A Revolution in Evolution Is Underway

Thomas More Lawcenter ^ | Tue, Jan 18, 2005

[Dimensio]

So...it's okay to teach non-science in science classrooms? It's okay to distort what is and what is not science?

[FastCoyote]

"Antibodies fit themselves to known germs but if the germ mutates into an unknown structure from having some of it's structure removed the antibody can't connect and destroy the germ."

Well, that's absolutely false from the immunology classes I took long ago at Stanford. While any given T-cell may have a fixed structure it connects to, the antibodies mutate to many forms and eventually one "connects" and that lineage is multiplied. Evolution on the quick at the cellular and molecular level. That's why, despite there being a new swine flue variant every year, we all eventually develop antibodies.

Sorry to not be more specific, it's a bit hazy, but the geneeral mechanism has been known for quite a while. Antibodies are not static.

[King Prout]

very well done. thank you.

[MineralMan]

"That was a very concise overview of the difficulty.
"

Thanks, I think. Having faced being reviled for stating the truth of the matter in the past, I'm fearful for the next reply.

It's all so silly. The TOE is just that, a theory. It's being tested daily by scientists. IE is not a theory, at least not scientifically, because it CANNOT be tested. It's a thought experiment.

It all doesn't matter all that much. Evolution does not, in any way, deny the existence of a creative deity. That's what the rabid anti-evolution folks don't understand.

They're talking about biogenesis, and that has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. If they could possibly get that right, they could probably get a statement in there with no objection. Evolution is a fact. How life began is only speculation.

[King Prout]

excellent post.

[WildTurkey]

Don't get me started, I can spew forever on this.

[discostu]

Exactly the opposite. If you'd read the rest of the post you'd see that my problem with low level science classes is that functionally they do worse than keep the masses uninformed, they downright MISinform the masses. 90% (maybe even more) of what you learned in your jr high and high school science classes is complete rubbish, it doesn't match up with either known or theorized science. This thread is a classic example, most high school bio classes that teach evolution teach a highly oversimplified version of Darwinian evolutionary theory even though Darmwin's theories have been largely disgarded as a nice start but wrong, and they also do nothing to distinguish between evolutionary theory and abiogenesis, and don't cover the later at all thus allowing students to make a false assumtion that evolutionary theory goes all the way back to the first appearance of life. This doesn't do the students any good, and if they don't go into a field where they need to learn biology and get the opportunity to unlearn the lies their teacher taught them they go on to be ignorant adults. If there isn't the time to teach students the truth it's much better to ignore the subject than to oversimplify it to the point of fiction.

[general_re]

An opinion is all the post CAN be.

Right, but what I meant was that I really doubt he's all alone in that opinion ;)

[WildTurkey]

90% (maybe even more) of what you learned in your jr high and high school science classes is complete rubbish,

That is absolutely false. Earlier, another poster made claims about the curriculum and I posted to him a link of approved curriculum modules that proved he was out to lunch. Please post examples of your claim that these science classes are rubbish and I will post you modules that show your claims are hogwash.

[WildTurkey]

>>and they also do nothing to distinguish between evolutionary theory and abiogenesis, and don't cover the later at all thus allowing students to make a false assumtion that evolutionary theory goes all the way back to the first appearance of life. <<

Absolutely false. Apparently you did not read the earlier posts on this thread:

---

To: broadway

[broadway]Darwin never discussed the Origin..... I beleive you, but that's not my point. It's being taught as evidence of the way life originated in our public schools. Who will correct the teachers?

[WildTurkey]Do you have any basis for your claim? Here is a typical teaching module and you will see that it is NOT what you claim. It clearly separates the origin of life from evolution and clearly states same.

When will yo correct your post?

http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/home.html


167 posted on 01/20/2005 3:27:30 PM PST by WildTurkey

[discostu]

It's not absolutely false. Ever compared what your high school chemistry class taught you about electron orbits and what college biochem class taught? What was the first they taught in biochem about those orbits? That your high school chemistry teach lied to you, what they taught you in high school was grossly over simplified to the point of fiction, but it was considered "good enough" for high school kids learning "water chemistry" who aren't going to have to get into complex chemical reactions. Those simple orbits are something every high school chem student learned, memorized and were tested on and they're damned lies, why do we make students memorize and regurgitate something we know is BS?!

