Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design 1634
An anonymous reader writes "The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science." From the release: "[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.'"
"Supernatural" not a necessity for ID (Score:2, Interesting)
Note that ID's notions don't necessarily rely on the supernatural. We may be able to create life ourselves someday in the lab, and this does not make us supernatural (even if our creations think so).
Of course this does not answer the issue of where the original creator(s) came from, but that may not be an issue. For example, if time travel is possible (nobody knows right now), then one can simply go back into the past to insert themselves. A recursive creation has not been ruled out.
My point being that if the attacks on ID depend on supernaturalness, then such may backfire in court.
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:2, Interesting)
Mind explaining for us "ignorant" folks how a supernatural supposition is compatable with a methodology that can only make meaningful statements and conclusions about the natural universe?
Re:Science is a PROCESS (Score:5, Interesting)
You miss the point.
It is to raise the profile of the KBSE : gain some much needed media-time to point some fingers. And threaten the whole state of Kansas with the stigma of pariah-dom with the rest of the US.
Sure, Kansas can still teach what their KBSE call "Science". But without the endorsement of these two bodies, they will have a harder time convincing the rest of the world that they are teaching "science". This has nothing to do with scientific process, it has everything to do with playing politics. Okay, scientists suck at politics, but well, they don't always have to be. Think Huxley.
Re:The obligatory argument against ID (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you missed the overall point that ID supporters tend to ignore mountains of scientific evidence for the flimsy psuedo-science they try to fool people with. The clubber obviously wrecked the guy's knee, but as long as he can spout enough BS, there'll be some people who will doubt he was the clubber. After all, if there were an Intelligent Designer intervening in life, He broke the ID guy's knee.
Did you miss the sarcasm of the whole thing?
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:5, Interesting)
As for your other points: here's what Wiki says about Satanism. "Satanism is a religious, semi-religious and/or philosophical movement whose adherents recognize Satan as an archetype, pre-cosmic force, or some aspect of human nature. Although named for Satan, a name associated with evil and temptation, Satanism is more commonly the name given to certain spiritual paths which emphasize the Left-Hand Path, as opposed to the much more common Right-Hand Path. Left-Handers believe in spiritual enrichment through their own work on themselves, and that ultimately they are answerable only to themselves, while Right-Handers believe in spiritual enrichment through the dissolution or submission of the self to (or into) something greater. Many Satanists do not in fact worship a deity called Satan, or necessarily any other deity, nor do they follow a principle of evil. This aspect of their beliefs is very commonly misunderstood."
Most Satanists, in fact, deny the existence of both God and Satan, which is why my original comment (snide as it was) is applicable.
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:2, Interesting)
"He who brings into existence whatever exists" does not exist. That has something of a Buddhist taste to it.
"He who is" does not exist. That is just funky...
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you saying that existing hypothesis on how the world came about don't actually tie into the fundamentals of chemistry or physics (biology doesn't enter into it until you start looking at the first life forms)? If so, you're woefully out of touch with reality.
While there is definately disagreement in the area of ID, we can at least teach the facts everyone agrees on (I haven't heard many religious challenges to F=ma, Maxwell's equations, Bohr's model of the atom, or microbiology recently).
So we should limit science to nothing but equations, and ignore things that might offend people's religious sensibilities, no matter how solid the evidence is for them?
And how does this make creationism scientific? That was my question, why did you completely ignore it?
Re:Obligatory Flying Spaghetti Monster (Score:3, Interesting)
You say "insults", I would replace that with "shows the folly of"
Take it a step further (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh. "Satanism" as you're definining it is "gothic satanism" - you know, the baby-eating, virgin-sacrificing type of Satanism that doesn't actually exist. Look up Satanism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica if you don't believe me, or any other reputable source; the Wiki was handy, which is why I used it.
"Satanism" as you describe it doesn't exist outside of fiction. I'm not terribly surprised that you have no idea what I'm talking about, but before continuing this conversation, why don't you look it up for yourself?
Re:The obligatory argument for ID (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but science isn't about "balance", it's about trying to find the best explanations for reality. If a view doesn't explain observable reality very well then science has little interest in trying to strike a balance with that view, it simply want to find a better explanation.
Intelligent design is not creationism or naturalism; it simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads.
