http://onlinejournal.com/TheocracyAlert/html/081205stasi.htmlThe origin of specious
National mutation through unnatural selection
By Dom Stasi
Online Journal Contributing Writer
“The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start examining evolution, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science—or of any honest intellectual inquiry.”—Stephen Jay Gould
August 12, 2005—George W. Bush wants to see “different ideas” introduced into the science curriculum of our public schools.
That’s fundamentalist code for, “I want to indoctrinate your children to Creationism.”
In case you’ve just arrived here from the outer planets and haven’t heard the “news,” the latest inanity our prez has used to throw the country’s “reporters” off the Karl Rove stench, while driving another wedge through what remains of her people’s unity is this comment, he made last week: “I think part of education,” expounded Bush the philosopher, “is to expose people to different schools of thought.” He went on to say he would endorse placing intelligent design on an equal curricular footing with evolution.
My god! Are we so insane now that we’re about to allow George W. Bush to influence our children’s thinking and thus the next generation of American scientists—or would alchemists be a more appropriate title? How about sorcerers?
I shudder at the thought, because we do not teach fantasy in science class. If the only criterion we use for selecting our impressionable young students’ material is that it represent a different “school of thought,” or a “different idea,” perhaps we should begin teaching history students that the holocaust never happened. That’s a different school of thought, and a widely held view by those who have a problem with reality. How about the one that says we never landed on the moon? Then there are those who say the 3.5 billion year old Earth is really 6,000 years old. Bush is one of the millions who buy that different idea. What interesting geography lessons (if rather hapless geographers) those “different schools of thought” would produce.
No. When facts contradict or fail to support hypotheses, there is no place for such speculative mental meandering in the disciplines. Different schools of thought about solid deterministic tenets, whether viable or specious, are examined in philosophy class or the advanced sciences, and generally to mature, trained minds. When ideas grow up and get factual, then they can find their way into the proximate (elementary and secondary) disciplines. Until then, and if we’re serious about the development of rational young minds, fantasy-subjects will just have to languish in the electives.
That Bush casually disagrees with the world’s greatest minds on the origin of species, particularly so as relates to the creation—or genesis—of humans is hardly a basis upon which to change traditional education and qualify solid science. Simply stated, though I doubt he is aware of it, Bush prefers the hypothetical postulation of intelligent design to the evidence-laden Unifying Theory of Biology. The former is popularly, if often incorrectly, known as creationism; the latter is popularly called Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, or of course the biggie (or Big E)—Evolution (never to be confused in the Creationist mind with the infinitesimally small “e”—evidence). Thus, he wants this patently religious, Christian fundamentalist contrivance taught in our tax-funded, secular public schools and he finally came out and said so.
more..