Biology textbook hearings prompt science disputes [Texas]

FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) -
The long-running debate over the origins of mankind continues Wednesday before the Texas State Board of Education, and the result could change the way science is taught here and across the nation.

Local and out-of-state lobbying groups will try to convince the board that the next generation of biology books should contain new scientific evidence that reportedly pokes holes in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Many of those groups say that they are not pushing to place a divine creator back into science books, but to show that Darwin's theory is far from a perfect explanation of the origin of mankind.

"It has become a battle ground," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of theNational Center of Science Education, which is dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom.

Almost 45 scientists, educators and special interest groups from across the state will testify at the state's first public hearing this year on the next generation of textbooks for the courses of biology, family and career studies and English as a Second Language.

Approved textbooks will be available for classrooms for the 2004-05 school year. And because Texas is the second largest textbook buyer in the nation, the outcome could affect education nationwide.

The Texas Freedom Network and a handful of educators held a conference call last week to warn that conservative Christians and special interest organizations will try to twist textbook content to further their own views.

"We are seeing the wave of the future of religious right's attack on basic scientific principles," said Samantha Smoot, executive director of the network, an anti-censorship group and opponent of the radical right.

Those named by the network disagree with the claim, including the Discovery Institute and its Science and Culture Center of Seattle.

"Instead of wasting time looking at motivations, we wish people would look at the facts," said John West, associate director of the center.

"Our goal nationally is to encourage schools and educators to include more about evolution, including controversies about various parts of Darwinian theory that exists between even evolutionary scientists," West said. "We are a secular think tank."

The institute also is perhaps the nation's leading proponent of intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have occurred without the help of an unknown, intelligent being.

It pushed this view through grants to teachers and scientists, including Michael J. Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The Institute receives millions of dollars from philanthropists and foundations dedicated to discrediting Darwin's theory.

The center sent the state board a 55-page report that graded 11 high school biology textbooks submitted for adoption. None earned a grade above a C minus. The report also includes four arguments it says show that evolutionary theory is not as solid as presented in biology textbooks.

Discovery Institute Fellow Raymond Bohlin, who also is executive director of Probe Ministries, based in Richardson, Texas, will deliver that message in person Wednesday before the State Board of Education. Bohlin has a doctorate degree in molecular cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas.

"If we can simply allow students to see that evolution is not an established fact, that leaves freedom for students to pursue other ideas," Bohlin said. "All I can do is continue to point these things out and hopefully get a group that hears and sees relevant data and insist on some changes."

The executive director of Texas Citizens for Science, Steven Schafersman, calls the institute's information "pseudoscience nonsense." Schafersman is an evolutionary scientist who, for more than two decades, taught biology, geology, paleontology and environmental science at a number of universities, including the University of Houston and the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

"It sounds plausible to people who are not scientifically informed," Schafersman said. "But they are fraudulently trying to deceive board members. They might succeed, but it will be over the public protests of scientists."

The last time Texas looked at biology books, in 1997, the State Board of Education considered replacing them all with new ones that did not mention evolution. The board voted down the proposal by a slim margin.

The state requires that evolution be in textbooks. But arguments against evolution have been successful over the last decade in other states. Alabama, New Mexico and Nebraska made changes that, to varying degrees, challenge the pre-eminence of evolution in the scientific curriculum.

In 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to wash the concepts of evolution from the state's science curricula. A new state board has since put evolution back in. Last year, the Cobb County school board in Georgia voted to include creationism in science classes.

Texas education requirements demand that textbooks include arguments for and against evolution, said Neal Frey, an analyst working with perhaps Texas' most famous textbook reviewers, Mel and Norma Gabler.

The Gablers, of Longview, have been reviewing Texas textbooks for almost four decades. They describe themselves as conservative Christians. Some of their priorities include making sure textbooks include scientific flaws in arguments for evolution.

"None of the texts truly conform to the state's requirements that the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories be presented to students," Frey said.

The Texas textbook proclamation of 2001, which is part of the standard for the state's curriculum, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, requires that biology textbooks instruct students so they may "analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weakness using scientific evidence and information."

The state board is empowered to reject books only for factual errors or for not meeting the state's curriculum requirements. If speakers convince the state board that their evidence is scientifically sound, members may see little choice but to demand its presence in schoolbooks.

Proposed books already have been reviewed and approved by Texas Tech University. After a public hearing Wednesday and another Sept. 10, the state board is scheduled to adopt the new textbooks in November.

Satisfying the state board is only half the battle for textbook publishers. Individual school districts choose which books to use and are reimbursed by the state unless they buy texts rejected by the state board.

Districts can opt not to use books with passages they find objectionable. So when speakers at the public hearings criticize what they perceived as flaws in various books - such as failing to portray the United States or Christianity in a positive light - many publishers listen.

State Board member Terri Leo said the Discovery Institute works with esteemed scientists and that their evidence should be heard.

"You cannot teach students how to think if you don't present both sides of a scientific issue," Leo said. "Wouldn't you think that the body that has the responsibility of what's in the classroom would look at all scientific arguments?"

State board member Bob Craig said he had heard of the Intelligent Design theory.

"I'm going in with an open mind about everybody's presentation," Craig said. "I need to hear their presentation before I make any decisions or comments.

State board member Mary Helen Berlanga said she wanted to hear from local scientists.

