Kansas Reconsiders Definition of "Science"
According to Yahoo News, Kansas is attempting to redefine science.
"The Kansas school board's hearings on evolution weren't limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself. Advocates of "intelligent design" are pushing the board to reject a definition limiting science to natural explanations for what's observed in the world."
"Last year, the board asked a committee of educators to draft recommendations for updating the standards, then accepted two rival proposals."
"One, backed by a majority of those educators, continues an evolution-friendly tone from the current standards. Those standards would define science as 'a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.' That's close to the current definition."
The other proposal is backed by intelligent design advocates and is similar to language in Ohio's standards. It defines science as 'a systematic method of continuing investigation' using observation, experiment, measurement, theory building, testing of ideas and logical argument to lead to better explanations of natural phenomena."
This, of course, has Evolutionists in quite a tizzy. They love to study natural phenomena, but they refuse to believe (despite the abundance of proof) that something supernatural might cause (or have caused) natural phenomena.
Now, it doesn't seem too scientific, in the study of natural phenomena, to exclude certain possibilities from even being considered. That's actually quite arrogant! How can you completely exclude a possible cause without scientifically disproving it, and continue to call your study "scientific?"
Science is the study of natural phenomena, but in order to study natural phenomena, it is necessary to consider the possibility of the supernatural. We can't rule out possibilities before they've been disproved.
posted by jacob.thrasher @ 5/17/2005 08:47:00 AM
21 comments
21 Comments:COMMENT POLICY
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Yea, I think that this is a huge opportunity for Intelligent Design to become more of the mainstream educational system. I was so excited when I heard about it! I can't believe that the supporters of evolution refused to be in the debate! Sore losers!
What abundance of proof? Give me one example.
Is the the whole meeoric dust theory again?
Well, one proof for the existence of the supernatural is the fact that the universe couldn't begin on its own.
But if God doesn't exist, what's wrong with lying by saying that He does?
Toad, please tell me when the Law of Entropy was repealed... If disorder can now magically yield order, then my job of cleaning my room becomes a lot easier...
"But mom, in a few trillion years, a big bang will happen and my room will clean itself"
Nice conumdrum, Gabriel.
In truth, the implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are more than sufficient to argue succinctly for Intelligent Design, in spite of the recent addendum, which is: (in all but biological systems).
Any truthful look at the diversity of nature, much less the complexity of man, is more than enough to convince one of the truth that much of the Truth of Life exceeds our feeble grasp of understanding. The arrogance of the "enlightened" is laughable.
The higher you rise in understanding, the more you realize that there is to understand, the farther away is your horizon. To exclude the possibility of Creative Design, especially in the light of proven Physical Law (the tendency from order, to dis-order), is to be aroogantly, intentionally, ignorant.
D
To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it. --Richard Dawkins,
...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in. It fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it!' --Douglas Adams
The law of Entropy proves Genesis 1:9 to be impossible.
So to answer your last post, no the bang wont clean your room, God will.
Actually, the only thing that is proven is that left to itself, these things could not occur. The tendency toward order from dis-order requires the over-riding influence of the Creator.
D
You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it.
Well, God doesn't need anything to make Him, because He's self-existent. If there weren't an eternal Being to create the world, there would have to be an infinite number of material things. But because matter is finite, it can't extend on infinitely. So there has to be some infinite Creator.
And it isn't the same as saying that DNA or life was always here. Both of those decay and therefore couldn't exist forever.
Why not teach theistic evolution and make everyone happy?
Why not teach theistic evolution and make everyone happy?
Well, I think if you wanted to please nobody , that would probably be the best way to do it. Creationists (of which I am one) would say that the “evolution” part goes against the Bible, and Evolutionists would say that the “theistic” part goes against science.
oh my gosh I got so excited reading your profile; homeschooled and everything! I don't run into too many young people on the internet who are homeschooled. that's great! Awesome blog by the way. Glad you read mine. :)
Jennifer
P.S. you should link to Maduecegunners.blogspot.com; I would if I could figure the thing out.
You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it.
That's a problem that Aristotle solves a few millenia ago. If everything needed something else to start it going, we have to go back . . . and back . . . and back . . . eventually we must come to someone or something that doesn't need to be started; that is eternal. Aristotle called it the Prime Mover. We call it GOD.
Besides, evolution is TOTALLY impossible.
Ask any scientist (including Richard Dawkins) this question:
Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?
When AiG scientists asked Dr. Dawkins this question (on video), see how he responded.
Allegations that this film is a forgery are disproven here.
Can YOU answer this question, toad?