The issue, really, is "what is the empirical evidence of design" because that is really the heart of the matter. In practice it amounts to "these are things which are not yet explained in the current theory". They are not, per se, things that are contrary to the current theory, just points that haven't yet been heavily scrutinised and explanations provided. How exactly do you know something was designed? Effectively you simply say "I cannot see how this could have evolved". That's not really the same thing as saying it can't have evolved - that is, saying that evolutionary theory specifically predicts such a thing cannot exist. It is not a falsification, but merely a lack of explanation.
It is actually surprisingly easy to take this same method of argument, of pointing to the gaps where explanation hasn't yet reached, and create a similar theory to Intelligent Design for any subject area in science - there's always something that has yet to be fully explained. Take, for instance, gravity. You can construct a reasonable sounding argument [kuro5hin.org] using exactly the same techniques as Intelligent Design and end up with a theory that, I'm quite sure, you could get not insignificant support for from various religious groups.
Intelligent design is accepted by religious and nonreligious academics and scientists; supported by microbiologists and mathematics. In a Natural History Magazine study, three proponents of intelligent design summarize their findings this way:
* Every living cell contains many ultra-sophisticated molecular machines.
* Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
* Darwin's finches and four-winged fruit fly theories cannot account for all features of living things.
And the "Uncaused Force" theory is supported by physics and mathematics (just check those journal articles cited in the essay: they are all real, and say exactly what the essay claims they do). You could summarise "Uncaused Force" findings this way:
* At various scale levels there are observable forces that have no observable cause.
* Interaction in our universe by somethign external to our universe leaves behind observable signatures.
* Einstein's relativity cannot account for the observed forces.
It's all just the same argument, so why do you not accept "Uncaused Force"?
You can't falsify a theory by noting that it hasn't yet explained something - it is interesting to note, but it is not a falsification. Claiming that a theory is flawed is not evidence for an alternate theory.
Jedidiah.
Re:The obligatory argument against ID (Score:3, Interesting)
Every person I've heard supporting ID uses a provably false reason why "evolution is wrong". This leads me to conclude that if only morons support ID, then ID is a moronic hoax
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:4, Interesting)
The Supreme Court didn't create any law. They reviewed a law and found it was at odds with the Constitution and the greater body of law governing this nation.
Now, if you want to take issue with the entire concept of Judicial Review, then you might have an argument. Unfortunately you're 200 years too late.
Re:The obligatory argument for ID (Score:5, Interesting)
A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design. It studies the science of intelligence or intelligent life.
This his simply a lie, and I thought Christians were not allowed to lie. Intelligent Design doesn't study anything, ID has postulated a set of theories that are beyond study and therefore not scientific, even if, by an astonishing miracle ID was a correct description of the world, it would be wrong to teach it in science class.
Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically.
This is another lie, the Christian is really going at it today. ID has never been tested simply because it is not testable. Also, the sentence above shows with utter clarity why you are so amazingly wrong, you are just ignorant. Science, outside of a rather narrow field, doesn't deal with proving things much, it deals with falsifying things, and the difference is enormous.
Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
This could probably said to be true, close to the first true sentence in your posting. There is a huge problem with it though, there is no characteristic signature in life that would imply intelligent design.
I propose the followers if the ID ideology change the name of it to BSD. The Theory of Bloody Stupid Design. You see, in all the life we see around us there is evidence after evidence of a Bloody Stupid Designer, if you look. A few examples:
The list goes on and on. There is no trace of any intelligence whatsoever in our design, but there is a lot of traces of random changes, adaptation of body-parts to jobs they are not particularly well suited for etc. If there was someone behind the design of humans, he would fail Human Design 101. Bloody Stupid Johnson.
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The obligatory argument for ID (Score:4, Interesting)
Then you would be sadly mistaken. The fact that people do argue that we are not designed is why this debate is occuring at all. The idea that we are "intelligently designed" is certainly debatable, since there are many features of the human body that are rather idiotically "designed" (one such example being the use of the same passage for the ingestion of both air and food - which makes choking a serious hazard; I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples if you try).
Students can make up their own minds or develop their own opinions about who they believe the "Creator" is.And where exactly did this "creator" come from? Is he/she/it not "irreducibly complex" as well? If not, did he/she/it "evolve"? If so, who designed the creator?
How did we come into being before we changed?
And how did the agent responsible for both creation and change come into being?
Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically
Please provide links to this scientific proof.
Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
Really? And what exactly is this "characteristic signature"?
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face (Score:1, Interesting)
Science class, where a completely unproven theory with zero supporting evidence is given credibility alongside rigorously proven theories.