Your link doesn't match any high school bio text book I've ever seen, for one thing that discussion on evolution is about 10 times as long as what's in real in use high school bio text books. It's really nice that ENSI wants that to be taught, but it's not what's getting taught. Real world high school evolutionary curriculum is 2 days long, one hour per day, here's Darwin, here's his boat, his natural selection, time to move on. It's worthless.

[e p1uribus unum]

Hopefully not.

No ID.

No wafty elementary teachers having the class vote on science results.

No HS gym teachers teaching physics.

I have no objection to teaching the facts uncovered by science...but before college the teachers themselves all too often are so unqualified as to turn off good students from the basic concepts of scientific thinking.

A lot of the creationists on this thread and others I've posted on are perfect examples. Very intelligent and quick thinking, but not able to get their heads around why scientists think as they do about evolution.

[e p1uribus unum]

I'm sympathetic to your view and also have seen many fine modules.

I've also seen what happens in the pre-college classroom.

Science is a discipline not a collection of data points, and mis-learning is far more damaging than waiting.

[WildTurkey]

It's not a lie. It's called a simplified model that is correct within certain limitations and is useful for classical chemistry studies and careers. Please cite something that is FALSE that is taught.

It forms the basis for continued education. Learning the structure of the atom (classical) and the periodic table made future studies easier, not harder.

By your reasoning, we should not teach a person how to bake a cake without knowing differential equations.

[WildTurkey]

I've also seen what happens in the pre-college classroom. Science is a discipline not a collection of data points, and mis-learning is far more damaging than waiting.

Please cite an example of mis-learning.

[WildTurkey]

A lot of the creationists on this thread and others I've posted on are perfect examples. Very intelligent and quick thinking, but not able to get their heads around why scientists think as they do about evolution.

I was taught the scientific method in Jr. High and that foundation has stayed with me. The reason that the creationists are not able to "get their heads around" is that they are fanatics, not because they were mis-taught in high school. More likely, they were never taught, rather than mis-taught.

[FastCoyote]

"IE is not a theory, at least not scientifically, because it CANNOT be tested."

Actually, I beg to differ. I'm a mechanical engineer with a background in thermodynamics and information theory. Entropy, in the lingo, is sometimes called information energy. Intelligent design simply implies a universe with entities that might be considered negative entropy wells, or information sources, they could be of multiple shapes and sizes. In terms of thermodynamics I can't preclude the presence of universe spanning systems with free energy gradients that could be construed as sentient.

For example, the universe has a memory of itself (that's what Hubble is showing us), it has a sense of self preservation (gravity constrains it), it has a nervous system of light rays, it's beginning and end may not be deterministic (i.e. free will), and it is rational (conservative laws of physics).

One can there fore conjecture the universe is sentient, it is evolving, it has a memory and sense of self. All this can be discussed in terms of thermodynamics and physics. So the idea that intelligent design is not amenable to scientific discussion is unscientific.

[discostu]

It IS a lie, when simplification goes to the point that it no longer bears any real resemblance it's not simplification, it's BS. I already did, electron orbits in high school chem as taught are a damned lie and we do our country as a whole a disservice by teaching them. It means everyone who doesn't go beyond high school chem believs BS, and everybody who does has to waste time unlearning the lies they were told.

Lying to people doesn't form a basis for continued education, lying to people forms a basis for the majority of the population to not know what they're talking about.

No, there's nothing wrong with teaching them how to bake a cake if what you teach them will actually result in an actually edible cake. What we do in high school chem class is teach them how to cook a pot roast and tell them it's a cake. The goal of science class is to teach the student how thing work in theory or practice (depending on the science being discussed), when we make stuff up that isn't how things work we aren't teaching them science. If we're going to teach them fiction we might as well hand them a novel.

[WildTurkey]

No HS gym teachers teaching physics.

Since you don't want anything other than a couple of basic principles of physics taught, seems HS gym teachers would be ideal.

