From Wired Magazine, an example of how skeptical views on climate change have now become mainstream enough to earn a level of protection when educators want to explore both sides of the issue. It is unfortunate that Wired magazine chose to label the idea as “anti-science”.
They write:
House Bill 302, as it’s called, states that public school teachers who want to teach “scientific weaknesses” about “controversial scientific topics” including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — “other scientific topics” may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson.
Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.
“These bills say, ‘Oh we’re just protecting the rights of teachers,’ which on the face of it isn’t wrong. But they draw big red circles around topics like evolution and climate change as topics to be wary about,” said Joshua Rosenau, a policy and projects director at the National Center for Science Education. “It suggests this kind of science is controversial, and would protect teachers who want to teach anti-evolution and climate-change-denying lessons in classrooms.”
The bill is one of five already introduced to state legislatures this year. While more than 30 such bills have been introduced since 2004, only Louisiana adopted one as law in 2008.
full story here
Just wanted to add to my explanation of how Steig’s Antarctic paper was a product of Intelligent Design.
It was intelligent, in the sense that it resulted from a mind that could analyze and associate various phenomenal events into a structure that was more meaningful than the sum of its parts.
It was designed to the degree that it served a purpose… bolstering the warmist belief in Global Warming.
Note this: its purpose was not to add to the sum total of climate knowledge… it was to support a partisan and self-serving point of view. Is that confirmation bias? Yes.
Is Steig’s paper part of a supernatural revelation? Like the Ten Commandments brought down from the mountain? Well the warmists would like to have that aura of divinity, maybe. But in reality, Intelligent Design is not supernatural, just a display of technology that may or may not baffle us.
Wow – the discussion at Wired is just whack.
Brilliant scheme, though. Equate people who see the obvious fatal flaws in the manufactured “climate change” thing with those who vociferously argue against Evolution. Since the Evolution/Creation debate is such a hot button, you can write off everything the enlightened have to say.
Well, the warmists are still running the show by stifling or framing the debate. But unlike Evolution, which is a good theory with plenty of empirical evidence and a strong line of reasoning, AGW is pseudo-science.
Ironically, the positions are reversed. Science is on the side of Evolution, but AGW is a blind faith position. Some day more Science oriented people will understand the difference.
Some commenters have failed to notice that this is a bill introduced to the New Mexico State Legislature, and not the US Congress. States and their local school boards are in charge of curricula for their schools, not the federal government.
Teachers should be qualified in the subjects they teach and should allow wide ranging discussion in their classrooms. In our time, there are still many scientific controversies and there is no reason why these should not be discussed — the kids hear rumors and weird stories and these need to be discussed and hashed out with a solid scientific approach so the kids learn how to discern between nonsense, pseudoscience, generally accepted theory, interesting but not definitive study results, newly proposed hypotheses, etc. This has always been the case and should be into the future.
Subjects long-since believed to be settled, for instance, the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago blamed on a comet or huge meteor strike, are still subject to controversy, with competing views in peer-reviewed papers newly generated on both sides of the issue. No one would dare ‘decree’ that only one of these views should be taught, and that the contrary view should be forbidden.
High school and college kids need to learn how to find out things: how to find out what’s true, what’s probably true, what’s maybe true, what’s probably not true, and what we’re pretty darned sure isn’t true — for themselves. That’s the end product of a well-rounded education.
And that’s what should be the GOAL of education: people who can find out the things they don’t already know and who can receive new data and adjust their understanding in light of new evidence, the value of which they have evaluated for themselves.
Anthony Hughes,
Just trying to summarize your proactive position towards Darwin.
If you believe that Intelligent Design pertains to the way that living organisms intelligently manipulate their environment, their abilities and their choices about who to help and who to kill and who to mate with, where to live and what to eat, then isn’t your version of “intelligent design” just a subset of Darwinism. There is nothing random about Darwin evolution – the choices that living animals make has a huge impact. You only have to look at the variety of domesticated animals and crops to know that intelligent design has a huge impact in Darwin theory. Just look at the number of males in China compared to females.
If you believe “intelligent design” is from some other off-worldly power or from the pervasive “force” (as per George Lucas) then I am afraid you are bit wacko, IMHO. I am not surprised that any intelligent Darwinist would argue against this unnecessary complication of Darwin’s beautifully simple theory – Occam’s Razor suggests that this is a totally unnecessary complication.
Jeremy says:
Just trying to summarize your proactive position towards Darwin.
If you believe that Intelligent Design pertains to the way that living organisms intelligently manipulate their environment, their abilities and their choices about who to help and who to kill and who to mate with, where to live and what to eat, then isn’t your version of “intelligent design” just a subset of Darwinism. There is nothing random about Darwin evolution – the choices that living animals make has a huge impact.
Jeremy, I’d like to commend your style. You’re making a sincere effort to understand an opinion, instead of constructing a straw man that you can later argue against.
I think you misunderstand Darwinism, however. The 3 principles of Darwinism are:
(1) small incremental change,
(2) occurring at random,
(3) with the environment favoring one variety of organism over another (survival of the fittest)
These principles do not assume proactive survival behavior on the part of the survivors of evolution. They survive merely because a particular mutation is a better fit to the immediate environment.