The difference between a theorem and a theory is that one cannot "prove" a theory with mathematical rigor but only demonstrate that it's unlikely to be falsified by observations in the near future. As for your claim that creation has "zero supporting evidence", have you read AIG's questions and answers about creation and the science behind it [answersingenesis.org]?
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, you're welcome to your faith, and should I see you proselytizing in the airport I wouldn't bother you (unless you get in my face like a Hairy Fishnut). But, this slashdot article is about the attempt to use the apparatus of Kansas government to force the teaching of a faith-based theory in science class, to the children of those who have no use for it. Even if no direct harm is done to the kids (such as making them ineligible for med school or life sciences research), the time given to the teaching of ID comes at the expense of something useful that could be taught.
You're welcome to screw up your own kids. Don't fuck with mine.
Re:Obligatory Flying Spaghetti Monster (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't speak to their religious validity. I happen to believe that religious validity comes from a match between the meanings and the deep structures of the human mind, but I have no firm evidence for this. (I.e., the evidence that I have is seen as evidence only by those already predisposed to such an assumption.)
Personally, I would as soon see religion taught in physics or biology class as I would see cosmology (big bang vs. the branes) taught in religion class. They really are, or OUGHT to be talking about two different kinds of thing. (And I consider those who can't see this to be hyped up chimpanzees...they make the same kind of mistake that chimps make when you teach them to drive a car and obey the traffic signals [as reported for an experiment done in a psych lab: You can teach them that red means stop, and green means go, but then they'll stop and go in response to the lights, whether their passage is blocked or not].)
From a Kansas parent... (Score:5, Interesting)
If, however, there had been no school in our area that taught evolution, I would have taught it to her myself. After all, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Any idiot can make sandwiches. It's times like these when you get a chance to actually parent.
There's an important point that the creationists miss in all of that. Kids will still be taught evolution regardless of whether or not they get their way with the standards. 99 percent of the parents in this state will tell their kids that evolution is fact. Some of the rest will find themselves explaining evolution simply to inform their kids about the debate. Still more kids will simply hear it from eachother or from media, the internet, etc.
Everybody will hear or learn about evolution, and the standards won't change which side of the debate people fall on. This whole thing about changing the standards is not only idealogically questionable, it's not practical or effective. They're achieving nothing but ridicule.
I for one hope that the board members continue to vocally extoll their positions and beliefs here; because the more they talk, the more unreasonable they sound. Like most of the ultra-conservative movement in this nation, the Kansas Creationists are running headlong for a backlash.
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the large majority of Christians (aka Roman Catholics) have no problem with macro evolution. It's official doctrine. It's based in the ancient Christian belief that the understanding the Universe is one of the best ways of understanding the God who created it. The idea that the workings of the world itself is as much a testament to God's will as the Bible. It's the minority of hardcore evangelicals (who somehow seem to have a strangehold on middle America) who prefer to believe that hard evidence must always give way to their fixed, particular interpretation of scripture.
ID vs Darwin - Great Motivator (Score:3, Interesting)
Questions like where did we come from. How do we explain major changes in speciation? Why are things the way there are? How did they become that way? How do things change? Why is there shuch diversity in life? Is there a God, flying spaghetti monster, higher power, or not?
Science fails when people stop asking questions - and when ideas are supressed by political means, questions that need to be explored are never asked. Even if you do not believe in god, or if you do, there is one thing about the evolution debate I've come to appreciate: real scientific discovery and real leaps in human knowledge only occur when people are allowed to question established beliefs. At present, evolution is an incumbent, accepted scientific belief, and as such should be questioned intensely. As the universe being created in seven days was before that. And the world being flat before that.
There is a reason that science is at a low point in America, and is has absolutely nothing to do with ID vs. evolution. Politics and patents have replaced discovery as the highest order of value for the professional scientist. That ID vs. Evolution is being debated in government halls instead of academic halls is a tradgedy of epic proportions.
Re:What about the FAKE apemen? (Score:1, Interesting)
Do please point out a current science book that lists java/piltdown/nebraska man as a real find or -proof- of evolution. Well?
You know how those hoaxes were discovered? SCIENCE. Radiocarbon & flourine dating, along with comparisons with the fossil records - 'piltdown man' for instance didn't fit into the fossil record at all, that's one of the main reasons they began to look at it as a fraud.
How many hoaxes has religion managed to discern on its own? Would you like to buy a holy relic? An actual nail from the One True Cross!
