[Kansas Education] Board member Morris: Evolution a 'fairy tale'

The Wichita Eagle ^ | 13 June 2005 | JOHN HANNA

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution is an "age-old fairy tale," sometimes defended with "anti-God contempt and arrogance," according to a State Board of Education member involved in writing new science standards for Kansas' public schools.

A newsletter written by board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis, was circulating on Monday. In it, Morris criticized fellow board members, news organizations and scientists who defend evolution.

She called evolution "a theory in crisis" and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!"

"It is our goal to write the standards in such a way that clearly gives educators the right AND responsibility to present the criticism of Darwinism alongside the age-old fairy tale of evolution," Morris wrote.

Morris was one of three board members who last week endorsed proposed science standards designed to expose students to more criticism of evolution in the classroom. The other two were board Chairman Steve Abrams, of Arkansas City, and Kathy Martin, of Clay Center.

Kathy Martin and Connie Morris

Morris was in Topeka for meetings at the state Department of Education's headquarters and wasn't available for interviews.

But her views weren't a surprise to Jack Krebs, vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science, an Oskaloosa educator.

"Her belief is in opposition to mainstream science," he said. "Mainstream science is a consensus view literally formed by tens of thousands people who literally studied these issues."

The entire board plans to review the three members' proposed standards Wednesday. The new standards - like the existing, evolution-friendly ones - determine how students in fourth, seventh and 10th grades are tested on science.

In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards. Elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservative Republicans recaptured the board's majority in 2004 elections.

The three board members had four days of hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life, that all life has descended from a common origin and that man and apes share a common ancestor. Evolution is attributed to 19th Century British scientist Charles Darwin.

Organizing the case against evolution were intelligent design advocates. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are so complex and well-ordered that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.

In their proposed standards, the three board members said they took no position on intelligent design, but their work followed the suggestions of intelligent design advocates.

In her newsletter, Morris said she is a Christian who believes the account of creation in the Book of Genesis is literally true. She also acknowledged that many other Christians have no trouble reconciling faith and evolution.

"So be it," Morris wrote. "But the quandary exists when poor science - with anti-God contempt and arrogance - must insist that it has all the answers."

National and state science groups boycotted May's hearings before Morris and the other two board members, viewing them as rigged against evolution.

"They desperately need to withhold the fact that evolution is a theory in crisis and has been crumbling apart for years," Morris said.

But Krebs said Morris is repeating "standard creationist rhetoric."

"People have been saying evolution is a theory in crisis for 40 or 50 years," Krebs said. "Yet the scientific community has been strengthening evolution every year."

[Coyoteman]

"The Great Owens River Scandal" or How Squatter Potter's Daughter Got Her Water

Don't know that one, sorry.

OOooo, Japanese please!

Japanese Creation Story

Long ago all the elements were mixed together with one germ of life. This germ began to mix things around and around until the heavier part sank and the lighter part rose. A muddy sea that covered the entire earth was created. From this ocean grew a green shoot. It grew and grew until it reached the clouds and there it was tranformed into a god. Soon this god grew lonely and it began to create other gods. The last two gods it made, Izanagi anf Izanami, were the most remarkable.

One day as they were walking along they looked down on the ocean and wondered what was beneath it. Izanagi thrust his staff into the waters and as he pulled it back up some clumps of mud fell back into the sea. They began to harden and grow until they became the islands of Japan.

The two descended to these islands and began to explore, each going in different directions. They created all kinds of plants. When they met again they decided to marry and have children to inhabit the land. The first child Izanami bore was a girl of radiant beauty. The gods decided she was too beautiful to live in Japan, so they put her up in the sky and she became the sun. Their second daughter, Tsuki-yami, became the moon and their third and unruly son, Sosano-wo, was sentenced to the sea, where he creates storms.

Later, their first child, Amaterasu, bore a son who became the emperor of Japan and all the emperors since then have claimed descent from him.

[patriot_wes]

I believe discoveries in this century in the area of microbiology - DNA,genomes have dealt the death blow to the "theory" of natural occurrence. The odds against spontaneous appearance of life arising from nothingness are so astronomically high as to make the probability of it be zero, zilch, nada.

That is why some of the most respected and trumpeted evolutionists have now stated their belief in some requirement for intelligent design.

[TOWER]

A challenge:

If we threw out all of the topics that are currently taught in science class, and only taught ID, what would be taught? Attack evolution? It doesn't exist anymore, it isn't taught. Attack the big bang? It isn't taught anymore either. So without these other topics around to attack, what does ID actually explain? What advancements could be made by understanding ID?

