Students Learn Intelligent Design

Phillyburbs.com ^ | January 18, 2005 | Martha Raffaele

[FeeinTennessee]

Pa. Students Learn 'Intelligent Design' By MARTHA RAFFAELE The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. - High school students heard about "intelligent design" for the first time Tuesday in a school district that attracted national attention by requiring students to be made aware of it as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

Administrators in the Dover Area School District read a statement to three biology classes Tuesday and were expected to read it to other classes on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which was speaking on the district's behalf.

The district is believed to be the only one in the nation to require students to hear about intelligent design - a concept that holds that the universe is so complex, it had to be created by an unspecified guiding force.

"The revolution in evolution has begun," said Richard Thompson, the law center's president and chief counsel. "This is the first step in which students will be given an honest scientific evaluation of the theory of evolution and its problems."

The case represents the newest chapter in a history of evolution lawsuits dating back to the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee nearly 80 years ago. In Georgia, a suburban Atlanta school district plans to challenge a federal judge's order to remove stickers in science textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact."

The law center is defending the Dover district against a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of eight families by two civil-liberties groups that alleged intelligent design is merely a secular variation of creationism, the biblical-based view that regards God as the creator of life. They maintain that the Dover district's curriculum mandate may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

"Students who sat in the classroom were taught material which is religious in content, not scientific, and I think it's unfortunate that has occurred," said Eric Rothschild, a Philadelphia attorney representing the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.

Biology teacher Jennifer Miller said although she was able to make a smooth transition to her evolution lesson after the statement was read, some students were upset that administrators would not entertain any questions about intelligent design.

"They were told that if you have any questions, to take it home," Miller said.

The district allowed students whose parents objected to the policy to be excused from hearing the statement at the beginning of class and science teachers who opposed the requirement to be exempted from reading the statement. About 15 of 170 ninth-graders asked to be excused from class, Thompson said.

A federal judge has scheduled a trial in the lawsuit for Sept. 26.

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Dover Area School District: http://www.dover.k12.pa.us

Thomas More Law Center: http://www.thomasmore.org

January 18, 2005 6:44 PM

[nmh]

You don't offend me.

Take care

[gobucks]

"but I've been weaning myself away a bit."

LOL! I can imagine why! I wasn't really planning these last couple of marathons myself. but it has been worth it.

I'm going to wean myself away too ...

[PatrickHenry]

From here out I will stick to my science.

A wise decision. Science will be better off, and the field of theology will somehow manage to get along.

[BMCDA]

I have posted this before. Not only have I met Carl Sagan, I appeared on both the "Discovery Channel" and "TLC" shows that featured him as well.

Wow! That's cool. Maybe I can catch the reruns ;)

[Savagemom]

You make good points, but the fact remains that I still would have liked to have at least been exposed to the flaws in evolutionary theory in my biology classes when I was in school. And it IS being debated now among people brave enough to go against the established scientific community (very few, to be sure!), and in Dover, PA, and in the media. I just saw a recent cover of National Geographic which asked "Was Darwin Wrong?" Just go to the science section of Borders and look at all the new books questioning theories on our origin, including "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" (I'm reading it in what little spare time I have and it's very compelling.) In school, I was presented with various theories (some stronger, some weaker) on the formation of the Earth and Moon, on the extinction of the dinosaurs - but only one on the diversity of life. It bugs me that a reasonable discussion of other theories is being suppressed because of a secular left-wing agenda. Schools are, in effect, protecting students from data which do not support evolution and denying them the opportunity to look at the facts and reach their own conclusions. It makes me glad I'm homeschooling - I want my kids to look at ALL the evidence and think for themselves, not just accept whatever indoctrination they are being fed.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I trust what the people who devote their lives to the subject say . . .

I do, too, by and large. Problem is, there are so many people who devote their lives to so many subjects I end up having to pick and choose because they do not all agree with each other. One would hope a well-rounded education would recognize the same and pursue it, allowing each individual to decide what most concords with reality. People who get their panties in a wad over a sticker in a book or any mention of ID as a possible explanation for the universe strike me as less-than-interested in true learning.

[Idisarthur]

I have a problems with the Yale-ian schematic (Primordial Soup), specifically going from step 2 to step 3. I will be closer to a believer when in this technological world we are able to replicate these processes, the Protein synthesis.

BTW, I'm sure there are many closet ID'ers in the scientific community. However the prevailing thought is to presume evolutionary ideas expand completely, in the Macro and Micro-sense, to the DNA RNA workings.

In many research arenas the evolutionary community is like the Liberal Main Stream Media, rock the boat and you are proselytized.

From your website link: The discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA (Cech et al., 1981; Guerrier-Takada et al., 1983) showed that a single chemical species could function as both genome and enzyme ([presume evolutionary ideas]). This suggested an evolutionary scheme, simple in outline, which is shown in Figure 1. Prebiotic reactions on the primordial earth generated RNA, RNA became the first

But anyhow thanks for the schematic and articles.

