Liquidrage

Secular,
Perhaps you could argue tactfully that ID is not science.
You could do this by stating that not a single paper supporting ID has made it through a peer reviwed scientific journal or publication.

That we should teach alternative theories and that at the present there are no alternative scientific theories.

Science class is reserved for science. If people want to argue that we shouldn't teach science, then that is another arguement. But just because someone has a theory that gives someone else the warm fuzzies does not make it science.

galiel

You can start at the site of the National Center for SCience Education

<a href="http://www.ncseweb.org" target="_blank">http://www.ncseweb.org</a>

Specifically, they have an article in their Resources section called "Eight Significant Court Decisions"

<a href="http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3675_eight_significant_court_decisi_2_15_2001.asp" target="_blank">http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3675_eight_significant_court_decisi_2_15_2001.asp</a>

By the way, this has been posted before, but is worth posting again: Scientific American has an excellent article: "15 answers to Creationist Nonsense." Not about the controversy of teaching creationism, but good, concise answers to the most common arguments made in its favor, including newer ID arguments.

<a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2" target="_blank">http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2</a>

[ October 07, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

Albion

If you can get hold of a copy, Kenneth Miller's book "Finding Darwin's God" has a number of refutations of ID claims to being scientific and follows them with a discussion about why regular science isn't atheistic.

RufusAtticus

Secular Elation,

Just counter with the fact that most people, High Schoolers included, are not equipped to descide what is true and not with respect to science. Most biology classes don't even have enough time now to do the material justice in one year. Now these politicians and preachers want to add an additional topic, one that is completely irrevelent to students future study of biology. I can see it now, instead of the typical 15 minutes spent on evolution, they spend 7 on evolution, and 7 on intellegent design and students are supposed to descide in the last minute based on that?

High school is not the place to challenge established scientific principles.

Imagine health classes that HIV causes AIDS, but some people don't think so, and tells the students that they should make up their minds based on their parents' and preacher's wishes. No telling how many High Schoolers would needlessly die for political stupidity.

Quetzal

Secular Elation: Another resource you might find useful is <a href="http://www.talkdesign.org" target="_blank">Talk Design</a>. It's a new site, unofficially officially affiliated with talkorigins. They're still building it, but it has some good rebuttals to your fellow student's questions.

American Agnostic

Question for ID believers: If ID is a valid scientific hypothesis (it hasn't been confirmed in any way so it is just a guess) then what sort of findings would confirm it? What sort of findings would deny it? If you can't answer these then you need a new theory.

Sure, that's how it STARTS. You get your crowbar in the door to the science classroom and then you keep working until you're teaching the bible as final truth. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> Besides, in order to even be considered a valid theory (let alone one that rivals a heavily entrenched theory like evolution) you have to have at least SOME supporting evidence! We need something more than "life is too complex to have form natural processes and random chance." <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Oolon Colluphid

There is of course a far simpler knock-down for intelligent design. It is that there heaps of examples of poor, stupid and/or weird -- IOW, unintelligent -- designs in nature. See <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000801" target="_blank">this thread</a> for details.

Oolon

Undercurrent

&lt;Cheap Shot&gt;Well, you could easily fit all of the evidences for ID into one class. The first two minutes of one, really.&lt;/Cheap Shot&gt;

The devil's advocate counter-argument you've presented paints a very different picture of science class than I've ever seen. Public school students are not the arbiters of what is, or is not the state of scientific knowledge. The opinion of the scientific comunnity is, despite the scare quotes your pretend opponent uses to describe them.

The purpose of public school science class is to describe the findings of science, and, in loose terms, the methods used to acquire those findings. The process of debating the merits of various theories and supplanting paradigms is accomplished on the pages of journals, where results of experiments are verified and derivations double-checked, not in the public school classrooms, where, let's face it, the tacher could say just about anything with nerry a skeptical eye from his/her audience.

ID proponents, on the other hand, would rather have that discussion happen in the public school classroom, simpley because they know they can not withstand the standard scientific process. Small children are easier to convince than professional scientists.

m.

P.S. It's rather ironic, I think, that ID came up from the Cobb county bill. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the language of the bill doesn't refer to evolution specifically, but only "disputed views of acadaemic subjects". Despite this, your friend in class didn't even try to hide what it really means.

Jimmy Higgins

Actually the flat earth theory could actually be worth something here. ID should be taught in school, and in science class to boot. However, not where the creationists want it. Teach it with the scientific method and explain how each "theory" holds.

Take the Flat Earth "theory"
Take Newton's theory of gravity
Take ID "theory"
Take the theory of how light travelled through ether.

Now teach how the scientific method works. Show that each principle needs a thesis. Each of these has one. Then you find a way of testing this thesis in a manner that is reproducible. This is where ID falls off. Then test the thesis. This is where the Flat Earth falls off (though I've never seen a picture of the earth that wasn't flat ). In the end, all that is left is Newton's theory of gravity.

We should teach in the beginning of the science curriculum, how ID actually fails the ability of being testable, therefore, it isn't science and it will be ignored beyond that. And light in ether would work perfectly to parallel the faults in their own premise. The way ID and the ether explained away the problem being discussed by using a mysterious thing or object is a faulty method.

By doing this, we could crush ID immediately.

[ October 08, 2002: Message edited by: Jimmy Higgins ]</p>

Skydancer

Now, now. Luminiferous Aether wasn't a bad first guess. All known waves at the time required transmission media, and they hadn't yet worked out the wave-particle overlap. (This was in the 1890's, remember.) So Lorentz and Michelson and a few others worked out the properties required by such a medium and Michelson and Morley devised an elegant test to measure the stuff. When the test failed to detect it, the first thought was that perhaps aether would somehow stick to a planet and give a zero reading - so they thought up a way to test THAT hypothesis. When THAT experiment also failed, they went looking for other explanations. The Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction idea tried to explain away the zero-speed reading with a fairly ad-hoc hypothesis, but it was still a testable one, and it was tested and found lacking. (L-F failed to account for the observed stellar offset due to the Earth's orbital motion.) Aether was a testable scientific theory - but one that failed its test, just like the phlogiston theory of heat. Being wrong doesn't make a theory unscientific... being untestable does


(Edited for spelling.)

[ October 08, 2002: Message edited by: Skydancer ]</p>