Creationists switch from pushing ID to... "critical thinking"?

[AdMan]

Could intelligent design finally be dead? The term is conspicuously absent from the latest antievolution education bill, which passed the Tennessee legislature in March and awaits action by the governor.

The bill’s language reveals a new tactic on the part of creationists. They seem to have retired intelligent design and replaced it with a concept as sneaky as stealth aircraft.

“These bills sound very innocent,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. That’s intentional, she said. The legislation has been crafted to be legally bulletproof.

The Tennessee bill hijacks language from scientists and skeptics: Teachers are allowed to promote “critical thinking” in areas where there’s “debate and disputation.” That’s not unreasonable on the surface, since there are plenty of areas of dispute — the value of certain cancer screenings, the safest way to store nuclear waste, or what benefit feathers would have bestowed on dinosaurs.

And critical thinking skills can be taught by examining bad science, such as cold fusion, or pseudoscience, such as homeopathy. But those aren’t the controversies the bill drafters care about. The bill singles out climate change and evolution.

Creationists Switch Tactics In Tennessee

This isn't a totally new tactic, as creationists have been pushing to "teach the controversy" for a while, but promoting critical thinking while singling out climate change and evolution as areas of supposed scientific dispute does seem underhanded.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Or, they may actually get what they do not wish for.

 

[ben m]

So you need to find some atheist Social Studies teachers to serve as test cases.

"Under the terms of SB 893, we can discuss both sides of controversial and disputed issues. A student asked me to talk about the controversy among historians about the authorship and historicity of the New Testament ... "

 

[Muldur]

"Science" HATES it when it gets hoist on it's own petard.

How DARE those kids be taught to think for themselves? Don't they know they are supposed to accept as Secular Gospel the words of the Priests of Godless Knowledge?

 

[Dinwar]

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist. The movement is inherently dishonest, and this has been documented in public records. Given that at least one group is actively trying to create a theocracy in the United States of America (see the Wedge Document for proof) it is dishonest to even give them the benefit of the doubt. Their actions are consistent and purposefully directed towards achieving their objective.

This is merely another in a long line of attempts to re-brand discussions of Creationism as discussions of science. As such, it's no different from any other: it's intentionally designed to sound reasonable, in order to trick people into accepting it.

The dishonesty here is in implying that there's debate about Creationism. There's not, at least not in any applicable field. There hasn't been for 300 years or so. The modern version has precisely zero scientific validity, and as such no debate between Creationism and evolutionary theory occurs in any scientific arena that I'm aware of. The only debate that occurs is political, and that's simply not applicable to a science classroom. Social studies, sure, but not science.

A key concept of critical thinking is establishing a standard by which we can determine what topics are valid topics of consideration and which are not. Science has done this--only those ideas supported by indepenently varifiable data are permissible for discussion, and once an idea has been shown to be wrong it must be fixed or discarded. Creationism has been shown to be wrong, and the reasons why are vital to understanding evolutionary theory (remember, ALL scientists were Creationists prior to Darwin--there was nothing else to be--so discussing the reasons that convinced them is a great way to outline a discussion of the proof of evolution). But today's Creationism doesn't meet the standards required to consider an idea, and therefore should not be considered.

 

[Muldur]

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist. *snip rest for space*

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Dr. William Arion, Biochemistry, Chemistry
Dr. Paul Ackerman, Psychologist
Dr. E. Theo Agard, Medical Physics
Dr. Steve Austin, Geologist

<SNIP>

Dr. Patrick Young, Chemist and Materials Scientist
Prof. Keun Bae Yu, Geography
Dr. Henry Zuill, Biology

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

Also see here for the issue of whether or not creation scientists ever publish in "mainstream" journals, and the issue of bias against them:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1998/04/15/creationists-publish

A key concept of critical thinking is establishing a standard by which we can determine what topics are valid topics of consideration and which are not. Science has done this--only those ideas supported by indepenently varifiable data are permissible for discussion, and once an idea has been shown to be wrong it must be fixed or discarded. Creationism has been shown to be wrong, and the reasons why are vital to understanding evolutionary theory (remember, ALL scientists were Creationists prior to Darwin--there was nothing else to be--so discussing the reasons that convinced them is a great way to outline a discussion of the proof of evolution). But today's Creationism doesn't meet the standards required to consider an idea, and therefore should not be considered.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

Edited by Locknar: 

Edited, breach of rule 4.

 

[Dinwar]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Most of these people don't have training in the appropriate fields, and therefore ARE dishonest in pretending to be experts. I mean seriously, you have PHYSICISTS commenting on BIOLOGY. If you can't see the flaw there, you understand neither field well enough to comment on this.

Also, that list is of HIGHLY questionable validity--numerous scieintists have requested to be removed, due to the fact that the wording of the survey was dishonest, for example.

