John, I thought the creationists were wanting to just add a chapter/section, whatever, to the required biology class that included speculation on 'intelligent design' as a possible explanation for the origin of man.
Don't know all the specifics of this one, Kate. It's my youngest brother's big issue of the last several years. He's very active in the Texas Freedom Network which has organized and funded much of the opposition to the social conservatives on this.
I do know bits and pieces. First, no one, at least seriously, to my knowledge, has ever objected to intelligent design outside science curriculums. Contemporary issues, perhaps religion, but not science. That's where the social conservatives want to put it.
Second, the portions of the college level science community recruited to oppose this were truly large and impressive. Best and brightest sorts. And contributed to it.
Third, you will note somewhere in the various arguments about this that the science types were content with discussions of weaknesses as long as they were empirically based, i.e. science based, I believe was the term. (Editing this later, one might substitute the notion of falsifiability here as well.)
Since the essence of good science is to never be settled with findings, to always critically examine them, I assume any good scientist would be comfortable with examining weaknesses so long as the grounds for such examinations were scientific ones.
But, and finally, as I recall, these were read as more than attacks on evolution but on science as a way of knowing. |
