Bush wants schools to teach Inteligent Design
I did not vote for Bush. I told people not to vote for him. They voted anyway... Now he wants public schools to teach Intelligent Design alongside the theory of evolution. White House representatives are now downplaying his comments and trying to make him sound reasonable (I bet Bush got sent to bed without supper for saying silly things without asking for permission from his retainers). Still... This is retarded.Creationism is not science - and neither is Intelligent Design which is a thinly veiled creationism sans Biblical quotes. Yes, this "theory" was really state of the art science in the middle ages when we did not know any better. At the same time also considered earth to be flat and claimed that the whole universe revolves around us. Somehow I don't see people disputing these things...
Biggest problem with ID? It's Infinitely recursive. Who created us? Some supreme being. Who created the supreme being? Someone even more powerful and all knowing. Who created that guy? See the pattern? We can do this ad nauseum, and the complexity of each next "creator entity" increases exponentially. Unless of course you stop at some point and say - this guy here is the uber God who created all existence. Once you have a all knowing, all powerful being that transcends time, space and existence - we are back to creationism. The same creationism which bases it's tenets on literal interpretation a very symbolic, allegorical and stylized Book of Genesis.
Last time I checked we still have separation of church and state. So guess what - it's not going to happen in public schools! Bush is dumb for even considering it! I can forgive a backwards, undereducated bible beater campaigning for something like this. But Dubya is the friken president - he should know better!
posted by Luke @ 8/03/2005 04:01:00 PM permalink
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At Thu Aug 04, 10:57:00 AM,
Luke said…
Yeah, but if it is not infinitely recursive, then it is basically creationism in disguise. The self creation is not something easily graspable by logic - it must be taken on faith.
And the problem with faith based system is that it is to damn close to religious preaching - and as such it has no place in public school system.
Also - I don't agree. I don't think majority people want ID in schools. Most people I know and talk with are against it. But then again I live on the East Coast, and spend most of my time in academic settings talking with people who have degrees in science and technology.
Nevertheless I think if majority of people wanted ID in schools it would already be there. This seems to be a very faulty logic.
I think there is a misunderstanding here. The "majority" you mention are probably Christian groups of self righteous individuals campaigning for teaching creationism in school. And if they can't get creationism, they would at least like to stick ID in there.
I might be biased here, but for me ID movement is underpinned by religious convictions. All they want to do is to establish foothold within education system - and later on they can gradually start pushing for creationism. They want this because they thing this is what their children should learn. But, hey - it's not what all children ought to learn in schools.
On the other side of the equation you have the school officials, teachers, professors, people with phd's in sciences, education, sociology and generally people whose job it is to make public schools work. The opinions of these people actually do matter because they are directly involved - they would be the people teaching and coordinating ID curriculum if it was ever introduced.
And these people can influence public opinion because they are educated, they have experience in these matters, and they use hard facts, and logic to show people why ID should not be in school.
If this argument was an IRC chat it would look kinda like this:
Church: "We want creationism in public schools"
School: "Sorry- separation of church and state"
Church: "Not fair! Ok, we want ID in schools. It's the same thing we just don't say God, and do not quote bible. Deal?"
School: "No deal, its still religion. Look at these statistics here - we have student of all faiths and denominations here. We can't do this."
Church: "No it's not! No fair! The minority is oppressing us! Burn the witches!"
Atheists: "Dude, if you are gonna teach ID, I'm suing someone!"
Church: "Bring it on you heretic!"
School: "Crap! Don't sue. We're not teaching it!"
Church: "Yes they are!"
Jews: "We're gonna sue to!"
Muslims: "Same here!"
Scientologists: "Hey, if they get to teach I we want to be able to recruit in schools!"
Everyone: "STFU Scientology!"
School: "Calm down everyone! We're not teaching it!"
Church: "OMG! Religious repression! I'm being repressed! Help!"
And so it goes...
BTW - I never claimed to be logical, coherent or serious in my posts here :P
At Thu Aug 04, 07:34:00 PM,
Luke said…
Actually, I retract my statement. Little earlier today I was reading /. and someone posted results of couple of polls which apparently showed that over a half of Americans does not believe in evolution.
They also showed that over a half of Americans does not know what a molecule is, has no clue what DNA stands for, and did not realize that the time needed for earth to orbit the sun is a year.
So yeah - you are right. Majority of people are uneducated, gullible dummies it seems. Sigh...
I find it sad that in the "age of information" people can be so dumb :(
And ok - I'll grant you that. If you assume that at some stage of recursion you deal with an infinite, self creating entity then I guess ID is not "infinitely recursive".
But then again how can we know how many levels we are removed from the true creator? What we know as infinite all powerful God might not be the last being in the chain of existence. As humans we cannot even comprehend the nature of infinite god, so how can we be certain that he is not just a flunky of some even more powerful supreme being that exists in dimensions beyond our comprehension?
If we assume existence of one infinite being, we cannot rule out existence of others. After all 2 times infinity, is still equal infinity. There might be a whole hierarchy of gods that created each other in sequence. Who are we to claim otherwise.
ID is not infinitely recursive only withing the Judeo-Christian framework which assumes that there is only one God. Which essentially means ID is creationism.
If you argue that it is not, then it must be infinitely recursive, because we cannot rule out existence of more than one supreme being. Why should there be only one? Or two? Or a hundred? Why not infinity? And who is to say that the haven't successively created each other?
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