"It really does matter if it's right."


Teaching Intelligent Design in the schools
There is a long but great post at The Questionable Authority.

The first flaw, of many, in the article is in this thesis statement. One thing which, I think people frequently fail to fully understand is that the current battle over Intelligent Design has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than getting ID taught in public schools. It certainly has nothing to do with the actual validity of the "theory". It has still less to do with what the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life will be. Intelligent Design could be force fed down the throat of every American schoolchild for the next century, but that will not make it the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. Scientists will continue to study evolution, until such time as evolutionary theory is supplanted by another scientific theory. That will happen only if empirical, scientifically testable hypotheses are presented, tested, and if they pass repeated tests.

While I agree that Intelligent Design is flawed, my take is a little different. I see this as the weakness of public education where the standards are set mainly by politics.

For decades, some groups on the Left have used public education to indoctrinate kids. Now that some conservative fundamentalists have figured out how to control the system, those groups on the left are feeling threatened. And both "sides" are threatened by any suggestion that public schools are perpetuating the problem. They believe that if they and only they could set the standards, all social problems would be solved.

That is the statist solution, and it requires that everyone accept one and only one choice. Power over. For the good of society.

Never mind that the answer may be different next week.

UPDATE - Oops, I forgot. Hat Tip to Rite Wing TechnoPagan.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - October 10, 2005 at 06:51 PM  Tag


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