"The evolution wars" in Time [Time Magazine's cover story]

National Center for Science Education ^ | 11 August 2005 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

The cover story of the August 15, 2005, issue of Time magazine is Claudia Wallis's "The evolution wars" -- the first cover story on the creationism/evolution controversy in a major national newsweekly in recent memory.

With "When Bush joined the fray last week, the question grew hotter: Is 'intelligent design' a real science? And should it be taught in schools?" as its subhead, the article, in the space of over 3000 words, reviews the current situation in detail. Highlights of the article include:

• A photomontage -- available only in the print edition -- on p. 26 and half of p. 27, with the elderly Darwin at the center, orbited by images of Pepper Hamilton's Eric Rothschild (a lead litigator in Kitzmiller v. Dover) brandishing a copy of Of Pandas and People, students in a biology classroom in Kansas, President Bush, the Cobb County disclaimer, and so forth.

• A comment from Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, on President Bush's remarks on "intelligent design": "It sends a signal to other countries because they're rushing to gain scientific and technological leadership while we're getting distracted with a pseudoscience issue ... If I were China, I'd be happy."

• A map, compiled from data provided by NCSE, showing antievolution proposals considered by state legislatures and boards of education since 2001 and antievolution proposals considered by local schools or panels in 2005. As members of NCSE and regular visitors to its website will have guessed, the map is crowded.

• A pair of definitions from Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's Biology textbook on the one hand and Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon's Of Pandas and People on the other hand. According to the latter, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact."

• A brief history of the development of creationist tactics from the Scopes era to the post-Edwards era, under the heading "A subtler assault," which quotes NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott as quipping, "You have to hand it to the creationists. They have evolved."

• A paragraph explaining the significance of state science standards as a new venue for creationists. NCSE's Glenn Branch told Time, "The decision-making bodies involved in approving state science standards tend to be small, not particularly knowledgeable and, above all, elected, so it's a good opportunity for political pressure to be applied."

• A recognition of the disparity between President Bush's seeming endorsement of teaching "intelligent design" and the Discovery Institute's recent distancing of itself from such proposals, with Connie Morris (a conservative Republican on the Kansas state board of education), and Senator Rick Santorum seeming "to be reading from the same script."

• A section in which scientists -- primarily the Oxford zoologist and popular expositor Richard Dawkins, as well as the Harvard mathematician and evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak -- castigate "intelligent design" as resting on misconceptions and mischaracterizations of bology.

• A pithy diagnosis of the "teach the controversy" strategy by David Thomas, the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason: "The intelligent-design people are trying to mislead people into thinking that the reference to science as an ongoing critical inquiry permits them to teach I.D. crap in the schools."

• A sidebar asking four prominent figures -- the National Human Genome Research Institute's Francis Collins, Harvard's Steven Pinker, the Discovery Institute's Michael Behe, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's Albert Mohler -- "Can you believe in God and evolution?"

While Wallis's article is inevitably not as scientifically detailed as, for example, H. Allen Orr's recent article in The New Yorker, or as politically astute as, for example, Chris Mooney's recent article in The American Prospect, overall it accomplishes the important goal of informing the general reader that antievolutionism -- whether it takes the form of creation science, "intelligent design," or calls to "teach the controversy" -- is scientifically unwarranted, pedagogically irresponsible, and constitutionally problematic.

[PatrickHenry]

I was interested until I got until the part where it called an American Prospect article "politically astute". Blech.

Nevertheless, I thought it was good enough that I've just added it to The List-O-Links:

NEW Inferior Design. Revealing info on ID and the Discovery Institute.

[Coyoteman]

That's a nice link, but--sorry to disappoint you--this is the way it REALLY was (I have it on good authority, Old Man Coyote told me):

Creation of the Earth

The world was once nothing but water. The only land above the water was Black Mountain. All the people lived up there when the flood came, and their fireplaces can still be seen.