Is ID capable of standing on its own?

[TOWER]

Proof that you do not understand evolution, it does not care how the first lifeforms came to be. You are confusing evolution with abiogensis.

[Stultis]

Is ID capable of standing on its own?

No. ID exponents actually admit this. That's what the whole "teach the controversy" gambit is about. There's nothing to teach with regard to ID as a positive theory. In fact ID'ers themselves will admit that ID is not a scientific theory at all. It doesn't have any of the crucial features of a theory, most notably an explanatory mechanism or model. That's why it's a "proposal," an "inference," and etc, but never a "theory".

[atlaw]

"The three board members had four days of hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life ..."

I'll point this out again. The new science standards proposed by the Kansas anti-evolutionists have apparently added to the prior science standards a claim that the theory of evolution covers abiogenesis. The old standards apparently (from what I can see) correctly made no such claim for the theory.

The false claim was added to the standards in order to call it into question and thereby undermine the theory (i.e., claim that the theory covers something it does not -- abiogenesis -- then call into question the evidence for the phony addition to the theory).

A great many posters here make the repeated argument that there is no (or insufficient) evidence of abiogenesis, and that the theory of evolution is therefore invalid. When it is pointed out that the theory does not cover abiogenesis, they then claim "oh, but the schools teach it as thought it does cover abiogenesis."

Well, it appears that the schools were not teaching any such thing -- until now. The deceit in this "movement" is beyond question.

[From many - one.]

"...The deceit in this "movement" is beyond question."

This is what disturbs me the most. Wrongheadedness is one thing, deliberate lying is another thing altogether.

Someone does not want the United States to perform well in the sciences. I really want to know why a fundamentalist Muslim was brought in as a credible witness for the anti-science side.

[wallcrawlr]

ping

Revelation 4:11
See my profile for info

[Oztrich Boy]

From the Creationist Making Stuff Up Section: That is why some of the most respected and trumpeted evolutionists have now stated their belief in some requirement for intelligent design.

[Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...]

Still waiting for an answer to my Post 89. Let me ask you another question - assume you are going on a camping trip in the most remote area of the planet imaginable. All of sudden you stumble across an area where rocks are assembled in a rough circle, stumps of trees surround the site and the stumps have a smooth surface on the top resembling a cut, in another area there is a trench that looks angled to drain water away, a pile of rocks is in one corner of the clearing... and so on. What conclusion would you come to? Unless I miss my guess, the obvious thing to say is 'sheesh, it looks like somebody has been this way before'. Why? The evidence shows that the site has been changed by an intelligent act; what you are looking at isn't random and there's an order to it. And so it goes with the entire universe - there is order everywhere one looks - from DNA to planets revolving around the sun to the existing of things that simply could not exist unless they were created as a complete entity in one shot. Order and design is everywhere.

I took a look through the link that you provided and don't think that too many of those will be a problem. As a matter of fact, most are quite simple and obvious. However, it's simply not practical from a time perspective to spend the next year coming up with a reasoned response to each one of these - which by the way, didn't come from you in the first place. How be you let me know from your personal reading and examination of scriptures what falsifiable claim/statements you've found that you clearly believe has been demonstrated to be absolutely false and I'll have a go at that one?

Let me leave you with these two verses. Psalm 14:1 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God'..... If this describes your attitude, you're a fool. No, I didn't say it. Somebody who claims much greater authority than me did. The second verse is from 2 Peter 3:5 'For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:'..... We are looking at the same physical evidence of the universe around us but but it would seem you have interpreted it one way and I another. However, God claims elsewhere in scripture that he knows even a person's most innermost thoughts ......and what He is saying is that you are being 'willingly ignorant' of what you are looking at. That phrase transcends the idea of simple 'interpretation' of evidence. What the Bible says is that have resolved yourself to ignoring the obvious and have simply decided it's not true. Just to carry this one step further, scripture says that one day in the future we all have to stand in front of God and give an account of ourself. While the big issue there will not be another crevo debate, do you think your arguments will hold any water there that you were totally persuaded to believe something other than God creating the universe based on the preponderance of evidence that had been presented to you while you were alive?

[patriot_wes]

"From the Creationist Making Stuff Up Section"

By Larry B. Stammer, Times Staff Writer...............03/11/05

Charles Townes, the UC Berkeley professor who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electronics and then startled the scientific world by suggesting that religion and science were converging, was awarded the $1.5-million Templeton Prize on Wednesday for progress in spiritual knowledge.

