I'd disagree with the first sentence, but otherwise it's a good article.
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Cloaking religion in scientific terms
Marie Cocco says creationists put a sensible gloss on
an outrageous claim
There is nothing stupid about the purveyors of "intelligent design."
These contemporary creationists evolved from William Jennings Bryan, who
ingloriously prosecuted the biology teacher John Scopes in the famous
1925 monkey trial. Bryan opened his case by declaring, "If evolution
wins, Christianity goes." Evolution technically lost in the Scopes case
but triumphed when put through the more rigorous trials of 20th-century
science. Christianity did not vanish. It managed to coexist alongside
scientific inquiry, as it has for centuries.
Having lost in every laboratory and legal forum, the creationists
devised the ingenious scheme of calling themselves proponents of
"intelligent design." They cloak their religious belief that some
superior being or intelligent "designer" is responsible for all life in
the costume of scientific jargon.
Their strategy bears no resemblance to the protocols of scientific
experiment. It embraces the tactics of a contemporary political campaign.
First they fog up the discussion, claiming, for example, that evolution
is just a "theory" and asserting that because it still has gaps (even
our best scientists, you see, haven't yet learned all the science there
is to learn) it might be invalid. Then they assert a grievance that
their own "theory" is unfairly kept out of the classroom. Finally, they
go about enlisting powerful allies.
Now they have snagged the highest prize. The president of the United
States has endorsed their efforts to put creationism into the classroom.
"Both sides ought to be properly taught," President George W. Bush told
a group of reporters last week, reiterating what he said had been his
position as Texas governor. When pressed on whether his answer accepts
the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, Bush
replied: "I think that part of education is to expose people to
different schools of thought."
Bush is master of the disingenuous blur. This one succeeds by putting a
perfectly reasonable gloss over the utterly outrageous: Who could argue
with letting local school boards decide to present "different schools of
thought?"
Social conservatives, for starters. For years they railed against this
very premise when they believed woolly headed liberals were watering
down educational standards. Now that creationists want to present
faith-based assertion as if it were scientifically tested fact, these
same educational conservatives are overcome with silence. Or worse, they
cheer. Would they now have us believe that Danielle Steel is the
literary equivalent of Shakespeare?
The peril in this movement is not merely political hypocrisy. As a
nation we are struggling to maintain our scientific edge in a world that
is now producing as much brainpower and has as much potential to break
through scientific barriers as we do. Yet American students have, at
best, a mediocre understanding of science. About half of 12th-graders,
according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, fail to
demonstrate even "basic proficiency" of scientific concepts. American
eighth-graders perform about as well as those from Australia and some
countries in Western Europe, but they lag behind those from Japan, Korea
and Taiwan as well as Hungary and Estonia.
"The risk, if intelligent design is incorporated into school curricula,
is to undermine scientific credibility and the ability of young people
to distinguish science from non-science," says the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, which has been struggling against the
anti-evolution lobby for years.
It doesn't help that the president, so fond of promoting strict
educational standards, would lower them so that high-school students
might pass biology by asserting their belief in a divine hand. What
teenager would pass that up?
"If you were to have a philosophy course or a social studies course that
says there are different ways of looking at the world, that's
different," Dr. Alan Leshner, chief of the science association, said in
an interview. "What's wrong with the intelligent design movement is that
it is trying to cloak religion in the language of science."
The creationists seek to impose on our children an unconstitutional
curriculum that is academically unsupportable. But that does not make
them dumb just very dangerous.
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http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%
2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1123278613443
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John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
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