5. Evolution vs Creationism: Is Hearing Both Sides Fair? It is already the 5th video, and I cant believe it. Probably the strongest argument for teaching both ideas, evolution and creationism, is a fairness. If there are both sides in the story, one should listen to both sides in normal situations. Does that apply to classrooms or school curriculum? Again, I think, Dr. Miller here offers a clearest answer why this whole fairness argument is strange in many respects. Dr. Scott explains a characteristic unique in American education systems, which are not all negative. If there is one weakness however, it is a possible bad curriculum. Dr. Powell at the end takes a slightly stronger tone than the other two speakers. They all give great insights in this issue when answering to the interviews. https://youtube/watch?v=TNxXlq8_OTA /*****- ***Warning: In my previous post, perhaps I made few people upset, and you are by no means obligated to read and listen what is following next. If you are not interested, read no further. Otherwise, please proceed. While I believe these scientists deserve to be heard, a mere Facebook post should not be read at the expense of some peoples important values. Also this is about questioning whether some idea should be taught in science classes in public school, and not about freedom of ideas on each person*** One of the most compelling arguments that one can make for the teaching of creationism, or intelligent design, or so called alternate theories in the classroom alongside the evolution is the idea of fairness. If you are going to hear one side of the story, it only seems fair to hear the other side of the story. I think most Americans, I mean for most Americans, that argument resonates. It sounds just great. You want to hear both sides of an issue. Now the reason this doesnt apply in science is actually pretty straight forward. Its not a question of hearing both sides of an issue. Its a question of whether or not the scientific process is going to be allowed to work. So ask yourself. How do scientific theories, how do ideas and concepts, get into a curriculum or into a textbook? The answer is, these ideas originate in the minds of scientists, they propose them, they do research, they develop evidence. They engage in peer-review, which means they publish their findings, they argue with people whom they disagree, they produce new evidence to answer those arguments. And gradually, overtime, if the evidence is on their side, they will win a consensus within the scientific community, that the ideas were right or at least they were valuable, that they have something to offer scientific discourse. And when they do that, quite automatically, those ideas will end up in classroom, and in textbook, and curriculum. The proponents of intelligent design, or creationism, who say its only fair to consider their ideas have a very curious idea of what fairness is because they are not interested in developing evidence. They are not interested in engaging in this process of peer-review, of publishing their work, of going to scientific meetings and trying to win a scientific consensus. In effect, what they want to do is to do an end run, around the entire scientific process by appealing to boards of education or legislatures to insert their ideas into the classroom, even though they havent won a scientific consensus. So you have to ask yourself whats fair about that. Every other idea in science has to fight its way through the criticism and analysis of the scientific process, but these ideas claim that they want to be exempt from that process in the name of fairness. In reality, what they are asking people to do is to cheat on the process of science and give them a short cut that would get into classroom and textbook. That would be a very bad science policy and even worse in terms of educational policy. Kenneth Miller PhD., Cell Biologist, Professor of Biology at Brown University, Author of 3 High School and College Biology Textbooks, plus Finding Darwins God Creationists have basically argued with three points in supporting creationism against evolution. One, that evolution is a weak science. Two, that it is incompatible with religion. And three, that Well, its only fair to teach both views, equal time The fairness argument is in many respects their most powerful one because it really appeals to American cultural values of fair play and free speech and community participation and so forth. Plus we have in the United States an extraordinarily de-centralized school system. This is something thats come as a real shock to Europeans and people in Great Britain and Japan and other developed countries, who are shocked to think that 17,000 thousand independent school districts are making decisions about what kids learn. This makes no sense to them whatsoever. But a local controls is extraordinarily important in America politics and in American education. This is how we do it here, and by gum we are not going to change. Nobody is going to tell us any different. And when you think about it, there are a lot of advantages to local control, but curriculum is not one of them. There is no reason to assume that children in Beebe, Arkansas, are going to be learning math or history or science differently from children in Livermore, California. You are in a fourth grade, and you are a fourth grader. Why dont you have the same curriculum. But we have this very patchy kind of curriculum around this country because of this big enthusiasm for local control. Now that kind of local control, having community members as local school boards, voters voting for school boards, all of this action determining what goes on in the schools is a really deep-set part of American culture and something that we are very unlikely to give up on. And it plays very much into the fairness or equal time kind of strategy of the creationist because they believe that local people should make these decisions, not experts. And of course, local people often dont have the technical knowledge to make these decisions. But its very hard to kind of persuade folks that they should maybe listen to people who actually know the discipline whey they are deciding what they should teach their kids in different grades. Eugenie C. Scott PhD, Executive Director of National Center for Science Education, Author of College Textbook: Evolution vs. Creationism: an Introduction The current controversy about intelligent design points up a basic misunderstanding in how science operates. Intelligent design folks say that because evolution, as far as they know and perhaps biologists agree, can not explain a certain fact. Therefore the whole theory is wrong or that there is a controversy in which anti-evolution and evolution are more or less equal standing and should debate each other. Scientists love gaps. Thats our meat and potatoes. Its the gaps that we can not explain, which we, if we can explain, will not only advance science, but get us a raise and promotion. And if its big enough, it makes us go down as one of the small groups of imminent scientists. So its the gaps where the action is. So instead of saying gaps disprove a theory, gaps are the way things are. There were many gaps in the theory of plate tectonics forty years ago when it first came out. Gradually scientists have closed in those gaps. When people talk about intelligent design today, some of our nations leaders even say we should put both sides out there. Other people say we should teach the controversy. And I ask myself, If you wanted to teach intelligent design, what is it that you would teach? What would Intelligent Design 101 consist of, a semester long course. Lets say 14 weeks, 1 hour, 3 times a week. What would it consist of, and then what is the next level? There is nothing there. There is no content to intelligent design other than to point out suspected flaws in the theory of evolution. So intelligent design is not a theory, Its not anything. It is the antithesis of something, so you couldnt teach intelligent design if you wanted to. So to me this whole argument makes no sense. If people want to point out flaws in evolution, gaps, the science teachers should do that, just as they should point out flaws in plate tectonics. Or point out that we dont really exactly know why gravity exists, for example, a big gap for one instance. And then talk about the creationism if they must talk about it in a religion class. James L. Powell PhD, Geologist, Specialist in Geochronology, Former Director and President of the LA County Museum of Natural History, USC Executive Director of National Physical Science Consortium -*****/
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 21:42:50 +0000
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