The prize, the proceeds of which Townes said he planned to largely donate to academic and religious institutions, recognized his groundbreaking and controversial leadership in the mid-1960s in bridging science and religion.

The co-inventor of the laser, Townes, 89, said no greater question faced humankind than discovering the purpose and meaning of life — and why there was something rather than nothing in the cosmos.

Townes said that it was "extremely unlikely" that the laws of physics that led to life on Earth were accidental.

Some scientists, he conceded, had suggested that if there were an almost infinite number of universes, each with different laws, one of them was bound by chance to hit upon the right combination to support life. "I think one has to consider that seriously," Townes told The Times. But he said such an assumption could not currently be tested. Even if there were a multitude of universes, he said, we do not know why the laws of physics would vary from one universe to another.

In 1964, while a professor at Columbia University, Townes delivered a talk at Riverside Church in New York that became the basis for an article, "The Convergence of Science and Religion," which put him at odds with some scientists. In the article, Townes said science and religion should find common ground, noting "their differences are largely superficial, and … the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each." When MIT published the article, a prominent alumnus threatened to break ties with the institution.

In a 1996 interview with The Times, Townes said that new findings in astronomy had opened people's minds to religion. Before the 1960s, the Big Bang was just an idea that was hotly debated. Today, there is so much evidence supporting the theory that most cosmologists take it for granted.

"The fact that the universe had a beginning is a very striking thing," Townes said. "How do you explain that unique event" without God?

[AndrewC]

Babe battles?

Eugenie C. Scott

IOW, what do pictures have to do with a people's right to choose how they educate their children? Or Ad Hominem is a poor argument.

[nightdriver]

"People have been saying evolution is a theory in crisis for 40 or 50 years," Krebs said. "Yet the scientific community has been strengthening evolution every year."

That's most likely because there is a greater and greater proportion of unbelievers in the scientific community every year.

I particularly like the picture sequence I saw a few years ago of a whale crawling out of the ocean onto dry land and sprouting legs, hooves and becoming a Holstein cow, but keeping its flat tail complete with flipper!

Sorry, it takes far too much faith for me to believe that one.

[Dimensio]

So let me get this straight and assume we are dealing with 100 specific statements provided by a witness in a court case.

But we're not dealing with 100 specific statements provided by a witness in a court case. We're dealing with a single compilation of multiple books that each make various claims, most of which cannot be verified (because they invoke the supernatural) and some of which only are "true" if you use a bizarre twisting of interpretation in an attempt to explain away rather apparent contradictions.

[Dimensio]

That's most likely because there is a greater and greater proportion of unbelievers in the scientific community every year.

Evidence?

I particularly like the picture sequence I saw a few years ago of a whale crawling out of the ocean onto dry land and sprouting legs, hooves and becoming a Holstein cow, but keeping its flat tail complete with flipper!

Yeah. It's fun to make fun of evolution by simply sniping at simplistic illustrations and completely ignoring the underlying evidence and explanations. You don't have to have any knowledge to do things your way!

Sorry, it takes far too much faith for me to believe that one.

Of course. You're not interested in evidence, so you only consider things acceptable if you can have "faith" in them. Rational scientists, however, live in reality and accept things based upon evidence.

[TOWER]

Great, so maybe God (or some other ID construct like an interdimensional computer) created DNA and the first lifeforms. Guess what, evolution still happened. I find it very suspect that ID'ers are having a hissy fit over evolution, but none of their objections have anything to do with evolution.

[Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...]

Actually, you've put your finger on a reason why consistency and accuracy in scripture is even more astounding (and why the challenge to you to find an irrefutable error should have been even easier - if one is to be found)- it is a compilation of books by numerous authors most of whom didn't know each other and written over hundreds of years..... and what I'm telling you is that there are still no errors or contradictions to be found. As for your statement that 'most cannot be verified', that is a meaningless statement since there are so many that DO lend themselves to verification - and it was specifically stated that all you need to do is deal with those. We already know that there are lots of passages that can't be verified - that was the point that was being made. And what is this nonsense about 'using a bizarre twisting of interpretation in an attempt to explain away rather apparent contradictions'? You probably have a favorite example of this, no?

So I guess the bottom line is that you aren't up for the challenge presented to you?

[RightWingAtheist]

Bleah! Give me Eugenie Scott instead!:

[Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...]