Thus, bacteria can gradually evolve a resistance to a specific antibiotic, just through the vast number of individuals and the short time between one generation and the next. If one germ out of a million undergoes a beneficial mutation, its descendants will assume a larger and larger share of the total population, just by the law of averages.
Intelligent design implies that an organism can in fact learn to take proactive steps to enhance its survival. Bird’s nests, beaver dams, and beehives are examples of Intelligent Design.
The exquisite intricacy of even the simplest forms of life is staggering. Life at its simplest uses a complex, choreographed dance of dozens of enzymes to perform the work needed to harness and tame chemistry: Biology rules over chemistry.
Life is not chemistry. In fact, the moment biological life takes its boot off the neck of chemistry, chemistry eats the boot – and everything else that enabled life to rule over it.
Biological life is the intelligent application of energy to employ the toolkit of organic chemistry in carrying out an ordered list of steps to accomplish pre-defined objectives. While organic chemistry is the toolkit of biology, biology uses that toolkit to do things independent of, and even contrary to, basic chemistry.
There is life, therefore, ipso facto, there is an Intelligent Designer.
As for the Designer’s name, address, like and dislikes, etc. they are the topics for other threads on other sites.
Anthony Hughes says:
February 7, 2011 at 10:12 am
“It was intelligent, in the sense that it resulted from a mind that could analyze and associate various phenomenal events into a structure that was more meaningful than the sum of its parts.”
So, where was this superior mind at the time in question?
Dishman says:
So, let me see if I’ve got this straight…
Teaching kids to question by sowing doubt is “anti-science”…?
As a parent with children enrolled in public school, I can tell you that teaching kids to question at all is pretty much against anything these schools represent. They have become indoctrination centers to shape young minds into “good little robots” … err, “good citizens” … who believe in and trust government unquestioningly.
You should hear the base ASSUMPTIONS they start with, let alone where they go from there. It’s a common topic of conversation at our house.
Last semester, my step-daughter was taking “Civics & Economics”. In the course of one discussion, she cited certain statistics that clearly demonstrated a position differing from the teacher’s. The teacher’s response? “I don’t believe those statistics”.
Your tax dollars at work…
Anthony Hughes says:
February 7, 2011 at 10:55 am
“Intelligent design implies that an organism can in fact learn to take proactive steps to enhance its survival. Bird’s nests, beaver dams, and beehives are examples of Intelligent Design.”
Isn’t exactly identical to Lysenkoism?
kwik says:
February 7, 2011 at 11:53 am
Anthony Hughes says:
February 7, 2011 at 10:55 am
“Intelligent design implies that an organism can in fact learn to take proactive steps to enhance its survival. Bird’s nests, beaver dams, and beehives are examples of Intelligent Design.”
Isn’t exactly identical to Lysenkoism?
No, not at all.
kwik says:
February 7, 2011 at 11:27 am
Anthony Hughes says:
February 7, 2011 at 10:12 am
“It was intelligent, in the sense that it resulted from a mind that could analyze and associate various phenomenal events into a structure that was more meaningful than the sum of its parts.”
“So, where was this superior mind at the time in question?”
Probably enjoying a Sam Adams somewhere in the environs of Harvard University.
I believe that the theory of climate change and evolution are comparable. Most agree that climate change and evolution, has happened, is happing and will continue to happen but the science is missing many pieces to both puzzles. Both theories rely on forcings that are poorly understood, very complicated along with the known unknowns more importantly unknown unknowns.
I believe that in the next few years we all will very surprised with the evolution of both of these theories.
Golly, I forgot to say it…
Even a drunken intellectual is right two times a day.
Well, let me say that jocularity with a few trolls aside, I have nothing disparaging to say about Dr Steig’s work. I have no doubt as to his research, objectivity, or his integrity as a scientist. If he supported a specific paradigm in the climate debate, that is natural, beneficial and instrumental in the evolution of the understanding of climate science. Agree or disagree with him, he is a valuable player in the field.
These “skeptical” educators will then be allowed to teach creationist nonsense, along with climate nonsense…
This is very rightly called an anti-science bill!
The only thing remarkable is that creationism and “skeptic” climate nonsense are treated together, and in effect, these are two sides of the same far-rightist coin. Creationists are representatives of the Religious Right, “Climate Skeptics” are representatives of the Economic Right.
I’ve read through all the comments on this thread, and have still no clear idea of what Anthony Hughes means by intelligent design. The meme I had picked up from other comments was along the lines that biology is too complex to have arisen randomly, hence the intelligent design. But Anthony talks about ID in the sense of beavers building dams. In what way does that allow complex biological processes to evolve non randomly, or is ID merely a metaphor for something else?
[snip – none of that putting words in my mouth I didn’t say here – Anthony]
From Peru,
“These “skeptical” educators will then be allowed to teach creationist nonsense, along with climate nonsense…”
But climate nonsense is being taught now anyway, so nothing will change in that regard.
