Posted on 11/01/2003 4:14:09 AM PST by I Am Not A Mod
AUSTIN -- Texas will be under the microscope this week in the fight over teaching evolution in public schools as the State Board of Education votes on adopting biology textbooks that have been at the center of the debate.
The board meets Thursday and Friday and is set to consider proposed changes submitted by 11 publishers. The board's decisions -- which could determine which textbooks publishers offer to dozens of states -- will end a review process that has been marked by months of heated debate over the theory of evolution.
Religious activists and proponents of alternative science urged publishers to revise some of the 10th-grade books and want the board to reject others, saying they contain factual errors regarding the theory of evolution. Mainstream scientists assert that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a cornerstone of modern research and technology.
Board members can only vote to reject books based on factual errors or failure to follow state curriculum as mandated by the Legislature.
"There's a bait and switch going on here because the critics want the textbooks to question whether evolution occurred. And of course they don't because scientists don't question whether evolution occurred," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the California-based National Center for Science Education.
Among those questioning the textbooks are about 60 biologists from around the country who signed a "statement of dissent" about teaching evolution and said both sides of the issue should be taught. Several religious leaders also testified against teaching evolution.
Any changes to the textbooks will have implications across the country.
Texas is the nation's second largest buyer of textbooks, and books sold in the state are often marketed by publishers nationwide. Texas, California and Florida account for more than 30 percent of the nation's $4 billion public school book market. Three dozen publishers invest millions of dollars in Texas.
One of the most vocal advocates of changing the textbooks is the Discovery Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Seattle. Institute officials have argued at board hearings that alternatives to commonly accepted theories of evolution should be included in textbooks to comply with a state requirement that both strengths and weaknesses are presented.
"These things are widely criticized as being problematic. They aren't criticisms we made up; they're criticisms widely held in the scientific community," said Discovery Institute fellow John West.
Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, said there are no weaknesses in current textbooks' explanation of evolution. Publishers are required to cover evolution in science books.
The institute has referred to a theory dubbed intelligent design -- a belief that life did not evolve randomly but progressed according to a plan or design. No book on the mainstream market presents the intelligent design theory of evolution.
"We know that this is a very contentious issue. We know that, but the sorts of things we were proposing we thought were moderate," West said.
Samantha Smoot, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors religious activists, argues that the Discovery Institute's arguments are rooted in religion. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that the teaching of creationism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state.
"It says that the theory of evolution can't explain the diversity of life on this planet and that there must have been a designer," Smoot said. "That is a very valid and commonly held religious perspective, but not one that is upheld by scientific evidence. Therefore it's not one that belongs in science classrooms."
The Discovery Institute has maintained that its arguments have no religious foundation, but Smoot disagrees.
"The concept of intelligent design was crafted specifically to get around legal prohibitions against teaching religion in public schools," she said. "And as long as proponents of intelligent design deny that they're referring to God when they talk about the designer, they hope to be able to pull this off."
At least one publisher has submitted changes in line with the institute's recommendations.
Holt, Rinehart & Winston has submitted a change that directs students to "study hypotheses for the origin of life that are alternatives" to the others in the book. Students also are encouraged to research alternative theories on the Internet.
Living things are "imperfect replicators" in that they reproduce themselves ("replicate") but the new generation is never a perfect copy of the prior generation ("imperfect"). This is what makes Darwinian evolution possible among living things. Gravity doesn't reproduce, so it is not subject to Darwinian evolution.
I didn't say anything about Christianity. I said:
Unless you mean a handful of letter to Fiske being the sum total of "last works," which is rather an eccentric view.
You've clarified you also include The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication as a "last work," but this is odder still. Variation was published in 1868, before The Descent of Man (1871), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), and Insectivorous Plants (1875).
Darwin did come out with a second edition of Variation in 1875, but this in turn was followed by entirely new books such as The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects (1876), The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876), and several other book length works. Darwin's last book was The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits, published in 1881, just a year before he died.
You've engaged in a great deal of arm-waving and cryptic references, but you've never pointed to any words by Darwin himself in support of your contention that he remained a Christian, or returned to Christianity, or himself interpreted his views on evolution in any sort of theistic context. Why don't you quit the zen sage routine and present some actual evidence. If you think Variation is so important in this respect, you can find full text of the 2nd (last) edition here. Cut and paste the passages you consider relevant.
Utterly amazing that you are able to get all the way from Asa Gray to Noam Chomsky, when (as I will soon contend) you seem to know next to nothing about Gray and his views.
Decades earlier? Well, lessee, Darwin's correspondence with Fiske covers 1871 to 1880, with 15 letters, whereas Darwin's correspondence with Asa Gray extends from 1854 to 1881, with, I dunno, looks like around 200 letters (around 300 records, but some are letters about Gray, rather than from or to him).
