W E D N E S D A Y , J U N E 2 2 , 2 0 0 5Evolution Vs.</p><p> Creationism: There's No Debateby Michael in New York on 6/22/2005 11:25:00 AMWhen Kansas held hearings on the "debate" between evolutionand "intelligent design" (ie. the Bible), a curious thinghappened according to the New York Times.</p><p> Most majorscience organizations refused to take part.</p><p> Their reasoning issound, but I don't know if I agree.</p><p> In short, the National Centerfor Science Education, top textbook authors and others saidshowing up would reinforce a lie.1.</p><p> There is NO debate in the scientific community on"intelligent design," which has had decades to inspire someresearch or findings and proven empty.2.</p><p> You can't debate faith -- the people arguing for intelligentdesign are not scientists, are unwilling to accept any otherpoint of view and therefore will never admit they're wrong.3.</p><p> The scientific community has spent the last few decadesappearing with these groups, taking them on scientifically,proving why their crackpot ideas hold no water and nothingchanges -- so why appear?4.</p><p> It's a waste of time in a political arena -- in this case, theyfigured the board had already decided to rule it was aninteresting debate and that kids deserved to hear about it inclass.</p><p> They were right.Now I'm of two minds about this.</p><p> NASA finally realized theyhad to weigh in on the basics of how man landed on the moonbecause crackpots arguing it was all fake had permeatedsociety and they realized that well-intentioned teachers didn'talways have the facts at hand to answer students' questions.Pretending idiots weren't out there (heck, the "hoax" evenmade it onto a primetime special on Fox) didn't make theproblem go away.In the same way, school boards all over the country -- well, atleast in the South -- keep holding hearings and its scary tothink the debate would be ceded to pseudo-scientists who canspout lots of complicated arguments that laymen aren'tequipped to handle.On the other hand, this really isn't a scientific debate, is it, sono one should need scientists to argue with these crackpots.Instead of getting into a discussion on evolution, maybesupporters of teaching science in science class should not playthat game.</p><p> Detail all the subjects that supporters of intelligentdesign would like to see dropped or challenged -- astronomy,biology, archeology, geology, physics, and so on.</p><p> Once peoplerealize it's not just one particular issue but science as a wholethey want to attack, people might wake up.</p><p> Show how manychapters of a typical science book they'd like to rip up.</p><p> Andtrips to the local planetarium are now out of bounds? Hold on,board members might say.</p><p> Maybe emphasizing that they arecompletely unwilling to ever change their views makes it amatter of faith, not science.</p><p> Maybe emphasizing that not asingle public university in the country teaches intelligent designas an alternative to evolution will get the point across -- whyare you trying to teach kids something that is rejected at everynon-Bible college in the country? Point out how not a singleatheist supports intelligent design? (But atheists are godless,so who cares what they think.) 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