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Permalink Reply by Merlin Mercer on June 11, 2011 at 7:51pm

This is all I could really find right now.  UTTER GARBAGE  The foreword alone will make you sick.

 

There are some students in Louisiana fighting the good fight in trying to repeal the state's passing of SB 70, allowing creationism to be taught in the public schools.  "In Livingston Parish, Jan Benton, Director of Curriculum, told the Livingston Parish School Board that the law’s purpose is to allow the teaching of “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes."  Quite frankly, I don't think the terms 'critical thinking' and 'creationism' belong in the same sentence.

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Permalink Reply by Scarlette Blues on June 12, 2011 at 1:27am

"A Theory of Intelligent Design

Developments in the information sciences have recently made possible the articulation of criteria by which intelligently designed systems can be identified by the kinds of patterns they exhibit. In a recent book titled The Design Inference, published by Cambridge University Press, Baylor University probability theorist William Dembski shows how rational agents often infer or detect the prior activity of other designing minds by the character of the effects they leave behind. Archaeologists assume, for example, that rational agents produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. Insurance fraud investigators detect certain "cheating patterns" that suggest intentional manipulation of circumstances rather than "natural" disasters. Cryptographers distinguish between random signals and those that the carry encoded messages. Dembski's work shows that recognizing the activity of intelligent agents constitutes a common and fully rational mode of inference. 7

More importantly, Dembski's work explicates the criteria by which rational agents recognize the effects of other rational agents and distinguish them from the effects of natural causes. Dembski argues that systems that manifest the joint properties of "high complexity" 8 (or low probability) and "specification" 9 invariably result from intelligent causes rather than from chance or physical-chemical laws. These criteria are equivalent (or isomorphic) to what information theorists call specified information or information content. Dembski's work demonstrates that "high information content" reliably signals prior intelligent activity.

This theoretical insight agrees with common, as well as scientific, experience. For example, no one would attribute hieroglyphic inscriptions to natural forces such as wind or erosion; instead, one immediately recognizes the activity of intelligent agents. Dembski's work shows why: Our reasoning involves a comparative evaluation process that he represents with a device he calls the explanatory filter. 10 The filter outlines the method that scientists (as well as ordinary people) use to decide among three types of causal explanations-chance, necessity, and design. His explanatory filter constitutes, in effect, a scientific method for detecting the effects of intelligence."


The whole page is full of bullshit. It actually makes me question I.D even more: Why is this even compared to evolution? The theory of I.D seems to be an attempt to find 'god' on the molecular level. It does nothing to explain life on this planet. If you want to replace/contrast something, you need to do so with something that is comparable.

[This entire last paragraph is just a jazzed up "if you see a painting" argument.]

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Permalink Reply by Araina on June 11, 2011 at 10:30pm

All students for the Intelligent Design classes should be made to wear dunce-caps.

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Permalink Reply by Akshay Bist on June 12, 2011 at 12:29am

it seems the entire class would be spent just 'debuking' evolution and not actually teaching anything

Well in order to debunk evolution, they would have to present the ideas they want to debunk. Hopefully critical thinking students will latch onto those ideas & instead of going along with the course material will research about evolution themselves.

And if they teach Christian creationist story - I hope the students ask 

If Adam & Eve were the first humans, and they had kids. And all of them were the only humans at that time, then where did the next generation come from? Did they.....?

Hopefully that will shut up the teacher & if a similar line of questioning becomes popular with the students, then maybe the mockery of the syllabus will get Idiotic Design yanked from the syllabus.

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Permalink Reply by Scarlette Blues on June 12, 2011 at 1:43am

I don't see the Christian creationist story ever being taught in public schools. If I would have heard that in high school, I would have laughed at my teacher..and then walked out of the classroom.

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on June 12, 2011 at 9:28am

It's amazing politicians (and my limited experience with the ones in TN is they are scientifically illiterate,  fundamental Christians) keep binging this up given the following list of scientific societies and their position papers on evolution/ID:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_societies_explicitl...

 

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Permalink Reply by Scarlette Blues on June 12, 2011 at 10:16am

That list is great!

"Intelligent design proponents may use the language of science, but they do not use its methodology. They have yet to propose meaningful tests for their claims, there are no reports of current research on these hypotheses at relevant scientific society meetings, and there is no body of research on these hypotheses published in relevant scientific journals. So, intelligent design has not been demonstrated to be a scientific theory" The American Associate for the Advancement of Science

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on June 12, 2011 at 1:48pm

In my letter to my TN reps re: the law attempted to be passed here, I listed all these organizations and commented that perhaps the TN legislature knows better than all these organizations. 

During the discussions about the resolution, one rep said something to the effect of "it's about time we stopped be pushed around by intellectual bullies."  I ended my letter with something like "It appears the intellectual bullies need to be put in their place by political bullies."

 

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Permalink Reply by Scarlette Blues on June 12, 2011 at 2:56pm

"It appears the intellectual bullies need to be put in their place by political bullies."

 

Nice!

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Permalink Reply by Rev. Chris Pagan on June 12, 2011 at 12:11pm

Nice list. Thanks for that. 

 You're right in regards to the TN politicians. It's not just science they are illiterate in, however, but a whole range of things. The same could be said for a vast majority of this country's politicians, regardless of political party. 

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on June 12, 2011 at 1:53pm

You're welcome, and you're right.

I recently started reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell (it's been about 20 years since I took Macro and Microeconomics in college and wanted a refresher).  It is clear many of our so-called leaders (state and federal) are economically illiterate as well. 

And don't get me started on "American History".......

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Wells on June 12, 2011 at 10:03am

I am not sure what they would teach, but does it really matter. When you have the truth you don't need evidence right. Now that I am thinking about it chemistry is kind of boring, perhaps they should teach alchemy in schools. Our economy is devastated and what better way to increase government revenue than having our children work in labs to create gold. This would be amazing. Another problem that I have with our school system is that they are teaching our children about sex. I can't stand the fact that they are taking my kids innocence. A great way to do this is to add stork theory into our curriculum. Millions of children across the world have been taught this theory so it would have an easy transition into our school systems.

*Disclaimer- This post was written out of complete sarcasm, please don't assume that I have lost my mind. LOL*

 

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