If it weren't for SCIENCE, you wouldn't know there had been any hoaxes. Religion didn't offer any means of discovering the truth about them, that's for sure! It took science to discover the hoax, and THAT'S HOW SCIENCE WORKS. No hoax will stand up to rigorous peer review and study for long, totally unlike how long religious myths can continue unchecked.
Thank you, DO try again..
Re:One Reason Why Standards Should Be Public Domai (Score:3, Interesting)
Rightly so: some day the shoe may be on the other foot.
(And in the interests of disclosure, I'll point out that I am a Christian, and a creationist.)
Flat earth flame ... but I'm hooked! (Score:3, Interesting)
[Here's a Christian idea
The big bang? Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for tens of years. You can explore the idea that the Earth is flat too if you want
The big-bang, incidentally is an untestable event as by definition the established principles of physical science break down at the singularity (and how would we observe, a temporal action, before time existed). So, it becomes a matter of faith as to whether there were a big bang or a re-expansion or some other creative event [or none! like Newton, Maxwell, Einstein et al. thought]
I guess the big-bang is probably still the standard model. But every standard model I ever studied was proven to be inconsistent with observations
Oh well.
LeMaitre - http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science
Why stop at Biology class? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is obviously a rhetorical question - but I feel it is a clear example of the fact that the ID movement is totally an ideological, and political, movement bent on removing evolution from the classroom, and a dishonest movement as well. Their egotism concerning human origins is intense, so while an ID'er can ignore teaching physics students "some scientists believe the laws of physics were designed and put into place by an intelligent force", they cannot stomach a branch of science that to them makes humans less than the image of a god. Since they can't teach their Sunday School lessons in science class, they wrap it up to look vaguely like science, use a bunch of smoke and mirrors arguments, and get god into school that way.
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:4, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, Darwin's theory of evolution is falsifiable. And here is one reason why it is false:
Darwinian evolution asserts that evolution occurs through the accumulation of minuscule random changes to the genome. If this were the case, there would be so many connecting species that the fossil record would be virtually a continuum.
What the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E shows, is that the fossil record is nothing like a continuum. Of the millions upon million of fossils which have been recovered, all of them fit nicely within a handful of phyla. Even fossils from Cambrian times already are separated into distinct phyla.
For Darwinian evolution to be true, the fossil record should resemble a conic section, starting from a point and spreading out evenly in all directions. There should literally be thousands upon thousands of connecting fossils which connect fossils to a whole host of predecessors and successors.
The real fossil record is nothing like that. Virtually fossils from the earliest times are segregated into phyla. Not only are there no connections between phyla, there are virtually no connections (links) supporting the major asserted jumps in evolution. Fishes eventually became amphibians, right? How many fossils support this conclusion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. A single questionable fossil is the only link between fish and amphibians.
Men evolved from primates, right? How many fossils support this assertion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. Less than a dozen fossils (fragments is a better term) support the assertion that primates evolved into men.
Evolutionists live in a fantasy world all their own where the lack of millions of connecting fossils is not an important issue. And the presence of a single questionable fossil establishes the "fact" that fishes evolved into amphibians. And less than a dozen fragments "proves" that primates evolved into man.
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions stated that "that enterprise [of science within an established paradigm] seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies."
Evolutionists have fashioned for themselves a fantasy box in which they force nature into their inflexible fantasy, irrespective of the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. They are so scared that their precious box is about to split open that they can't even engage in rational discussions and acknowlegde the incredible weaknesses of their theory which is driving many to look more deeply and question (scientifically) all that is assumed to be true.
There is a scientific revolution coming, and the evolutionists are going to be on the wrong side of history.
A paradox... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I understand ID correctly, then any obviously complex system implies the presence of a designer. Such a designer, would themselves be reasonably complex. So, then who designed the designer? And who designed the designer's designer? Ad infinitum...
Why introduce layers of unneeded abstraction? I don't see how ID gets us any closer to understanding the universe around us. If anything it discourages investigating the tough issues -- it's too complicated for us mere humans to understand the will of the great designer.
Not About Science or Religion -About Power & $ (Score:2, Interesting)
I call BS. I *do* hate copyright! (Score:3, Interesting)
No I don't. I hate it.
