Posted on 05/09/2005 8:22:16 AM PDT by anguish
This week sees the 80th anniversary of the trial of John Scopes, teacher, for breaking the newly-passed Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state of Tennessee. Conceived as a PR stunt to put the town of Dayton, TN on the map, it succeeded in making a laughingstock of the state, which found Scopes guilty in a trial that garnered enormous publicity. 80 years later, scientists have identified DNA as the medium in which heredity is passed on, constructed a map of the entire human genome and can routinely manipulate genetic information in the laboratory. Yet despite the advances we have made in the field, there remains a certain intransigence towards accepting as unquestioned scientific fact the theory of evolution as it pertains to the development of humankind. Although the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches defer to the scientific community on this, a highly vocal and well-funded group of fundamentalists in the United States are still bent on the suppression of evolution in schools.
Whereas the Scopes Trial of 1925 took place in a court room, this current fight takes place in front of the Kansas School Board, some of whom could not even be bothered to read through a draft of scientific standards. This board of educators, most of whom are confessed skeptics of evolution, have invited the researchers from the Intelligent Design research group Discovery Institute in Seattle to present the case that thousands of scientists worldwide have in effect been lying to themselves and the whole world by claiming that evolution — rather than God — is responsible for the vast array of biodiversity we find on the planet Earth. Scientists, led by the AAAS, have decided not to dignify these hearings by appearing before them. This event comes hot on the heels of previous efforts by the Kansas School Board to prevent the teaching of evolution, and moves by Cobb County in Georgia to label biology textbooks with a warning that evolution remains a theory. Oddly in that case they did not point out the same is true of gravity in physics books.
While the battle between fundamentalists and educators continues in the wilds of Kansas, the business of actually studying evolution marches on. A new report in Nature this week describes the rapid speciation of cichlid fish descended from the now-extinct Lake Makgadikgadi in Africa. Using mitochondrial DNA the researchers have shown a huge variety of fish species are descended from an original flock from the now defunct lake. Why have these cichlids undergone such diverse adaptations? The fish have a second set of jaws further back in their throats, that allow the main pair to develop and adapt to changing conditions, for example with big jaws from cracking snail shells, or long jaws for better predation. The female fish incubate their eggs in their mouths, and more "personal" breeding means sex selection is important, another factor in their rapid speciation.
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EvoPing. Nothing new about the Kansas lunacy, but at least some interesting info on the rapid speciation of cichlid fish.
"Yet despite the advances we have made in the field, there remains a certain intransigence towards accepting as unquestioned scientific fact the theory of evolution as it pertains to the development of humankind."
Gee, I didn't realize the theory of evolution had become "unquestioned scientific fact". In that case, never mind.
Thanks for the ping. Not much news in this one, really. We've had a few recent threads on the Kansas situation. If nothing else turns up this morning, I'll ping the list.
Oh, geesh. You guys haven't resolved this by now?
Yes, and in Galileo's day it was unquestioned scientific fact that the sun has no spots.
Darwinism has become what its adherents profess to loathe: quasi-religious dogma that is too brittle and weak to withstand critical challenge so it presses the prevailing authorities of the day to silence and forbid honest inquiry.
Long ago, before there were any people, the world was young and water covered everything. The earth was a great island floating above the seas, suspended by four rawhide ropes representing the four sacred directions. It hung down from the crystal sky. There were no people, but the animals lived in a home above the rainbow. Needing space, they sent Water Beetle to search for room under the seas. Water Beetle dove deep and brought up mud that spread quickly, turning into land that was flat and too soft and wet for the animals to live on.Grandfather Buzzard was sent to see if the land had hardened. When he flew over the earth, he found the mud had become solid; he flapped in for a closer look. The wind from his wings created valleys and mountains, and that is why the Cherokee territory has so many mountains today.
As the earth stiffened, the animals came down from the rainbow. It was still dark. They needed light, so they pulled the sun out from behind the rainbow, but it was too bright and hot. A solution was urgently needed. The shamans were told to place the sun higher in the sky. A path was made for it to travel--from east to west--so that all inhabitants could share in the light.
The plants were placed upon the earth. The Creator told the plants and animals to stay awake for seven days and seven nights. Only a few animals managed to do so, including the owls and mountain lions, and they were rewarded with the power to see in the dark. Among the plants, only the cedars, spruces, and pines remained awake. The Creator told these plants that they would keep their hair during the winter, while the other plants would lose theirs.
People were created last. The women were able to have babies every seven days. They reproduced so quickly that the Creator feared the world would soon become too crowded. So after that the women could have only one child per year, and it has been that way ever since.
/sarcasm
Dang, I hear flute music.
Argument by straw indian?
Ping us when it has evolved into a trout.
Or a darwinist.
Prediction: This thread will reach over 400 replies, yet no minds will be changed on either side.
:)
This article is much more balanced & realistic than the "conservative equals anti-science" crud that's been appearing in the mainstream liberal papers lately.
Yep.
But, we will see much vitriol, name-calling, and smugness.
The purpose of Creationism is to destroy the Conservative Movement.
If you go back far enough, we and the chimps share a common ancestor. My father's father's father's father, going back maybe a half million generations - about five million years - was an ape."
Walter Cronkite, Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution
To the best of my knowledge, All political parties hate science, because sooner or later, science contradicts something that politicians want to promote.
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Once upon a time--a mere week ago in cosmic terms--mere matter, flotsam and jetsam from a collapsed and spent star, was rolling chaotically and randomly through spacetime and suddenly thought to itself, "I know! I will coalesce and evolve into life!"
And so it did.
Richard Dawkins will explain the magic of the gaps to you just as soon as he finishes his most current character assassination and ad hominem broadsides on religious believers who refuse to convert to his faith.
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