Vince Causey says:
February 7, 2011 at 1:00 pm
“I’ve read through all the comments on this thread, and have still no clear idea of what Anthony Hughes means by intelligent design. The meme I had picked up from other comments was along the lines that biology is too complex to have arisen randomly, hence the intelligent design. But Anthony talks about ID in the sense of beavers building dams. In what way does that allow complex biological processes to evolve non randomly, or is ID merely a metaphor for something else?”
ID is an alternative pathway for biological forms to come into existence. It does not close the door on classical Darwinist processes of natural selection, but merely adds to it.
It is true, however, that ID authors such as Michael Behe consider Darwinism to be appropriate only for lower level originations such as the evolution of particular species. In principle, however, this does not close the door on development of more diverse forms of life.
Let’s look at the origins of DNA. Intelligent Design people believe that cells based on DNA are much more complex than, say, the Windows 7 operating system, and a Darwinian origin for such a beast is pretty unlikely.
A more practical consideration is this. If we want to understand the architecture of the cell and its DNA, is the Darwinian paradigm more useful than the engineering paradigm? Should we consider the cell as an artifact of a highly advanced civilization that had practical, albeit unknown, purposes for assembling the cell in its particular configuration? Or should we consider it as a hodgepodge, unstructured, the result of random assembly.
The ID people claim that the former point of view, if we observe it, will teach us much more about basic biology.
When you get right down to it, science is about practical advantage.
Having had “debating” and debunking of creationists/ID-folks as a hobby for a couple of years, it was…interesting to arrive at WUWT about half a year back. There are quite a few similarities between the creationist “view of things” and way of debate that are mirrored here, only with AGW skepticists in the role of creationists. -The level of debate here is (a little bit) higher than on creationist sites, but still cherry-picking and misrepresentation of opponents run rampant.
Just an observation.
Now I’d like to play devils advocate here, but to whoever posted this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tree_of_life_SVG.svg
Now I’m not a creationist or a Intelligent design believer but according to this tree of life, our closest non primate genetic ancestors are mus musculus and rattus norveigus. Now I’m sure you get from the names we are talking a bit of a jump here. Where is the humanus rattus skeleton? or the Bliarus Rattus. Oh OK we found that one and made him Prime Minister but joking aside. The idea is good but there are huge gaps.. so it is still really just a nice idea even a hundred years later. Adaptation minisculus or evolution maximus. The big problem with discussing this is that even making this post is almost guaranteed to annoy people that would rather ‘let it lie’.
Dave Springer and Anthony Hughes. I have greatly enjoyed your comments. I think Juice made the most astute observation, however. Evolution theory strives to explain the past whereas CAGW theory attempts to predict the future. They are both theories, it’s just that evolution is a much older theory and has a great deal of objective evidence to support it.
For what it’s worth, I believe in evolution. This theory best explains things in my mind. It is not, however, bulletproof. One of the most difficult aspects of evolution to reconcile is the amount of time necessary for slow, gradual and incremental changes to result in the life forms we see today. We have no yardstick by which to measure the rate of evolution but we can infer a lot from the geologic and fossil records. These do not always support evolution. I reject Creationism and I’m embarrassed to say that I am woefully ignorant about intelligent design (this is something I’ll be reading about very soon). But even as a believer in a time-tested, well-established theory such as evolution, I remain open minded enough to recognize that it IS only a theory and may not necessarily be the ultimate truth.
Here’s a question. Did domestic cattle, pigs, chickens and dogs evolve into their present form or did mankind make them that way? Do bacteria which develop resistance to certain antimicrobials evolve into new species or are they adapting to a noxious environment? Actually, you can remove the antimicrobial from a population of resistant bacteria and over time they will lose their resistance because this adaptation is no longer beneficial for survival. Did they devolve?
The citizens of each state should craft their own educational policy, as NM is doing here.
The Feds, and most of all, distant world bureaucracies, should have no role to play in domestic educational policy.
A treaty with the UN would override state laws and put Congress, foreign law-citing courts, and the United Nation in control of family decisions regarding education.
The UN Convention on the Rights of a Child is such a treaty. Read about it, and sign a petition to protect parental rights here: The Proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Here’s a good example of evolution outside of natural selection… the existence of intellectuals.
It seems that the environment would punish nerds as unfit. Geeks would be at a disadvantage in dealing with the practicalities of survival in a brutal environment and should be selected out and perish.
But in reality, that is not the case. Why not?
Intelligent Design is a good explanation. Geeks would normally select each other as mates, and this mate selection would counter the effects of hostility from the physical and social environment. In essence, the environment would be prohibited from selecting them out as unfit. This is, of course, survival of the unfit, in contradiction to Darwinian theory.
Here we go…:)
Phil M2, what the graph says is, that we Homo Sapiens share a common ancestor with the mouse and the rat, not that these furry little things are our nearest cousins in any sense. This common ancestor existed _many_ millions of years ago, and there are _many_ transitional fossils documenting the evolution of our respective lineages in the time since we diverged.