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Subjectmatter
Skeptic Friend
173 Posts |
 Posted - 01/16/2006 : 10:21:45 [Permalink]
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Now, Bunga, I happen to know what classes you took in high school, and ToK as offered by the IB is simply not philosophy. Granted, it has a philosophical component, but it is intended to foster understanding of the relationships between different 'areas of knowledge' not study the actual nature of reality in the sense that philosophy does.
And ID isn't philosophy. It addresses scientific issues not philosophic ones. And science has shown that it is incorrect. In order to pass it off as philosophy they would either have to remove the concept of intelligence, or the cause/effect relationship the 'intelligence' has with the natural world. Either way you'd end up with something very strange...
And you cannot pass anything of in a philosophy class, because everything is not philosophy. Any attempt of claiming something without proving or at least supporting through the use of pure reason is doing something very differenct from philosophy. |
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Bunga
Skeptic Friend
Sweden
74 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2006 : 10:33:15 [Permalink]
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The ToK course might not be a comprehensive philosophy course, but I contest that it most certainly is philosophy. No course can be truly comprehensive in anything.
Courses with titles like "A study of the atomic radius of lithium", excepted.
Many of the issues adressed in ToK were scientific, yes. I would in no uncertain terms claim that ToK as taught to me was philosophy with "scientific" components, and not science with philosophical components.
Subjectmatter, you say that "nothing can be passed off in a philosophy class". Likewise, nothing can be passed over or offed in a science class, as stating anything without evidence is one hundred percent contrary to the spirit and letter of science and the scientific method. And very little of what was taught in ToK was supported by observational evidence, the vast majority of it only supported by reasoning. |
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Subjectmatter
Skeptic Friend
173 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2006 : 10:58:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Subjectmatter, you say that "nothing can be passed off in a philosophy class". Likewise, nothing can be passed over or offed in a science class, as stating anything without evidence is one hundred percent contrary to the spirit and letter of science and the scientific method. And very little of what was taught in ToK was supported by observational evidence, the vast majority of it only supported by reasoning.
Would you mind clarifying that? I don't quite get what you are saying. And I'm sure I never said anything of the kind which you quoted me to have said... |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 01/18/2006 : 03:21:37 [Permalink]
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The course is canceled:
Calif. School Scraps 'Intelligent Design' quote:
A rural school district agreed to stop teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution as part of a court settlement filed Tuesday, a legal group said.
Frazier Mountain High School will stop teaching a philosophy class discussing the theory of "intelligent design" this week and won't teach it in the future, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
quote:
Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who was teaching "Philosophy of Design," defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise.
"I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach," she wrote
Comment from AU : El Tejon School Officials Agree Not To Offer Controversial Class Again quote:
“This course was far from intelligently designed,” said Americans United Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan. “It was an infomercial for creationism and its offshoot, intelligent design. The class would never have survived a court challenge, and the board of trustees made the right call by pulling the plug on it.”
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"Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly"
-- Terry Jones |
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GeeMack
SFN Regular
USA
1093 Posts |
Posted - 01/19/2006 : 14:56:10 [Permalink]
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Post Dover, some people get it, others don't. The Vatican has once again said that ID is not science, and therefore should not be brought into the discussion of evolution when taught in schools. And the Discovery Institute whines.quote:
"Intelligent Design" Not Science: Vatican Paper...
The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.
[...]
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute -- the main think tank of the ID movement -- said on its website that reading the Osservatore article that way amounted to an attempt "to put words in the Vatican's mouth."
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2006 : 04:06:49 [Permalink]
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Putrid Pat hopes for more reasonable judges in the future.
http://sm1.cbn.org/archive/club/011806.wmv
About 3:35 into the broadcast. |
"Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly"
-- Terry Jones |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2006 : 05:20:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Starman
The course is canceled:
Calif. School Scraps 'Intelligent Design' quote:
A rural school district agreed to stop teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution as part of a court settlement filed Tuesday, a legal group said.
Frazier Mountain High School will stop teaching a philosophy class discussing the theory of "intelligent design" this week and won't teach it in the future, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
quote:
Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who was teaching "Philosophy of Design," defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise.
"I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach," she wrote
Comment from AU : El Tejon School Officials Agree Not To Offer Controversial Class Again quote:
“This course was far from intelligently designed,” said Americans United Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan. “It was an infomercial for creationism and its offshoot, intelligent design. The class would never have survived a court challenge, and the board of trustees made the right call by pulling the plug on it.”
Being the dirty, suspicious, old skeptic that I am, I might speculate as to what part the Discovery Institute played in the desision to dump the ID class.
Consider: they want this crap taught as science, not philosopy, and to have in taught as such anywhere would set an unwanted president.
Not to mention the fact that it's shitty philosopy as well.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2006 : 07:24:12 [Permalink]
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Uh-huh....