[jdhljc169]

I have no idea how to highlight or underline, but this is a peer reviewed paper. Look thru to find out more about genetic mutations. Go to the website to read the whole article. It's good......................... The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories By: Stephen C. Meyer Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington September 29, 2004........................ On August 4th, 2004 an extensive review essay by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239). The Proceedings is a peer-reviewed biology journal published at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.......................... In the article, entitled &#8220;The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories&#8221;, Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms. He proposes intelligent design as an alternative explanation for the origin of biological information and the higher taxa............... Due to an unusual number of inquiries about the article and because the article is presently not available on line elsewhere, Dr. Meyer, the copyright holder, has decided to make the article available now in HTML format on this website. (Off prints are also available from Discovery Institute by writing to Keith Pennock at Kpennock@discovery.org).................... PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 117(2):213-239. 2004.......... The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories.... Stephen C. Meyer........ Introduction....... In a recent volume of the Vienna Series in a Theoretical Biology (2003), Gerd B. Muller and Stuart Newman argue that what they call the &#8220;origination of organismal form&#8221; remains an unsolved problem. In making this claim, Muller and Newman (2003:3-10) distinguish two distinct issues, namely, (1) the causes of form generation in the individual organism during embryological development and (2) the causes responsible for the production of novel organismal forms in the first place during the history of life. To distinguish the latter case (phylogeny) from the former (ontogeny), Muller and Newman use the term &#8220;origination&#8221; to designate the causal processes by which biological form first arose during the evolution of life. They insist that &#8220;the molecular mechanisms that bring about biological form in modern day embryos should not be confused&#8221; with the causes responsible for the origin (or &#8220;origination&#8221;) of novel biological forms during the history of life (p.3). They further argue that we know more about the causes of ontogenesis, due to advances in molecular biology, molecular genetics and developmental biology, than we do about the causes of phylogenesis--the ultimate origination of new biological forms during the remote past.......... In making this claim, Muller and Newman are careful to affirm that evolutionary biology has succeeded in explaining how preexisting forms diversify under the twin influences of natural selection and variation of genetic traits. Sophisticated mathematically-based models of population genetics have proven adequate for mapping and understanding quantitative variability and populational changes in organisms. Yet Muller and Newman insist that population genetics, and thus evolutionary biology, has not identified a specifically causal explanation for the origin of true morphological novelty during the history of life. Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure. They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)--that selection must act on what already exists. Yet, in their view, the &#8220;genocentricity&#8221; and &#8220;incrementalism&#8221; of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists. Instead, Muller and Newman see the need to identify epigenetic sources of morphological innovation during the evolution of life. In the meantime, however, they insist neo-Darwinism lacks any &#8220;theory of the generative&#8221; (p. 7)................ As it happens, Muller and Newman are not alone in this judgment. In the last decade or so a host of scientific essays and books have questioned the efficacy of selection and mutation as a mechanism for generating morphological novelty, as even a brief literature survey will establish. Thomson (1992:107) expressed doubt that large-scale morphological changes could accumulate via minor phenotypic changes at the population genetic level. Miklos (1993:29) argued that neo-Darwinism fails to provide a mechanism that can produce large-scale innovations in form and complexity. Gilbert et al. (1996) attempted to develop a new theory of evolutionary mechanisms to supplement classical neo-Darwinism, which, they argued, could not adequately explain macroevolution. As they put it in a memorable summary of the situation: &#8220;starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its (neo-Darwinism's) adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, 'the origin of species--Darwin's problem--remains unsolved'&#8220; (p. 361). Though Gilbert et al. (1996) attempted to solve the problem of the origin of form by proposing a greater role for developmental genetics within an otherwise neo-Darwinian framework,1 numerous recent authors have continued to raise questions about the adequacy of that framework itself or about the problem of the origination of form generally (Webster & Goodwin 1996; Shubin & Marshall 2000; Erwin 2000; Conway Morris 2000, 2003b; Carroll 2000; Wagner 2001; Becker & Lonnig 2001; Stadler et al. 2001; Lonnig & Saedler 2002; Wagner & Stadler 2003; Valentine 2004:189-194)................. Read rest here:........... http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177&program=CSC%20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science