Fish-eater and Hawk lived there. Fish-eater was Hawk's uncle. One day they were singing and shaking a rattle. As they sang, Hawk shook this rattle and dirt began to fall out of it. They sang all night, shaking the rattle the whole time. Soon there was so much dirt on the water that the water started to go down. When it had gone all the way down, they put up the Sierra Nevada to hold the ocean back. Soon they saw a river running down through the valley.

When they finished making the earth, Hawk said, "Well, we have finished. Here is a rabbit for me. I will live on rabbits in my lifetime." Fish-eater was over a swampy place, and he said, "I will live on fish in my lifetime." They had plenty to eat for themselves. It was finished.

Owens Valley Paiute creation story, eastern California

[b_sharp]

It is Fester.

[b_sharp]

"Frankly, astrology has been around a lot longer and makes more sense. At least it deals with a certain amount of direct observation in real time."

Astrology has direct observation? Could you explain further?

[js1138]

...and the Dover school-board member who drove the policy in question made his conservative Christian motivations clear in widely reported public statements (which he now disputes having made)...

And who is surprised at this.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Astrology has direct observation? Could you explain further?

It's called "looking at the stars."

[PatrickHenry]

And who is surprised at this.

I'm shocked that a creationist would tell a lie. Shocked!

[js1138]

The guys in Alabama denied having religious motives also, but they had committed themselves in writing.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"It's called "looking at the stars."


Looking at the stars will do nothing to substantiate or disprove ANY theory of astrology. I think you are thinking of the science of ASTRONOMY. Not surprising for one who discounts most science of the past 200 years.

[Coyoteman]

Re: your tagline: Science has it all: the fun of being still, paying attention, writing down numbers...

Some scientists have found a way to have: fun playing in the dirt, paying attention, writing down numbers...

The best of all possible worlds.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Looking at the stars will do nothing to substantiate or disprove ANY theory of astrology.

Of course not. But at least astrology engages in direct observation, which is more than I can say for evolutionism.

[b_sharp]

Guilt by association alert.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Of course not. But at least astrology engages in direct observation, which is more than I can say for evolutionism."

Direct observation of what? The stars? No different than navel staring. Just like creationism.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Direct observation of what? The stars? No different than navel staring.

I reckon there might be a handful of astronomers who would beg to differ, but that's just me.

[js1138]

Counting pebbles on the beach. Now that's real science. None of this anti-God speculation.

[b_sharp]

I can look at the stars all night. That doesn't mean I am practicing astrology. The stars are hardly evidence of the ability to predict the future. Astrology has more to do with where the Earth is in its orbit about the sun.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"I reckon there might be a handful of astronomers who would beg to differ, but that's just me."

You are correct. That WOULD just be you. Direct observation of the stars will not substantiate or disprove ANY theory of astrology. Any astronomer worth his salt will agree. Keep chugging those beers!

[js1138]

The stars are not evidence for anything unless you have the imagination to make a testable hypothesis.

You can count beans all day but until you speculate on sme aspect of the beans you are just counting beans.\

When ID makes a hypothesis that can be tested, it will be engaging in science. If we count the hypothesis that the bacterial flagellum is irrducible, then it is already falsified.

If ID wants to be taught as science, it will have to say something that suggests a line of research.

Fester, of course, is not arguing for ID. He is a young earth creationist. Somehow he is only willing to criticise natural selection, but his position rejects nearly all of science.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Direct observation of the stars will not substantiate or disprove ANY theory of astrology.

And to think the better part of evolutionism doesn't entail the least bit of direct observation, yet you consider it to be "science." Keep drinking that kool-aid!

[Fester Chugabrew]

Astrology has more to do with where the Earth is in its orbit about the sun.

You know more about it than I do. Apparently you take it more seriously, too. I would expect as much from one who subscribes to the evolutionist notions that all life is derived from a common ancestor and matter is able to organize itself apart from an intelligent agent.