Should those who are opposed to the scientific method because it clashes with their own narrow religious beliefs, be made to forgo the resultant fruits of its progress for their personal aggrandizement and well being ? Some think that they should. The high handed manner in which the Kansas Board of Education steamrollered Intelligent Design into its science curriculum, has been a blow to science education and a slap in the face of teachers. The scientific community has decided to push back by denying the state of Kansas the latest materials and methods of science education. (The editor of Houston Chronicle goes one step further to suggest that anti-evolution obscurantists should also be denied access to the flu vaccine whose development utilizes the principles of random mutation. By doing so, the devotees of Intelligent Design may indeed remain faithful to their faulty belief.) Sadly, the real losers in this "red herring" of a controversy are the students in Kansas schools who will pay a high price for the obduracy and closed minds of the adults. Read further for elucidation.
……"Last week in Kansas, meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association both officially condemned the state as poisoned ground for learning. The two respected groups forbid Kansas to use their state-of-the-art science education materials because, in a new draft of school guidelines, the state’s Department of Education showed its new contempt for scientific method.
According to the science groups, Kansas "inappropriately singles out evolution as a controversial theory despite the strength of the scientific evidence supporting evolution for the diversity of life on Earth and its acceptance by an overwhelming majority of science." …….
…. Stripped of resources from these two reputable associations, Kansas in the meantime has to cobble together its own, paraphrased framework for teaching science. This is more than just a nuisance. The improvised curriculum will isolate Kansas’ students from their counterparts across the nation, almost all of whose states use the science groups’ materials…..
…..Those who discount the value of this method (the scientific method) should be willing to forgo any bird flu vaccine that is developed on the principles of random mutation, genes and natural selection. They should also be ready for a blighted crop of Kansas high school graduates, forced to mull confusing and irrational tions of nohow nature works while their rivals were growing into scientists and doctors.
The full article from the editorial page here .
Accidental Blogger 
4 responses to “Smite Them With Bird Flu?”
In this context, you may be interested in this editorial:
Fundamentals of faith
The Hindustan Times November 7, 2005
The Head of the Pontifical Council for Culture at the Vatican, Cardinal Paul Poupard, has stated that ignoring scientific reason in pursuit of blind faith risks a swerve towards fundamentalism. This statement comes not a day too late, as the debate over the teaching in US schools of the concept of intelligent design — that hints at the existence of a Creator — has raged on for months. While the Vatican is working on ways to help end the ‘mutual prejudice’ between science and religion, Americans are attempting to fight it out in courts.
But the issue is hardly something that ‘laws’ can decide. Which is why the cardinal’s statement carries great import. At the centre of the ‘intelligent design’ controversy is the basic tussle that science completely ignores the basis of religion and that ‘evolution’ theories are incomplete. This, in itself, is an instance of where blind faith, be it in any religion, can lead us. The cardinal has rightly pointed out that science without ethics, a pillar of religion, can be as dangerous as dogmatic faith without reason. For a secular democracy like the US, it’s unfortunate that those engaged in the debate are ignoring the call to reason from both the church and the scientific community.
For isn’t the basic point being in the semantics of the debate? For a rational schooling process, there exists no dichotomy in the teaching of both science and religion. However, it is unfortunate if the teaching of religion is masked under the garb of science, which is essentially defined by the presence of empirical evidence. In fact, with the dynamics of the world as they are, science and religion have equally important roles to play. There has to be faith in reason and reason in basic tenets of faith.
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Thanks for the view from your paper’s editorial.
No one stopped the Intelligent Designers from taking their theory to the religious theory class, where it belongs. It is their insistence on presenting it as an alternative to evolution in the biology class, without a shred of supporting empirical evidence, is what has rightly incensed the scientific and the rational community.
I do agree that the teaching and advances of science must take into consideration ethics – of economics, social justice and the human condition. Religion needs to stay out. And there is no place for faith in scientific reasoning either. You accept what the evidence presents whether or not it fits anybody’s (including your own) religious or political agenda.
In fact, with “the dynamics of the world as they are”, I would disagree with the editorial that “science and religion have equally important roles to play”. Those dynamics have been screwed up by religion alone. Unless science is able to carry on a dispassionate effort to understand the natural world without religious interference, the dynamics will continue to tilt towards ignorance, intolerance, oppression and unrest.
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God makes scientists look wrong to test our faith, so only by accepting vaccine may we prove our faith.
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Try prayer, MT.
Faith, probability and the placebo effect dictate that it might work.
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