Posted on 02/07/2005 3:50:28 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Al Frisby has spent the better part of his life in rooms filled with rebellious teenagers, but the last years have been particularly trying for the high school biology teacher. He has met parents who want him to teach that God created Eve out of Adam's rib, and then then adjusted the chromosomes to make her a woman, and who insist that Noah invited dinosaurs aboard the ark. And it is getting more difficult to keep such talk out of the classroom.
"Somewhere along the line, the students have been told the theory of evolution is not valid," he said. "In the last few years, I've had students question my teaching about cell classification and genetics, and there have been a number of comments from students saying: 'Didn't God do that'?" In Kansas, the geographical centre of America, the heart of the American heartland, the state-approved answer might soon be Yes. In the coming weeks, state educators will decide on proposed curriculum changes for high school science put forward by subscribers to the notion of "intelligent design", a modern version of creationism. If the religious right has its way, and it is a powerful force in Kansas, high school science teachers could be teaching creationist material by next September, charting an important victory in America's modern-day revolt against evolutionary science.
Legal debate
Similar classroom confrontations between God and science are under way in 17 states, according to the National Centre for Science Education. In Missouri, state legislators are drafting a bill laying down that science texts contain a chapter on so-called alternative theories to evolution. Textbooks in Arkansas and Alabama contain disclaimers on evolution, and in a Wisconsin school district, teachers are required to instruct their students in the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory". Last month, a judge in Georgia ordered a school district to remove stickers on school textbooks that warned: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."
For the conservative forces engaged in the struggle for America's soul, the true battleground is public education, the laboratory of the next generation, and an opportunity for the religious right to effect lasting change on popular culture. Officially, the teaching of creationism has been outlawed since 1987 when the supreme court ruled that the inclusion of religious material in science classes in public teaching was unconstitutional. In recent years, however, opponents of evolution have regrouped, challenging science education with the doctrine of "intelligent design" which has been carefully stripped of all references to God and religion. Unlike traditional creationism, which posits that God created the earth in six days, proponents of intelligent design assert that the workings of this planet are too complex to be ascribed to evolution. There must have been a designer working to a plan - that is, a creator.
In their campaign to persuade parents in Kansas to welcome the new version of creationism into the classroom, subscribers to intelligent design have appealed to a sense of fair play, arguing that it would be in their children's interest to be exposed to all schools of thought on the earth's origins. "We are looking for science standards that would be more informative, that would open the discussion about origins, rather than close it," said John Calvert, founder of the Intelligent Design network, the prime mover in the campaign to discredit the teaching of evolution in Kansas.
Other supporters of intelligent design go further, saying evolution is as much an article of faith as creationism. "Certainly there are clear religious implications," said William Harris, a research biochemist and co-founder of the design network in Kansas. "There are creation myths on both sides. Which one do you teach?" For Mr. Harris, an expert on fish oils and prevention of heart disease at the premier teaching hospital in Kansas City, the very premise of evolution was intolerable. He describes his conversion as a graduate student many years ago almost as an epiphany. "It hit me that if monkeys are supposed to be so close to us as relatives then what explains the incredible gap between monkeys and humans. I had a realisation that there was a vast chasm between the two types of animals, and the standard explanation just didn't fit."
Other scientists on the school board's advisory committee see no clash in values between religion and science. "Prominent conservative Christians, evangelical Christians, have found no inherent conflict between an evolutionary understanding of the history of life, and an orthodox understanding of the theology of creation," said Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University, who describes himself as a practising Christian.
But in Kansas, as in the rest of America, it would seem a slim majority continue to believe God created the heaven and the earth. During the past five years, subscribers to intelligent design have assembled a roster of influential supporters in the state, including a smattering of people with PhDs, such as Mr Harris, to lend their cause a veneer of scientific credibility. When conservative Republicans took control of the Kansas state school board last November, the creationists seized their chance, installing supporters on the committee reviewing the high school science curriculum.
The suggested changes under consideration seem innocuous at first. "A minor addition makes it clear that evolution is a theory and not a fact," says the proposed revision to the 8th grade science standard. However, Jack Krebs, a high school maths teacher on the committee drafting the new standards, argues that the campaign against evolution amounts to a stealth assault on the entire body of scientific thought. "There are two planes where they are attacking. One is evolution, and one is science itself," he said.
"They believe that the naturalistic bias of science is in fact atheistic, and that if we don't change science, we can't believe in God. And so this is really an attack on all of science. Evolution is just the weak link."
It would certainly seem so in Kansas. At the first of a series of public hearings on the new course material, the audience was equally split between the defenders of established science, and the anti-evolution rebels. The breakdown has educators worried. With the religious right now in control of the Kansas state school board, the circumstances favour the creationists.
In a crowded high school auditorium, biology teachers, mathematicians, a veterinarian, and a high school student made passionate speeches on the need for cold, scientific detachment, and the damage that would be done to the state's reputation and biotechnology industry if Kansas became known as a haven for creationists. They were countered by John James, who warned that the teaching of evolution led to nihilism, and to the gates of Auschwitz. "Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?" he asked. But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. "I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?" he thundered.
