Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."
The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.
A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."
See my second post...you're getting hung up on the technical details of the two.
What you personally suspect is neither here nor there - what matters is which interpretation is supported by the evidence. As you probably know, anthropoid primates all have the same genetic defect that causes a lack of the L-GLO enzyme, preventing them from synthesizing ascorbic acid. In this case, the hypothesis that the common defect is a result of common descent - inheritance from a common ancestor - is supported by what we already know about common descent through cladistics and the fossil record. What evidence is there to support the hypothesis that this common defect is actually the result of multiple discrete events, occurring in each and every species that exhibits the defect?
Evolution should not feel so threatened by ID as to go so far as to censor it. I thought democracy was suppose to be a market place of open ideas.
So far, evolutionists have only proven one theory, that they are scared spitless at the thought of both being taught.
Sorry, the notion of universal common descent (of every organism from a single, or few putative ancestors, including human from earlier non-human ancestors) is not evidence, it is an interpretation of evidence. Explanations are not evidence.
Cordially,
No, Miss Pie, you do not understand what Coyoteman is saying.
Science does not censor or attempt to censor religion. Scientists simply want to teach science in science classes. No scientist I have ever heard of has wanted to enter a church to censor what goes on there.
Sure wish I could collect £5 for every time I have seen this quote out of context. Just try google on the quote, and the first two pages of hits are from 'Creation Science' or similar websites.
But you have to find the original to get the balance of the paragraph, to wit:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions.
My emphasis. The next paragraph goes on:
The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against. [(Francis Crick, Life Itself, Its Origin and Nature, 1981, p. 88)]
As am I. How sad to find that my scientific education lies forever mired in ignorance, all for the missing of a TV show!
:-)
Of course. Science forces one to take a position and defend it. The so-called "intelligent design" movement is political in nature, it is not scientific. ID is such a big tent, that it is not useful to science. It cannot take a stand. It must be purposely vague, because if it weren't a big tent the various theologies that oppose evolutionary theory would not be able to unite beneath it. Various supporters of creationism are far more divergent in their beliefs than mainstream scientists. Young earth creationism cannot be reconciled with old earth creationism which cannot be reconciled with intelligently designed common descent. ID really says nothing. It is a framework constructed in such a way as to be acceptable to all. It can't say anything, because if it did it would cease to be a unifying glue among anti-evolutionists. All ID says is that somewhere, some time ago, something happened, but whatever it was that happened wasn't evolution.
It is. High school science classes are not.
See #120
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1617533/posts?page=120#120
Also see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1617533/posts?page=96#96
and
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1617533/posts?page=11#11
So true, so true. Fundamentalism thrives in the climate of chaos. Gosh, if only I could think of an example of this...
No but science will enter a public school and censor ID. No where in our Constitution or laws is religion excluded from the public square and confined to a church building.
Opposing theories such as ID have just as valid a place in the classroom as science's also unproven theories. They don't have to be taught in the same classroom if it makes scientist's queezy. But is has a right to be taught also.
I totally agree. Why do you think I included it? And why do you think I included a link to my profile page which provides hot links to the two Galileo / crevo-evo items??? DUH!!
So students leave their civil rights, democracy, and national sovereignty at the door when they enter the school building...I have noticed that, and that is why my son no longer attends.
Go find a thread on teaching ID in a philosophy class. You won't see many objections, if any at all.
Anything is omitted from a science class that is not science. Art Appreciation and Civics, for instance. That is simply because what is taught in a science class is supposed to be science.
Do you find this a difficult concept?
Sorry, but I have really tried--and completely failed--to distinguish your point here from the standard liberal special pleading for marginal points of view, which rips through educational institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Place the scientific literature (= the evidence) for ToE in one pan of the scales, and the scientific literature for Creationism in the other: the scales do not come close to balancing. But you hold that Creationism/ID is somehow "entitled" to 'equal time'?
Here (UK), large portions of British history are no longer taught in secondary schools because it is "imperialistic" and "Euro-centric." Well, that's because the British Empire was (for better and for worse) precisely those things, too bad if that offends some people!
Anything is omitted from science class that is not science, except theory of course.
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