There's also the small fact that the list of scientists named Steve that support evolution is much longer than this entire fraudulant list.

Then there's the fact that I'm a paleontologist, which means I'm fully capable of examining the evidence on my own and coming up with my own conclusions. No list of experts is going to sway me--only ARGUMENTS will. If you wish to discuss the actual evidence, I suggest you go to the "Evolution: The Facts" thread stickied at the top of this subforum.

Also see here for the issue of whether or not creation scientists ever publish in "mainstream" journals, and the issue of bias against them:

Science has rules. Creationism does not follow them. Then they scream "Foul!" when science rejects their studies. Pure stupidity on their part--it's not like the rules of science aren't well-known.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

Behe is a fool and a fraud, without any respect in serious scientific circles.

Out of curiosity, are you a young-Earth creationists or an old-Earth creationist? Also, please explain in your own words Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium, without looking it up. I ask not to point and laugh at how little you understand about evolution (you may actually undestand it as well as I do), but rather so that I can understand what your level of understanding is and what your views are,s ot hat I don't straw-man your position or talk down to you.

 

[dudalb]

Wow.
And this is happening in Tennesee.
Inherit The Wind 2 I guess......

 

[Resume]

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

He can differ all he wants as he was destroyed on cross examination in the Dover trial.

 

[marplots]

The problem with the critical thinking and debate idea is there is no end to it. At what point in the curriculum do the kids get to move on? Just "teaching the debate" would take years -- after all, the topic has been bandied about for as many years as I've been on this forum and looks to continue for many more.

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that. Here is what creationists have to say, here is what modern biology has to say. The teacher, of course, being a skilled and certified expert, should also have some input -- showing the flaws they perceive in the positions.

Then again, I think creationism will fall flat on it's face when exposed in this manner. Maybe it's a way to protect kids from the crap they hear in church.

 

[Dinwar]

after all, the topic has been bandied about for as many years as I've been on this forum and looks to continue for many more.

The other issue is that children don't have the knowledge to understand the issues. I've been trying to understand evolution for 10 years, and I'm certainly not going to pretend to know all of it. I know the things I've focused on, but I've simply not had time to learn all of it. Besides, a lot of this requires a certain understanding of other facts before you can understand the larger concepts--you need to understand anatomy to understand paleontological phylogenies, for example. You need to understand biochemistry to really understand genetics. And so on.

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that.

Won't work. The issue is that to make an informed choice you need to understand the data--and that's the part Creationists fail at (Behe's a perfect example, in that he simply ignored for a long time the myriad of intermediate eyes that currently exist in the world today in order to argue that the structure is irreducibly complex). And understanding the data takes a long, long time.

 

[ben m]

If they could distill it down to a few talking points, I'd go for that. Here is what creationists have to say, here is what modern biology has to say. The teacher, of course, being a skilled and certified expert, should also have some input -- showing the flaws they perceive in the positions.

Then again, I think creationism will fall flat on it's face when exposed in this manner. Maybe it's a way to protect kids from the crap they hear in church.

Problems come in when you remember that some science teachers are, themselves, creationists. Not most, maybe not even many, but some. These folks want to teach creationism---if you gave them leeway to do so, they'd adopt "Pandas and People" as a biology textbook. If you give them leeway to "teach the controversy", well, they'll dig up some slick images from creationist textbooks, some ugly images (Haeckel? Huxley?) from biology textbooks, and ... well, if the students end up getting the impression that evolution is atheist pseudoscience, that's how controversy works, innit?

That's a tricky problem in this business. Sometimes you have good science teachers under a good school board, sometimes you have the opposite, sometimes you have the diagonal cases. "Teach the controversy" only sounds appealing in the good/good case.

 

[BravesFan]

Let them teach whatever they want, then when their children are laughed out of college biology classes they can get them all jobs pumping gas somewhere. Serves em right.

Seriously, not accepting evolution is true is akin to saying the earth is flat. We have the evidence, vast amounts of evidence. creationists have NOTHING. It's a silly thing that promotes Idiocracy

 

[W.D.Clinger]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

Evidently.

As Dinwar pointed out, most of those people are expressing an opinion on a matter that's outside their areas of expertise. It's outside my area of expertise, also, but I can tell you a few things about the three people who listed mathematics or mathematical sciences as their areas of expertise:

Dr. Bryan Dawson, Mathematics

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann, Professor of Mathematics, US Naval Academy

Dr. Valery Karpounin, Mathematical Sciences, Logics, Formal Logics

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

Dr Bryan Dawson is chair of the department of mathematics and computer science at Union University, which is associated with the Southern Baptists. He has written two monographs, which were published by Royal Fireworks Press, which publishes books for the home-schooling market. Of the six peer-reviewed articles listed on his scholarship page, three were exceedingly unimportant papers that were published in the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences. The other three were even less important. Dr Dawson also lists one conference article, which appeared within the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference of the Assoc. of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences. Google Scholar does not report any citations of papers written by Dr Bryan Dawson.