Science teachers believe that the genteel questioning of the intelligent design movements masks a larger project to discredit an entire body of rational thought. If the Kansas state school board allows science teachers to question evolution, where will it stop? Will religious teachers bring their beliefs into the classroom?
"They are trying to create a climate where anything an individual teacher wants to include in science class can be considered science," said Harry McDonald, a retired biology teacher and president of Kansas Citizens for Science Education. "They want to redefine science."
Religious right
Young Earth creationism: God created the Earth, and all the species on it, in six days, 6,000 years ago
Old Earth creationism: The Earth is 4.5bn years old, but God created each living organism on the planet, although not necessarily in six days
Intelligent design: Emerged as a theory in 1989. Maintains that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and that Earth's complexity can be explained only by the idea of an intelligent designer - or a creator
Just because someone thinks humans are separate from other primates does not mean they are anti-science.
When you replace scientific method with religious doctrine and then demand that I teach it to my kids, that is anti-science.
As for not being related to other primates... How can you look at them, watch them for any period of time and think that we are not related?
Teach your kids whatever you want - I just don't want my tax money used to teach my kids that God did not create anything. And I never said we weren't related. I said we weren't great apes.
As a chemist and amateur astronomer, that is total nonsense. The structure of matter at the scale of the very small (atoms, electrons and protons) is completely different from the structure of very large collections of matter (i.e. planets, stars, etc.) and the basic scientific theories describing them (quantum mechanics and relativity) are very, very different.
Then again, if you are a creationist, you will believe that quantum mechanics and relativity are only theories and not facts and have the same fundamental problems as evolution as scientific theories. Scientific ignorance must truly be bliss.
I'm sorry, but these are differences in degree (slight modifications on a theme), not in kind (something one group has, but another doesn't). Indeed, your list could be slightly modified to mark the differences between chimps and gorillas, for example.
Well, since the TOE does not cover the origins of life, you should have no problem with it being taught to your kids.
"see my post #221 for their logic in this."
Wow. I see that you're using the term 'logic' here VERY loosely!
The Theory of Evolution doesn't state that God didn't create anything, it explains how species developed over time.
And I never said we weren't related. I said we weren't great apes.
Wait, how can we be related to great apes and not be a member of the great ape family? And if you admit that we're related wouldn't that mean that we ummm...."evolved" from a common ancestor?
I was mostly kidding. The information on the chart boils down to three or four changes, mostly in the areas of: locomotion, reproductive strategy and intelligence (which may be related to reproductive strategy).
"Creationism is nothing more than a bronze-age, Middle Eastern myth that only children and the pathetically ignorant believe to be literally true."
Not really true, I am an evolutionist AND a creationist and I think the physics backs me up. Before you say I am unscientific, remember, the Big Bang is a creationist event, vitual particals are quantum creationist events and current string theory has been known to postulate colliding 'Branes' that set off the creation of new universes.
I think it is time for a synthesis of the two ideas (Crevo) and the development of an "Intelligent Design" theory that makes scientific sense.
Impossible you say? Well, the universe itself may be a sentient creature - it has a memory (that's what we are looking at through Hubble), a nervous system (light rays arry information), a sense of self (gravitation literally holds it together [more or less]), and a strict sense of logic (that's what the conservative laws of physics are).
Consequently, while I'm eager to depose anti-evolutionist fallacies, I think it is a bit too soon to give up on Intelligent Design scenarios. In a sense, ID is a truism, it is clear that our set of physical laws and the particular matter of the universe have had an Attractor towards the creation of stable organisms from the onset, as if the universe were destined to create us.
I just think there is a higher level of discussion possible on this forum once some subset of us decides to develop a theory that uses both evolutionary and ID theories together.
Therefore, I suggest a new term: CREVOLUTION and propose some of us are actually crevolutionists.
Related as created by the same creator. Why did the great apes stop evolving and humans didn't?
Your choice of words also applies to my ex in other ways. And to think that those, umm, actions were spiritually less objectionable than science and evolution!
Just curious, what was the official stance of the Soviet Union on this matter? If evolutionary theory was taboo, did they teach something else, or just leave that out of biology class?
"Evolution denies there was a Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. and that means evolution is against God and His word."
Actually, evolutionary theory now traces mankind back to a single mother and a single father, though they lived about 40,000 years apart. Read up on haplotypes and Cavalli Sforza, maybe that will open your eyes.
Who said they didn't. Evolution makes no exceptions for different species. Great Apes and humans share common ancestry. The current great apes are the same product of evolution as we are. We didn't evolve from today's Great Apes, but the various Great Apes and us descended from common ancestory according to TOE. It is a creationist myth that evolution syas we descended from modern apes or monkeys.
The soviets rejected evolution as a counter revolutionary idea. It went against their own theories of socialism. Evolution, in their minds, was the biological analog of capitalism.
Lamarkism and Lysenkoism. Darwin was considered to be very wrong.
I'll stick with my belief that humans were created specifically by God. The theorists of evolution can believe they descended from whatever creature they prefer.
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