Posted on 05/03/2005 2:12:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Some science teachers say they're encountering fresh resistance to the topic of evolution - and it's coming from their students.
Nearly 30 years of teaching evolution in Kansas has taught Brad Williamson to expect resistance, but even this veteran of the trenches now has his work cut out for him when students raise their hands.
That's because critics of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection are equipping families with books, DVDs, and a list of "10 questions to ask your biology teacher."
The intent is to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of students as to the veracity of Darwin's theory of evolution.
The result is a climate that makes biology class tougher to teach. Some teachers say class time is now wasted on questions that are not science-based. Others say the increasingly charged atmosphere has simply forced them to work harder to find ways to skirt controversy.
On Thursday, the Science Hearings Committee of the Kansas State Board of Education begins hearings to reopen questions on the teaching of evolution in state schools.
The Kansas board has a famously zigzag record with respect to evolution. In 1999, it acted to remove most references to evolution from the state's science standards. The next year, a new - and less conservative - board reaffirmed evolution as a key concept that Kansas students must learn.
Now, however, conservatives are in the majority on the board again and have raised the question of whether science classes in Kansas schools need to include more information about alternatives to Darwin's theory.
But those alternatives, some science teachers report, are already making their way into the classroom - by way of their students.
In a certain sense, stiff resistance on the part of some US students to the theory of evolution should come as no surprise.
Even after decades of debate, Americans remain deeply ambivalent about the notion that the theory of natural selection can explain creation and its genesis.
A Gallup poll late last year showed that only 28 percent of Americans accept the theory of evolution, while 48 percent adhere to creationism - the belief that an intelligent being is responsible for the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.
But if reluctance to accept evolution is not new, the ways in which students are resisting its teachings are changing.
"The argument was always in the past the monkey-ancestor deal," says Mr. Williamson, who teaches at Olathe East High School. "Today there are many more arguments that kids bring to class, a whole fleet of arguments, and they're all drawn out of the efforts by different groups, like the intelligent design [proponents]."
It creates an uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom, Williamson says - one that he doesn't like. "I don't want to ever be in a confrontational mode with those kids ... I find it disheartening as a teacher."
Williamson and his Kansas colleagues aren't alone. An informal survey released in April from the National Science Teachers Association found that 31 percent of the 1,050 respondents said they feel pressure to include "creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution in their science classroom."
These findings confirm the experience of Gerry Wheeler, the group's executive director, who says that about half the teachers he talks to tell him they feel ideological pressure when they teach evolution.
And according to the survey, while 20 percent of the teachers say the pressure comes from parents, 22 percent say it comes primarily from students.
In this climate, science teachers say they must find new methods to defuse what has become a politically and emotionally charged atmosphere in the classroom. But in some cases doing so also means learning to handle well-organized efforts to raise doubts about Darwin's theory.
Darwin's detractors say their goal is more science, not less, in evolution discussions.
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute distributes a DVD, "Icons of Evolution," that encourages viewers to doubt Darwinian theory.
One example from related promotional literature: "Why don't textbooks discuss the 'Cambrian explosion,' in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?"
Such questions too often get routinely dismissed from the classroom, says senior fellow John West, adding that teachers who advance such questions can be rebuked - or worse.
"Teachers should not be pressured or intimidated," says Mr. West, "but what about all the teachers who are being intimidated and in some cases losing their jobs because they simply want to present a few scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory?"
But Mr. Wheeler says the criticisms West raises lack empirical evidence and don't belong in the science classroom.
"The questions scientists are wrestling with are not the same ones these people are claiming to be wrestling with," Wheeler says. "It's an effort to sabotage quality science education. There is a well-funded effort to get religion into the science classroom [through strategic questioning], and that's not fair to our students."
A troubled history Teaching that humans evolved by a process of natural selection has long stirred passionate debate, captured most famously in the Tennessee v. John Scopes trial of 1925.
Today, even as Kansas braces for another review of the question, parents in Dover, Pa., are suing their local school board for requiring last year that evolution be taught alongside the theory that humankind owes its origins to an "intelligent designer."
In this charged atmosphere, teachers who have experienced pressure are sometimes hesitant to discuss it for fear of stirring a local hornets' nest. One Oklahoma teacher, for instance, canceled his plans to be interviewed for this story, saying, "The school would like to avoid any media, good or bad, on such an emotionally charged subject."
Others believe they've learned how to successfully navigate units on evolution.
In the mountain town of Bancroft, Idaho (pop. 460), Ralph Peterson teaches all the science classes at North Gem High School. Most of his students are Mormons, as is he.
When teaching evolution at school, he says, he sticks to a clear but simple divide between religion and science. "I teach the limits of science," Mr. Peterson says. "Science does not discuss the existence of God because that's outside the realm of science." He says he gets virtually no resistance from his students when he approaches the topic this way.
In Skokie, Ill., Lisa Nimz faces a more religiously diverse classroom and a different kind of challenge. A teaching colleague, whom she respects and doesn't want to offend, is an evolution critic and is often in her classroom when the subject is taught.
In deference to her colleague's beliefs, she says she now introduces the topic of evolution with a disclaimer.