Furthermore, it's not apparent (from the very brief descriptions in the Darwin Correspondence Database) that any of the Fiske letters cover the topics of design, theistic evolution, and the like. They may well have covered those topics as well, but seem to have primarily been thankyou's for books and articles shared, or notices that Fiske would be in England and plans to meet.
By contrast, well... I'd have to do more research on exactly when Gray and Darwin's long discussion of evolution, design and theism rounded up, but it continued at least into the 1860's, hardly "decades" before Darwin and Fiske may have discussed such matters. And of course, over all, the much briefer Fiske correspondence falls fully within the total period of the Gray corresondence.
Finally, as late as 1876 -- right in the midst of the Darwin/Fiske correspondence, and a year after the 2nd edition of the all important (in your mind) Variation was published -- Darwin wrote to his freind Hooker that:
Asa Gray's directed variation would make natural selection superfluous.
Clearly Darwin had not changed his mind by that point, nor is there any evidence that he did subsequently, that God is NOT the "immediate source" (as you and Fiske would have it) of variation or selection.
You are just wrong. You have substituted Fiske's interpretation of Darwin for Darwin's own views. Now, it is perfectly legitimate to argue that Fiske's interpretation of darwinism is better, or in some manner preferable, to Darwin's own interpretation. I might (or might not) agree with you about that; but it is an entirely different matter to thoroughly confuse the views of the two men, and to make Darwin a creature of his interpretor Fiske. This is what you are doing, and I'm not letting you get away with it.
Well, I don't know Grays views on race in detail, but I'd guess they were decidedly liberal. He was a strong opponent of the scientific racism of the day (e.g. Josiah Knott, Samuel Morton, Louis Agassiz, etc) although this may have been because he saw these works as apologies for slavery. Gray was a very passionate abolitionist (as was Darwin). Their shared glee at the start of the Civil War -- which both immediately saw as a war against slavery, long before Lincoln came to see it so -- was almost unseemly.
As an abolitionist, Gray was most certainly a Republican.
The parting of the ways with Gray would have come over the relevant passages to race in Descent.
You surmise incorrectly again. Gray reviewed Descent favorably, and their friendship and correspondence continued through the rest of their lives.
Interesting to note also that Fiske includes a very extensive list of those who he felt contributed to the understanding of Darwin's theory in that age, and that Asa Gray is nowhere mentioned.
An odd oversight on Fiske's part. Gray reviewed all of Darwin's books prominently and favorably, led the debate against Darwin's primary opponent in America, Louis Agassiz, incorporated evolutionary theory deeply into his own botanical studies, and wrote one of the more widely read popular books on evolution: Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism (1876).
It would be interesting to see if Gray ever taught anything on Darwin, but I doubt it.
You're batting a thousand. Gray not only taught evolution to his own students, and probably before anyone else in America did so, but he also was also the first to include evolution in textbooks. (Gray's botany textbooks and manuals, written for both children and adults, were far and away the most popular and successful of the late 19th Century.)
The work of Darwin only really begins to show up after the Civil War
Uh, DUH! The Americans were a tad preoccupied with slaughtering each other.
Asa Gray is more likely in the ID camp, which is the in the line of Newton's clockwork universe, where the maker builds it, winds it up and walks a way. Not found in Fiske
Did you even read that ASA article I linked for you? Gray's views were similar to Fiske's, in viewing design as due to ongoing supervention by God of the smallest details of nature, in contrast to Darwin's view that design -- if it existed at all -- was only to be found in "general laws".
Yet you call Fiske eccentric, but not Gray. In any case, their viewpoint came after the origin of intelligent design and makes God imminent in the world. You took great delight in thinking you were countering that argument while you documented my point precisely which that it was not an odd or hardly accepted viewpoint.
If you ever get around to reading some more Darwin, you will yet find he thought so too.
Nice work
No I didn't.
but not Gray. In any case, their viewpoint came after the origin of intelligent design and makes God imminent in the world. You took great delight in thinking you were countering that argument while you documented my point precisely which that it was not an odd or hardly accepted viewpoint.
You still don't get it, do you? I happen to agree that (if God exists) he is imminent in the world. (I would put it a bit differently, but never mind for the time being.) I personally side more with Gray, and even (from what I know of his views) with Fiske than I do with Darwin on these matters. But the subject was not MY views, the subject has been DARWIN's views.
Intellectually honesty requires accurately reporting and assessing the views of another especially where we disagree with them. You seem unable to make the elementary distinction between accepting a certain view of darwinism, and (gratuitously and falsely) forcing Darwin to agree with you.
