Critical Exponent

Sometimes I despair when I think of where this country is headed. Here are two of the latest salvos in the culture wars:

• A Pennsylvania school district voted to end the International Baccalaureate program. The reasons cited by various people include claims that it is too liberal, part of an international conspiracy, and too expensive. As an IB alum, I can vouch for the fact that the goal and focus of the program is to teach students to think critically, to prove mastery of advanced academic skills via an internatially-certified standard, and to expose students to other cultures as well as their own.These last two are particularly valuable in today’s global economy and society. Cutting the program shortchanges the students, contributes to America’s decline in science, technology, and culture, and reveals how tenuous the dogmatists’ positions are, if they feel they must shelter students from other points of view lest they make up their own minds.

• The New York Times reports on many evangelicals who signed an anti-evolution petition; these include a few scientists, though apparently no biologists. What is wrong with people? Evolution remains the best scientific theory for the origins of life as we know it today: its mechanism has been observed in microcosm, and it is simple, in that it does not posit unobserved and extraneous external agents such as a designer or aliens. All the opposition to evolution seems to come from some combination of faith (”it contradicts my religious texts”) or lack of imagination (”I can’t see how evolution could possibly give rise to the large differences among species”). Neither of those is a valid reason to overturn or ignore a scientifc theory. Once again, based on the observed evidence, Darwin’s theory remains the best (simplest, most compact, consistent with observation, micro-reproducible, and falsifiable) explanation for the origins of life. It’s certainly your right to believe what you want to believe, whether it’s science, faith, both, or neither, but please don’t claim that evolution is on a shaky scientific footing, because it’s not.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Right-wing watch, Science in society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.