Posted on 08/16/2004 9:40:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Samuel Chen was a high school sophomore who believed in freedom of speech and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. He thought his public high school did, too, but when it came to the subject of evolution -- well, now he's not so sure.
In October 2002, Chen began working to get Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, to give a lecture at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Chen, who was co-chair of a student group that tries to stress the importance of objectivity on controversial issues, knew that Behe would be perfect, since the group was examining evolution as a topic. The author of Darwin's Black Box, a critique of the foundational underpinnings of evolution, Behe had presented his work and debated the subject in universities in the U.S. and England.
Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.
Then he found out just how entrenched Darwinist orthodoxy was in the science department at Emmaus. By the following August, Chen had entered into a six-month battle to preserve the Behe lecture.
As the struggle unfolded, it became obvious that those who opposed Behe coming to Emmaus didn't seem to care about his credentials. In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, Darwin's Black Box was internationally reviewed in over 100 publications and named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Instead, it was Behe's rejection of Darwinism -- in favor of what is called "intelligent design" -- that drove opposition. According to the Discovery Institute, of which Behe is a fellow, this theory holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
The head of the science department, John Hnatow, sent a statement to every faculty member in the school stressing that Emmaus held to the official policy of the National Science Teachers Association. That policy states: "There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place."
It appeared there would be no debate at Emmaus, either. Some of the science teachers would not even allow Chen to address their classes and explain to students what Behe's lecture would be about.
Chen said various tactics were apparently used to undercut the event, including an attempt to cancel the lecture and fold the student organization without the knowledge of Chen and other members; requiring that the necessary funds for the lecture be raised much faster than for other student events; and moving the lecture from the auditorium to the school cafeteria.
One science teacher in particular, Carl Smartschan, seemed particularly riled about the upcoming lecture. Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff." He asked the principal to cancel the lecture, and then, when the principal refused, asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.
Smartschan's campaign to get the Behe lecture canceled was surprising to Chen because the event was scheduled after school, and not during class time, and was sponsored by a student group, not the school itself. Nevertheless, Chen persevered. The lecture was a success, attracting more than 500 people.
In the process, however, Chen's struggle took its toll. His health deteriorated over the course of the controversy, to the point where he collapsed three times in one month, including once at school. "My health has been totally junked," he told AFA Journal.
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney and senior policy advisor for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, is advising Chen on his options for the coming year. Fahling said, "Schools are not allowed to interfere with viewpoints with which they disagree, and schools cannot disrupt the right of the students to participate in the academic and intellectual life."
Despite the hardship, Chen said he would do it all over again because the issue is so important. "I feel that there's a dictatorship on academic freedom in our public schools now," he said, adding, "I refer to evolution education as a tyranny .... You can't challenge it in our schools. Kids have been thrown out of class for challenging it."
That tyranny can be intimidating to students. "Some of the students who support me are afraid to speak out, especially because they saw how the science department reacted," Chen said. "They have a fear of speaking out against it in their classes."
On the other hand, he added that some students "are now questioning evolution, some for the first time."
That may be the first step in the overthrow of Darwin's dictatorship.
Then why bitch about it unless you are just another troll?
The apparent lack of such a resource opens the evolutionary community to questions.
It does NO such thing, this is a question for abiogenesis, not evolution.
Evolution starts when the first creatures that procreated appeared, any further back and you go into a whole other theory, or hypothesis actually, a number of them.
That field is abiogenesis, and Ichneumon made an excellent post with all kinds of resources in it about 4 pages back, I would advise you to go backand look at that post and study some of the very interesting work being doen in that field.
But again, you are trying to hurt evolution on questions it never asks.
Do you wish to try again, this time about evolution?
You are correct, thank you for that, I am running a fever of 102, so probably should not try to get at all technical, because I will miss something.
Thank you
Indeed it does. However, don't you think we should teach alternate viewpoints too?
:-)
My memory runs off, and drags me kicking and screaming with it.
Wow! You have the complete physiological definition of 4.3 billion year old bacteria? Time to write an article and win a Nobel prize!
Oh, wait, are you just assuming that bacteria haven't evolved in the last 4.3 billion years?
Oh, then, never mind.
Of course they haven't. How could they - there are no beneficial mutations. In fact, bacteria were once hyperintelligent beings, far more advanced than we. They built vast cities, and spaceships, and roamed the universe. Then those darn mutations started, and they slowly started to degenerate. By now they're only a single-celled shadow of their former selves.
Just look at cats.
Good old Felis Domesticus once enslaved mankind into worshipping them as gods.
And then they grew compacent, and our alien overlords then became pets..
They still try to uphold a pretense of their previous superiority.
/ joke
*chuckle*
Perhaps your interlocutor is unfamiliar with the term "state variable"......
I don't mind. But there are no chinks in the armor of the second law. In a modified form it recently "took down" Hawking.
Sez you. I could find you a dozen elegant perpetual motion machines of the second kind. It seems to me they ought to get equal billing.
Yeah, like the one sentence, religious mantra, "god did it".
Of all the reasoned criticisms I have seen leveled (which, of course, do not exist the instant they are out of your sight),
Could you attempt to be less vague?
every one has been dismissed rather than addressed.
Oh, utter horse manure. Do even *you* believe this crap you write? On this thread alone, the following creationist "challenges" have been "adressed rather than dismissed" (or "addressed *then* dismissed", as appropriate), even though you claim that "every one" has been treated vice versa:
nasamn777's "dice football field" analogy. Addressed in posts #318, #334, #366.And so on. Your overblown claim is quite simply false.nasamn777's "talkorigins leaves out stuff" charge. Addressed in post #317, #327, and #337.
Microgood claimed that evolution should require the number of species to continue to increase over time. This was addressed in post #324.
And anytime someone points out that the only trick you know (other than your disdain for unbelievers) is that one sentence,
How, when, and why did you get on this "one sentence" kick? And just how often do you imagine anyone else makes the same goofy point?
you roar about how the level of debate has never risen above that level.
No, we ask what in the heck you're going on about.
Are you sure you're even reading the same thread as the rest of us?
http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/793.html
Take a peek at that, it might interest you, if you are actually looking for answers, and not tilting at windmills.
What do you mean? Many, many, many of those PMMs get into the news. You just don't see many vehicles driving around with them providing the motive force.
That's because the Dictatorship of Evil Engineers makes sure they're excluded from auto plants.
So after you get drunk and bash up your new Escalade, are you going to blame the engineers at Cadillac?
They are always a disapointment, because once the gyro gets spinning, it's supposed to go forever, but they never tell you that you have to give it peanuts for the squirrel in the trunk....
huh?
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