Bush promotes ID

Hi yaro,I thought Gary Bauer's comment was quite amusing: It's reached a pretty desperate stage when Bush's endorsement makes something more respectable than it previously was!mick

Hi,People here may be interested to read a short article by Tim Wise on the relationship between ID and religiosity, with an emphasis on how the two are incompatible. The article was published this morning on Znet following Bush's comments.http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=76&...MickThis message has been edited by mick, 08-03-2005 12:32 PM

"Go ask your priest"mick

Hi monk,My reply was not meant to be glib. It is the reply I would give to a student who brings up religious questions in a science class. I have given some thought to what I would do in that situation, and my opinion is largely due to Jerry Coyne's comment in Nature (the text of which I post below)

quote:

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In the Editorial "Dealing with design" (Nature 434, 1053; 2005), Nature claims that scientists have not dealt effectively with the threat to evolutionary biology posed by 'intelligent design' (ID) creationism. Rather than ignoring, dismissing or attacking ID, scientists should, the editors suggest, learn how religious people can come to terms with science, and teach these methods of accommodation in the classroom. The goal of science education should thus be "to point to options other than ID for reconciling science and belief". In this way, students' faith will not be challenged by scientific truth, and evolution will triumph.

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This suggestion is misguided: the science classroom is the wrong place to teach students how to reconcile science and religion. For one thing, many scientists deem such a reconciliation impossible because faith and science are two mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world. For such scientists, Nature apparently prescribes hypocrisy. The real business of science teachers is to teach science, not to help students shore up worldviews that crumble when they learn science. And ID creationism is not science, despite the editors' suggestion that ID "tries to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature". Rather, advocates of ID pretend to use scientific methods to support their religious preconceptions. It has no more place in the biology classroom than geocentrism has in the astronomy curriculum.

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Scientists are of course free (some would say duty-bound) to fight ID outside the classroom, or to harmonize religion with science. But students who cannot handle scientific challenges to their faith should seek guidance from a theologian, not a scientist. Scientists should never have to apologize for teaching science.

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This message has been edited by mick, 08-16-2005 07:41 PM