Silly Little Country

Toronto Separate School Board versus The Vatican Astronomer

Bob Parks' item 4 from his Nov 18 weekly report reports the following, also confirmed here:

Earlier today, the Rev. George Coyne, the director of the Vatican Observatory said that "intelligent design" is not science and does not belong in science classrooms. This seemed to put the chief astronomer firmly on the side of Cardinal Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture and orthogonal to Austrian Cardinal Schoenborn (WN 8 Jul 05), and perhaps to Pope Benedict XVI, as we saw last week.

Now this is a little depressing to me. In an earlier post I cited this article ($$ needed - I don't recommend spending them), in which we discover that the Toronto Separate School Board (a separate state-funded school system for Roman Catholics) supports a curriculum that teaches Intelligent Design as science. Perhaps they should all be talking to one another?

It is worse; the same article profiles a teacher in the system who cites arguments so stupid that perhaps even most proponents of Intelligent Design would not dare to use them in public. The biggest laugher cited was that "three-quarters of an eyeball is no good". It seems three quarters of a brain might be enough to get some good jobs.

My right eye is pretty fractional right now, but still quite useful in lots of contexts and without it I could be walking into walls. When human science and engineering finally get their chance to work on it (i.e. when the ludicrously unnecessary queues for cataract surgery in our glorious healthcare system finally let me get to what's needed) I expect things to improve.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:19 PM