ReligionDispatches.org

Deliberately mandating the provision of "teaching" materials promoting scientific illiteracy to school children is a tragedy. Sneaking in code-words and phrases casting doubt on evolution and the age of the universe and the earth is just the start for what these religious fanatics really want - the destruction of all of science, and a retreat to the Dark Ages of ignorance and religious intolerance. How can the voters have let this travesty happen? How can so many anti-education and anti-science religious ignoramuses be on a Board of Education?

"What McLeroy fails to grasp is that supernatural explanations aren’t testable, for one can never disprove a God-did-it hypothesis."

Sure they can-- you just have to make the person saying "God-did-it" transform that claim into something falsifiable...which they can do, because they are after all claiming that God did something which had an effect on the physical world, which makes God a physical entity, which puts his behavior within the bounds of scientific study.

That was the only aspect that pained me about the prosecution's line of argument in the Dover trial. I agree with Richard Dawkins that God's existence and his acts are a scientific hypothesis-- that is, it's an empirical hypothesis and thus treading on science's turf. If someone who wants to claim that God did something is willing to offer conditions under which that claim can be scientifically proven or disproven, then experiments can be conducted to do so. The main reason, above all, why creationism should not be taught in science classes is not that it is at heart religious-- it's because it's not science. Those two statements are not saying the same thing. Ken Miller demonstrated as much in the trial when he explained the concept of exaptation using a modified mousetrap (or, for his purposes, a primitive tie clip). If supernatural explanations were by definition out of the bounds of scientific study, then such an explanation would mean nothing. All that would be necessary would be the testimony of Eugenie Scott making it clear that the origins of ID are in fact religious, and it would be case closed. Instead, what had to be proven was that not only is ID bad science, but that it is also religious. I find that kind of a shame, because while I thoroughly appreciated Eugenie's efforts (and boy, her evidence was unquestionably damning!), I found them superfluous to the central question at hand. Ideally, the results of the trial should've been the same even if the 1st Amendment did not exist.

Yes, I know you know all about the Dover trial-- sorry for rehashing it so much! But again, if the supernatural can't be tested then there is no point in doing studies on whether prayer actually has any effect on helping people with cancer, no point in performing MRI scans to find out what prayer "looks" like in the brain, no point in testing whether psychics can actually predict the future...and scientists are doing all of these things. They can test them because they're empirical claims, and religion makes a lot of empirical claims. If it didn't, it would lose a lot of ground....it is, for that matter, losing precisely this ground amongst non-believers in Gould's NOMA everyday.

There are a lot of things you can say about a believer who rests her "faith" in God on empirical claims. You could say she is wise, not to trust faith alone. You could say she is cowardly, to be unwilling to make that leap. You could say she is brave, to risk the foundation of her faith being disproven. But to some extent or another, she is also the majority. Most believers subscribe to a set of tenets about physical acts in the world, physical attributes of gods and spirits, and these are at least in theory-- and increasingly in reality-- scientifically testable.

All this language does is encourage students to EXAMINE the THEORY of evolution.
Nothing is said about the FACT of evolution, which all creationists agree DOES happen; it is the THEORY of evolution, properly called 'common descent' that is in question, as it does not even qualify as a scientific theory!

Discuss this, and any Origin issue in a CIVIL manner at Talk About Origins
www.tao.invisionzone.com

AmPaTerry, I'm sorry. You almost got it right, but not quite. Evolution is indeed both a fact and a theory. The fact is that it happens and has happened--including common descent-- and the theory concerns how it happens. And contrary to what you say, creationists do deny evolution. A creationist is a person who insists that species came into being exactly as described in Genesis, and were not evolved.

You could, with some justification, tell me to butt out. I am, after all, an Englishman living in England and retired from teaching.
I've seen this debate acted out over and over again on all sorts of sites but rarely do I see anyone consider the possible effects on the children.
Asking eight and nine year olds to consider "strengths and weaknesses" is asking something they aren't equipped for. What happens when a non-specialist teacher from a creationist viewpoint tells them that the Bible gives a true account of men and dinosaurs living together while a man named Darwin came up with a lie to discredit God and said that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago? In three or four years time they go to a specialist science class where a science trained teacher tells them how descent with modification and natural selection is the best way we have to explain how life grew from simple chemicals into the wonderful world of nature we see today. There are problems with evolutionary theory - there are problems with all of science. Science by its very nature is open ended. Who knows what we will discover this year, next year, in ten years' time? Perhaps Darwin, like Newton, discovered a theory that holds true for certain aspects of space/time but not others. I'm not a biologist. I don't know even how that could work. But as a scientist, I am open to the possibility. The moment you say "God said" you've closed the door on all that.
Children shouldn't be burdened with issues like this just so that people with shaky faith in their own God can silence any voices that make them uncomfortable.
Creationists of the six day young earth kind are quite open about this. If you can't accept the Genesis myth as actual historical and scientific fact then you cannot accept any part of the Bible. Any science that does not conform to the Genesis myths must be silenced. That's what the "Wedge" is all about.
And if you let this happen, it's the children in your schools who will suffer.