That didn’t really happen, in other words.

It is patently nonsense to say that “there is no controversy in science” - there is controversy and argument all the time.

There’s no controversy over the validity of evolution. Quit trying to change the subject.

Pupils should be taught the appropriate amount of knowledge of the theory but should be protected from atheist preachers hijacking science lessons. No more, no less.

We could agree on that. Atheism has no more place in public school science class than creationism, for the same reason: the Establishment Clause.

Green cheese is a joke and no one ever believed in a flat earth until the 20th century.

Flat earth belief existed in the ancient world. An ancient Greek established the roundness of the earth by measuring its radius. You are correct that Columbus’s contemporaries understood the world to be round; Columbus insisted, erroneously, that it was small because land-life debris washed up on the shores of islands off Africa after storms, and he thought it came from the coast of Asia.

“Teach the controversy” is Intelligent Design Lite. It’s the ID fallback when they lose politically at the school board level. There is no controversy in science, so “teaching the controversy” in science class is improper.

So what if is ID light? That’s not a serious argument.

It is patently nonsense to say that “there is no controversy in science” - there is controversy and argument all the time.

But I personally don’t think that school children should be bothered with it. Anyway, a ultradarwinistic teacher (by which I mean the “evolution disproves God crowd) would easily such a “teach the controversy” to his own advantage.

Pupils should be taught the appropriate amount of knowledge of the theory but should be protected from atheist preachers hijacking science lessons. No more, no less.

For that matter, there is no “macro-evolution” in science. Macro- and micro-evolution are terms ginned up by ID to distinguish evolution they believe in (diseases evolving resistance to antibiotics) and evolution they don’t.

That doesn’t make the terms illegitimate though. In fact, the term exists in science since scientists subscribing to ID do use the term.

Regarding flat earth and green cheese, both have been debunked and ought not be used if you want to be taken seriously.

Actually not because these never were claims brought forth in the realm of science. Green cheese is a joke and no one ever believed in a flat earth until the 20th century. So it was never garbage masking as science.

… that effectively makes the reporter into a “higher authority” than the rest of the public. The reporter determines what is “silly” and what is “right” and disallows publishing of what is “silly” and encourages publishing of what is “right.”

I agree with you about the effects and that such a behaviour on part of the reporter is detrimental to an open discussion but it is still not censorship. Censorship would be if the state intervened and told a reporter: “You cannot give equal time to IDers.”

Ideally, a reader can get information lacking from any report from another report, books or his own experience. I agree that many reporter all toeing the same line makes this problematic, but censorship it is not.

The difference to censorship is that no reporter is prevented from speaking out.

But Dave,

Freedom of the press is freedom to print what you want, not freedom to read what you want. It is the former that censorship violates.

I guess this is a misunderstanding due to your ambigous wording but

Freedom of the press is the freedom of the press to print not what YOU want but what the press wants.

Freedom of anyone to read what you want should be obvious to anyone. (Of course, this presupposes that what you want to read has been written in the first place.)

If someone tried to promote the green-cheese notion, astronmers (sic) and the geologists who have studied rocks retrieved from the Moon would label it nonsense and rule it out of the scientific canon, with no court of higher appeal.

Actually, that’s not how science is supposed to run. Nothing is ruled out of science like this. Other experts surely would speak out and voice their (scientifically based) opinion and if the larger part does that or is convinced that the new thesis is wrong, this thesis will not go anywhere.

And if doesn’t go anywhere, it will not enter the canons of institutions like schools and universities.

But nothing keeps our green-cheese-scientist from continuing to scientifcally work on his thesis.

Especially important if the new thesis is not as patently absurd a moon made out of green cheese. No thesis involved in this debate is that clearly absurd.

All too often, the First Amendment is invoked to defend the indefensible. As long as no one tries to legally ban anyone from speaking out, legal texts are irrelevant.

Shouldn’t then people like Dawkins be pushed towards acknowledging that their viewpoint is a religious belief?

Shouldn’t the outcry about them not doing so be at least as big as that about creation science?