[anguish]

I still would have liked to have at least been exposed to the flaws in evolutionary theory in my biology classes

The parts that are disputed in the scientific community is not really at a level that most highschool students could easily digest. If one would include what ID'ers and creationists say and dispute in science education, schools would also have to include other (scientifically) fringe beliefs in science education. There might be time for that if we added another year to highschool.

And it IS being debated now among people brave enough to go against the established scientific community (very few, to be sure!)

Question is: how inclusive can the public schools be? If we are to take time to discuss every scientific (and even those of questionable scientific merit) dispute in schools, other things would have to be discarded from the curriculum.

I just saw a recent cover of National Geographic which asked "Was Darwin Wrong?"

Yes, it was a very loaded question on that cover. You'd be advised to read the article though, and not only the cover. In short, it answers the title with 'Probably not - all the available evidence supports evolution'.

"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" (I'm reading it in what little spare time I have and it's very compelling.)

When you've read the book, I can recommend reading the articles collected here: Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe.

Personally, I was as you put it "exposed" to theories other than evolution when I went to school, but I'm a product of the Swedish educational system. The creation myths from all major religions were discussed in Religion class, and we even had creationist give a short lecture in Biology class once (we pretty much shredded his arguments afterwards during QA, and he left disappointed). It was however a pretty advanced class, and I suspect our teacher only allowed him to come since he knew we could dissect and scientifially evaluate the arguments.

[donh]

You make good points, but the fact remains that I still would have liked to have at least been exposed to the flaws in evolutionary theory in my biology classes when I was in school.

There are no more, nor less, "flaws" in gravity theory. Do you really want to spend bandwidth in an introductory 9th grade class on orbital anomolies and quantum difficulties?

And it IS being debated now among people brave enough to go against the established scientific community (very few, to be sure!),

It hardly requires you to muster the courage of Galileo to stand against the scientific establishment. Only the creationist side of this argument has a history of trying to win the argument by burning it's opponents at the stake.

Anyone who publishes to peer review is actually standing against the established view in some small manner--elst there's be no point in publishing--which is why referees try to knock them down.

Just go to the science section of Borders and look at all the new books questioning theories on our origin, including "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution"

Ah, yes, Behe, Dempski and Johnson, the vanguard of science.

This is not science, this is a pretty thinly disguised new, more subtle attack of the creationist clones, largely sponsered by the Discovery Institute. For all their technical terms and math, all these arguments amount to is "if I can't think how it could have happened, it must be a miracle."

For a devastating blow-by-blow critique of Behe's arguments, try a book by a serious mainstream scientist who co-author's the standard college biology survey textbook, and is a devout catholic: "Finding Darwin's God" by Miller. In at least one case, Behe's predictions about unattainable complexity pathways had already been peer-review published before his book was printed. Not a good deal of benchchecking going on in that neck of the woods.

(I'm reading it in what little spare time I have and it's very compelling.) In school, I was presented with various theories (some stronger, some weaker) on the formation of the Earth and Moon, on the extinction of the dinosaurs - but only one on the diversity of life.

That's because there was a serious question in the minds of a fair number of serious scientists at the time, and the job of a high school science department is to impart what is going on amonst scientists.

It bugs me that a reasonable discussion of other theories

The distinction lies in the word "reasonable". On the available forensic evidence, it is just as "reasonable" to discuss UFOlogy, astrology, and Raelian n-dimensional transfer. We do not count the noses of the pigs at the trough to decide how to feed pigs, and we don't care how loud, or how popular scientific theories are with non-scientists to decide which we should teach our impressionable young in compulsory educational environments.

[Alacarte]

"Problem is, there are so many people who devote their lives to so many subjects I end up having to pick and choose because they do not all agree with each other."

We can trust the scientific literature. We can't trust it to be right all the time, but we can trust it's integrity. We can trust that it will find those errors and correct them (which it does very well). We can trust that it tells us how the natural world works according to our current most educated scientific understanding. Is it always correct? No. By far the best we have? Definitely.

"People who get their panties in a wad over a sticker in a book or any mention of ID as a possible explanation for the universe strike me as less-than-interested in true learning."

I agree 100% that kids should be encouraged to think critically, explore the options, and learn to make their own decisions.

The problem with the stickers is that we are talking about science class, not philosophy class. From a scientific perspective, evolution is one of the most proven theories in science, and the ONLY scientific theory that explains the diversity of life on earth. If kids don't believe it, fine, but suggesting to kids that evolution is less credible than other theories like gavity and relativity is a flat-out dishonesty. Evolution is as close to fact as science gets.

How would you like mandatory stickers in all bibles saying "Nothing in this book is scientific or historically accurate. In fact, many events in this book directly oppose natural laws and historic record. This material should be critically considered before blind faith is applied."

[Fester Chugabrew]

The problem with the stickers is that we are talking about science class, not philosophy class.

I just don't see how, or why, the two have to be so antiseptic from one another. Good God. Evolution teaching is just as likely to invoke a philosophy as creation teaching. Gravity and relativity are operative and observable. Billions of years of history are not. Your suggestion for mandatory stickers in bibles is overblown. The sticker in evolution textbooks does not make such an extreme pronouncement.

