Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Post Dover

Or, Did The Discovery Institute and it's associates learn from their loss.

Robert T Pennock is a well known critic of all things creationist when it comes to science, and he is claiming a well deserved victory for science in the Kitzmiller et vs Dover Area School Board et al in Harrisberg Pennsylvania.Kitzmiller et al vs Dover Area School District et al, was an "activist" judge and was not being true to his appointment by President George W Bush.

Michael Behe in his "Whether Intelligent Design is Science" article date Feb 4, 2006, and published at the "Center for Science and Culture" a part of the "Discovery Institute" clearly maintains a definition of science that is so broad as to include Tarot Cards and Faith Healing (See Whether ID is Science is not Semantics.) To allow ID as science we must rewrite the definition to be so broad as to be meaningless in any functional way.

The definition of science espoused by Behe and Dembski to name a few is a problem the near future is going to deal with. Within my own family, what is called science and what is not appears to be blurred. Blurred because a number of people are making false claims about their equiry, like meta-physics, whatever it's merits, it is not science and certainly not physics.

Why should we concur with a definition so broad that every thing under the sun can be called science, just because some fellows of the Discovery Institute and The Thomas More Law Centre say it is and say it is a "widely held belief".

Meanwhile in Arkansas the problem persists (see The Missing Link by Jason R Wiles at Arkansas Times 23 March 2006) School science teachers are under a threat if they teach evolution in science classes, so they leave it out. Obviously, as mentioned in the article, the community does understand the two previous cases on the subject, Epperson v. Arkansas and McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, which prohibit the teaching of evolution. It is sad because all this started with the concerns of a science teacher and his geography lesson.