Review of Discovery Institute's Evolution Textbook 756
Darwinned writes "Intelligent Design is still a hot topic, as evidenced by recent legislation mandating that it be taught in school. Pro-ID group Discovery Institute has released an evolution textbook for use in schools, but a review shows it to be chock full of bad science and questionable reasoning. 'The book doesn't only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book, but its authors are expecting that legislators and the courts will be too stupid to notice that, or to remember that the Supreme Court has declared teaching creationism an unconstitutional imposition of religion.'"
So let them. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:2 - The Great Flood (Where are all the Unicorns (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway I think that the Slashdot usage of the term "Creationism" should be replaced by the phrase "Young Earth Creationism"
(YEC for short)
Perhaps. At least the YECers have the balls to believe in something which is not only demonstrably inane, but has been disproven many times. Those OECers simply relegate their creator to misty Planck times. I call that moving the goalposts to a spot where they do no one any good whatsoever.
"Chock full of bad science"? (Score:2, Interesting)
The Slashdot blurb implies that the review shows the book to be "chock full of bad science", yet I didn't get that impression from the review.
The first section of the review dealt with politics, not science.
The second section claimed that the "scientific community" overwhelmingly accepts evolution.
Finally on the second page of the review, the implication is made that it's unscientific to be precise about definitions ("neodarwinianism") since the rest of the community prefers the term "evolution" (which is a VERY plastic term that can mean almost anything depending on who you talk to and what part of the sentence just came out of their mouth).
The next "unscientific" claim the review "refutes" is the idea of common descent. Well, duh! That IS the issue, isn't it? "You don't accept my science therefore your claim is unscientific." Pfft.
Then the review objects to the book's criticizing the views of scientists with whom the reviewer doesn't agree anyway. The reviewer claims that the book is using these examples of molehills to build mountains. Maybe, but is it a "chock-full" of "bad science" to criticize faulty viewpoints?
Then the review seems to find fault with the book for calling attention to real controversies in biology, as if that's playing unfairly.
The review even seems to claim that although we still, after 150 years, have limitations in our fossil record, it's a "bait and switch" to mention therefore that some scientists doubt that the fossil record supports common descent.
The review seems to take offense for the book's claim that Darwin's "Tree of Life" has in recent years come to look more like an orchard of bushes. As I understand the state of the fossil record, the book is more correct on this point than is the reviewer. The review also seems to claim that cladistic trees match molecular trees, which I am quite confident is not the case (read an article on that just the other day - sorry, don't recall the citation).
The review downplays the significance of the Cambrian Explosion, claiming that to look at it the way the book does is faulty. And one of the reviewer's arguments is that the sudden appearance of the bat is offset by the sudden appearance of an earlier bat. What?!
The review takes offense at Behe's "irreducible complexity", claiming that at least three scientific papers have refuted Behe. I'm a little familiar with those claims; those claims don't convince me (particularly since they've not been demonstrated, but merely are "just so" stories that "might" be how it happened).
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying the book is good, or bad; I don't know; I haven't seen it myself. But I definitely get the impression that this review is more an emotionally-charged response to a challenge to a religiously-held belief system. The battle-cry of "bad science" is just a banner under which the faithful will be expected to gather.
My opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
In my opinion, schools need to have a separate course on Culture. It should teach about different races and religious beliefs. Intelligent design should certainly be taught there, so that people understand and respect one another's beliefs. Currently, for every idiot who opposes evolution, there's another idiot who is unaccepting of religious beliefs. There are a lot of people who believe in a combination of evolution and intelligent design (myself included), and while the intelligent design aspect is in no way science, it is education.
Re:Evolution textbook!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Parent is the most insightful comment in a long time.
That's *exactly* what happens now.
But never forget that psychology defines religion as a kind of (mild or bad) schizophrenia. And indeed, if you compare them both, it fits nicely. :\
So the country needs a therapy. As a whole. Unfortunately psychological therapies are still not very effective.
But I learned, that a raise in intelligence often helps people to solve their problems themselves. So my money's on education. (And I'm not talking about the outdated way you know from school. I'm talking about modern methods and more social and emotional education in addition to logic an motor skills.)
Re:revenge on the nerds (Score:5, Interesting)
Good point. Instead, we got good looking genius boy.
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981
"I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." -- Ronald Reagan, 1980. (Actually, Mount St. Helens, at its peak activity, emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, compared with 81,000 tons per day by cars.)
"The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees." Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in 1979. (There is no scientific data to support this assertion.)
