Thoughts on Washington Post’s Jay Mathews’ endorsement of “teaching the ID controversy”
| January 13, 2012 | Posted by News under News, science education |
At Evolution News & Views (January 12, 2012), David Klinghoffer noted yesterday that a “Washington Post Columnist Endorses Teaching the Evolution Controversy.” In “Santorum’s good but hated education idea” (01/12/2012), Jay Mathews wasn’t kidding; he offers,
I think Darwin was right, but boring.
[Mathews has kindly written us to say that he plans a followup column next week. Stay tuned. - UD News]
Well, Jay, many of Darwin’s modern day defenders sure fixed that. Their ideas are too stupid to be wrong but every TV hair model excitedly fronts the stuff: How natural selection explains why men cheat (or don’t), why some people vote conservative or believe in God, and why it’s normal for women to kill their young children. (Like Andrea Yates was a normal woman, see?)
It was hard for me to become interested in classroom explanations of natural selection when I was a student. Introducing a contrary theory like intelligent design and having students discuss its differences from Darwinism would enliven the class. It would also teach the scientific method. Did Darwin follow the rules of objective scientific inquiry? Does intelligent design?
Okay, the critical question now becomes: Can Mathews, or teachers who agree with him, deal with the fact that Darwin sometimes did not use the scientific method (witness his fudging on the Cambrian explosion of all current phyla of life forms*). Or that ID types often do use the scientific method, to cast doubt on Darwinists who don’t use it.
Do Mathews or the teachers really want to deal with this in front of a class?
Advocates of intelligent design at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute have influenced Santorum. They accept many Darwinist concepts, such as the notion that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. They see a weakness in Darwinian theory because of the lack of much evidence of natural precursors to the animal body types that emerged in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago. How did we get from random chemicals to creatures with eyes and spines? They say that gap in knowledge leaves open the possibility of intervention by an outside force.
Many scientists and teachers think the intelligent design folks are only pretending to have an allegiance to science. They seemed sincere to me. Some have doctorates in science. Even if they are fakes, their reliance on the fossil record rather the first book of the Bible qualifies them for a science class debate.
Good points re Discovery. Another way of looking at it, Jay: Take Discovery out of the picture. You still have the Cambrian explosion and a bunch of doctrinaire hacks and lobbyists trying to explain it all away. What was achieved that you care about?
Some of us would recommend letting creative teachers and good students take the lead in these areas. We are unenthusiastic about court judgements, laws, curriculum funding formulas, or rubrics that seek to either compel or constrain thought. The post-Darwinian era is too new for that; it will bust any mold right now.
* Endemic among Darwinists today. Any time you hear someone say “the Cambrian explosion was overblown,” or “We have an explanation that removes the anomaly,”or “science will fill in the gaps,” you are hearing basic fudging. The skinny: The Cambrian explosion just wasn’t a part of Darwin’s program, period. Whatever the Cambrian is, it is something else. Darwin knew it. People shouldn’t be taught otherwise.
See also: Yes, science should rethink the definition of life
and
When science writers can’t cope with honesty among scientists …
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8 Responses to Thoughts on Washington Post’s Jay Mathews’ endorsement of “teaching the ID controversy”
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as to
and from the horses mouth,,,
Whereas where Darwin did actually use science, (i.e. reasoning from presently acting cause to explain events in the remote past), ID uses the same method to establish the superiority of its case over Darwinism;
Furthermore, Darwinism is, in reality, nothing more than a psuedoscience:
Further notes:
The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
This following site is a easy to use, and understand, interactive website that takes the user through what is termed ‘Presuppositional apologetics’. The website clearly shows that our use of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality cannot be accounted for unless we believe in a God who guarantees our perceptions and reasoning are trustworthy in the first place.
related notes:
I’m a contrarian. I’d teach the controversy in a history of science class. I’d like to see high school science taught in a historical context, since many important concepts can be demonstrated with inexpensive equipment.
Most of the arguments against evolution are more than a hundred years old. It would be useful to see how they were confronted when new.
“Boring” is how my 15 year old daughter described learning about evolution in her biology class. “Confusing” was another word she used.
Evolution is a fascinating subject in the hands of a good teacher. Your daughter must either have a bad teacher, or else she’s telling her mother what she wants to hear.
WE YEC say you don’t have a cambrian explosion either.
Anyways.
Aha. This Jay person says Did Darwin follow the rules of objective scientific inquiry?
I say they don’t want to go there.
If something is not true then it couldn’t have evidence to fill a eye glasses case .
Even less then this evidence from the vigour of scientific qualifications for evidence.
Therefore evolution couldn’t have scientific evidence behind it and since it strives to make its case on evidence THEN this evidence is not from scientific investigation.
I find it truly is just lines of reasoning from minor real data.
This is a serious flaw that has been missed by everyone that reaches larges audiences.
if i may so punchy.
Let the “scientific ” establishment demonstrate indeed if the top five best points for evolution are from scientific investigation and print it in these big papers.
I dare them!
Unfortunately in order to be a good teacher of the theory of evolution one needs to have excellent evidence from which to teach and the theory of evolution doesn’t have that.
I’m going to coach my kids on what to ask their teachers when they are being taught the theory of evolution and the teachers are going to look pretty stupid when they can’t answer…
No need to teach ID-
That’s right, I said there is no need to teach intelligent design. All that needs to happen is to stop telling students that our existence is an accident, ie living organisms spontaneously arose from non-living matter, and stop telling them that all genetic changes are errors/ mistakes/ accidents. IOW stop the lying baloney.
Tell them the truth- tell them we don’t know.
When pressed provide valid options and tell them that one of the basic questions science asks is “how did it come to be this way?”
Then you have a discussion using the evidence and data to try to determine which option is the best fit for that. Then you devise ways to test your inference.
You can even discuss what options are valid and why they are valid. Even discuss why some alleged options are not valid, ie not an option.
Get down to cause and effect relationships- (get down on it- get down on it)- given this effect can you determine the cause.
Tell them why not every death is considered a homicide nor every rock considered an artifact.
IOW stop with the indoctrination and teach science, not materialism.