Posted on 06/22/2003 5:29:39 PM PDT by Aric2000
In Cobb County, Ga., controversy erupted this spring when school board officials decided to affix "disclaimer stickers" to science textbooks, alerting students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."
The stickers were the Cobb County District School Board's response to intelligent design theory, which holds that the complexity of DNA and the diversity of life forms on our planet and beyond can be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent. The ID movement -- reminiscent of creationism but more nuanced and harder to label -- has been quietly gaining momentum in a number of states for several years, especially Georgia and Ohio.
Stickers on textbooks are only the latest evidence of the ID movement's successes to date, though Cobb County officials did soften their position somewhat in September following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. In a subsequent policy statement, officials said the biological theory of evolution is a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other, religious teachings.
Surely, few would begrudge ID advocates their views or the right to discuss the concept as part of religious studies. At issue, rather, is whether ID theory, so far unproven by scientific facts, should be served to students on the same platter with the well-supported theory of evolution.
How the Cobb County episode will affect science students remains uncertain since, as the National Center for Science Education noted, the amended policy statement included "mixed signals."
But it's clear that the ID movement is quickly emerging as one of the more significant threats to U.S. science education, fueled by a sophisticated marketing campaign based on a three-pronged penetration of the scientific community, educators and the general public.
In Ohio, the state's education board on Oct. 14 passed a unanimous though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But the board's ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."
In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."
Undaunted by tens of thousands of e-mails it has already received on the topic, the state's education board is now gamely inviting further public comment through November. In December, Ohio's Board of Education will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels.
Meanwhile, ID theorists reportedly have been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey and other states as well as Ohio and Georgia.
What do scientists think of all this? We have great problems with the claim that ID is a scientific theory or a science-based alternative to evolutionary theory. We don't question its religious or philosophical underpinnings. That's not our business. But there is no scientific evidence underlying ID theory.
No relevant research has been done; no papers have been published in scientific journals. Because it has no science base, we believe that ID theory should be excluded from science curricula in schools.
In fact, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world, passed a resolution this month urging policy-makers to keep intelligent design theory out of U.S. science classrooms.
Noting that the United States has promised to "leave no child behind," the AAAS Board found that intelligent design theory -- if presented within science courses as factually based -- is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and undermine the integrity of U.S. science education. At a time when standards-based learning and performance assessments are paramount, children would be better served by keeping scientific information separate from religious concepts.
Certainly, American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints and the scientific community is no exception. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, science and conceptual belief systems should not be co-mingled, as ID proponents have repeatedly proposed.
The ID argument that random mutations in nature and natural selection, for example, are too complex for scientific explanation is an interesting -- and for some, highly compelling -- philosophical or theological concept. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution, and it isn't based on science. In sum, there's no data to back it up, and no way of scientifically testing the validity of the ideas proposed by ID advocates.
The quality of U.S. science education is at stake here. We live in an era when science and technology are central to every issue facing our society -- individual and national security, health care, economic prosperity, employment opportunities.
Children who lack an appropriate grounding in science and mathematics, and who can't discriminate what is and isn't evidence, are doomed to lag behind their well-educated counterparts. America's science classrooms are certainly no place to mix church and state.
Alan I. Leshner is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science; www.aaas.org
In another thread, in response to this same claim of yours, I posted evidence that I think provides very strong support indeed, not just for evolution in general, but also for the specific claim that humans and apes share a common ancestry.
I remind you of this because you are still making this 'no evidence for evolution' claim without having shared your thoughts on the apparent fusion in the human number 2 chromosome. You can find links to the relavant messages in that other thread by scrolling up to message #535 in this thread.
I can remember the lists of scientists that the ICR and AiG and others toss out there of "scientists who doubt evolution". I think that Project Steve" is an appropriate response to those claims. Project Steve is a list of scientists (named Steve, obviously) who agree that evolution is a viable scientific theory. 220+ Steves, to be exact. If you go with the logic that 1 out of 100 men is named Steve (an over estimate?), than there are tens of thousands of scientists who support evolution, compared to the few hundreds who AiG regularly compiles.
The point behind Project Steve is to show that the ICR and AiG lists are fallacies. Science is not a democracy (or any political system for that matter), however, evidence is king. And right now, the evidence points toward evolution (a blend of Punctuated Equilibrium and Gradualism, to be exact).
Man in black: Get used to disappointment.
(The Princess Bride, "The Fencing Match")
It exists as a minority hypothesis within evolutionary theory. And even as such, it has limited application. Most living things are single celled, and their evolution is directly observable. For instance, you can start a bacteria colony from a single individual, and produce colonies resistent to antibiotics in a matter of weeks through mutation and selection.
LOL. You mean like religion, where there is absolute consensus. Interesting that the Gospel of Thomas, an eyewitness to Jesus, didn't make it into the Bible.
Appeals to "what we all know" so often are just begging the question.
I think you're confusing being pig-ignorant with being "knowledgeable."
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