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann used to teach at the US Naval Academy, but has retired. Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr Herrmann. Judging by his website, he's a critic of the Johnson-Dembski-Behe theory who thinks his own crackpot theories should be preferred to those advocated by the Discovery Institute. According to Google Scholar, Dr Robert A Herrmann's most-cited paper, which is about a topological notion (rc-convergence), has been cited only 33 times. Dr Herrmann says he has published 75 articles in 31 different journals, but his home page is devoted to Christian apologetics with a strongly mathematical bent. He gives himself credit for "the idea that mathematical analysis can be used to investigate the possibility that natural-system behavior is intelligently designed". He refers to Michael Behe's notion of intelligent design as "mostly insignificant but well-publicized", and appears to regard Behe as a crackpot who's trying to steal his ideas.

Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr. Valery Karpounin, and I have been unable to find any reliable information about him. Google Scholar does not report any papers by V Karpounin.

On the basis of that spot-checking, I'm inclined to regard your list as an unusually lame example of proof by false authority.

Scientists such as Dr Behe would beg to differ with that assessment.

According to Michael Behe's own colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University:

The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.

 

[Dinwar]

http://www.geosociety.org/criticalissues/ev_3.htm

Here's a fun website from GSA (Geological Society of America, a professional organization devoted to the study of geology, paleontology, and related fields) discussing this issue.

http://www.geosociety.org/positions/position1.htm

Here is that organization's official position.

http://www.vertpaleo.org/OnEvolution.htm

Here is the statement on evolution from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a United States organization dedicated to the study and preservation of vertebrate fossils.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

Here's a brief web course by the University of California at Berkley's Museum of Paleontology regarding evolution.

I can go on, but I think this serves to illustrate the intellectual vacuity of Creationism. It illustrates (doesn't exahustively present, but illustrates) the stance of organizations of professional scientists on this topic--you know, the experts.

 

[BravesFan]

Evidently.

As Dinwar pointed out, most of those people are expressing an opinion on a matter that's outside their areas of expertise. It's outside my area of expertise, also, but I can tell you a few things about the three people who listed mathematics or mathematical sciences as their areas of expertise:




Dr Bryan Dawson is chair of the department of mathematics and computer science at Union University, which is associated with the Southern Baptists. He has written two monographs, which were published by Royal Fireworks Press, which publishes books for the home-schooling market. Of the six peer-reviewed articles listed on his scholarship page, three were exceedingly unimportant papers that were published in the Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences. The other three were even less important. Dr Dawson also lists one conference article, which appeared within the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference of the Assoc. of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences. Google Scholar does not report any citations of papers written by Dr Bryan Dawson.

Dr. Robert A. Herrmann used to teach at the US Naval Academy, but has retired. Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr Herrmann. Judging by his website, he's a critic of the Johnson-Dembski-Behe theory who thinks his own crackpot theories should be preferred to those advocated by the Discovery Institute. According to Google Scholar, Dr Robert A Herrmann's most-cited paper, which is about a topological notion (rc-convergence), has been cited only 33 times. Dr Herrmann says he has published 75 articles in 31 different journals, but his home page is devoted to Christian apologetics with a strongly mathematical bent. He gives himself credit for "the idea that mathematical analysis can be used to investigate the possibility that natural-system behavior is intelligently designed". He refers to Michael Behe's notion of intelligent design as "mostly insignificant but well-publicized", and appears to regard Behe as a crackpot who's trying to steal his ideas.

Your link does not provide any biographical information for Dr. Valery Karpounin, and I have been unable to find any reliable information about him. Google Scholar does not report any papers by V Karpounin.

On the basis of that spot-checking, I'm inclined to regard your list as an unusually lame example of proof by false authority.




According to Michael Behe's own colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University:

I was just about to ask Mulder how many of those listed taught at Christian affiliated colleges but you beat me to it!

 

[Dinwar]

So all of the following are too stupid to accept your "truth" or are otherwise dishonest?

I want to re-visit this statement. Here's my original quote:

As I've said before, one cannot honestly examine the evidence and remain a Creationist.

Muldur ignored one viable alternative: That many of these people have never examined the evidence. This is likely the case in many instances. Most people don't even know WHERE the evidence, much less WHAT it is. I can only really speak to my field, but I can tell you from personal experience helping with fossil curation that what you see in a museum isn't even a tenth of what any museum has in storage. It can't be--there's simply not enough room in your average museum to display all of the fossils (fossil cabinets are specifically designed to maximize the space, while offering maximum protection to the fossils). The fossils are also the most photogenic ones the museum has, which aren't necessarily the best evidence for evolution. One of the most valuable fossils I've found consisted of a sliver of powdery calcite that looked like a fingernail clipping and which was about a third as big. It included a diagnostic trait for the genus I was working with, which confirmed my taxonomic placement--the better-preserved, more photogenic fossil didn't have that.

