Bush’s Two Minds on Science
Posted by casey at August 6th, 2005
This artical was so right on … I had to reproduce it all right here. ENJOY!
When it comes to science, President Bush is of two minds, one of which is wrong.
Concerning the space shuttle program, he defers to the views of experts.
In a conversation with Texas reporters Monday, he said that “the experts at NASA” will determine whether the shuttle should be retired before 2010.
But when it comes to science education, he unfortunately sees no need for experts. Answering a question about evolution vs. intelligent design, he said it was a question for local school districts, but he felt “both sides ought to be properly taught.”
And he added, “so people can understand what the debate is about.”
But among experts, there is no debate worth mentioning. The theory of evolution underpins all modern biology, and like any vibrant science it is constantly being expanded and modified as new lines of evidence appear. Thousands upon thousands of research scientists have contributed to it since Darwin proposed the mechanism of natural selection as an explanation for the relationships among species living and extinct.
Intelligent design, in contrast, is taken seriously by scarcely any scientific experts. It proposes that the natural world is too complex to have been created by entirely natural processes, so there must be a designer of some kind. As to how the designer acts, or how scientists could study those actions, it has no answers. Intelligent design explains nothing and predicts nothing; it isn’t even a theory. It has no place in science classrooms.
The president said that part of education is to be exposed to different schools of thought. Up to a point, yes. But in planning lessons on space exploration, how much time is due to the people who believe - quite sincerely - that the Apollo program and the moon landings were nothing but a hoax?
