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For its latest collection of position statements defending evolution education, the National Center of Scientific Education (NCSE) will include one from an area of study it had previously suggested as an alternative forum for Intelligent Design.The lobby group’s third edition of Voices for Evolution will include a statement from the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) to explain its latest position on teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom.“Social studies may, at first glance, seem to be a better fit for this approach to teaching intelligent design, but the same constitutional issues arise whether religious beliefs are taught in science or in the social studies curriculum,” read the NCSS statement, which was issued in May 2007.The NCSS stated that “while the social studies classroom is the proper forum for the discussion of controversial issue,” it maintained that the “teaching religious beliefs as the equivalent of scientific theory is not consistent with the social studies.”A contributor for “Evolution News & View,” a blog from a subgroup of the Discovery Institute, a think tank associated with the Intelligent Design movement, points out that the NCSE will go at great lengths to banish any line of thought inconsistent to the teaching of evolution-even if it means going back on its previous arguments.“After endorsing censoring science classes and relegating intelligent design to discussion in social studies, the NCSE is now flip-flopping and praising censorship of social studies classes as well,” wrote Robert Crowther Friday on the blog for the Center for Science and Culture.Crowther cited several examples from previous articles in which the NCSE and other supporters of evolution education proposed social studies as an appropriate forum for discussing non-Darwinian thoughts such as Creationism and Intelligent Design.Furthermore, Crowther suggested that critics of Intelligent Design have strategically misrepresented the scientific claim as synonymous to Creationism to exclude it from being taught in science classes.Opponents of Intelligent Design have criticized the claim, alleging that it is only a vehicle to inject religious teaching, mainly Creationism, into public schools and scientific debate. Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.Jay Richards, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, told The Christian Post in an interview earlier this year that while the religious labeling of Intelligent Design is misguided, it serves the critic’s purpose.“By attaching the label of religion to it, the person is essentially trying to privatize it, so it doesn’t have to be considered public evidence,” said Richards. “But the point of intelligent design’s argument is that it’s based on public evidence, the evidence from nature and the natural world.”The Discovery Institute makes it clear on its website that Intelligent Design “theory” is neither based from nor upholds the Bible and is not the same as Creationism.
“The intellectual roots of intelligent design theory are varied,” explains the Discovery Institute on its website.“Plato and Aristotle both articulated early versions of design theory, as did virtually all of the founders of modern science.”“Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the ‘apparent design’ in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations,” the group adds.
In contrast, “Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago.
“Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design,” the Discovery Institute clarifies.Other explanations surrounding Intelligent Design theory posted on the group’s website also clarify that Intelligent Design does not reject evolutionary theory, if “evolution” is defined by "change over time," or “that living things are related by common ancestry.”However, Discovery Institute does challenge a dominant form of evolutionary theory known as neo-Darwinism, which “contends that evolution is driven by natural selection acting on random mutations, an unpredictable and purposeless process that ‘as no discernable direction or goal, including survival of a species.’“It is this specific claim made by neo-Darwinism that intelligent design theory directly challenges,”the group states.Regarding NCSE’s initial suggestion that Intelligent Design be taught in the social studies curriculum, Discovery Institute’s Richards said even if it were allowed, the theory would be irrelevant in that discipline. Since the design argument draws from science disciplines such as biology, chemistry, astronomy, or physics, it would be most appropriate in a science class.
As in the days of Noah....
