Re: Challenges to teaching biology

Klinkenborg describes the problems of YECism and Intelligent Design,
both are failures of education but the purpose of ID is to deepen that
failure by trying to introduce the teaching of it into highschool
curricula even though it is scientifically vacuous.

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/Depth.of.Time.htm

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution

*By VERLYN KLINKENBORG*
Published: August 23, 2005

<quote>Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has
been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a
theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed
political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition
- the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has
no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely
created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are
based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the
physical evidence.

Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a
personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding
science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent
of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created
as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years.
This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.

The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that
failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a
debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective,
there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory
for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have
been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation.

The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design,
is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the
belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive
hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature,
except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of
knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the
Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a
righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we
share with all of life. </quote>

Pim van Meurs wrote:

>
> Bill Hamilton wrote:
>
>> --- Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Man, that's truly sad. Imagine these poor kids indoctrinated to
>>> reject good
>>> science all in name of religious faith and not realizing that they are
>>> rejecting God's Creation.
>>> No wonder US kids are doing so poorly in highschool when it comes to
>>> sciences.
>>>
>>
>>
>> While I agree that YEC is a factor in the lack of interest on the
>> part of US
>> kids in science careers, I would be cautious about ascribing the entire
>> phenomenon to YEC. When I was in high school I noticed that some of the
>>
>>
> I was not even thinking of YEC. YEC, like much of ID thrives in a
> situation where students are poorly educated in the sciences. But I
> see them more as a symptom rather than a cause.
>
>> evangelical leaders had poor grades, yet they were encouraged by
>> their parents
>> and church to take on a demanding schedule of organizing and
>> participating in
>> meetings. When I first became a Christian (at age 29) one of the
>> practices that
>> bothered me about the admittedly rural church in which I became a
>> Christian,
>> was that a young person got a lot more recognition from the church if
>> he was
>> going into missionary work than if he was going off to get a Ph.D. in
>> engineering or the sciences. That perhaps explains to some extent the
>> dearth of
>> Christian kids in science curricula, but what about the kids from
>> nonchristian
>> homes? There is a dearth of _American_ -- not just evangelical --
>> kids in
>> science curricula. I just retired from GM R&D center, and over 23
>> years I
>> noticed an increasing trend for my colleagues to be Indian, Chinese,
>> Thai, even
>> Arab. I feel that working with such an international group was a
>> great benefit
>> to me, and I'm glad so many good scientists/engineers have come here,
>> but it
>> troubles me that more Americans are not pursuing careers in the
>> sciences.
>>
>>
>
>
Received on Sun Apr 2 18:05:06 2006