[Alacarte]

"I just don't see how, or why, the two have to be so antiseptic from one another. Good God. "

Evolution and ID? Or science and philosophy? The former I'm adamant about, since ID is not even close to being an alternative to evolution, even if we did redefine science to accept it. ID says one thing, "everything is too complicated to be a natural process." Evolution constitutes thousands of technical papers and decades of research that covers all fields of life sciences.

If you mean teaching science and philosophy together, well, that's opinion, since there are a lot of philisophical issues that revolve around science, like ethics. But I think there is enough real science to fill 8 classes a day for kids, so I'd be against mixing philosophy with science. Leave science class as an objective period to learn what our current understanding of the natural world is.

"Billions of years of history are not."

This is opinion only of people who have no advanced science education. To the scientific community, there is no difference, and evolution is just as strong as relativity. Almost all of astronomy is about the past, we can see the stars, but what we see is actually mill/bill years old. But we don't need 'faith' to tell us how they work. Hell, just by looking at the light from distant stars, we can tell what light elements are predominant in that system! Just by analyzing the light! Same with evolution, there is overwhelming evidence from fossils to genetics to geology. Just because we didn't see it happen, does not mean we can't be sure it happened. And there actually are things we can reproduce in a lab about evolution.

"Your suggestion for mandatory stickers in bibles is overblown. "

Maybe, but they are both equally ridiculous, and the bible one is pretty much true compared to the science one. Evolution is theory in science, but not in the common usage of the word. Noah's flood, Lazarus rising from the dead, water to wine... list goes on, all directly oppose natural laws.

If you don't want to believe evolution on a faith basis, that's cool. But you cannot argue against it scientifically. The only people on your side are a couple people with advanced science degrees who just got them so they could have weight attacking evolution, and don't even contribute to the actual scientific process. On the other hand you have every science institution on the planet in the life sciences. The people who devote their livew to the subject. You and I don't know near enough about molecular biology to debate it. Trust me, I can't even read technical papers from fields outside computer science, since I don't understand any of it, science dictionary or not. Science is WAY more complicated than the childish ID makes it look. So basically, we have to trust someone. For me there is only one option. I trust the scientific method, it has proven that it works over and over. IDers point out that science makes mistakes, but they never mention that it is other scisntists who discover and correct the mistakes thanks to the scientific methods of peer review and publication. Of course they are going to make mistakes, the point is whether they catch and correct them or not, and they do. Evolution has been around for over a century, if it weren't true, we'd haev figured it otu long ago, because all the predictions it makes would not work.

[Fester Chugabrew]

How does scientific process benefit from the Theory of Evolution? What can the Theory of Evolution do for scientifc process that adherents of Creation Theory cannot do?

Evolution constitutes thousands of technical papers and decades of research that covers all fields of life sciences.

I would expect as much from those who turn a blind eye toward the biblical account of creation. It should take mountains of obfuscation to explain away the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and sustains them according to "natural" laws to this day while being fully capable of intervening as desired. The Theory of Evoluton has not been a friend of science. Fact is, what we perceive as "natural laws" are supernatural in and of themselves. But like frogs in a boilng pot, we're oblivious to the same. Jaded, some might say.

[Alacarte]

"How does scientific process benefit from the Theory of Evolution? What can the Theory of Evolution do for scientifc process that adherents of Creation Theory cannot do?"

The scientific process does not benefit from anything in science. The process is there to guide all science. You mean science in general? As related to our benefit? Well, first of all, science's mandate is to define the natural world, not make life better for us. What has the theory of gravity done for us? Nothing really, but it has been instrumental to other useful things like flight. Without evolution, genetics makes no sense, and genetics has caused a revolution in modern medicine.

You cannot compare evolution with "creation theory" (BTW, it's not funny using the word 'theory' with creation) except at a very abstract philisophical level. At a science level, craetion is on par with leprechauns and ghosts.

"I would expect as much from those who turn a blind eye toward the biblical account of creation. It should take mountains of obfuscation to explain away the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and sustains them according to "natural" laws to this day while being fully capable of intervening as desired."

Why can you not reconcile your beliefs with evolution? Maybe there is some being that put all of nature in motion, evolution does NOT dispute that. Evolution explains how those natural processes work, not what created the universe. You are mixing up philosophy and science.

"The Theory of Evoluton has not been a friend of science. "

Wrong. Evolution is the most important advancement in biology for centuries.

"Fact is, what we perceive as "natural laws" are supernatural in and of themselves."

Like I said, what does this have to do with science? Why can't you just accept that god made the natural world, and evolution was part of his plan? Either way evolution is science, no matter how many people's toes it steps on.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Why can you not reconcile your beliefs with evolution?

Evolution itself is a belief. It is 85 percent conjecture, 14 percent wishful thinking, and one percent BS. Those who adhere to it have no business establishing the science curriculum in public schools.