A quote from this website, which favors so-called “intelligent design,” sums up my feelings nicely:
You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap.
I don’t think that website is having its intended effect. Would you respect a geology teacher who insisted that the opinion that the earth is flat should be taught out of fairness to all sides? No. Would you respect an astronomy teacher who said the opinion that the sun revolves around the earth should be taught out of fairness to all sides? No.
The same is true for evolution. I’ll write a more thoughtful post at some point.
Now Available: E-Book download: “Letters from Israel: An American journalist’s adventures in the Holy Land.”
Related posts:
“You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap.”
Not a bad quote. It succinctly describes why so called “intelligent design” is not taught in reputable scientific curricula. David(Quote)
Intelligent design and evolution started at the time of the Big Bang The entire universe of atoms were born. Your atomic age is in the billions of years as does all life and all things. Mankind, and science, should find this humbling in the consciousness of their soul.
Strident ideological camps do a disservice to humanity. Schools should require a Search for Wisdom
covering a broad range social problems which will enchance and ennoble our young. charles fisenne(Quote)
“Would you respect a geology teacher who insisted that the opinion that the earth is flat should be taught out of fairness to all sides? No.”
You’re making arguments of association because Darwinism has not been verified empirically. Therefore a critic can say: “Neither of the two fundamental axioms of Darwin’s macroevolutionary theory—the concept of the continuity of nature… and the belief that all the adaptive design of life has resulted from a blind random process—have been validated by one single empirical discovery or scientific advance since 1859.” –Michael Denton
Arguments of association are typical to pseudo-science because its practitioners have a need to compare themselves to harder forms of scientia/knowledge yet arguments of association are seldom found among hard forms of science that are actually rigorous. Darwinian reasoning is based on hypothetical goo, so you’re left with arguments of association in which you try to equate the imaginary narratives typical to biologists with the fact that the earth is round. Biologists have often sought to associate Darwinian reasoning with Newtonian reasoning yet physicists do not compare the theory of gravity to the theory of “evolution” in the same way because Newtonian physics is not rooted in pseudo-science and is empirically verifiable. if Darwinism is “just like” physics or some other form of science that actually comports with the empirical evidence instead of either mutating to fit itself to it or forming the evidence to fit to itself, then what is the well established metric for natural selection? What is the equation for Darwinism’s most basic and foundational tenet and how does it predict the evolution of organisms? What is the mathematical language that represents natural selection and makes predictions that can be falsified or verified, about as sure as gravity? Given the incessant attempt at an association, aren’t Darwinian principles as sure as gravity and as verifiable as tracing the trajectory of an object before it is set in motion? Do Darwinists think that physicists sit around after an object comes to rest and only then write an equation or perhaps a little story about how Nature selected it to be there by supposed “natural selections”? Is Darwinism on the same epistemic level as theories that make predictions and have been repeatedly tested and encoded in the precise language of mathematics, or not?
“Would you respect an astronomy teacher who said the opinion that the sun revolves around the earth should be taught out of fairness to all sides? No.”
Why is it that you seem to have to shift to forms of knowledge that have virtually nothing to do with Darwinian theory and the “origin of species” to argue how strong the empirical evidence supposedly is? It seems that you have to make that shift because Darwinian theory is clearly empirically falsified in the case of mankind while numerous other organisms might also be advanced against it.
For example, a case that Denton cites: “Sirex is also peculiarly accommodating towards its predator, the parasitic wasp Ibalia. Sirex bores a hole in the trunk of a conifer, in which it deposits its egg. The egg yields a grub which feeds on the wood. As the grub feeds on the wood it gradually bores a tunnel. After some years the grub turns into a pupa which finally yields the adult wasp, which, using its powerful jaws, bites its way out of the tree. The Ibalia using the hole bored by the Sirex lays its egg in the Sirex grub. The Ibalia grub gradually consumes the tissues of the Sirex grub but does not eat the vital organs until last, thus ensuring a fresh supply of meat until its development, which takes three years, is complete. The presence of the Ibalia changes the behaviour of the Sirex. Normally the Sirex larva bores deeply into the wood but when infected by the Ibalia it bores towards the surface. This is a vital behavioural change for Ibalia because it has comparatively weak jaws and would be unable to bore as far through the wood as Sirex to escape from the trunk. Yet another example of interspecific altruism? What conceivable value [for natural selection to operate on] can the Sirex grub gain by changing the direction of its boring? By what curious sequence of small evolutionary steps did the Ibalias’ predatory habit induce this vital behavioural change?“
(Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
by Michael Denton :223) mynym(Quote)