[Rant]
I want the Public Domain back sometime in my lifetime. The GPL is a means to that end, using copyright against itself, but if copyright were abolished, that would be a *good* thing to me. Yes, good. As RMS was recently quoted on Slashdot in a story about GPL version 3, the GPL derives its legal authority from copyrights, but its moral authority from the rights of the people. You lose only the right to restrict others by accident or design if you distribute or merge my source with your own (mere use of my work is explicitly *not* covered by the GPL). You remain free to make your own damn software if you don't like the conditions I and other GPL software copyright holders put on our work.
[End Rant]
And for the record, I give my own work away freely.
> I don't hear anybody "wailing" about the Church of Scientology's copyrights, either.
Then you aren't listening. Just in case you've been living in a cave (or basement?
Frankly, this strikes me as a publicity-whoring move by ID opponents. Whatever. I'll go with the science of evolution for myself, but I don't have either the time or the vitriol to tell every poor sod I can find on the Internet something like "OMG!!! YOU ARE A STUPED MORNO WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SCIENCE IS!!!!! DIE!!@#~!#!@#!" for daring even to ask a question, when I myself can barely explain what ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means, or whether or not it is outdated.
Re:"Theoretically speaking" (Score:2, Interesting)
I've agreed that we've failed. But not for the reasons you're stating.
I am not a creationist. And I'm not sure that ID is the best response to the evolution issue. But here are the reasons why I am skeptical about the evolution hypothesis:
Re:FSM vs. Jehovah (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny, but this has been cropping up on Slashdot for ages now, and I haven't heard anyone mention surrealist arguments (this may not be the commonly accepted term - it's a while since I took the paper, and wikipedia doesn't know what I'm talking about).
A surrealist argument (iirc) is one that tries to explain some phenomenon by appeal to an undetectable power or state, e.g. the moon is moved in its orbit by invisible angels. The angels are completely undetectable (apart from their effect on the moon, of course), but they're there. Really. I swear. We can never see them, but they're there.
The problem with surrealist arguments is that they're not disprovable (they never make falsifiable predictions, which is something that DOES get mentioned in these discussions) and unfortunately defences against them usually have to be about lack of explanatory power... but that's another big can of worms. It could be that the moon really is moved in its orbit by invisible angels, but that state cannot be distinguished from the accepted scientific state by any experiment.
Now back to the topic at hand... Pretty much any argument that 'God did it' is a surrealist argument. If you don't want to accept the fossil record you can claim that God rigged to look like that, and the earth is really only 6000 years old. That state is is not experimentally distinguishable from the accepted scientific state.
Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster arguments are both surrealist too. The most important thing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that the logical arguments for his existence are exactly as compelling as for ID or the Christian God. The Noodly One is inherently ridiculous which helps reveal the flaws in arguments for His existence, but also unfortunately leads to people misinterpreting the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a parody in poor (or possibly tomatoey) taste.
Re:Stop blaming Christians! (Score:2, Interesting)
Read what I actually said (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps I should qualify my own remarks by saying that the Mormon achievement in Utah is remarkable. But, as someone who studied sociology of religion, I see Mormonism itself as a unifying system intended to give a sense of social coherence to people from disparate backgrounds. The parallels with the origins of Islam are striking, so much so that students of such things classify both Islam and Mormonism as schisms of Christianity, though I'm not competent to comment on that.
I won't be around in a thousand years time to see if Mormonism has resulted in the explosion of achievement in science, architecture and civilisation that followed the establishment of Islam, but I do think the recently reported fact that Mormons no longer constitute a majority in Salt Lake City is a dead giveaway.
And in answer to your last question - I am not an atheist. However, I do not believe in any kind of afterlife, and I can point to this position being supported at many points in the Bible. I won't bore you with my own theological beliefs, but whether or not you believe in a Creator God the idea that God would create the entire universe just as a kind of juvenile training system for a part of the human race to go on to another, invisible universe for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever - well, it's not worth spending time on. However, people who do believe it are extremely dangerous because they have no vested interest in preserving our planet. I would rather be governed by atheists who believe that this is what we have and therefore we need to look after it, than by people who think that if WW3 happens tomorrow, they will be sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
Creation of species (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.
"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.
Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.
Examples: Salamanders [pbs.org], greenish warblers [actionbioscience.org].
Eivind.
Re:What ID is actually about (Score:3, Interesting)
Adam was supposed to have lived for 930 years or so, which in itself seems rather unexplainable withouth presuming that he's a metaphor for the "source" of human life in the middle east (which is often cited as the origin of humans who eventually migrated all over the place)...