Florida has a new Counselor of education, Cheri Pierson Yecke. She has stated that she believes alternatives to evolution should be taught in public schools.
At this time there is no alternative to evolution that is based on scientific evidence.
Tom Gallagher, Republican gubernatorial candidate, has stated that he would not oppose the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes.
It is obvious that Yecke and Gallager do not understand the basic principles of science.
Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1922 for his work on electromagnetic energy. There was scientific evidence to support his work. He did not win a Nobel prize for his work on the special theory of relativity because the evidence to support it was not known until the development of the particle accelerator. Until then it was considered a hypothesis. Relativity became a scientific theory only after there was evidence to support it.
Even a famous scientist who has won a Nobel Prize must have evidence to support a hypothesis before it can be considered a scientific theory. That is the way science works.
There are school boards and teachers who believe that we should change that to fit their religious belief. They want to teach that evidence should not be required to support a hypothesis. All that would be necessary in biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy would be to have a process look like it is too complicated for scientists to understand and that would prove the existence of an "intelligent agent or designer."
The School Board in Dover, Pennsylvania is trying to change the way science is taught to the students there by reversing one of the most important principles of science, peer review of evidence acquired by experimentation.
Michael Behe, who has never done any serious scientific work, is the leader in the intelligent design movement. He not only has never done any scientific work to show evidence for intelligent design, but he said during cross examination at the Dover trial he hadn't completed scientific tests on examples he uses to illustrate intelligent design because he has better ways to spend his time. He also said he already knows intelligent design is science. We might ask how he knows, if he has no scientific evidence and refuses to do any?
Charles Darwin spent twenty years collecting evidence to support the scientific theory of evolution. He wrote several books and articles that were subject to peer review. Since then thousands of scientific papers and books have been written by researchers in support of evolution, and presenting evidence that is subject to peer review. The supporters of intelligent design would have science change the way it is done by eliminating the need for evidence.
It is appalling to me to think that there are teachers and administrators who believe that their personal religious belief should take precedence over well-established scientific theories.
It should be obvious that intelligent design has no standing in the scientific community or the supporters would be caring on the fight at the college and university level and not the Jr. high and high school level.