Unless you've had access to the back rooms in a paleo museum you cannot say that you've examined all the paleontological evidence for evolution, much less the evidence in general.

Geology is another area I can speak to with some degree of expertise. And I can tell you that most people who aren't geode-loving feldspar jockies (thanks, Sheldon Cooper! ) don't go to where the really good outcrops are. Outcrops tend to be in places people aren't, like Death Valley or fun places of that kind. Most people wouldn't know an alluvial fan sequence from a lacustrial sequence, because they've never seen either. And you simply can't see all of them--Dibblee wondered around the Mojave for his entire professional career and left data gaps (oddly enough, they're always where I need to work).

And even if you are exposed to the data, you don't necessarily examine it. Engineers aren't geologists--my life story is a testiment to that! We think in fundamentally different ways, and see fundamentally differnet things. I recently had an engineer ask if something was coarse silty sand. It was obvious to me that it was badly-weathered granite. Neither is wrong--and in fact the weathered granite is the source for the sand in the region. They're simply two entirely dfferent ways to interpret the same drill core. Engineers aren't trained to interpret the history of a site from the rocks they encounter--they're trained to figure out how to build something at the site, which is a different quesiton entirely. Not wrong, certainly--but not useful for interpreting evolutionary data.

Before I'm accused of the No True Scotsman fallacy, let me emphasize that I'm not saying that no one on this list has examined the data--there is NO excuse for a paleontologist to be on this list, unless either they are lying or the survey was intentionally misleading. What I am saying is that there are reasons for a substantial number of these names to be completley dismissed. They have not had access to the data, or their training doesn't include an understanding of stratigraphy, anatomy, taphonomy, or other fields necessary to interpret the data. As such they have every bit as much business commenting on evolution as I do on electrical engineering or handing out medical advice--that is to say, none at all.

(As far as the paleontologists go, 1) they are in the EXTREME minority, and 2) they pretty obviously are not unbiased from my quick wiki-walk. They also don't appear to have produced much in the way of peer-reviewed papers, which is quite telling.)

 

[marplots]

I was just about to ask Mulder how many of those listed taught at Christian affiliated colleges but you beat me to it!

The implication here is that they discount evolution because they teach at a Christian college, but it may simply be the case that they teach at a Christian college because that is where they feel most comfortable, including their views on creation/evolution.

Furthermore, the challenge to the creationist was something along the lines of "no scientist believes in creation," not that "we should only respect expert opinions on the matter."

Although I think TOE is correct, I have to cry foul at the goal-post moving. Plus, I think we've fallen into a trap here. It is not required that every last person with a degree (or even those with a relevant degree) has to agree. The matter is settled in a more general sense of science marching on to other things based on what is accepted in this area as factually correct. The matter of disagreement is a red herring. Scientists are people. They can be wrong, stupid, ornery or just stupendously obstinate. Science is a method that can also be wrong, but less wrong on the whole than some cherry-picked subcategory.

In a sense, science (the enterprise) exists to prevent people from being, well, too peopley.

 

[Dinwar]

Furthermore, the challenge to the creationist was something along the lines of "no scientist believes in creation," not that "we should only respect expert opinions on the matter."

Check out the wording for AiG's survey. It was intentionally misleading.

Plus, I think we've fallen into a trap here. It is not required that every last person with a degree (or even those with a relevant degree) has to agree.

This is broadly true. However, the issue here is that Creationists are trying to use these few disenters (and this is a VERY short list, by the way--more scientists work in my office than are on that list!), many of who are on there dispite requesting to be taken off, to argue that there's a controversy that requires being taught in schools. This is a transparently dishonest attempt to shoe-horn Creationism into a science class, but the issue must be addressed.

In other words, we're not saying that everyone has to agree--we're saying that these handful of detractors don't represent a genuine scientific controversy. There's a significant difference between those two statements, though Creationists try to equivocate between the two.

 

[marplots]

Dinwar, thanks. I think I see the scam.

There is a kind of guerrilla warfare going on.

I couldn't think of the term "asymmetric warfare," so I googled guerrilla warfare and found an interesting bit on wiki about how to defeat such tactics.

"The guerrilla can be difficult to beat, but certain principles of counter-insurgency warfare are well known since the 1950s and 1960s and have been successfully applied."

And they follow with a list of anti-measures I think are worth adopting in this fight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare#Classic_guidelines

An amazing recipe to defeat creationist affronts.