And of courses you ignore that ID is actually put out there by scientists. Claims that ID is not science are ridiculous - it might be bad science and it certainly is no scientific theory (but rather picking holes into the Theory of Evolution) but science it is nonetheless.

And before you jump: I do not subscribe to ID.

Yes, if you re-define censorship you can use the word any way you want. Unfortunately this evacuates useful words of their meaning.

Your scenario of a voluntary media blackout on human-caused global-warming doubters would fall apart as those doubters began publishing their own broadsides, a venerable American custom vastly enabled by the Internet. It would not have the effect of a government ban on discussion.

We’re obviously operating on different wavelengths, so I don’t think we’ll settle this here. But briefly,

I am aware that if the government were to censor someone that would violate the freedom of the press. I am aware that if a person is not able to read whatever she wants, that does not violate the freedom of the press.

But join me in a thought experiment for a moment. Imagine that every news organization in America were to decide (for example), “Human-caused Global Warming is unquestionably proved by science. Therefore, any person who questions the idea of human-caused Global Warming is obviously wrong and, what is more, their message hinders efforts at avoiding this horrific catastrophe. Therefore, it is best for us, both scientifically and morally, to not give Global Warming skeptics any press.”

The effect of this choice would be that the vast majority of the public could no longer hear any debate concerning Global Warming. As a result, they would unquestioningly accept it as truth (which is, of course, the goal of the press).

But if this were to happen it would amount to or have the same effect as Government censoring publication of any anti-human-caused-Global-warming information. Thus, in my original post I wrote that it would already be, “censored in some respect.”

In other words, it would be de facto censored, even though not actually censored. No one’s rights would be violated but I still don’t think it would be a desirable state of affairs.

Therefore, I think that if there are two sides to a certain issue, and if both sides have some sort of logical argument, then both sides should be presented. If one side is refuted then it should be reported that they have been refuted, but it should not be entirely ignored as if there were only one side to the issue in the first place.

In any case, that’s all I have to say about that. I’ll let you have the last word and I’ll take your comment “off the air.”

Thanks for the dialogue,

Robert

My own position is that the kids […] ought to be advised that there is a controversy regarding macro-evolution

“Teach the controversy” is Intelligent Design Lite. It’s the ID fallback when they lose politically at the school board level. There is no controversy in science, so “teaching the controversy” in science class is improper.

For that matter, there is no “macro-evolution” in science. Macro- and micro-evolution are terms ginned up by ID to distinguish evolution they believe in (diseases evolving resistance to antibiotics) and evolution they don’t.

Regarding flat earth and green cheese, both have been debunked and ought not be used if you want to be taken seriously.

Gee, really? (sarcasm off) I use those concepts to demonstrate that there is such a thing as garbage disguised as science universally recognized as such, and remind folks how it should be dealt with.

Freedom of the press is freedom to print what you want, not freedom to read what you want. It is the former that censorship violates.

It properly denotes a higher authority allowing or denying a text to be published and disallowing all or parts of it.

What I am saying is that when a reporter feels that he/she has the ability to judge by him/herself the ultimate correctness of a certain position, that effectively makes the reporter into a “higher authority” than the rest of the public. The reporter determines what is “silly” and what is “right” and disallows publishing of what is “silly” and encourages publishing of what is “right.”

The effect this has on the mind of the public is no different than that of censorship of any other sort. The public gets one point of view that is assumed to be the correct point of view and therefore sees anyone who might be going against the mainstream presentation as “disruptive” at a minimum and “dangerous” at a maximum. People who think in such ways have not been informed, they have been brainwashed. Why? Because they cannot argue against the “disruptive” or the “dangerous” all they can do is parrot the dismissive attitude about them that they see in the mainstream media.

The end result is that the media themselves are the censors on what is “appropriate” for public consumption.

But if all a textbook does is describe it as a natural process, then that wouldn’t trouble me, not any more than when a textbook describes childbirth or continental drift as a natural process. After all, that’s not explicitly ruling out supernatural involvement, it’s just giving the scientific explanation and stopping at that.