In brief, West Virginia legislation would bring “Intelligent Design” to science class. And in Florida, a confusing bill not only bans “divisive concepts,” it would also undercut the teaching of ANY science in colleges. Last time I checked college students are adults, but the MAGA Nanny State needs to protect them from what? Thinking?
MAGA opens two new fronts in their war on science.
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Luckovich nails it. Again.
https://theweek.com/political-satire/1021383/truth-and-knowledge
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RE: “West Virginia legislation would bring ‘Intelligent Design’ to science class.”
Good. Intelligent Design belongs in science class. Biblical Creationism does not, but it is not the same thing and the two should not be confused.
We had a video post here in the Forum recently that discussed the scientific basis for Intelligent Design:
https://tinyurl.com/3d557zvh
In a nutshell, the application of information theory principles to biological systems reveals various shortcomings in the theory of evolution. Intelligent Design theory proposes that nature itself appears to present the characteristic of intelligence.
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Bullshit.
Intelligent Design is Creationism pure and simple. It is NOT science. The essence of a scientific theory is that it can be tested by experiment or observation. There is no possible test to prove or disprove the theory of Intelligent Design. It is there nothing but an attempt to subvert the Constitution by putting religion in secular classrooms. If you want you children’s minds polluted with this crap, send them to Bible School.
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RE: “Intelligent Design is Creationism pure and simple. It is NOT science.”
You don’t know what you are talking about.
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“You don’t know what you are talking about.”
Yes, actually I do. As a Philosophy major at Dartmouth where I graduated Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa I studied the Philosophy of Science as a requirment to fulfill my major. What are your credentials to discuss such matters? Bible studies?
The scientific theory for the origins and the shape of life – the Theory of Evolution is supported by uncountable observations, tests, fossil records, and molecular studies. Every attempt to disprove it – such as the claim that the eye could not have evolved – has turned out to be hokum.
What observation or experiment can you even imagine to test the tenets of the Intelligent Design theory? Don’t even try. No one can do it. It is pure Metaphysics. Believe it if it floats your boat, but you do not get to call it science.
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Methinks Paul is accurate.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/intelligent-design
Maybe not “pure and simple”, but certainly aligned with creationism, which IS Biblical.
Maybe ID should be taught in the same place CRT is: COLLEGE and Graduate Schools.
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I don’t have a problem with intelligent design being presented AS THEORY alongside natural selection. At least in schools it will hopefully be considered in an open forum and challenged.
It will not get that kind of even handed consideration in church.
I don’t know what to think of the bill in FL, there is no accurate description in the article.
If the intent is to not allow model output to be presented as scientific truth, then good. The religion of Climatism is based on accepting the output of models we already know to be wrong as holy writ, so requiring the weaknesses of the modeling system to be explained in the course of instruction makes sense.
Intelligent Design and Climatism should both be approached in the same way, with deep skepticism. If anything, the case for Intelligent Design is stronger.
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RE: “I don’t have a problem with intelligent design being presented AS THEORY alongside natural selection.”
That makes sense to me, although I tend to think of ID as barely more than a plausible hypothesis at present. As a topic to be addressed in the course of scientific training, ID is probably best handled as a case study in epistemology, or how scientists know what they know. For example, it is one thing to know that nature appears to be intelligent in some ways; it is entirely different to know where that intelligence comes from.
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I don’t support Intelligent Design but playing Devil’s Advocate, I would point out that there is no reason the strength of the electromagnetic constant, effectively the strength of the charge on an electron, should be exactly what it is.
Yet if it were even a tiny bit stronger, chemical bonds could not be broken at temperatures compatible with life, and if it were a tiny bit weaker, stable bonds could not form. Life exists only because that constant is exactly as it is within a very tiny tolerance.
Lucky, isn’t it?
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“Lucky, isn’t it?”
There are many other constants of nature in OUR universe that would serve to make the same argument.
One answer is that some Divine Being set the Universe in motion with all of these constants at just the right level.
The other is the Metaverse Anthropic idea which says that ours is one of countless universes randomly bubbling into and out of existence with a variety of initial states only some of which support the evolution of intellent life capable of pondering such questions.
https://www.britannica.com/science/anthropic-principle
Neither answer is testable at this point but String Theorists and other Cosmologists are hard at work to develop theories that could be tested by observation. They may succeed or they may fail. But there is NEVER going to be an empirical test for that Intellent Designer. It will always remain a Metaphysical idea.