Here's my question: if creationism is to be taught, why is it Christianity/Judaism/Islam's view on it? I suppose you'd be pretty irked if science text books talked about when Brahma created Earth.
And in response to the response to my earlier statement, why bother trying to satisfy everyone when we can just piss everyone off? Why do we even care about how everything started? All that matters is that it did.
Here's my question: if creationism is to be taught, why is it Christianity/Judaism/Islam's view on it? I suppose you'd be pretty irked if science text books talked about when Brahma created Earth.
Well, is the way Brahma created the earth consistent with what we see in nature?
And in response to the response to my earlier statement, why bother trying to satisfy everyone when we can just piss everyone off?
Nobody will settle for a view unless it agrees with what they believe.
Why do we even care about how everything started? All that matters is that it did.
If God didn't make the world and give it a certain order, why should we tell the truth, make peace with other people, or even decide to stay alive?
How to tell that someone does not have sufficient background in physics, information theory, or chemistry to argue against evolution--they invoke entropy as an argument against evolution.
Here is a physics lesson: entropy (that is the quantity that is proportional to the logarithm of the the number of states available to the system) is not a measure of complexity! Most creationists get this wrong because they have only seen freshman physics books were the entropy of an ideal gas is shown to increase as the system gets more disordered. Alas, these same people are too stupid to realize that *this is one physical system* and not a universal property of entropy. Examine the thermodynamical properties of a gas with an attractive effective potential (a nontrivial task) and one can easily see disorder isn't necessarily increased with increasing entropy.
Even elementary observational skills easily utilized by a child, much less an adult, recognize the clear propensity demonstrated by everything in the natural world toward simplicity, from complexity. Decay is part of the natural system, period. Across all natural systems.
Witness the manicured garden, left untended.
Witness the Earth, mountains eroding to the sea;
Witness the tree, after the spark of life has departed;
I could go on, but you get the point.
Everything in the NATURAL world constantly moves toward a state of equilibrium; this journey is downward, not upward. There is truly no empirical evidence for deviation from this in any system.
" Alas, these same people are too stupid to realize that *this is one physical system* and not a universal property of entropy."
One could easily surmise that anyone making this statement has been educated to the point of ignorance. If one constricts their veiwpoint to the limits of theoretical physics, it can indeed be proven that a bee cannot fly. Open your eyes, and watch.
There are things that are beyond our ken.
D
You apparently don't live in the same world that I do. I observe the complex arising from the simple all the time. Plants grow in my garden from seeds, stars formation occurs, intricate ice sculptures form from my roof in the winter, half the reactions in biochemistry exists, etc. These are all instances of self-organization that follow basic thermodynamical laws where entropy increases at the same time as the spatial complexity.
If it can be proven that bees can't fly then I'd like to see the proof:)
Otherwise you are repeating an urban legend about an engineer that naively applied some fluid dynamics from aerospace engineering to insect motion. Of course, if you want to say this is a proof that bees can't fly you don't understand the nature of science. A lot of what goes on in science is modelling--using mathematical models to try and understand how nature works. A mathematical model is a simplified representation of reality. Sometimes models are usefull and provide an adequete discription of nature and othertimes they do not since they are erronous or simplify the problem too much. The bee example is of the latter and it is sad that what started out as a joke amoungst applied mathematicians has been latched on to by anti-science types who have sometype of beef with science.
The very miracles you note are indeed a beginning toward complexity, but left to themselves, rapidly play out and then the process of decay inexorably begins. The plants wither and die, the ice melts, the reactions equalize and cease to react, all these things occur without continued influx of substance/energy (and sometimes even with continued influx).
The end result is still an ever downward turn in activity, toward a final state of equilibrium.
I guess the case could be made that the ice sculptures may ultimately be left; but even these will be in stasis.
It doesn't matter how deep we get into the layers of riddle surrounding our existence; there will always be another riddle. At some point, one either has faith, or despair.
Hawkings, Higgs, Wheeler, et al are not as close to ultimate truth as is a 6 year old who looks upon the heavens and realizes that God is awesome. The only thing impressive about the psuedo-intellectual community is the vast amount of different ways they can express the fact that, ultimately "we're just not sure, yet".
Guess what: they never will be.
It's a farce. Sacred cow to some, but still a farce.
This is very funny--it's almost like you're arguing that because there will be an eventual heat death of the universe evolution cannot occur. A red herring for sure since evolution doesn't require an individual to increase in complexity forever...all it requires is an individual last long enough to pass on its genes.
But I'm glad you admit that self-organization does exist in nature.
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