Well, there are certain people I debate, like you, who make me smarter, help me clarify my thoughts, sometimes convince me to change my mind, and the like. That’s why I participate in these conversations and debates. Then, there are people who are not in the least helpful that way. I just ignore them once I’ve found out they’re not useful.

You’re equating two groups: pro-science advocates and those who would replace science teaching with a Sunday School lesson. Look at your frame – both groups are using their children as pawns in an “ideological” battle.

Well, I guess that in its rawest, basest sense science is an ideological pursuit. So there’s probably a sense in which your position is technically accurate. But it’s a frame – as stated here – that places the two ideologies on a level footing and presents parents who want their children educated as more or less the same as parents who want their children (and every other parent’s children) miseducated.

You say elsewhere that science is good and ID bad and I believe that’s what you think. But you can’t expect to SAY what you admit you’re saying in comment #33 and not be challenged on it.

I very much appreciate your input. To answer your question:

“As I read it, you feel that both evolutionists (”supporters of science”) and ID advocates have no qualms about using children’s education as a battleground for their own ideological purposes. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but that’s what I got.”

That is essentially what I was trying to say. At least that is the feeling I sometimes get from what I’ve read and seen.

Again, thanks for your take. When the boys start squabbling, sometimes it takes a woman’s perspective to clear things up cheers.

“neither side seems terribly concerned about using the children themselves as pawns in the adults’ ideological battles.”

As I read it, you feel that both evolutionists (“supporters of science”) and ID advocates have no qualms about using children’s education as a battleground for their own ideological purposes. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but that’s what I got.

I liked this very much:

“Likewise if we try to talk down (to) our ideological opponents with contempt and derision, we risk giving rise to true fanaticism in those we wish to win over.”

I agree in general; I particularly believe that when our opponents become insulting the best counter is to become even more punctiliously respectful. However, I also know that sometimes you just get fed up. ID is the HIV of the educational body: it’s infectious, it’s invidious, it shifts to resist opposition, and every time we think it’s on the decline, it pops up again. Frustrating.

Finally, the strange thing about this thread to me is that I can’t find anything substantive on which you and JS and Sam actually disagree.

Most of the people who comment here earn a great deal of respect for admitting inaccuracies and/or rephrasing, reworking, and rethinking their comments so that they come closer to what they really mean. There are those, of course, who will defend even the most lack-witted comments to the bitter end rather than admit being less-than-perfect in their original statements.

Dr. Slammy, in your words, I am “using ID, which is anti-science, in attempting to make an argument about the fallibility of science”. I’m sorry. That makes no sense. You’re putting words in my mouth. More like shoving them down my throat. My statement about the nature of scientific change was merely in response to your comment (#16) which began … “you seem to think …” Now I’m not sure what you seem to think about what I think but let me be clear about what I think:

ID Bad, Evolution Good. ID not science, Evolution Science.

Before you conclude anything else about what I may or may not think, please read my posts again.

JS,

You say: ” …your implication is that, somehow, those who support science are somehow using children as “pawns.” ” Where did I say anything close to that? What are you going to say next:

“Tictacgo’s implication is that those who don’t have pets, hate animals” ???

Look instead of claiming that I hold certain points of view such as “Science is ideology”, please next time, ask me to clarify what it is I meant (as Brian did) instead of making an assumption about my beliefs, casting that assumption as fact and then bludgeoning me with it. And on my part, I will be sure to avoid making rhetorical “hit and runs”. Cool?

And your analogies are going from bad to weird … from teaching your kid derivative trading to taking teenage girls as “chattels”. WTF?

This thread seems to be degenerating rather fast. If you wish to lob any further criticism in my direction please go back and read my initial comments and also Brian’s response to what I said, and please do refrain from imputing assertions that I have not made such as “Science is ideology” to me. Thank you.

Is the unrelenting onslaught of horribles in our lives the inevitable result of too many people focusing on amassing personal power and wealth without guilt at the expense of others because those others are different, unwashed, and unworthy? Perhaps we had to suffer through this experience to unite and focus on creating a new vision. I believe that people will look back at this time in history and regard it with the same awe that we regard the enlightenment.

Savor the moment because we are destroying the old bankrupt structure of ideas and values. We have the power and, like it or, we are creating a new paradigm made possible by the methodology we call science.

But new data can turn reverse probability really, really quickly.”

New data from the mind-bending and reality-shattering study of quantum physics is radically transforming our notion of “reality” from something solid that exists outside ourselves into buzzing waves of energy, or light, that become particles apparently caused by the act of our attention. This new view is causing a paradigm shift in our concept of who and what we are in relation who and what we are not. The idea that reality isn’t solid can be regarded as threatening and terrifying or welcomed as enlightening and empowering. If we dream what we call reality into existence, we have the power to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time, except that what we call the dimension of space-time isn’t real either. There is only light, possibilities are infinite, and reality, or what we like to call “fact” is but a probability.

When you next enter your sleep cycle, give yourself permission to imagine . .

Science is not a thing; science is a method. Intelligent design is not a method; it is a description of reality or belief and it is no more “real” or “right” than any other belief that doesn’t exist.

Are we not collectively dreaming an end to the nightmare of Bush/Cheney and spreading the dream through the vehicle that is the internet?

Okay, kiddies, the pool is open.

Create the universe of infinite possibilities with your imagination and transform light into form with the infinite power of your attention.

Thanks for coming back with a more complete post. It’s really quite difficult to do much with quick rhetorical hits without backup.

