Duane Bozarth wrote:

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Duane Bozarth wrote:


Tim Daneliuk wrote:
...


...Tax funded institutions, by their very nature, are open to a democractic
governance process.


Up to here, you're ok...



... Being in the majority doesn't make you right.


And here...



...But being in the majority AND a taxpayer means you get to drive your views right into the heart of the school system.


But here you've missed the boat entirely. Being a taxpayer and wrong
doesn't connote anything more than being a taxpayer. There is still a
responsibility to provide correct education to the student--that's under
the section of oaths for public officials that deals w/ prudent
stewardship of public monies. Wasting such public funds on
pseudo-science is not such stewardship.

The problem is that ID is not obviously true or false and for that matter,
neither is science. Both can only be argued on philosophical (and perhaps
utilitarian) grounds. No absolute winner can ever be demonstrated. Hence
ID is legitimately entitled to as much traction as the scientific belief system.


There you're simply wrong. The "science" which the ID folks bring to
bear is, for the most part, simply not accurate and what few facts they
do get right are used in their own context for their own purposes.

The "prudent stewardship" argument implies that the best service is
provided the student by teaching what is best known at the time. As
I've noted elsewhere, all science changes--it's the nature of science.
What is now known in high energy physics now is grossly altered from
that I learned in graduate school only 20 years or so ago...much of what
we now know in the biological sciences was completely unknown then.
Same is true in the knowledge of origins. There is where the
controversy and excitment lie, not in some mumbo-jumbo explanation that
all is imponderable.

You mean like the "mumbo jumbo" that suggests Everything appeared at the
Big Bang out of Nothing and we are *certain* that this materialist/mechanical
POV is correct? All systems of knowledge have unprovable starting points -
this includes Science.

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Tim Daneliuk
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