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.
And a good thing too. Because based on the organization human genome, the "designer" must have been an incompetent putz.
So what would you call genetic engineering? Or the century of genetic research involving natural and radiation induced mutations in fruit flies?
What qualifies as a lab experiment in your view?
You continue to practice diversion in order to avoid the issue.
If a Republican student organization wants to hold an after-school meeting, would you force the school bus them to, say, the local Knights of Columbus clubhouse?
If an environmental activist student organization wants to hold an after-school meeting, would you force the school ot bus them to the nearest meadow?
If an atheist student organization wants to hold an after-school meeting, where would you propose they be bussed?
He called scientists who believe in evolution "closed-minded morons that inhabit the biological sciences." As if somehow his own interest, astronomy, was somehow immune - guess he's not familiar with the Big Bang.
He was implying that the reason the sciences accept evolution is because they are somehow close-minded to the "truth." My response is to donate him a roll of tinfoil, as it would take a conspiracy of enormous proportions to ensnare the entire reputable scientific community.
The only scientists who have not accepted evolution are those who have determined not to accept it due to their own religious beliefs. I find it amusing that he considers them "open-minded." In fact, it is the opposite.
Could you explain a bit why you say this?
This is one of the problems with this subject. It becomes so religiously and philosophically polarized.
DNA has certain known physical properties and the manifestation of such are observed and measured in biological organisms.
Oh really? How so, Mr. Genome Engineer? Are you talking about the supposed 'inefficiency' of protein synthesis?
Of course not.
First of all, the K of C aren't a political organization.
Furthermore, I'm not forcing the school to bus anybody anywhere.
I'm merely saying that, if necessary, the students can ride a bus that's already headed to the church's neighborhood anyway.
I don't think I want to touch that one except to say that 1720 is, to some, a very large number.
But you are technically correct. Natural selection is a mechanism proposed to account for the observed facts of biology.
And you reinterpreted that to say that all scientists are close-minded. You would do better justice to your argument to not engage in such overstatement.
As if somehow his own interest, astronomy, was somehow immune - guess he's not familiar with the Big Bang.
Now that is a valid point.
I would definitely agree with you that cosmologists suffer from some close-mindedness. To this day many are determined to refute Big Bang theory despite the mounting evidence supporting it. To that end they attempt to resurrect oscillation or steady-state theories. Among those that have accepted it, many have done so quite grudgingly and have moved onto theories of multiverses and the like in order to restore the notion of "infinity" to their cosmological theory.
Now why is that? Well, it is because the notion of a unvierse with a finite extent and a finite age is quite difficult to swallow from an entirely naturalistic standpoint. It lends creedence to the notion that the universe was caused by an external force. An infinite universe, whether one that is in steady state or one that is oscillating, needs no such cause, so such theories were far more comfortable in a purely naturalistic framework.
What is more, the relatively young age of the universe suggested by the Big Bang theory causes naturalistic origin-of-lifers some degree of consternation. Couple that with recent evidence that life existed on Earth far less than a billion years after the planet was formed and a truly intriguing mystery results.
This more about the origin of life question and not evolution per se.
i don't have a problem with the theory of evolution.
i don't have a problem with millions of years, or billions of year, etc. as there is no accepted account to disprove it.
i don't have a problem with criticizing creationists arguments.
i do have two problems:
1) the attitude towards those who critique evolution. just as critiquing of non-evolutionistic theories is good so should it be for evolution. even if that criticism is supposedly coming from outside the realm of science. otherwise evolution is just another religion.
2) as many creationist's theories may be laughable as they seem so implausible, so to is anything i've studied about where the first bit of "life" comes from in the evolutionist's various theories. also as to where all the information that is contained in the various structures of life forms came from. (not that theories don't exist, just that they are weak, like theories by creationists on things like how light got here from the stars.)
and that's not to say a reasonable theory won't eventually be developed, but just trying to be honest with myself with the current state of things.
But if, as you way, you are not in favor of forcing the school to bus anyone anywhere, you must necessarily be in favor of letting these student groups, no matter what their content, to hold their meetings in the school. Or, you can ban all student groups from doing so.
What you cannot do is deny Christian groups access to facilities that you grant to secular or political groups.
As for the idea that "the bus is heading there anyway", there is no way you can guarantee that.
Your agenda is transparent, Willie. You apparently have no desire to extend to Christians the same degree of free assembly and speech afforded to other groups.
Hold on a second - you claim to be familiar with TIBS, and yet in number 26 you posted:
It's a peer reviewed article in a major journal and it does, to the mind of the debaters, have to do with ID.
TIBS is not a major journal and not peer reviewed, as you apparently know. Why did you refer to the Behe TIBS review as 'a peer reviewed article in a major journal'?
The point being the type of weird denials and smears that go on here by the anti-Creationists are like the dem and lib tactics.
Physician, heal thyself.
Another perennial favorite fib.
I didn't say that.
This deisgner seems to have an inordinate fondness for retroviral DNA and broken genes. For crying out loud he/she/it can't even fuse two chromosomes together in a way that doesn't look totally half a$$ed!
I don't feel any particular need to do so. Nor do I feel any particular need to reconcile evolution with the bible.
I still await the day when evolution can be reconciled with science.
Astronomy provides proof that the universe isn't a few mere thousands of years old.
And?
If I have put words in your mouth, I sincerely apologize.
Why do you think the scientific community (not just the biological sciences, incidentally) has overwhelmingly accepted evolution?
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