing about people who deny the Holocaust on their own time. He just doesn’t think that they have the right to see their unsupported beliefs in history books, no matter how many Holocaust deniers there eventually are. His analogy holds: by your logic, we would then be sensible to allow the possibility that it’s all a Zionist plot in order to also teach the possibility that Jews actually were murdered, or to hold onto the truth that there really were Nazis.
*”Or martians! It could totally be martians! Or maybe martians who traveled back in time!”
**Chapter 2.2: It Could Totally Have Been Time-Travelling Martians
The scientific method doesn’t stand on its own, Omar.
No, Robert. You’re on the side proposing the sweeping change; you’re the one who has to answer the questions. Do you equate Constitutionally-protected guarantee of the free exercise of religion—which includes freedom of conscience—with forcing religious education into the schools in the guise of science?
Perhaps you’re not just cynically exploiting a voting bloc. Certainly, you’re starting to argue like a typical IDist.
Myca, honestly, there’s not enough time in the year to cover actual science in science classes. Why waste it on unverifiable assertions?
The scientific method doesn’t stand on its own
Robert, what do you mean by that? I don’t know if Newton and I agree on any point except the value of scientific method, so it doesn’t seem like it requires much philosophical doctrine to compel acceptance.
**Chapter 2.2: It Could Totally Have Been Time-Travelling Martians
I started to ask why we changed topics, but this justifies any number of thread-hijacks.
I am not the person who created the conflict between values. We have a guarantee of free exercise of religion; we also have made a governmental decision to educate most children in public schools. (I would prefer a completely private system, with government funding going to the very poor.)
If the government is going to educate everyone, it has to respect everyone’s beliefs, even when those beliefs contradict what certain classes of society believe to be scientific truth. I believe that evolution is basically true; I also believe in a divine origin for life. Accommodate me, or close down your schools. ;)
And the third claim, which seems accurate, says that Democrats lose because they haven’t made it clear what they stand for, nor have they defended themselves well from the constant attacks of conservatives.
I’ll suggest a fourth claim: the roots of the crisis for the Democratic Party is that it stands for the same principles and goals that the Republican Party stands for, and the real distinction between the two parties is simply the tactics they’ve chosen for dealing with popular resistance to those principles, those principles being capitalism and imperialism. (Fun reading: [Link is missing –Amp].)The US ruling class is finding it has less and less room to maneuver, as its economic advantage over its competitors shrinks and class tensions mount.
What we usually refer to as liberalism was a political approach that came out of the long economic boom that lasted for about thirty years after the end of World War II. The ruling classes of the advanced industrialized, with a prospect of perpetual and uninterrupted growth, found it easier to deal with the working class by granting popular reforms while dismantling working class organization piecemeal. The long boom ended in the 1970s, and the economic cycle returned to its classic pattern. Since the 1980s, both the Democrats and Republicans in the US have been committed to policies of dismantling the popular reforms of the long boom period in order to further weaken the working class. Many of the cuts in social spending carried out under Reagan were drafted by the Carter administration. The economic booms since the 80s have depended in no small part upon eliminating social spending on the working class. Fleeing the US won’t help much, since most industrialized countries have followed the US lead.
Liberalism has been dying since the 80s.
However, I think it’s a mistake to think of liberalism as identical with leftwing ideas. In fact, believing that to be the case is one of the left’s biggest problems. People who want progressive change should break with the Democratic Party. Building a third party is a good start to solving the problems we face, I think, but ultimately what we need is a radical transformation of society.
Uh, I don’t know what just happened, but there was supposed to be a link to an article about liberals advocating imperialism. Can someone fix my post?
The scientific method is a technique of knowledge, not a complete epistemology. It doesn’t stand independently; it must be rooted in a framework of cultural values, implicit beliefs and assumptions, and a set of known data points.
OK, rereading that, it’s philosophy babble. Let me try it in English.
You can be a Deist, who believes in a creator God, and study biology using the scientific method. You can be a stark atheist, who actively disbelieves in God, and study biology using the scientific method. You can be a Frisbeetarian, for that matter, and study biology using the scientific method.
On small questions, these three scientists will usually come up with similar answers. On larger questions, they will not. Their cultural assumptions and biases, and their preconceptions about what ideas are valid and what ideas are not valid, will come into play. Adherents of the scientific method seem very invested in the notion that this is not the case, but I believe that it is.
Spoken like a true libertarian.
But again, there’s no conflict with you; what you’ve been describing all along has nothing to do with ID’s challenge to evolution.
There is nothing in evolutionary theory that conflicts with a divine origin for life. Period. So we’re good; there’s no conflict. It’s the devil you’re supping with that’s kicking up the fuss.
ID says that we all must accede that life was designed because there’s proof. But there is no proof. There is, instead, a collection of attacks on evolutionary theory that were half-baked when they sailed under creationism’s flag, with some arguments about irreducible complexity that betray a fundamental failure of the scientific theory (I don’t understand it, so no one will ever understand it)—and anyway, there’s lots of theories to account for what was once irreducible complexity, theories which ID does its best to ignore or discount because it is not open to new observations or theories that challenege its basic dogma. That isn’t science. It’s at odds with science. Majority rule, minority rights, but there are limits, as conservatives like to point out on a regular basis. The minute your religious convictions interfere with the majority’s right to learn about the world is it bloody well is, it’s time to look into your own religious academy. There’s plenty of ground for compromise already, where compromise is meaningful. —But you do not get to redefine science for the sake of a few lousy votes.