If you ever get around to reading some more Darwin, you will yet find he thought so too.
So far you've shown no evidence of actually having read Darwin yourself (in contrast to reading what Fiske wrote about him). Once again, nearly all of Darwin's books are availabe on the web. Show me where he says what you say he says.
Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin by A. Hunter Dupree
It's usefully read in conjunction with:
Darwin's father was a medical doctor. So was his grandfather. His uncles were mostly industrialists. Darwin himself studied for the ministry. Maybe this is what you are confabulating, although I may be giving you too much credit.
and Darwin could not go along with a six thousand year old earth. So he had to come up with another way to explain what did not make sense.
No he didn't. It wasn't even a issue. The (creationist at the time) scientific community had abandoned the idea of a 6K year old earth before Darwin was old enough to wear knee-pants.
Those who were anti-creator, found great usage of "evolving" and thus the "imperfect replicators" began their theory of evolution so they could removed HE that did in fact create.
Wrong here too. The majority of evolutionists are and always have been theists.
Evolutionists who are so far out in the stratosphere, got what they think is credibility through a "monkey" trial.
The evolution side lost the Scopes Trial. Antievolution laws remained on the books for nearly half a century following.
Asa was Fiske's mentor and fellow professor. To think they didn't constantly share viewpoints is aburd, and the blurb above kind of puts a hole in your attempt to dismiss Fiske and the notion that Darwin didn't hold a Christian viewpoint. Yet, you brought up Gray while trying to deny Fiske. Got it straight now?
Which it is.
You may be getting evolution (mutation + natural selection)
confused with faunal succession (fossils are restricted to certain strata, eg there are no rocks with both mammals and trilobites)
Fauna succession is a fact, which the theory of Darwinian evolution explains. It was known decades before Darwin.
ID is armchair speculation or hypothesis, and should be taught as such.
No, the Discovery Institute is a creationist 'think-tank'.
Doing a bit of research now, I'm finding that you don't even seem to know a lot about Fiske, let alone Gray. This is wrong on both counts.
First, Gray was a fairly orthodox Congregationalist. Although Fiske shared the same denominational background, he rejected orthodox Christianity. He became somewhat more sympathetic to Protestantism (in a very general way) later in life, but in college he styled himself as an "infidel" (although he meant non-Christian rather than atheist). It's unlikely that Gray would have taken an "infidel" under his wing, unless he tolerated this in a serious student of science (which Fiske was not, he studied law).
Second, Fiske was never a "professor" at Harvard. He held various temporary positions there, as a lecturer, and as a librarian, but he was never a "professor". Specifically, as I have thus far determined the following positions held at Harvard:
1869 -- Lecturer in Philosophy
1870 -- Instructor in History
1872-1879 -- Assistant Librarian
1879-???? -- member, board of overseerers (two six years terms, I think)
To think they didn't constantly share viewpoints is aburd
I repeat, Darwin was sharing AN UNPUBLISHED THEORY with his friend Gray. If Gray had discussed it with others it would have threatened Darwin's scientific priority. Without regard to what you consider "absurd," or the absurd things you seem to think are likely, there's not a single shred of evidence that he ever did. And even if he did, he wouldn't have singled out a scientific dilletante (at best) like Fiske.
This is just bizzare. Why do you insist that something must have happened for which you have no evidence at all? You don't even know that Fiske ever took a class with Gray (I don't know either) but you confidently assert a mentor relationship. This is strange behavior. You speculate, in the complete absence (so far as can be told) of actual knowledge, that something might have been the case, and you thereby infer that it indeed was the case! (Although this is roughly similiar to Spencer's and, as I am finding, Fiske's mode of philosophical reasoning.)
and the blurb above kind of puts a hole in your attempt to dismiss Fiske and the notion that Darwin didn't hold a Christian viewpoint
Come again? How in the world do you get that from, "Gray became the most persistent and effective American protagonist of Darwin's views. Yet at the same time, he believed that religion and Darwin's theory of natural selection could coexist?"
Jeez, not only was Darwin not a Christian (after around 1851 or so) but I've now learned that your precious Fiske wasn't a Christian either (although unlike Darwin he was a convinced theist).
I have been given examples of micro-"evolution" There is no disputing things such as building resistance to certain aspects of our environment (virus, etc.) You are saying that if I have an immunity to the flu, that my kids will too. Not the case. If it was the case, then our specias would have done away with the flu, malaria, and numerous other diseases that have been around for a long time. But I am sure you will shoot down what I just said, even though it directly addresses your beliefs.
I have never been given one link, ever, that proved macro-"evolution". Sure, I have been given plenty of circumstantial evidence, but that is it. You are attempting to jumble micro and macro...can't do that. Oh, you will, but you can't do that.
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