Re: In the News: Intelligent design has place in science lessons, says CofE

On Jun 2, 6:24 am, Bloopenblop...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jun 2, 8:27 am, Ron O <rokim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:





On Jun 2, 2:48 am, Jason Spaceman <notrea...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

From the article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------­­---
Donald MacLeod and agencies
Friday June 1, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk

The row over teaching the theory of intelligent design in science
lessons was reignited today by the Church of England's new head of
education.

The Rev Jan Ainsworth, who is responsible for more than 4,600 CofE
schools, said intelligent design could form part of discussions in
science lessons under the heading of history of science.

Intelligent design - the argument that living species are too complex
to have evolved through Darwinian natural selection and must have a
"designer" - is dismissed by the vast majority of scientists.

Ms Ainsworth told the Times Educational Supplement: "While it is not
something I would subscribe to, it is a recognition that there are
different ways of looking at the evidence.

"History of science" is OK, they can teach that there was a time when
some people seriously looked at the evidence in this way, but that was
when no one knew any better.

Modern science doesn't do that. For a very simple reason, there is no
reason to do that. 100% failure for the assertion of intelligent
design in the entire history of science. Even the scam outfits like
the Discovery Institute do not have any working examples. If it can't
be found to be a factor in nature, there is no reason for science to
consider it as a viable alternative. Anyone that wants to look into
it can mess with it and try and make it work, but even the creationist
scam artists, that ran the ID scam for a decade, gave up on ID years
ago. Why would serious scientists consider it as being viable? If it
were viable science why are the ID creationist scam artists
perpetrating a new scam that doesn't even mention that ID ever
existed? Why did they have to come up with the replacement scam as
far back as 1999 if they really believed that ID was something worth
discussing?

"You would get howls of protest from the scientific community, which
would say there is absolutely no place for it in the curriculum. But
you could do it in history of science," she added, pointing out that
religious education lessons in CofE schools include discussions of
different beliefs.

History of science would be fine, just make sure that the students
understand why intelligent design failed to gain any significant
acceptance, and why it is utterly worthless in science today. Just
going through the various ID assertions over time should do the
trick. Point out that the "Designer did it assertions" (DDIA) could
never be tested directly, but scientists had to work very hard to
figure out what was really going on. It turns out that DDIAs weren't
even good place holders and inhibited the search for the real answer
more than helped it. Why do the seasons change? Does thundar come
from the gods? Who was the cause of disease? Who makes babies? So
who cares about the modern DDIAs like Who made the blood clotting
system? Who made the flagellum?

100% failure of all DDIAs to date. The only DDIAs left standing are
then ones that can't be tested at this time. Any lesson about the
history of science and intelligent design's part in it would have to
make that clear.

Ron Okimoto

The church today hastened to play down the significance of her
comments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------­­----------

Read it athttp://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2093476,00.html

J. Spaceman

But what about someone saying "An intelligent designer made this
ancient arrowhead?" Or "An intelligent designer wrote this book?"- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I would listen just as soon as they provided some evidence _for_ an
IDer and even more if he provided some believable reasoning that
rejected the ToE.

Harry K


.

Relevant Pages