"If we are going to discuss scientific information in the textbooks, the discussion will have to remain scientific," Berlanga said. "I'd like to hear from some of our scientists in the field on the subject."

Why should I comply with a demand that is solely yours and which bears no relation to anything I wrote

I was simply asking you to prove your anti-Christian statements when you said:

."And it is certainly true that a number of Christian denominations which are currently the most vocally anti-evolution were in the past segregationist and even racist."

Simple pulling out racist statements from a few individuals or holding up the southern Baptist group during the civil war doesn't prove your broad-brushed, anti-Christian remarks.

Is there any explanation other than common descent for the fact that people, chimps, gorillas, et al all share the exact same mutation that prevents the formation of vitamin C?

and your point is? Hopefully you are not saying that sharing of a gene proves, for example, that man evolved from a chimp? There is, of course, no evidence of any species evolving into another species.

I can assure you that huge numbers of mainstream churches were racist, openly and publicly, as recently as 1960. I heard their preachers on the radio and listened to the results of their preaching among my classmates at school. If you had been in school in the south in 1954, you would have heard things that would end the career and social life of anyone who repeated them today.

The orignal point I was trying to make to the prof, was that not all Christians were racist. In my opinion, most were not. For every racist preacher on the radio, I contend there were ten who were not racist.

Robert May is a UK Chief Scientist. In New Scientist magazine (July 1, 2000) on page 5 he stated, “We share half our genes with the banana.” One can only guess (with a fertile imagination) what the common ancestor between people and bananas looked like! In addition, there are fish that have 40% the same DNA as people, but hopefully no evolutionist would claim that the fish are 40% human – or people are half bananas.

If you do NOT believe like we do, then you are the enemy and we will destroy you in any way, shape, manner, or form that we can.

That's not the attitude of most, or even many, fundamentalists in America, and I think you know that. I'll grant that there is a totalism lurkering there that could be dangerous in a certain time or place, but we are not, in this country, in that time or in that place. To not acknowledge that religious conservatives, even those with their occassionaly bone-headed ideas, are part of this society, and have made and continue it make deep contributions to it, is churlish.

RWP has suspended his active membership on FR.

???

Has this always been on his home page?

It's my understanding there is a Vedic/Hindu antievolution movement also. I don't have much of that in my literature collection, just one book from the Krishna Consciousness folks. They object to evolution, among other reasons, because it contradicts reincarnation. This stems from Vedic literalism. The Vedas (apparently) precisely number the "species of life": two million something, IIRC. It's the soul that evolves, and moves from species to species, like we move from one house to another. Species don't evolve. It's as ridiculous as a house spontaneously adding rooms to itself, or so the organge clad ones aver.

A "1000+ posts without a flamewar" placemarker.

It's not too late! :-)

Not that I've been around much... but ya'll have a great weekend. Mine is starting early and I'll be out of town and on the beach in Capitola California.

One of the last times I was in Capitola I met some folks from Northern California. From the Santa Cruz Bay looking West they asked me if that was Hawaii out there. Um, they were in a bay looking across the bay at Monterey/Carmel. I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe I'll see f.Christian if I look long and hard. :-)

Hey scripter, I just read your home page...thanks for posting the story about the birds.

Before I accepted Jesus as my personal saviour, we were 'church shopping' and we went to this one church only a few times...it was small, nice, a fading congregation, a melancholy group. The pastor was trying to reach them but wasn't connecting and you could tell.

He told this story one Sunday. It really hit me. It was the final stop before acceptance, which came a few months later when we found our home church we were searching for.

Enjoy the weekend and many prayers and blessings for you!

.. There is, of course, no evidence of any species evolving into another species...

Sharing the same mutation (it prevents the gene from coding for a useful enzyme) is evidence of common ancestry. How else could it have happened? The odds are astronomical that the *exact same* mutation happened independently in different organisms.

are you claiming that the designer had lousy quality control? That he let a bad gene into creatures that *just happened* to appear to be related on anatomical, etc, grounds?

It's the same logic used in copyright cases - if the alleged copy has the same **mistakes** as the original, it really is a copy.

Funny ...

I use to live on the west coast --- Oregon and Calfornia --- and the pacific ocean was the extent of my universe - comprehension !

hmmmmmm ... now it's the new heavens - earth --- designeduniverse.com !

"Scary isn't it?

If they had the chance they would NOT hesitate.

It would be the dark ages ALL over again.

Frightening thought. "

chicken little chihuahua

..We share half our genes with the banana...

And with all other eukaryotes.

How many mutations do we share with bananas? As I said above, the common mistakes are evidence of common ancestry.

A little research will show you that it's not just the pseudo-gene needed for vitamin C synthesis that we share with the (other) great apes. There are quite a few. Way to many for any other explanation to fly, unless the designer had very bad quality control.

One can only guess (with a fertile imagination) what the common ancestor between people and bananas looked like!

"To: ALS

awaiting a reasoned response to #202

I wasn't aware my opinions mattered so much to you. However, since you've turned down my attempts to draw you into a debate on science in the past, I will have to turn down your attempte to debate on politics on this thread. Unless, of course, you'd actually like to debate science."

translate that: Evolution is neither science or politics, and I can't give a reasoned response to post #202, so all I can do is continue insulting the intelligence of everyone including my feeble attempt at one.

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