I will agree with you that, if one expands the definition broadly enough, “ideology” can apply to anything. I could say, for instance, that in my ideology, jumping from an airplane at 10,000 feet without a parachute is quite likely to kill me, because that’s a part of a belief system that includes the effects of gravity. I could also assert that, in my ideology, overspending my income over a period of time is likely to lead to my bankruptcy, which is part of an ideological system of microeconomics. The Wikipedia definition you gave is so broad that the term basically loses any useful meaning. Wikepedia also errs in saying that ideoology’s main purpose is to offer change in society. Many ideologies, especially dominant ones, have sought to prevent change in society (see, “Priesthood, The, Ancient Egypt, 19th Dynasty and after”).

What’s telling though, is the context in which you used the word “ideology.” The exact quote is:

It seems to me, the problem with this whole debate is, how neither side seems terribly concerned about using the children themselves as pawns in the “adult’s” ideological battles.

One “side,” in this context, is those who believe in science, and because the Theory of Evolution (writ large, notice, because the ToE is a complex structure constantly being reinforced by new discoveries) is about as rigorous as science gets, your implication is that, somehow, those who support science are somehow using children as “pawns.”

That’s a heckuva statement. The idea of using children as pawns is extraodinarily distasteful to most people, and accusing them of such falls just short of accusing them of being pedophiles. There is also the implied question of, “When should one try to do what’s best for children? Does the attempt to do so always mean one is using children as “pawns”? If my “ideology” is that young girls cannot consent to sexual intercourse and, therefore, should be protected by law, and someone else’s ideology is that young girls are chattel to be taken at will, is my attempt to stop those people an example of my “ideology” making the children pawns?

Your statement, by the way it was worded, gives equal moral/ethical weight to “ideologies.” Those who want real science in science classrooms are the same as those who don’t, because both sides are ideologues, right? That’s how the wording reads.

BTW, I have yet to meet a real scientist who believes there is such thing as scientific facts. That’s a term rarely if ever used in college, or even upper-level high school, classes that are taught well. There is never “fact.” There are only those things that seem so highly probable that to treat them as anything else but fact, in a practical sense, would be perverse.

But new data can turn reverse probability really, really quickly.

I was referring to the fact that in science, as in society, revolutions are not uncommon. What constitutes “established scientific fact” today may well be overturned by new insights and new observations. That is not to say that the “scientific method” itself is broken or subject to distortion via talking-points.

Right – there are revelations. Advances. Etc. All of which are produced by the scientific method. I’m hard-pressed to think of a case where legit scientific advance has resulted from the political maneuverings of uninformed theological dogma.

It seems to me that you’re trying to make a point that nobody is necessarily arguing with by using an example that’s simply indefensible.

I was referring to the fact that in science, as in society, revolutions are not uncommon. What constitutes “established scientific fact” today may well be overturned by new insights and new observations. That is not to say that the “scientific method” itself is broken or subject to distortion via talking-points.

JS,

You took my words and extracted a meaning that was not intended. Is the battle between ID and Evolution (as far as teaching either one is concerned) an ideological conflict? Absolutely:

Wikipedia: “ideology is an organized collection of ideas … a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things, as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society. The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer change in society through a normative thought process. Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics. Implicitly every political tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.”

Do evolution and ID fit that definition? Absolutely. The difference is that one (ID) is an inconsistent set of ideas, a house of cards built upon a single unjustified prior belief – complex systems cannot emerge from the laws of nature, because of the 2nd law, etc etc. Evolution is a paradigm which rests on a vast body of independent observations in fields ranging from geology to genetics.

If there is anything else you’d like me to clarify I’ll be happy to take a gander at it. Barring that, I rest my case. Cheers.

ps: incidentally, recent advances in our understanding of said complex systems promise to upend that solitary axiom of ID well and truly. But the battle will of course go on for a bit longer.

Ingrid

Careful about the barbarians at the gate, now, you here?

this was an interesting article… we need to keep vigil on anything that might pass as something scientific when it is most definitely anything but..

Ingrid

Why oh why? I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess.

As best I can tell, going back as far as there are written records, people first counted on their gods to control those things humans can’t control: fertility, disease, weather, famine, etc. (None of this looking to the gods for moral rules.) Having gods gave you an opportunity to control, or at least heaviliy influence, those things. If you just said the words right, did the right rituals, kept the temple and the likeness in good repair, brought food every morning, and what have you, things would be all right. The gods would protect you and nurture you unless overpowered in war by the other guy’s bigger and stronger gods.

The secular side of US society is not nearly as protective as in most European nations (well, Western Europe, anyway). If you are injured or fall ill in the US for an extended period, there is a fair chance that you will lose everything. Your employment is “at will,” so you can be fired for the way you part your hair if someone has a mind to. Medical insurance is extremely expensive ($12,000 + per year for me and my family), so many can’t afford it. And so forth.

So, I wonder if Americans cling to God because they are afraid of what life may bring and, lacking secular means of feeling secure, God is their buffer. If a hurricane smacks New Orleans, then God must be punishing that city for its iniquity. The way to avoid hurricanes is to be righteous. Having a God that rewards and punishes things gives people a sense that they are infuencing things they cannot possibly influence, and gives them a sense that they are more secure than they really are.

BTW, I know a woman who, when told by a local school board in Eastern Washington State that she had to teach creationism, decided to teach as many creation myths as she could find. She was fired, then she won a lawsuit. But the whole incident must have dragged out at least seven years. I doubt she’d do it again.

So hurrah for you in sending your child to a camp where he learns that there are many myths and no evidence available to prefer one over the other. But that won’t work in many parts of the US.