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Debate:Should Creationism/Intelligent design be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools? (view source)
Revision as of 13:41, February 12, 2009
, 13:41, February 12, 2009→Teaching ID/Creationism is unfair: Rules are stacked or ignored.
I'll be interested in PJR's response to this. I hope my analogy was clear, and my post not too long. And finally, if anybody wants to post a criticism of my view, please take the entire post into account, because I don't want one of my claims being picked on when I've already provided counter-criticisms elsewhere in the post.[[User:JHanson|JHanson]] 22:04, 7 February 2009 (EST)
I'll be interested in PJR's response to this. I hope my analogy was clear, and my post not too long. And finally, if anybody wants to post a criticism of my view, please take the entire post into account, because I don't want one of my claims being picked on when I've already provided counter-criticisms elsewhere in the post.[[User:JHanson|JHanson]] 22:04, 7 February 2009 (EST)
:: Your analogy was clear, and I don't mind (moderately-) long posts. However, your analogy was not entirely appropriate and ignores some underlying assumptions.
:: The soccer (World Cup) analogy is actually quite interesting—in the World Cup, the opposing sides are at least allowed to compete. This is not the case with ID nor creation. If the rules of the World Cup said that Australia was not allowed to compete because Australia can't win, it would hardly be a fair rule, would it?
:: "''It's not the case that any theory just has the right to be taught.''": And I guess it's not the case that any team has the right to compete? Oh, wait...
:: "''All theories are subject to the same rules,...''": No, ID and creationism are ruled out ''a priori''. The Biological Society of Washington, for example, published in their journal a pro-ID paper. They received massive criticism for it—''because it was pro-ID''. So they declared that they would not publish pro-ID papers again. Note that they didn't say that any future pro-ID papers would be properly peer-reviewed or etc. They said they ''would not be published''. See [[Suppression of alternatives to evolution#Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington|here]]. What's that about the same rules?
:: "''...(yes, any additions like "only materialist theories are allowed" would be unfair...''": I'm glad you agree. Because that is precisely the problem. Just look at all the anti-creationist arguments that claim that creationism is not science ''because it invokes God''. In other words, ''it's not science unless it's materialistic''.
:: "''Now defenders of YEC/ID may say "Well evolution is being favoured by the peer review process, because it's wrong and YEC/ID is right and that's being censored. Even though the rules may be fair, the people supposed to be enforcing them are not doing so."''": That's not exactly how I'd put it, but that's close enough for now. But keep in mind that the "rules" are not formally laid down like the rules of the World Cup. You can't take a scientific journal to court and say that "the laws of [insert country] say that scientific journals must accept all papers that pass a specified peer-review process". There are no such "rules" in that sense. You can really only appeal to their sense of fair play (which is obviously absent in these cases) or appeal to public sympathy.
:: "''In the same way, if a YEC/ID does think that the rules of scientific review are being improperly enforced, ...''": Qualified by my comments in the previous paragraph, this is the case.
:: "''...then they should investigate the extent of this injustice by scientists, show how this censorship and favouritism is occurring,...''": Dr. Jerry Bergman in particular has done this sort of study.[https://store.creationontheweb.com/au/product_info.php?products_id=740&osCsid=0e2a49ce6bb8f57186f7edbeb9c78636] See also [[Suppression of alternatives to evolution|here]].
:: "''...and try through legal and democratic processes to get those responsible removed and get people who will enforce the rules impartially instated...''": Wouldn't getting school boards to adopt a fairer approach amount to this? Yet the evolutionists fight it at every turn. Even claiming that evolution is not a fact was [[Suppression of alternatives to evolution#Cobb County School District|disallowed]].
:: "''...instead of just asking for the whole process to be bypassed in the case of their theory.''": Tell the evolutionists that. They use the courts to decide what is allowed in science. Isn't ''that'' a case of bypassing the system?
:: "''...if the rules were to changed so that a theory simply needed to be accepted by a sizeable percentage of the population...''": Yet that ''argument ad populum'' is the very sort of argument that evolutionists use. Evolution is believed by the majority of scientists, so therefore that's the only one to be taught. Part of the problem is that we are not talking about hard science (observable, testable, science) here. That is, nobody can run any experiments to see if dinosaurs really did turn into birds tens of millions of years ago. (Even if we ran experiments that should that scales ''could'' turn into feathers, it would not prove that this ''did'' happen.) We are, to a fair extent, talking about ''history''. So evolutionists can't say "we've proved [goo-to-you] evolution is true in the laboratory; see, here's the experiments, and you can run them again yourselves if you don't agree", so they have to resort to "most scientists agree"-type arguments.
:: Another problem, although already mentioned above, is that the "rules" are stacked against creation and ID. Or you could say that creation and ID has to pass rules that evolution doesn't have to pass. For example, in the case linked above, the court ruled that the school board decision was unconstitutional because the proponents of the decision had "religious" motives. That is, they had a view about God that was behind their decision. But this ignores that many evolutionists also have a view about God that drives their views—but these are ''atheistic'' views. So pro-theistic motives are not allowed, but anti-theistic motives are!
:: Note also that the main creationist groups do not support teachers being forced to teach creation and ID, although they do support teachers being ''allowed'' to teach it.
:: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:41, 12 February 2009 (EST)