Except, Robert, for the vast, vast majority of working scientists today, of all religious stripes and affiliations, those larger questions don’t meaningfully interefere with their ability to work together.
One of the really cool things about science, in fact.
Hey! Maybe, if enough people start believing in Lysenkoism, we could go after the USDA next!
There’s another option: I can offer free public schools to everyone who wants to use them. Those schools will teach science, not religion, in the science classrooms.
If you don’t find it acceptable to use those schools, you can pay to send your children to private schools, or you can home-school them. As long as your kids are capable of passing basic tests for their age group, you are welcome to teach them ID, evolution-as-God’s-creative-tool, creationism, or whatever else you like.
In other words, the government provides a public bus system than everyone can use. If your religion demands that all vehicles must have convertable roofs, then it’s not the government’s responsibility to either get buses with convertable roofs, nor does the government have to shut the bus system down. If you don’t want to use the public bus system, then get your own car.
By the way, Robert, how would you feel about the idea of teaching ID – along with creation theories from a variety of religions – in a sociology class? I’d be willing to compromise on having children taught about religion, and about creation stories. I’d be willing to have a social studies class teach both “sides” of the ID conflict. What I don’t think is a reasonable compromise is having ID taught in science classrooms, because it’s simply not science.
Barry, the use-em-if-you-want model is politically acceptable to me. It is, however, not viable in the long run, because funding depends on the voters. People won’t vote to fund schools they don’t use. (Now, if I’m mistaken about how many people feel how strongly about this issue, I might be wrong about the consequences, too.) If that happens, then you end up with free schools that nobody wants to use because they’re so terrible.
The mostly-pure libertarian position (private schools for all, subsidies to that element of society too poor to be able to pay for school) would probably end up producing better outcomes for everyone…but it’s not politically viable.
I doubt many people would find your compromise palatable, simply because it would be a devolution from what happens now. (Which is that evolution is basically left untaught.)
—basically left untaught in those school districts sufficiently cowed by the vociferous minority.
We’re working on that.
The mostly-pure libertarian position (private schools for all, subsidies to that element of society too poor to be able to pay for school) would probably end up producing better outcomes for everyone…
For certain values of ‘everyone,’ meaning those who run for-profit schools and those who always had the money to go to the best schools. Unless you truly believe that Section 8 provides good, liveable housing and food stamps insure that everyone has nutritional food to eat.
For certain values of ‘everyone,’ meaning those who run for-profit schools and those who always had the money to go to the best schools.
…and there’s the political non-viability; too many people who think that the bottom end gets the shaft now, and that reallocating resources from the middle class to the poor would somehow make that worse.
I have a solution for your problem: Form a Feminazi party!
Teg, you’ve now officially worn out your welcome. Please don’t post on my blog anymore.
Man, do I miss the numbered comments.
Robert: >>The scientific method is a technique of knowledge, not a complete epistemology. It doesn’t stand independently; it must be rooted in a framework of cultural values, implicit beliefs and assumptions, and a set of known data points.
OK, rereading that, it’s philosophy babble. Let me try it in English.
You can be a Deist, who believes in a creator God, and study biology using the scientific method. You can be a stark atheist, who actively disbelieves in God, and study biology using the scientific method. You can be a Frisbeetarian, for that matter, and study biology using the scientific method.
On small questions, these three scientists will usually come up with similar answers. On larger questions, they will not. Their cultural assumptions and biases, and their preconceptions about what ideas are valid and what ideas are not valid, will come into play. Adherents of the scientific method seem very invested in the notion that this is not the case, but I believe that it is.>>
The fact that every scientist necessarily brings their own preconceptions to the table–of course–does not mean that those preconceptions, their framework, must be taught in a science class. The framework is, as you’ve pointed out, something that each scientist and each science student may decide or refuse to decide for him- or herself. I didn’t need to have my atheism supported, or someone else’s creationism imposed, in order to study biology or physics or astronomy. And bear in mind that we are not talking about an acknowledgment of preconceptions, but of the imposition of one particular, unsupported set of preconceptions. How would a student with a Constitutionally-protected atheistic framework fare if they were placed in a science class that insisted upon an ID context for science?
There is no Constitutional protection for atheism per se.
There is no Constitutional protection for atheism per se.
There is now. Seriously, you can’t believe that Congress could legally outlaw atheism. This doesn’t advance the discussion. As for the larger questions you mention in your earlier comment (thank you for putting that in relatively empirical terms, by the way), how do they relate to teaching students what we conclude by following the scientific method? The statement ‘science tells us this happened’ does not contradict the statement that God created the world so that it looked old a la Gosse, much less the simpler claim that God created the world. By contrast, the statement that Newton’s Rules point to a designer contradicts the observed facts.
(Incidentally, I have yet to see a creationist who seemed to grasp what Gosse meant. He apparently said that God created the world using the imagined history of evolution as a blueprint, then gave us the Bible — and Gosse — so as not to deceive us.)