posted on September 24th, 2008
The Dallas Morning News is reporting that proposed changes to Texas’s curriculum standards would get rid of a current requirement that students be exposed to “the strengths and weaknesses” of the Theory of Evolution. The current standards require teachers to cover the strengths and weaknesses of “major scientific theories” in science classes. Those opposed to the changes are calling the new proposal “censorship.”
And censorship it is. What about the helio-centric model of the solar system? Everyone can see that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; that’s a pretty glaring weakness in the theory that the earth orbits around the sun. Failing to point that out in science class is censorship. And Atomic Theory? If everything in the universe is really just made up of three different types of sub-atomic particles, then there would only be six possible different things in the universe! Obviously a gaping hole in that theory. And gravity is terribly flawed; in order for two objects to act upon each other at a distance (such as the earth and an airplane flying above it), there must be some kind of field or particle or wave or something that actually connects the two. So far, no such “gravity wave” has been discovered. Huge flaw. Gravity is therefore, obviously, caused by God’s love, and saying otherwise is censorship.
All snarkiness aside, I’m actually all in favor of teaching strengths and weaknesses, as long as that’s actually what’s going on. Returning to the gravity example, teachers could discuss Sir Isaac Newton’s Theory of Universal Gravitation, and how it couldn’t explain slight perturbations in the orbit of the planet Mercury around the sun, and how Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has superceded Newton’s earlier work. The gravity waves posited by General Relativity have been measured indirectly, but never been directly detected. And now that the Large Hadron Collider is online, now is a fantastic time to discuss the ways in which we can test Atomic Theory.
Even with regard to evolution and intelligent design, I’d be okay with it, as long as the “weaknesses” of Intelligent Design are (correctly) summed as follows: “There is absolutely no evidence of intelligent design whatsoever. No test has ever been devised or conducted that has ever shown any evidence of an intelligent designer. Intelligent Design is, in short, not a scientific theory that can be tested; it is a principle of philosophy.” Science class should be about the “how”, and Intelligent Design is about “why”.
This rant filed under: Evolution, Political
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