Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Maybe there is hope after all

I have to say the news of the pro-intelligent design school board being ousted, or should I say routed, in Pennsylvania is some of the first good news I've heard in a while (that and the failure of most of Arnold's propositions)

Don't get me wrong, I actually think its valid to educate people about potential weaknesses or gaps in the evolutionary theory, or indeed any theory. Budding scientists do need to be taught that not everything we know today is based on incontrovertable evidence, and even that which appears to be such, say the Newtonian theory of everything, might suddenly be invalidated over night. Of course Newtonian theory is still an extremely good approximation for most day to day calculations where quantum effects rear their head, but it does show that reality is not always as it seems.

But if you postulate "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory then it deserves the same scientific rigour in its critique, i.e. that there is not one iota of scientific evidence for ID. While ID might be useful to some as a day to day approximation of reality - the explanation for our existance has no bearing on day to day life for many (although it should) - it has no scientific utility and shouldn't be taught in a science class as a scientific theory.

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