Strollerderby : intelligent design

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Guess who's 200 today? Yes, yes, Abraham Lincoln. But down to the year, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. One put down a revolution. One started one.

I am a big fan of Charles Darwin and always sad to see him maligned by creation "science" types claiming that evolution, being "only a theory" is therefore not worthy of being taught in school science classes. I wonder if those folks are willing to jump out a window, since, after all, gravity is only a theory.

Darwin's latest attackers, in the form of Seattle's Discovery Institute planned to usurp the usual Darwin Day celebrations in schools interested in participating instead in what they call "Academic Freedom Day." They planned to promote "debate of evidence for and against evolution."

When roughly 100% of the professional scientific community is in agreement on something, it seems a bit beyond debate to me. You?

If you'd like to celebrate Darwin with your kids at home, my favorite kid-friendly book on the subject of his life and work is The Tree of Life by Peter Sis. Sis's beautifully, intricately illustrated story of the Life of Charles Darwin is a captivating choice for older children (8 and up--up to you, in fact!)

Happy Darwin Day. May we all evolve a little this year.

image: an illustration from Peter Sis's The Tree of Life

Teaching Evolution as Theory not fact

Brett Singer — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

An article in last week's New York Times discussed a major hot-button issue in schools across the country: evolution vs. creationism, or its offshoot, intelligent design.

It's a long article, and certainly worth reading. I won't try to summarize the whole piece in this post, but the big surprise for me was that it was less about two competing theories/beliefs, or even about science versus religion. It was about a teacher who, in my opinion, has the patience of Job.

That teacher is David Campbell, who teaches Biology in Orange Park, Florida. The story the article tells is not of him fighting with parents, the school board, or local churches. Actually, he's not fighting with anyone. This quote sums up his attitude nicely:

"He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

"'If I do this wrong,' Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, 'I’ll lose him.'"

His main concern is not "proving" anything one way or the other. It's teaching.

"'Faith is not based on science,' Mr. Campbell said. 'And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks. But I do expect you to understand it.'"

That, to me, is the bottom line. Campbell's students, although they probably don't think so, are incredibly lucky to have him.

image/source: NYTimes

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Evolution Bad: Ben Stein’s Intelligent Design

Cole Gamble — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:31:00 GMT

We interrupt your regularly scheduled animosity toward Scientology with this Religious News Break. Did you know there is a conspiracy to squelch the teachings of Intelligent Design from our schools? Once again those fat cats at Big Science are choking us with their “truths” when what our children really clamor for is the rebel yell that is Intelligent Design.

At least, that’s what Ben Stein wants you to think. Stein stars in a new documentary called Expelled which asserts that creationism must be taken seriously by scientists. Among Mr. Stein and the filmmakers’ persuasive points: the theory of evolution paved the way for the holocaust…

Bueller? Bueller?

Expelled just opened last Friday, so if you want to catch it, you might wanna go soon. I predict it will have a short theatrical life and then enjoy a resurrection of cult-like following on DVD.

Before I jump into my rant let’s get to the questions for you. I realize I might make a lot of assumptions about our reading audience on Babble. Perhaps there are more intelligent design supporters out there than I give credit, so let me ask: do you think there is room for intelligent design in school curriculums? Is there room for it anywhere? Do you think it’s harmful to view it as a credible alternative to evolution?

Still here? Okay. Here’s MY big question: Why do science and religion have to go head-to-head ever? Pardon the cliché, but they are apples and oranges. In my mind, the two deal in categories of thought completely exclusive from one another. In other words:

Science looks for KNOWING. How do the chemicals in our brains create the sensation of love? How do they create pain?

Religion looks for MEANING. What does love mean? What does hurting mean?

As I have mentioned before, I believe faith and reason can coexist, we just need to know where they belong. Knowledge belongs in schools, faith belongs in churches. I don’t know why understanding the separation is so hard. I wouldn’t swing a bat in a china shop, nor would I bring an antique vase to a baseball game. Religion is a philosophy. It’s meaningful, but not fact. Biblical fact is not fact. You can’t apply the tenets of any philosophy to answer a scientific matter. That’s why you will never see a mechanic fix a Volkswagen by applying the Socratic Method.

Trying to shoehorn faith into the construct of science is as ill-fitting as, well, trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. Intelligent design is a closed system. Where science is always reaching out for answers, intelligent design draws a box around everything we understand and calls everything outside that box “God.” Case closed. Makes it hard to find new cures for diseases when you’ve already determined that is unknowable. Back in the early days of man, when there was no science only religion, the average human lifespan was under 30. If you are reading this and over the age of thirty, science is what got you here. Intelligent design, not so much.

How many minutes does Intelligent Design have left in the public’s attention span? Intelligent design just doesn’t seem like a concept that has legs. (You might argue it’s always been there, but thrusting it as an “empirically” proven theory to sit along side evolution seems like a rather modern and perhaps desperate positioning.)

Finally, it kind of hurts my heart because I had a soft spot for Ben Stein, silly old conservative he is. Yeah he was a speechwriter for Nixon. Yes, he’s responsible for Jimmy Kimmel, and by extension, responsible for The Man Show. His stint as host of a game show that might have actually been harder than Jeopardy gave me the impression that he is a man who puts intelligence first, not “intelligence.” I met him once and he seemed like a genuinely nice man (not that he shouldn’t be) full of curiosity. We were in a theatre I worked and he grilled me about the history of the theatre and this crazy thing called “improv” that we performed there. He just struck me as someone who valued knowledge and wanted to know more about everything he encountered. Oh well.

Intelligent Design through Adoption

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Sun, 20 May 2007 14:41:00 GMT

Family planning and intelligent design are at the crux of many heated debates these days. Some brilliant person at an ad agency in San Francisco has turned these terms into an inspirational adoption promotion campaign for adoptionsf.org.

This ad reads: "... we thought about the children who were growing up alone. We knew that together we could be an extraordinary family. When you plan to have children, consider adopting an older child."

Kind of puts the whole international celebrity adoption ring into dramatic relief.