DUMB & DUMBER: I posted something loosely about "intelligent design" and science inside a comment a few posts ago, and I thought it was not bad...so I'm reposting it here, on accounta I think it might inspire some fun back-and-forth. Here goes:
The whole "intelligent design" debate is kind of funny to me. I have no problem if intelligent design is presented in the classroom for what it is: a non-scientific explanation invented after the fact by religious people who want to merge biblical prose with scientific knowledge. Something like that. I mean, evolution is only a theory, too. It works better than intelligent design, if you play by the rules of science. But the thing I always hated 'bout science class was that scientists thought that creating some kind of language and classification system and memorizing it somehow represented knowledge. Science and Mathematics are amazing and useful tools, but they're just a lot of hand-waving at the end of the day. They can be used to produce tremendous good, just like the Humanities. But there's nothing absolute about the blueness of blue or the hydrogenness of water. It's just semantic hand-waving, useful for communication and even exploration, but a million miles short of any kind of absolute explanation of the intrinsic nature/meaning of life.
Discuss...
9 comments:
I understand your point and particularly like your explanation of how intelligent design should be taught. However, the point of science and mathematics is that they are absolute: 2 plus 2 will always equal four, and the hydrogennes (?!) of water is exactly what makes it water - if it was carbon it would be carbon dioxide.
It's a brush that's often used to rail against people who insist that science trummps ideology - "your theory doesn't explain why we are here." As scientists (many of them devoutly religious, by the way) have pointed out since time immemorial "We are not trying to determine why we are here. We are trying to determine how we are here." The latter is the domain of science; the former, quite correctly, the domain of religion, philosophy, whatever name you wish to call it.
Teaching intelligent design in a science class is exactly the same as teaching the Second Law of Thermodynamics in a Comparitive Religion class - the two, quite simply, have nothing to do with each other.
Incredibly well put, Bart.
I agree that, if you want to mention intelligent design in science class, you're mixing apples and oranges. Nonetheless, I'd have no problem having it mentioned in science class as long as it's done in the way I describe.
As far as two-plus-two and thermodynamics, they're just words acting as stand-ins for concepts. To me...and perhaps only to me...they're not particularly *real*. They're names for something. I'm of the mind that scientists don't really *know* much of anything, they've just come up with a nice handy system for sorting stuff. Science, to me, is more process than product. I admire the process and its results. But I'm way past thinking scientists have any better answers than priests or rabbis. In other words, I wish more time was spent alerting students that science is not some absolute domain, peopled with apolitical truth-seekers. I'd wager it has as many nutjobs as religion does. Absolutism -- thinking anyone or anything has the answer or is the answer -- is the problem.
Math and science are universally accepted classification systems that are used to articulate shared physical realities. That's as close to the definition of "objective" that you can get without losing yourself in the labrynthine ghostworld of Platonic forms.
I heart Isaac. Always have. The Hebrew Spock, with a heart.
Ok, let me make sure I've got this straight:
Mr. "No more science haters need apply" is also Mr. 'I'm okay with teaching a non-scientific explanation as equal to a scientific theory'? some of your multitudes should be introduced to one another for conversation.
IF Intelligent Design were to rise to the level of a scientific theory, testable, etc, then fine, add it to science curricului. But, to add a 'non-scientific explanation' to a science curriculum...would lake intellectual rigor. Now, 'mentioning' it, say, in a one-day sidebar on alternative beliefs and explanations, and including others as well, so that no special weight is being granted to it, maybe. Adding it to curricului, as is the goal of I'd advocates... Well, to craft an analogy based on another of your mutitudes, an F1 car isn't allowed in a NASCAR event, despite being a car designed to go fast when drivien well and supported by an expensive team, right? Why? Because there are rules of classification and the F1 car doesn't meet the NASCAR test. Fine car? Maybe. NASCAR? No.
Science is just a subset of how we classify human knowledge and intellectual activity. Let ID be taught under a more fitting banner, if at all.
That said, should science curricului be designed to acknowledge that evolution is a theory, a well-tested one that stands up pretty well but is not without it's shortcomings? Ok. Sure.
Give me a break, Kev. I was clear that it wasn't science. Here's what I wrote:
"...a non-scientific explanation invented after the fact by religious people who want to merge biblical prose with scientific knowledge."
Ok, I didn't read closely enough. From everything I've seen, ID advocates want it taught AS science. I was probably reacting to. "...evolution is only a theoy, too." from which I inferred that you saw ID and evolution as equivalents. In some broad sense, I suppose it is, but in a narrow sense of how the two might be placed in a curriculum, they clearly are not.
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