"I preface it with this idea, that I am not a spiritual provider and would never try to be," Ms. Nimz says. "And so I am trying not ... to feel any disrespect for their religion. And I think she feels that she can live with that."
A job that gets harder The path has been a rougher one for John Wachholz, a biology teacher at Salina (Kansas) High School Central. When evolution comes up, students tune out: "They'll put their heads on their desks and pretend they don't hear a word you say."
To show he's not an enemy of faith, he sometimes tells them he's a choir member and the son of a Lutheran pastor. But resistance is nevertheless getting stronger as he prepares to retire this spring.
"I see the same thing I saw five years ago, except now students think they're informed without having ever really read anything" on evolution or intelligent design, Mr. Wachholz says. "Because it's been discussed in the home and other places, they think they know, [and] they're more outspoken.... They'll say, 'I don't believe a word you're saying.' "
As teachers struggle to fend off strategic questions - which some believe are intended to cloak evolution in a cloud of doubt - critics of Darwin's theory sense an irony of history. In their view, those who once championed teacher John Scopes's right to question religious dogma are now unwilling to let a new set of established ideas be challenged.
"What you have is the Scopes trial turned on its head because you have school boards saying you can't say anything critical about Darwin," says Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman on the "Icons of Evolution" DVD.
But to many teachers, "teaching the controversy" means letting ideologues manufacture controversy where there is none. And that, they say, could set a disastrous precedent in education.
"In some ways I think civilization is at stake because it's about how we view our world," Nimz says. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, for example, were possible, she says, because evidence wasn't necessary to guide a course of action.
"When there's no empirical evidence, some very serious things can happen," she says. "If we can't look around at what is really there and try to put something logical and intelligent together from that without our fears getting in the way, then I think that we're doomed."
What some students are asking their biology teachers Critics of evolution are supplying students with prepared questions on such topics as:
• The origins of life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth - when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
• Darwin's tree of life. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
• Vertebrate embryos. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry - even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
• The archaeopteryx. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds - even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?
• Peppered moths. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection - when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?
• Darwin's finches. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection - even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?
• Mutant fruit flies. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution - even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
• Human origins. Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident - when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?
• Evolution as a fact. Why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact - even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
Source: Discovery Institute
You did not start your post as you claim here. You said,
"...the past is not a readily observable phenomenon."
Here's what I replied,
"The study of Science is not only about the study of the past."
You contradict yourself, sir, and therein you are simply found to be wrong.
I have to assume tyo read everything, including the Bible, with the same care.
Actually, yes I do. It is your own writing that you need to read with considerably more care and hopefully prior to the time you ultimately decide to post.
"Again, you describe forensic science, not Science, itself." Something I've said hundreds of times on these threads, and I know you've posted on these same threads. Why do you bother arguing this?
Answer: Because you too often carelessly equate "Science" with what is only it's subset, forensic science. You did it again and I called you on it. You play far too loose with your terminology, and that's where you become confused and your arguments fail.
The opposite of fraud is integrity. Integrity is the result of one's consistent and unwavering demonstration of trustworthiness. Trustworthiness may only be established by unwavering demonstration of one's truthfulness and honesty. Do we agree with all the above statements, beginning with the statement, the opposite of false is true?
Fails to to answer. Point surrendered and awarded to Agamemnon.
If you want to know what institutions are most trusted, ask yourself whether ID is trying to present itself as a science or as a religion.
Here we are back to the concept of trust, and hence back to credibility and the concept of truth as the underpinning of "trust" again.
What can you claim to know about trusted "institutions," when the thing you call "science" is not in pursuit of the truth?
I submit that on the basis of this tortured distinction you make between the study of Science and the pursuit of truth you are unable to think truly scientifically about anything, because you can't think truthfully about Science in the first place.
Has ID become an "institution" now? Like evolution, I consider ID a premise. One is a premise founded in things Science may study, the other is founded on a thing called faith.
Since ID states the obvious about what is readily observed in the present, and Science studies that which can be readily observed, the premise of ID may be considered a premise founded in that which Science may study.
Evolution on the other hand is a premise defining a subject that has never been readily observed either chemically or physically, and of which no credible evidence exists either past or in the present. Hence, evolution is not a premise founded in that which Science may study. It is founded merely on faith.
Faith is the cornerstone of religion. From the writer of the biblical book of Hebrews we read, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen...."
ID has nothing to do with faith, and therefore has no particular reason to be required to have anything at all to do with religion. This stands apart from what may be one's desire, which often wells up from inside onesself to openly praise the Creator of this marvelously complex universe. ID, itself, doesn't mandate such adoration of the Creator. ID merely states the obvious, and has nothing to do with faith, because ID is so obvious.
On the other hand, evolution has everything to do with faith, and therefore, religion, because there is no evidence, just the enduring hope by it's less-than-rationally thinking devotees that man is his own creator, that he will someday create life from non-life, that he will evolve himself into the superman his primordial and primate "ancestors" intended him to be, but he'll do so only... if only we'll believe he can....
Takes more faith for your side to believe what it does than it takes for my side to readily observe and study what it does.