Very interesting. Thanks Star.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Subjectmatter
Skeptic Friend
173 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2006 : 08:32:56 [Permalink]
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Boy do they reapeat themselves... they must assume that the people on the El Tejon School Board are not the brightest stars in the constellation (which is not an unreasonable assumption to make).
quote:
Statement by the Discovery Institute to the El Tejon School Board
...formulated as if it would promote young earth or Biblical creationism as scientific fact... promoting young earth or Biblical creationism as scientific fact... this course originally mixed up intelligent design with the young earth creationist viewpoint... at the Discovery Institute believe that intelligent design is constitutional to teach as a science... past history as originally having been formulated to promote Biblical creationism as scientific fact ... Discovery believes that the Dover case was wrongly decided, and that it is constitutional to teach about intelligent design in a science or a philosophy course ... course threatens to become a dangerous legal precedent ... The young earth creationist history of this course ... extremely shaky legal ground ... extremely problematic and is on shaky ground ... students were told it would promote young earth creationism as fact ... Because of the young earth creationist history of this course ...
They are basically just repeating three points over and over again |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2006 : 15:08:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Subjectmatter
...
They are basically just repeating three points over and over again
What'd ya expect, they're Republicans. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2006 : 08:18:57 [Permalink]
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Our friend The Bad Astronomer plays a little whack-a-mole with Sen. Chris Buttars (R-Utah). quote:
Sen. Buttars drags Utah back to the dark ages
Ever play whack-a-mole, where the little mole pops up out of a hole, you whack it down, and it pops up in another hole?
Welcome to the reality-based community dealing with the fantasy of creationism.
Just four months ago, I wrote in this blog about the Utah school system's Board of Education unanimously supporting a position statement reaffirming their commitment to teaching evolution in high school science classes.
But poof, that's now gone. Utah Senator Chris Buttars (R-West Jordan) proposed a bill regulating the discussion of the origin of life in the classroom — students must consider opposing "scientific" viewpoints when learning about evolution (never mind that there are no scientific oppositions to it). The bill passed one hurdle, and is expected to pass the second as well. When it does, students in Utah get to join the increasingly less-exclusive list of other students around the United States getting screwed out of their education.
Alas, Phil didn't whack this troglodite nearly as hard as I'd have liked. Buttars wouldn't know science even if it jumped up and clobbered his happy-sac with a fish billy. Anyone who substitutes unsupported and even nebulous belief for documented fact is just plain too stupid to be worth listening to.
But it's a good start, yas, a good enough start.... You go, Phil!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2006 : 14:07:50 [Permalink]
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I thought that Wack a mole was such a good analogy. 
Filthy, do you have a different name over there? |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2006 : 17:15:47 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
I thought that Wack a mole was such a good analogy.
Filthy, do you have a different name over there?
Sadly, I am not registered there. The forum font's too small for me -- very tiring to read. That's the reason I left Internet Infidles as well. They changed the font. I visit the BA's home page now and again to see what's going on, though.
If I ever do join, and I'd like to, it will probably be under the nom d'guerre of: Duvenoy.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2006 : 18:46:11 [Permalink]
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Starman, thanks much for the link which gave the Discovery Institute shyster's statements to the El Tejon School Board. I digress to note that he slipped at least two whoppers into his third sentence: quote:
The Discovery Institute is a think tank based out of Seattle, Washington that represents a large number of scientists who do scientific research into intelligent design.
They don't represent any "large number of scientists," and those alleged scientists they do have certainly do no "scientific research" in ID. (And how could they, since ID is not a scientific matter?) Even the "think tank" description of the discovery Institute is suspect, in my opinion. I guess the lawyer wasn't under oath.
But, as others have noted in some of the details, the gist of what the DI lawyer said was that the El Tejon School Board were morons (I agree) for not having worked out a slicker way to cram God down the throats of public school children, and that DI therefore wasn't going to expend legal defense money on such an indefensible program.
Apparently, the local yahoos at El Tejon were so ignorant of the outside world, they had no idea what deep shit they were stepping into.
I see two important issues, neither of which is exclusive to the other, involved in the "noble experiment" by El Tejon:
First, even if there existed no Constitution or guarantee of separation of church and state, religious dogma, as a practical matter, should not be allowed to be substituted for scientific thinking. People simply can't maintain a modern, technically-based society if they have the edicts of priests, rabbis, mullahs, or preachers substituted in place of observations of the real world. Our knowledge cannot be shackled to the mythology of a neolithic or bronze age people.
Second, since there is a Constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state, no religious dogma can be taught in any school which is supported by taxes. Whether taught as philosophy, as science, or as basketball, makes no difference.
Even if presented in a comparative religion, or critical thinking class, Biblical Literalism cum Creationism cum Intelligent Design must be given absolutely no more prominence in a tax-supported school curriculum than Buddhism, Santeria, Scientology, Islam, Judaism, theism, Catholicism, atheism, Wicca, or any number of other religions or alternatives to religion.
Creationists are recently 0 for 2. The Discovery Institute people seem pretty slick, but they got their sneakier version of Creationism resoundingly beaten at Dover. I wonder what their next tack will be.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 01/23/2006 18:52:30 |
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