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
Ever hear of Heinlein's Interregnum of the Prophets?
We're on our way.
"Evolution is a fact: it is the way God has created our bodies. Not so our souls."
Or perhaps "Evolution is a fact: it is the way our bodies were created. Not so our souls which is what God created?
By the odds, it should have taken many billions of years - if ever - to cook it just right, yet there it was.
Replication seems out of reach.
Strange indeed?
Interesting that it seems only Christians that have an argument with the THEORY of evolution?
Wonder what other religions think, the Jews for example?
"The theory that all life shares a common ancestor rest on the premise that "nature is all there is"--Naturalism."
God ain't natural huh?
God created our world slowly and wonderfully - for instance, he took about 9 billion years to make one or more supernovae to build all the transuranics and other elements heavier than iron on earth.
He created our world slowly and wonderfully, and then did the same with our bodies. And at the very last he breathed his image into the clay. This would appear to have been sometime between 100, 000 and one million years ago. The genetic migration appears to indicate a "genetic bottleneck in mitochondial DNA" (a quaint scientific term for a single mother) between those dates. Score one for the Garden of Eden.
Embrace science. Real science (not junk science like Global Warming or the HIV hypothesis) is a friend to truth. If you know that God exists, then no actual, real scientific discovery can contradict his Reality. How could it?
But Creationism needs to be dropped - it's unfortunate that so many regard any contradiction of Creationism to be an attack on God. But those who believe it must drop it. It is not true, it contradicts Truth. And in defending it, many are forced into indefensible positions.
Accepting the empirically proven Evolutionary theory is - properly understood - a Christian act. It really appears to be so, and it tells us something of what God has done. Just be aware that there are many unwarranted penumbra from Evolution theory: for instance "Evolution proves that God doesn't exist". Such unproven statements are poor science.
How do you know?
>Evolution is totally about leaving God out.
Not totally. He can create the rules, can set the evolution in motion, there are many possibilities
>If there was no God, there would still be evolution.
No evolution, if the God is the ultimate cause
>Evolution is what Communists use to defend their theory.
So what? They used algebra also. Are we supposed to reject algebra now because of this?
>Evolution does away with Adam and Eve. That means they do away with the fall of man in the Garden. That means they do away with the need of a Saviour.
Hm-m, Adam and Eve can remain as metaphors. You would not reject a moral of a good tale just because it was made up, would you?
>Evolution itself does away with the need of Jesus Christ.
Then the need was not strong enough!
>Evolution is totally about doing away with man's need for salvation.
I reckon there should be other reasons.
>Evolution is totally against God
Ignorance is against Man
I had to think about that!
No, if we take it that God exists, he created both body and soul. Plus mountains, streams, sun, moon, stars. Otherwise we're back in Manichaeism (sp?), where the devil created the physical universe and God created the spiritual. Not good.
You maybe had an implicit question - why would God make the body slowly, and the soul fast? Well, I guess the answer here is - Free Will and an Immortal soul are things that are discontinuities. You either have them, or not. And (from an artistic point of view) they are the finishing touches to human creation, so would be added last.
Good point. The DNA helix that leads to all the subsequent intricacy of life doesn't appear to have itself evolved. There are no evolutionary stages, though once DNA exists, it replicates its own building blocks. A very good point you have there Onedoug.
"You're right. Savings souls is more important."
If they want to save soles, they should become shoe repairmen.
Before you start arguing about science in general, and specifically evolution, you need to know what these concepts are all about. If you did, you would know that evolution neither says there is a God (or Gods), not denies the existence of God (or Gods). Science is incapable of answering those questions.
Souls/soles
You said-->The theory that all life shares a common ancestor rest on the premise that "nature is all there is"--Naturalism. Can science based on Naturlism say Intelligent Design is false? No! It can only state it is not science. This is a clever way to win an argument."
You are making a mistake. There is no required premise in science that "Nature is all that is". Where did you get that idea from? Who said that, your Pastor?
What there is Texas, is real evidence that you can actually see and test that drives the picture of nature as presented by science. A theory in the scientific sense is assembling the facts that you actually have in your hand, and putting them together to try and see the picture that is revealed on the surface of the jigsaw puzzle. You can make a very good guess about what that picture is without having every single piece. There may be something missing from the set, but you can tell if it is a painting of the statue of liberty or of a Playboy nude without having everything in place. Certainly you may change you mind if something comes along that alters the view.
The problem with so called "Intellegent Design" is that it is not very intellegent to accept the idea that creatures are so complex that they demand a creature of vastly more complexity to design them. So who designed that creature?
We, as human beings have accomplished a great deal in the real world because some of us are not satisfied with the only solution to the questions to the reality that surrounds us, is that "GOD DID IT-- Shut up."
This is not about clever ways to debate, it is about a way to develop medicine, DNA from bacteria that can make human insulin, cell phones and computers to name a few things.
If you took everthing the theologists have accomplished over the years and pressed a button and deleted it, you would go to work tommorow just fine, and would not notice the absence any of that stuff. That would not be the case if we lost the scientific works we have strained so hard to pry out from nature.
Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, used to teach that the white race was created in a test tube by black scientists. Does that qualify for teaching as an Intelligent Design theory?
A scientific theory is an explanation that links together multiple facts into a systemic body of knowledge. A scientific theory is higher in a hierarchy than facts and hypotheses. A hypothesize is closer to the layman's definition of theory. Creationism has none of these elements and, hence, cannot be considered science. One important point that makes Creationism fail the basic tenets of science is that it does not have any information or insight into the origins of the Creator. In order to be valid, creationism must have some idea how a creator that creates us came into existence. Our origins ultimately reside in the origins of such a creator.
Secondly, there is no room for supernatural intervention in the physical worlds. If there was, experimental sciences would be irreproducible and the explanation "God did it" would be sufficient.
The Fundamentalist Christian approach to science will result in it's elimination from schools and the U.S. will cease being a force in technological and scientific endeavors. Students here will be forced to be scientifically dumb and ignorant, but, hey, they will be saved!
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