Re:Evolution textbook!? (Score:5, Interesting)
There followed a long decline. Wars, on and off, with the crusaders of Europe raiding into the Middle East. Various rulers of Arabic and Persian and Turkish dynasties competing for domination of the Islamic world. A gradual eclipse as the nations of Europe set about building their empires. And finally irrelevance, a culture respected only insofar as it provides crude oil to its betters. Small wonder that a civilisation brought so low from such a glorious past turns to its god for answers, and finds dark counsels.
Re:Epicurus said it best (Score:2, Interesting)
So. Let's see here.
The first few chapters of Genesis can be quite simply stated as: God gets bored. God creates some toys to play with, which he calls people. God creates the potential for vast, limitless pain, suffering and EVIL into these "toys". God lets them do their thing and watches for millennia as the pain and suffering unfold.
Yep, I can't see *anything* malevolent there.
No amount of "free will" touting can cancel this -- it's "free will" which allowed the events to play out that way in the first place! Were god NOT malevolent he would have removed the potential for suffering, one of the (many) ramifications of which would be the removal of free will.
It's quite easy to show that a "loving god" would never have allowed free will in the first place, by never having created the potential for suffering in the first place. The logical conclusion to this chain of thought is that a "loving god" would never have created us in the first place in ANY form!
Re:Evolution textbook!? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency."--Ibn al-Haytham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-haytham [wikipedia.org]
This is what too few human beings do, they always trust in what they have been taught... when much of what they know is fraught with error. I am weary of anything I say as well as anything any other man says, that cannot be demonstrated. Therefore, I only defend what can be demonstrated.
The majority of people do not take the above view, they are overconfident in what they think they know when they hardly know anything at all.
Re:2 - The Great Flood (Where are all the Unicorns (Score:1, Interesting)
So by extension of your logic, any knowledgable person who contributes accurate information to wikipedia immediately becomes wrong retrospectively until the point at which that knowledge was first gained. Right?
Re:2 - The Great Flood (Where are all the Unicorns (Score:1, Interesting)
The reason creationists feel their way of life is under attack is that in a very real *psychological* aspect it is. A basic human need, is to feel significant, and beyond that to feel validated in the decisions you've made in life.
As any child with siblings knows, one way to feel good about yourself is to try hard and achieve, the other is to find a way to feel better than your brother or sister by comparison ... possibly be insulting, hitting or tattling on them.
Fundamentalism (actually all Zealotry) is in my opinion, simply an extension of this short-cut method of feeling better than everyone else by comparison.
Linux-heads feel "under attack" by windows and os X.
Creationists feel that they are "under attack" by science.
Homophobes feel that they are "under attack" from gay people.
Demoblicans feel that they are "under attack" by Republicrats.
It's a moral short-circuit.
Re:Evolution textbook!? (Score:3, Interesting)
An interesting theory I read is that part of the decline was due to economics. In the Middle Ages, Europe ran on feudalism, which granted individuals permanent rule over an area, which they could also pass on to their descendants. In the Arab world instead terms of power were granted, such as for three or five years.
This meant that European nobles had at least some incentive to invest in long-term projects in their territories, while in the Middle East the incentive was skewed towards short-term profit. Therefore, while the Middle East had a head start while Europe was busy clawing itself from barbarism, over time the situation reversed, and by the time of the Renaissance the Middle East was stagnating.
Re:2 - The Great Flood (Where are all the Unicorns (Score:4, Interesting)
As an ex-christian I'll help interpret for you. Since I understand both sides of the fence.
1) Your belief system is comforting. The more conservative I was the more certain I was and the more certain I was the happier and more comforted I felt.
2) Denying God is real means it's all in your head and you shouldn't actually be confident in what you 'know'.
3) If you can't be confident in what you know then you can't be certain and if you can't be certain then you aren't comforted. Your amazingly incredibly blissfully wonderfully happy land grows dark and is replaced with the cold uncaring uncertainty of doubt.
4) So when you attack a christian's faith what you're actually doing is robbing them of that beautiful all enveloping right-hemisphere of the brain oneness with God. Which is incredibly painful.
It's like stealing a junkie's needle. It's going to be very traumatic. Much more traumatic than if you for instance told them that ketchup sucks and it's silly that they like it. Unless they get some sort of bizzare high from ketchup.
Re:2 - The Great Flood (Where are all the Unicorns (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, I'm an atheist - but I think you need to look up the word 'metaphor'.