Posted on 10/18/2003 4:43:10 AM PDT by Zender500
Some people think evolution should not be mentioned at all in public schools, while others think any evidence that may contradict evolution should not be allowed.
Both views reflect poor science, and if either side wins, students will lose. Unfortunately, that's just what might happen in Minnesota.
Although many people view Darwinian evolution as a valid explanation, others have begun questioning parts of this theory.
For example, a growing number of prominent biologists are signing on to the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
Written in 2001 to encourage open-mindedness within the scientific community, the statement has been supported by Nobel Prize nominee Fritz Schaeffer, Smithsonian Institution molecular biologist Richard Sternberg and Stanley Salthe, author of "Evolutionary Biology."
Minnesota is setting new content standards for K-12 science education. Committees have written a draft of these standards and, along with Education Commissioner Cheri Yecke, are inviting feedback from people like you at public hearings and through e-mail letters. (See The Minnesota Department of Education for information and a copy of the standards.)
I commend the standards committee for its emphasis on knowledge and the scientific method. However, I'm concerned that some citizens and committee members want Darwinian evolution taught as undisputed fact while prohibiting any critical analysis of this and other scientific theories. This is no less biased than those who do not want evolution mentioned at all. History reveals how such suppression of data actually hinders science, while honest inquiry promotes it.
For example, the Earth-centered theory of the solar system proposed by Ptolemy in the first century was upheld as absolute truth for 1,500 years. Unfortunately, the church suppressed the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and others who challenged this theory with scientific evidence. Isaac Newton's publication about gravity and the sun-centered theory in 1687 finally overcame this bias and exposed the Earth-centered theory as dogma, not scientific fact.
Faith in God influenced these latter four scientists' pursuit of scientific discovery, so their conflict was not with religion but rather with bias against other theories. Those who would forbid any challenges to Darwinian theory are displaying this same kind of partiality.
Instead of answering these challenges with evidence that supports their theory, some defenders of "evolution-only" are taking another tactic accusing all critics of trying to bring religion into the classroom. However, critical scientific analysis of Darwinian evolution is not religion, and exploration of all the facts should be encouraged.
Such exploration exemplifies the scientific method, which begins with observation and leads to a hypothesis (an educated guess that tries to explain the observation). This hypothesis is then tested, and if test results contradict the hypothesis, it is discarded or revised. A hypothesis that has been tested and supported by large amounts of data becomes a theory. A theory that withstands rigorous testing by independent scientists over time eventually becomes a scientific law.
All theories and even scientific laws must be tentative. For example, who would have thought Newton's Laws could ever be contradicted? Yet, Einstein and other scientists found that these laws could not explain certain complex problems.
Quantum mechanics became the new guiding principle, though Newton's Laws are sufficiently accurate for most aspects of daily activity.
The scientific method that has been so instrumental in advancing science requires that all scientific theories and even scientific laws at least be open to further testing. We should not be afraid to question and analyze scientific evidence; data that is valid will stand the tests.
We have the opportunity to set responsible and rigorous standards for science education in Minnesota. We should help students practice the scientific method in all areas of science, including the study of evolution let's not encourage them to violate it.
Geez don't you know how to even spell your own name?
This is one of the problems with evolutionary theory. On the one hand it says that species change in order to conform to changes in the environment, on the other it says that these changes are gradual and take a long time. Now, environmental changes affecting species include other species around them and of course a new species moving into an area which it previously did not inhabit can cause great destruction. This is one of the reasons for strong controls on importation of animals and plants from different countries - they often destroy existing species, they do not cause them to mutate and survive. This is just another example where commonly known and commonly applied scientific principles show evolution to be false.
Absolute garbage. The introduction of new species into an environment invariably results in destruction of species which previously inhabited there, not in their mutation and survival. This is a very common occurrence nowadays because of international travel and it has shown that this evolutionary claim is totally false.
The environment changes way too fast for species to be able to evolve new abilities to survive them. If this were so, with the rapid changes that occur in the environment which take place in most cases in less than a year, we would have been able to see numerous transformations of species to adapt to these changes in the last 150 years. Instead evolutionists cannot point to a single such change having occurred.
Evolution (of course it is not a scientific theory). By denying that man is little different from apes, chimps and lower species it denies that creative intelligence exists.
Of course it is. NOthing can be both true and false. The proposition that species transform themselves through gradual random events sifted through natural selection has already been proven false by science. It is impossible for a system to gradually evolve when for it to function in a beneficial way (and thus survive natural selection) requires that the entire system be in place. Gradual and together at once are opposites so both cannot be true. Thus not only is the proposition of the truth of evolution falsifiable, it has been falsified already.
Atheism is a religious view and when atheism is promoted in the name of science one is mixing science and religion. This is exactly what evolution and evolutionists are doing.
What all the questions asked by Hank have to do with it is that if life is due to special creation and evolution is false then we certainly are unique and made in the image of God, not of chimps. The scientific evidence of human capacities certainly shows the vast gulf between humans and chimps.
No, that is your opinion. Biologists have to have a means to naturally explain the origin of life. Evolution, as imperfect as it is, does that. You cannot have real science without that. That is as impossible as maintaining a free market economy without lax social controls.
Evolution is not based on faith. It is a scientific theory and thus is either based on some proven fact or it is discarded.
Are you making the pagan assertion that God looks like a male human? What race is God? Is God white? Black? Dark skinned arab or a stereotype of what Jews are "supposed to look like?" Or maybe God looks like a typical person from China.
But maybe, just maybe, being created in the image of has nothing to do with body and mind but spirit.
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