'Intelligent design' theory threatens science classrooms

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

Thank you for your reply!

Bzzzt. No prize. No evidence. No truth. Insect eyes are way different from hunman eyses. Dog eyes and human eyes differ in color sensitivity and construction. On and on I could go. Cats respond to movement in the field of vision, dogs see both movement and still objects. Some insects see ultraviolet wave lengths that we do not, and some see heat.

Perhaps it would be more clear to have this excerpt from the link at post 544 (emphasis mine):

Master Eye Gene Found

A single gene has been identified that appears to control the growth and development of eyes throughout the animal kingdom, report Swiss researchers.

The 'eyeless' gene is believed to be a master control gene for the growth and development of eyes. The Swiss researchers demonstrated their hypothesis in a dramatic series of experiments in which they induced fly eyes to grow on the wings, legs and antennae of Drosophila fruit flies. They accomplished this by carefully targeting the expression of the eyeless gene. The resulting eyes grew in complete with active photoreceptors and resembled normal fly eyes. One fly had 14 eyes growing out of various parts of its anatomy….

Homologs of the eyeless gene found in Drosophila have also been found in a variety of vertebrates (including homo sapiens), insects, cephalopod, ascidians and nemerteans. The homolog of the eyeless gene of Drosophila is called the aniridia gene in humans and Pax-6 in mice. The genes all have much in common, including extensive sequence identity, the same three intron splice sites, and similar expression during development.

So what would happen if a mouse eye gene was introduced into a fruit fly genome? When the researchers induced expression of the mouse Pax-6 gene in the Drosophila fruit fly, additional (fly) eyes sprouted at the sites of the gene expression.

"The observation that mammals and insects, which have evolved separately for more than 500 million years, share the same master control gene for eye morphogenesis indicates that the genetic control mechanisms of development are much more universal than anticipated," note the researchers.

And the reverse experiment worked as well:

Conservation of Pax 6 function and upstream activation by Notch signaling in eye development of frogs and flies.

Loss of Pax 6 function leads to an eyeless phenotype in both mammals and insects, and ectopic expression of both the Drosophila and the mouse gene leads to the induction of ectopic eyes in Drosophila, which suggested to us that Pax 6 might be a universal master control gene for eye morphogenesis. Here, we report the reciprocal experiment in which the RNAs of the Drosophila Pax 6 homologs, eyeless and twin of eyeless, are transferred into a vertebrate embryo; i.e., early Xenopus embryos at the 2- and 16-cell stages. In both cases, ectopic eye structures are formed.

To understand the genetic program specifying eye morphogenesis, we have analyzed the regulatory mechanisms of Pax 6 expression that initiates eye development. Previously, we have demonstrated that Notch signaling regulates the expression of eyeless and twin of eyeless in Drosophila. Here, we show that in Xenopus, activation of Notch signaling also induces eye-related gene expression, including Pax 6, in isolated animal caps. In Xenopus embryos, the activation of Notch signaling causes eye duplications and proximal eye defects, which are also induced by overexpression of eyeless and twin of eyeless. These findings indicate that the gene regulatory cascade is similar in vertebrates and invertebrates.

The issue was discussed exhaustively on another thread. The summary of the discussion is what I posted at 544.

To repeat the summary for Lurkers:

The current "issue" is that genetic mechanisms for development and adaptation of functional biological systems, such as eyes, are evidently virtually identical across phyla, indicating that either:

they were present in a common ancestor (evolution biology) or
they are pre-programmed in ancestors (intelligent design) or
they are a common building block (creationism.)

Notably, if they were present in a common ancestor, it would indicate that the mechanism, such as eyeness, existed long before it would be used.

This runs contrary to the classical evolution hypothesis that the branches of the "tree of life" developed as a result of random mutations. It may however be explained by automata – autonomous self-organizing complexity (tortoise, Wolfram, Rocha, Pattee.)

But the methodology whereby such a mechanism could arise has not yet been ascertained.

YOU will get the thread pulled, just as you got G3K's thread pulled.

No it is not ALS that is getting threads pulled, it is the evolutionists with their constant insults who start crying when they get a dose of the medicine they use on everyone else. You folks start crying and screaming to the mod each time you folks start losing on a thread.

It might be fun to see just how many such bandwidth-eating images Junior post 651.

Seems the above has always been a favorite of evos when losing.

I ain't the one running off to the AM to get posts I find uncomfortable pulled #657 by Junior - well you have plenty of friends to do that don't you? Like Aric and Radio.

Another graduate of the G3K Institute of Technology (GIT). 660 by RightWingNilla. I am not even on the thread and you guys defame me.

What does the ol' Holy Writ say about false witness? Or are the rules suspended in Holy Wars? -678 by VadeRetro - the usual evo/atheist despicable insult at Christians

Maybe you folks like to live in a sewer but some of us like to intelligently discuss things. You guys obviously do not care for decency or discussion, you just like to pollute the threads with garbage to drive both the lurkers and those who disagree with you away. This is the behavior of thugs, not scientists. This is the behavior of ideologues, not that of people with open minds. This is the behavior of those who wish to silence discussion not that of those who want to indulge in civilized discourse.

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