We'll see alot of evolutionists loosing their religion before too much longer, I suspect. They'll be toppling the alter of Darwin, and bolting for the "church" doors, as reformation enters their thinking, and they head over to the only logical, enlightened, and abundantly obvious side of this argument.
ID is to evolution what the Swift Boat Vets were to the Kerry campaign.
Standing ovation!
Bravo, good fellow! Well put!
Since I started my post by saying that historical biology and geology were branches of their sciences, I cannot imagine why you would start a post by arguing against something I haven't said.You lying sack of dingo kidneys. Here's how Post # 398 started out:You did not start your post as you claim here. You said,
"...the past is not a readily observable phenomenon."
the past is not a readily observable phenomenon. Biology and geology have large branches devoted to history. These cannot ever produce an absolute, complete and final truth.
You are giving a standing ovation to a liar. Good job.
The fact that only a long line of ancestors that survived long enough to procreate could lead to someone who could ask the question?
Was that the supposed lie you posted in #583? Our country is in such a mess because of this lawyerly thinking. The obvious gets thrown to the wind to argue over a non-related technicality.
Redirect!
You mean, a well-orchestrated attempt to torpedo a long-standing discussion from out of left field?
Lo and behold, we already have multiple matching lines of retroviruses found in the evolutionary tree! So, at some point in the chain of events described above, there's obviously something you disagree with. It would be really informative to know where that point is. Personally I can't really understand how not to be convinced by such evidence, but at the same time I understand that some people (at least think they) already know the TRUTH®, and will not be convinced whatever the evidence.
Thanks for the Ping!
IMO, another reason for the scarcity of science teachers is that schools are administered by people with education degrees - who wants to be bossed by people both stupider and more ignorant then you are?
True as far as it goes, but science is not just about looking for patterns in observations. It is about explaining those patterns. We will never know whether our explanations of these patterns are true. We do know, however, if they are useful. In your example, "the moon blocks out the sun" is a useful explanation of the patterns while "magic" is a useless one. It is not possible to determine which one is really true.
As you alluded to in your post 459, there is a disconnect between the common usage of the term, evolution and the technical definition. In textbooks however, (and this is a thread about what is being taught in schools, btw) there are a least half-a-dozen usages of the term. It can mean anything from change over time, a historical narrative of the universe, to changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population, to limited common descent and the mechanisms for it, to universal common descent, or the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
The problem is equivocation. Some of these meanings generate no controversy at all. Nature has a history, gene frequencies change, limited common descent among organisms has occurred, and natural selection has played a significant role in speciation and species modification. The problem starts when evolutionists offer evidence and argument for evolution in these senses of the term and then speak of evolution in the macro-sense as if it were equally well established.
Your technical definition is of course permissible and proper, but I have given in this thread ample instances of varied and sometimes shifting meanings of the term used by scientists, teachers, and textbooks, etc, which are relevant to the subject of the article, which deals with aspects of the controversy. Abiogenesis is one of the subjects that is encompassed by the term as it is used in textbooks and elsewhere by scientists, whether it fits your preferred technical definition or not.
Cordially,
You can call me names but you just proved my point -- again.
What you started with I addressed. And I went on to address the second portion of your post in the context of truth --- which you have danced around completely --- and I addressed quite thoroughly.
But since you are an evolutionist and admit that you are not in search of the truth through scientific experimentation and inquiry, that says it all right there. I need no additional proof.
I'll just let your words bear witness against yourself.
"It is not possible to determine which one is really true."
Adding qualifier: using scientific reasoning.
I'm not dancing. Science isn't about truth. It's about useful and productive ideas.
But while science cannot prove the truth of its statements, it can demonstrate that some statements are reliable, and some statements are false. And that is a useful thing.
Well, if you're trying to prove a claim of universal common ancestry then this evidence is insufficient because there are no examples of ‘shared errors’ that link mammals to other branches of the genealogic tree. It also is insufficient to establish common ancestry because it is based on the the presumption that the retroviruses are non-functional (because of the presumed randomness of the retrovirus insertion.) But just because we don't know what the function might be or have been in the past doesn't mean that there is no function. Also there is some evidence to support the idea that some of these may serve functions, and that their insertion is not entirely random.
Cordially,
Agreed, but just curious, how would you demonstrate using something other than scientific reasoning that the "magic" hypothesis is false?
Well, if you're trying to prove a claim of universal common ancestry then this evidence is insufficient because there are no examples of ‘shared errors’ that link mammals to other branches of the genealogic tree.This example is of course only for the species in the diagram. I don't follow the research on retroviruses closely enough to tell what parts of the evolutionary tree has been tied together like this. Of course, I'm not trying to prove anything, as that's really outside of science's scope (unless you're of the school that includes math in the scientific realm), but merely to present evidence.
It also is insufficient to establish common ancestry because it is based on the the presumption that the retroviruses are non-functionalOf course this evidence can be falsified, just like DNA tests to establish paternity could, but that has yet to happen.
Also there is some evidence to support the idea that some of these may serve functions, and that their insertion is not entirely random.Such as?
600
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