The Montana state legislature has two bills that look at the issue of evolution.
Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, is sponsoring a resolution reaffirming the state’s commitment to separation of church and state and to teaching valid scientific principles, which in his mind rules out creationism.
On the other side, Rep. Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, has introduced a bill that would give schools more leeway to teach “intelligent design” in science classrooms.
In an e-mail response to a request for an interview, Koopman said that few people realize that the scientific evidence disputing evolution is just as strong as the evidence supporting it.
Good grief. It is always disappointing to see people saying that Intelligent Design (ID) is scientific evidence. What ID experiments have been done? What ID articles have been published (besides the one review article that the journal’s editorial staff disowned as not meeting the journals scientific standards)? Other than a bucket full of negative arguments what evidence has ID come up with to suggest that evolution should be displaced with the new “theory”: God Did It? Kindly post a link in the comments.
“The only time religious bias becomes a factor is when people try to ban scientific data that supports intelligent design, because they insist that only an atheistic model of origins should be taught,” he wrote.
Well we can see that State Representative Roger Koopman is either a blithering moron or an outright liar. Teaching evolution says nothing about the existence of God. There is, for example the deist view of the universe.
Critics contend that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism in disguise, something its proponents deny. They say that intelligent design, unlike Biblical-based creationism, doesn’t say who or what the intelligent designer is and therefore isn’t religion.
Uhhhmmm no. It isn’t just that it is a thinly veiled attempt to smuggle in Creationism into public school science curriculums, but that ID isn’t science. ID is nothing more than a grab bag of negative arguments against evolution. Granted it is a well put together grab bag, but a grab bag none-the-less. There is nothing positive from ID. And by positive I mean a prediction. Suppose we formulate a hypothesis about some observed phenomenon. From this hypothesis we’d derive predictions about events that have already happened (and we have yet to examine) or events that will happen. Does ID do this? Not. At. All. In fact, one of ID’s most cherished examples, the bacterial flagellum, has been shown to not be an example of irreducible complexity with research into Type III Secretory System (by the way, IIRC Kenneth Miller both believes in God and evolution). And let us not forget that if we had accepted ID we’d be sitting around thinking that the flagellum could not have evolved as it now looks like. We’d have stopped and wallowed in ignorance…which is precisely what ID fosters, ignorance and mental laziness.
Also, lets consider this: ID is actually very, very young. Typically real science takes years even decades of research with experiments, verification, and so forth establishing that a new idea is indeed worthy of futher consideration. ID proponents don’t want to do that. Instead of heading of to the laboratory to verify their conjectures they run to the courts and political system. It should give one pause to wonder: Why aren’t these bozos in the lab doing work? And if they are in the lab doing work, why are they in such a hurry to get this stuff put into public school curriculums? Could it be their lab work so far tells them that they are full of crap? Just a thought.
