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Pseudoscience permeates Florida society today. This includes UFOs, crystals,
ghosts, alternative medicine and a host of other unscientific belief systems.
These belief systems are unscientific and reflect the unproved belief
that there is something magical about our universe that goes beyond the
physical laws that govern the natural world.
One of the most dangerous pseudosciences is creationism or its beguiling
cousin Intelligent Design. It denies one of the fundamental principles
of biology - evolution. It denies that every living creature on this planet
evolved from prior living creatures. Evolution occurs because of the need
for organisms to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. Natural
selection allows this adaptation. The denial of this natural process assumes
that God is responsible for the complexity and diversity of life on our
planet. That is religion, not science.
One proponent of creationism is the Florida K-12 Chancellor Cheri Yecke.
Yes, she will preside over the process of creating science standards.
If that does not terrify supporters of science, read the next paragraph.
In Minnesota, she tried to weaken the language on evolution in final
draft of the science standards. After the citizens committee that was
preparing the standards complained, the offending language was removed
(http://austringer.net/wp/?p=160). We hope that she has learned her lesson,
but we cannot sit on our laurels and hope that she will not try this again.
We must watch her and other Florida creationists who may try to introduce
creationism into the science standards. If anything, the coverage of evolution
in the science standards should be strengthened, not weakened.
Without strong science education, people will not have the knowledge
and critical thinking skills to properly evaluate the pseudoscientific
claims that bombard them every day. People must understand the scientific
process and why it is the superior method for understanding the natural
world. They must understand the basic principles of science so that they
can question claims that violates these principles. Finally, they must
learn critical thinking so that they will question pseudoscientific claims
and only accept proper evidence before they accept the claim.
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