Thirty-eight Nobel prize winning scientists and other notables have contacted the Kansas State Board of Education to request that they reject science standards that include intelligent design. The reason is simple: a model for the development of life that has, as its foundation, the involvement of a supernatural designer or planner (i.e. some sort of creator), cannot be tested by known scientific means. By definition, this type of model is not a scientific model.
Science deals with the physical universe, and its realm includes the study of natural processes. Proposed supernatural processes or entities is outside this realm, making it difficult to justify its inclusion in any science curriculum.
3 comments:
But the problem here is that a majority of the Board a priori rejects the scientific model in its entirety rather than simply misunderstanding the model's parameters.
Indeed, I suspect that a few of them understood the logical implications of the scientific model so well that they were motivated to go into politics in order to try and discredit science among the ignorant with an intentionally water-muddying, Babbitt-graduating, school curriculum.
Mark -
Yes, in fact the Board Superintendent has already dismissed the effort of the top scientists in the world. The curriculum will almost certainly pass, and scientists need to make the case against ID stronger to the general public...an almost grassroots attempt to educate the public about what science is and is not. This will not be an easy thing to do...
Well, when you contradict people who have what is esentially a magical view of reaity they will hold fast to that magical view rather than entertain premises that they find to be profoundly threatening. And if you persist they will go on the attack.
This isn't to disparage religious belief - plenty of people including nobel laureates believe in God - they just don't do so in concrete terms.
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