BEIJING - A storm drenched China's southeast on Sunday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the evacuation of 1.4 million people on the mainland, officials said. In Vietnam, the death toll from a separate storm rose to 55. Krosa came ashore as a typhoon in China's Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, but weakened and was soon downgraded to a tropical storm, the official Xinhua News Agency said.It said no deaths or injuries were reported, but the storm wrecked houses and knocked out power in the port city of Wenzhou as torrential rains swept the region.More than 1.4 million people were evacuated from coastal areas, including more than 500,000 tourists who were at beach resorts for the National Day holiday week, Xinhua said.Some 75,000 fishing vessels in the two provinces were ordered back to port and trips by ferries and sightseeing boats were canceled, the agency said.Krosa — the Cambodian word for crane — killed five people Saturday on Taiwan as it knocked out power to 2 million homes and soaked the island, according to Taiwan's Disaster Relief Center.Two men were killed in suburban Taipei when a landslide buried their house, the center said. A man died after falling from his balcony in Hsinchu and a woman was electrocuted after falling from her motorcycle in Tainan. A man's body was also recovered from a hostel that was hit by a landslide in Ilan and another man was missing.Early Sunday, China's coast guard rescued 27 sailors from a Hong Kong freighter that suffered mechanical failure after it was hit by the storm off Wenzhou, Xinhua said.In Shanghai, where the Special Olympics is taking place, the city government canceled vacations for flood-control workers and was drafting plans to drain competition sites, the agency said.Meanwhile, the death toll from Typhoon Lekima, which hit Vietnam's central coast late Wednesday, rose to 55, with another 16 people missing, officials said Sunday.The death toll in Vietnam's worst-hit central province of Nghe An rose to 22 after eight more bodies were discovered over the past two days, said provincial disaster official Pham Hong Thuong."Communication to many parts of the province is still cut off," Thuong said. "The death toll is likely to rise."Lekima, named after a local fruit, also damaged about 77,000 homes, the government said.
PASARGADAE, Iran-For the people protesting against it, a new dam near these sun-drenched ruins may be more than an environmental upheaval: In it they see an affront to the country's pre-Islamic identity.For 2,500 years, the tomb of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargadae, in southern Iran, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian empire. But some fear the dam and reservoir pose a threat to the ancient structure.They say the project may increase humidity in the arid area near the city of Shiraz, which they believe could damage the limestone mausoleum.That may seem far-fetched-officials dismiss it-but the feud highlights deep cultural fault lines in attitudes toward the Islamic Republic's wealth of pre-Islamic relics."This is an illegal project which will harm our historical heritage," said Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a lawyer campaigning against the Sivand Dam.He accuses the authorities of not paying enough attention to sites dating from before the Arab Muslim invasion of what is now Iran in the seventh century: "They don't care about pre-Islamic history."Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who heads the state culture and heritage organization, has suggested that groups "opposing the Islamic Republic" are behind the protests.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially inaugurated the dam, some seven kilometers away from Pasargadae, in April. Cyrus built the capital in the sixth century B.C. and is believed to be buried there.Ringed by bare and tawny hills, Pasargadae is one of Iran's eight world heritage sites, though it is not as well preserved or famous abroad as Persepolis, erected by Cyrus' successors closer to present-day Shiraz.Many Iranians still see Cyrus as one of their greatest historical heroes, who arguably created the first world empire and showed tolerance toward the different faiths of his era.Cyrus conquered Babylon in today's Iraq in 539 B.C. and freed the Jews held in captivity there. He is also credited with authoring a decree inscribed on a clay cylinder, which some have described as the first charter of human rights."We are really proud of him. He was unique," said a man in Shiraz who gave his name as Reza Hosseini.In his book "The Soul of Iran," American-Iranian journalist Afshin Molavi describes how Cyrus was praised by the U.S.-backed Shah but criticized by the Muslim clerics and leftist revolutionaries who toppled him in 1979.After the revolution, one prominent ayatollah branded Cyrus a tyrant, liar and homosexual and even called for the destruction of his tomb as well as that of Persepolis. "Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed," Afshin wrote.Even so, not much remains of Cyrus' Pasargadae: His multi-tiered tomb is the most impressive building even though it was looted and emptied long ago.Government officials say the dam is needed to help farmers irrigate land to grow corn, rice, tomatoes and other agricultural produce. They have promised to closely monitor any climactic changes that result from the dam.