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You don’t understand the term “Devil’s Advocate” do you?
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“You don’t understand the term “Devil’s Advocate” do you?”
I think I do. Having been raised in the Catholic religion I probably have understood it longer than you.
In this case, you were playing the Devil’s Advocate and you said so. I understood that. I answered the Devil’s Advocate – not you. You should not have taken it personally. I am sure you were well aware of the Anthropic principle before I brought it up.
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Lucky? More like long odds overcome by billions of galaxies with trillions of stars and uncountable planetary debris combined with billions of earth years measuring time. In amongst all these stars and planets are so much space, that we might never know how much did fail to establish that electromagnetic miracle.
And then we have dark matter. I believe I read that there are theories that indicate dark matter may have more mass than the observable universe.
Point being, that no matter what the truth is, intelligent design is just a way to simplify what is truly difficult to imagine or comprehend. But that does not make it so.
Religions sell on personal gods. Prophets used that to frame morality and codify both behavior and culture. And, considering the vastness of space, also provides the possibility that we are not alone in a vast sea. There is a Mothership of sorts that we can turn to, talk to, pray to to ease our minds and give purpose to our intelligence.
Whether the universe is infinite or not, Big Bang repeating like a perpetual motion machine, is beyond proof for now. Teaching that it is provable by a form of reverse engineering that ID uses would be best left to the religious scholars.
IMO
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Actually, a different electromagnetic constant would require another universe, not just another galaxy.
I don’t believe in Intelligent Design, but there are too many unexplained coincidences for us to dismiss its adherents as ignorant yokels.
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“… dismiss its adherents as ignorant yokels.”
Well, I certainly didn’t do that. But the flip side is that ID adherents and their brethren, creationists, want to do just that through the costume of being godly and we are lowly atheists, agnostics or Satanists.
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…”ignorant yokels.”
How does “anti-science, religious fanatics” sound?
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Just as bigoted.
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Much more nuanced and accurate. – IMO
And just a reminder, you refer to radical Islamic extremists in a similar way.
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“I don’t believe in Intelligent Design, but there are too many unexplained coincidences for us to dismiss its adherents as ignorant yokels”
Most of these “yokels” have no idea about the fundamental constants you are referring to. For them, the discussion of Intelligent Design is about the origin and development of life. I personally have no problem dismissing such people as ignorant since the Theory of Evolution explains the diversity of life totally. They move beyond just ignorant to odious when they try to force their ignorant beliefs onto innocent children in public schools.
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“I don’t have a problem with intelligent design being presented AS THEORY alongside natural selection.”
You should. It is not science.
And if it were presented in a science class and the teacher totally debunked it because it is not a testable “theory,” the local “Christians” would get out their pitchforks.
You do not like some of the models used by some climate scientists. Is that a reason to denigrate the use of models in the college-level teaching of science? No more meterology. No more plate tectonics. No more epidemology. No more hydrology. On and on. Mathematical modelling is an indispensible tool in a lot of disciplines.
Finally, there is the brillian idea that attempts to prepare students for the real world by having general education requirements such as so much English, so much Math, so much History, so much Economics, so much foreign language, and so much science should be changed to not include science. Is someone really educated if they have never been exposed to science?
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Who said anything about reducing science
Models can be useful but not on every topic and not very far into the future. Models do pretty good on weather about 2 weeks out. Teaching the use of models must include an understanding of their inherent limitations.
But at the appropriate level of course they should be taught. What I said was that their OUTPUT cannot be taught as scientific fact.
“In climate research and modeling, we should realize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” IPCC, Third Assesment Report
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Lol, MAGA, MAGA, MAGA is all one has to fixate on? I don’t know what “theoretical or exploratory” concepts Florida has issues with but these issues are being used as replacement credits and hardly encompass “all science” except in the eyes of some hyperventilating left wingers. However, if you approve of theoretical or cexploratory concepts for college credit we can start with The Edgar Cayce holistic A.R.E. aaaaand…intelligent design. Sound fair?
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The dictionary list Intelligent Design and Republicans as antonyms.
Really, look it up😇.
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Question. And I recall this may have an earlier discussion. But isn’t there currently scientific studies that are attempting to prove the presences of G-d? Asking for a friend.
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I think these proofs are not so much trying to prove the existence of God as saying there cannot possibly not be one.
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I was thinking Higgs-Bosson (sp) particle. Sometimes referred to as the G-d particle.
But then again I could be mistaken. Unlike some others here, I can admit it.
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