Now why would a God who was all-powerful enough to have created something (in fact everything) from nothing want to bother with evolution? Doesn't make sense.

And as for your statement that 'evolution still happened' (and making some assumptions about exactly what you mean with this), no intelligent person would argue that change on a radical level isn't happening (past, present and future). What I would argue is that change does not equate to evolution.

[Dimensio]

Still waiting for an answer to my Post 89.

Answered. IF you have further things to say to me, please direct the post to me rather than yourself.

Let me ask you another question - assume you are going on a camping trip in the most remote area of the planet imaginable. All of sudden you stumble across an area where rocks are assembled in a rough circle, stumps of trees surround the site and the stumps have a smooth surface on the top resembling a cut, in another area there is a trench that looks angled to drain water away, a pile of rocks is in one corner of the clearing... and so on. What conclusion would you come to? Unless I miss my guess, the obvious thing to say is 'sheesh, it looks like somebody has been this way before'. Why?

Because the arrangement is consistent with human intervention in such a setting.

I do hope that you have a point.

The evidence shows that the site has been changed by an intelligent act; what you are looking at isn't random and there's an order to it.

"Not random" and "orderly" are not themselves a sign of intelligent intervention.

And so it goes with the entire universe - there is order everywhere one looks - from DNA to planets revolving around the sun to the existing of things that simply could not exist unless they were created as a complete entity in one shot.

Really? How would the universe look if this weren't the case? Justify you r reasoning -- point to an undesigned universe that can be used as a comparitave example.

The problem with your analogy is that with the forest scene, I have a basis for comparison. I can compare the setting that you described with the are as it would look without such a setup. I have no such comparison for universes. No one has ever observed an entity 'setting up' a universe in any configuration, and no one has ever observed a universe that was not 'set up' by an alleged intelligent entity.

Order and design is everywhere.

You'll have to explain how "order" is itself evidence of design.

I took a look through the link that you provided and don't think that too many of those will be a problem

Then please address them.

As a matter of fact, most are quite simple and obvious. However, it's simply not practical from a time perspective to spend the next year coming up with a reasoned response to each one of these - which by the way, didn't come from you in the first place.

Ah, a convenient excuse. "They're obviously not really valid objections, but I'm not inclined to explain why!"

How be you let me know from your personal reading and examination of scriptures what falsifiable claim/statements you've found that you clearly believe has been demonstrated to be absolutely false and I'll have a go at that one?

Alright. I'll have a run through later tonight.

Let me leave you with these two verses.

Why? You've yet to establish the Bible as authority.

Psalm 14:1 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God'..... If this describes your attitude, you're a fool.

Which is completely meaningless to someone who does not already accept the validity of the Bible.

I could quote from The Book of the Great Queen Maeve where it states that any who deny Her Divinity is a pus-brained twist. Doesn't really carry a lot of weight, though, does it? That's how your quoting of Pslam 14:1 sounds to a non-Christian

No, I didn't say it. Somebody who claims much greater authority than me did.

What, the person who wrote that particular line (possibly David, or possibly someone whose work he compiled into Psalms)?

Or are you asserting the existence of a deity and attributing the quote to that deity, then asserting that anything said deity says is truthful, which is assuming two unsubstantiated conclusions at once?

The second verse is from 2 Peter 3:5 'For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:'..... We are looking at the same physical evidence of the universe around us but but it would seem you have interpreted it one way and I another.

And one of us actually has rational explanations behind the interpretations. The other one has logical fallacies and hyperbole.

However, God claims elsewhere in scripture that he knows even a person's most innermost thoughts ......and what He is saying is that you are being 'willingly ignorant' of what you are looking at.

So you assert. You've yet to demonstrate the existence of this "God" or that any gods who exist conform to your definitions.

That phrase transcends the idea of simple 'interpretation' of evidence.

It's an assertion, nothing more. It carries no weight whatsoever.

What the Bible says is that have resolved yourself to ignoring the obvious and have simply decided it's not true.

A convenient excuse for you to use to avoid addressing any real evidence.

Just to carry this one step further, scripture says that one day in the future we all have to stand in front of God and give an account of ourself.

That's not what the Great Book of Queen Maeve says. Why should I believe your book and not mine?

While the big issue there will not be another crevo debate, do you think your arguments will hold any water there that you were totally persuaded to believe something other than God creating the universe based on the preponderance of evidence that had been presented to you while you were alive?

I think that your question is meaningless because you've yet to demonstrate that what you assert has any truth whatsoever.