click the pic
And don't forget the RACIST Christian BASHING statement in post #561
Posted on 07/09/2003 12:08:32 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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.
New books will be distributed next summer.
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."
Better see a doctor, I think you've got more problems than most of us ever dream of.
That is Ad Hominem.
Ditto...even before this latest embarassment.
A protein is something that is used by cells, that does not say anything about what it is.
Are you arguing that cells have a will? Even whackier.
And cyanide causes death. Is it a murderer? This is not law school.(This is an Ad Hominem jab like your whacky comment)
Me too. Have for almost 5 years. You are a good recent addition...too many of the other recent additions are not.
This issue divides families, friends, so no suprise that it will divide Republicans...I don't know what will happen with FR, but when I read the passion some of these folks have for a 'theory', it would not suprise me if they protect that belief with whatever it takes...so switching party affiliation would be a minor detail.
Maybe they already have and don't realize it...anyway, you heard it here first.
Thanks and good night...it's been fun.
That is ridiculous. We have a passion for the truth and for reason. The divide goes deeper than just evolution: It's a question of where morality comes from. Creationist conservatives think there is no moral code that people can converge upon by examining the real world. Ironically, in this they agree with postmodernist deconstructionists! But where po-mos are happy to live in their world of competing, totally subjective "texts", creationists want there to be a deus-ex-machina god to come down to Earth and impose his morality upon us. A Deus-ex-machinocracy, if you will.
Evolutionist conservatives, OTOH, think morality is a concept that flows naturally from the facts of human nature, and as such there is indeed a single, objective morality which is best for all people to follow. The problem is, it's not self-evident, but must be learned through hard experience, and analyzed through our capacity for reason.
Both creationist & evolutionist conservatives believe humans need a single set of consistent moral codes to live by for civilization to flourish - so there should be some common ground for us as conservatives - and indeed there is, when we come together on other day-to-day subjects, such as supporting the war in Iraq, etc.
This issue evokes such passion with me because now that Communism has collapsed, creationists want to distract the conservative movement into a totally useless side-issue which is an embarrassment to the movement, and if successful would do great harm to America's science profession. Not to mention giving the liberals & leftists (remember them?) a great gaping hole through which to charge and stage a major comeback.
As long as you creationists keep trying to wedge the religious doctrine of creationism into public schools' science classes, this divisive issue will not go away. That is not our fault.
I have no idea. I missed the last 40 posts. I hit the abuse button to request removal of the post Jesse Shurum made where he directly accused me of Jew-baiting (?!?), but that was much earlier in the day & nothing ever happened with that.
As long as you keep defining any attempt at exposing the weaknesses and flaws of Darwininian "science" as an attempt at teaching creationism it will remain a divisive issue.
I wonder if this thread will still exist when I'm back.
Yes, human nature will govern itself morally. Ever look around at all the nations degenerating into tribal states, where the ones with the most firepower subjugates the rest?
This reads like a call for the State to take control and your ideal society is nothing more than Communism
Not all of them are equally obtuse. Michael Behe, who is mentioned in the article, has said that he has no real problem with common descent (that diverse, and possibly all, biological organisms are ultimately connected by normal reproduction). Behe believes that an "intelligent designer" is only required as the author of certain key adaptations at the microscopic or molecular level.
I've talked (years ago, long before ID came on the scene) with another figure mentioned in the article, Ray Bohlin (then of Probe Ministries in Dallas). He agreed with me that the leaders of a local creationist organization, which he was lecturing to, taught their followers great heaping piles of nonsense. He didn't tell them that, naturally, but he did gently correct common creationist misrepresentations of punctuated equilibrium. He privately told me that he considered it "entirely possible" that common descent is "substantially correct".
Back in the day, when ICR founder Henry Morris (to a large extent) ran the creationist movement, wielding an iron fist in favor of strict biblical literalism, these ID'ers would have been loudly denounced as heritics and "compromisers".
Although it is vacous scientifically, the ID movement is a brilliant strategic ploy as it allows the (still more numerous) strict creationists to work with more "reasonable" and sophisticated "God of the gaps" types, and put them forward in venues like textbook hearings as a more publicly palatable supplement to fulminating fundamentalists.
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