"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.

[KMJames]

This is a partial copy of my previous post #298:

"...I fail to see how evolution is at all "knowable" since the "mechanism of change" is as great and multifaceted as all of existence itself.

Philosophically it seems that we can only know/understand evolution when we are able to know/understand the universe. Why not just eliminate the redundant evolution powder keg and set about understanding the existing cosmos - that alone should take an eternity - and I think would yield greater benefits to mankind."

Activities such as observing and comparing genomes seems to be the "stuff of science" and quite worthwhile, but, what on God's green earth (pun intended) does evolution contribute to this study? I don't see why an evolution backdrop is required to do this work. It seems like it's added in to true "scientific method" science just to get a rise out of people. I'm beginning to think it's an unnecessary sideshow to scientific investigation.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"That's more than can be said for those who today believe in a 4.5 billion year old earth, for they have neither observation itself nor records of observations dating that far back."

You are being willfully ignorant. You have been told repeatedly that eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as physical evidence, yet you continue to want to elevate the here-say testimony from people who lived thousands of years ago over the direct evidence of the earth today. You have been given tons of evidence that the world is very old, from multiple sources and methods. The ONLY evidence you have of a very young earth is writings of goat herders and fishermen that have been passed down over a few millenia and been translated from dead languages. That is not *direct observation*, that's here-say. Their *eyewitness testimony* is useless from a scientific standpoint.


BTW, i notice you didn't put a link on the paragraph you posted about astrology.

[BMCDA]

What do you have that better explains the organization and consistency of matter?

Uhh, the absence of intermeddling gods, for instance...

[Fester Chugabrew]

You have been told repeatedly that eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as physical evidence . . .

In some cases it is reliable, and in some cases it is not. Physical evidence is subject to various interpetations, especially without an eyewitness as to how it was laid down. There are no written records and no eyewitnesses to a 4.5 billion year old earth, so from a scientific standpoint that assertion is SOL. From the standpoint of history and philosophy it's not bad, but still not as good as the biblical texts.

. . . i notice you didn't put a link on the paragraph you posted about astrology.

See #319.

[longshadow]

"Blessed are they who have been touched by His Noodly Appendage."

[js1138]

You are so precious. In our wildest dreams we could not have imagined a creationist opponent who takes the emperical evidence for astrology seriously. You have really made my day. 1⁷²⁰ dittos to you.

[js1138]

I'm sorry. Make that 1⁷²⁰ dittos.

[longshadow]

"Ein Feste Nudeln ist Unser Gott"

[BMCDA]

"Blessed are they who have been touched by His Noodly Appendage."

There are rumors that "Touched by an Angel" is going to be replaced by "Touched by a Noodly Appendage" ;)

[BMCDA]

LOL!!
Now thank Gott that's "ist" and not "hat" ;-)

[js1138]

It's nothing to celebrate about.

[Fester Chugabrew]

The ONLY evidence you have of a very young earth is writings of goat herders and fishermen . . .

. . . yadayadayada. I do not consider 10,000 years to be very young. I've said elsewhere that just because I would be considered a young earth creationist does not mean I subscribe to a 6,000 year old earth. But I'll take the words of those who were present several thousand years ago to observe the universe in that day and write things down about it as worthwhile evidence.

By the 3rd century BC astrologers had at their command a proper almanac giving the positions of the Moon and planets at regular intervals over a number of years, together with conjunctions of the Sun and Moon. These suggested an order in an otherwise orderless, incoherent universe, an order man should strive to emulate; the movements of planets in the skies had meaning which man was capable of understanding, and related to his life - otherwise why should the planets move at all? It could not be that they were the products of accident. This theory had great political importance, and is advanced again and again over the next two thousand years throughout Europe, as an argument in favour of order in society. [Link]

We owe much of our knowlege of history, including the use of clocks and calendars, to those so-called ignorant goat herders and fisherman who have gone before us. That's more than I can say for the past 150 years worth of Darwinist meanderings trumping itself up as science.

[general_re]

As long as they cancel the horrifying "Touched By An Uncle" ;)

[longshadow]

Now thank Gott that's "ist" and not "hat" ;-)

Sehr gut!

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"There are no written records and no eyewitnesses to a 4.5 billion year old earth, so from a scientific standpoint that assertion is SOL. From the standpoint of history and philosophy it's not bad, but still not as good as the biblical texts."

The biblical texts have no eyewitness accounts for the creation. The texts that we have now are copies of copies of translations from sources we don't have anymore. The stories in them go in direct opposition from the physical evidence we have right now before us. In Chugabrew Logic that is a strength for the bible. In regular logic that means the bible creation stories are crap. The difference in the two logical systems? One relies on copious amounts of alcohol, the other doesn't.

[BMCDA]

As long as they cancel the horrifying "Touched By An Uncle" ;)

ROTFLMAO!!

Rats! Coke in the respiratory tract is really awful.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"... yadayadayada. I do not consider 10,000 years to be very young. I've said elsewhere that just because I would be considered a young earth creationist does not mean I subscribe to a 6,000 year old earth."


And I said you said the Earth was 6,000 years old when?
BTW, 10,000 is just as silly as 6,000.

"But I'll take the words of those who were present several thousand years ago to observe the universe in that day and write things down about it as worthwhile evidence."

That would be your problem. You gladly accept the copied, translated word of scientifically illiterate people from over 2,000 years ago over the overwhelming evidence that exists today for an old earth. You have the nerve to say that scientists today are arrogant. lol

[longshadow]

...."Touched By An Uncle"....

Is that the TV show starring Michael Jackson's nephews?

;-)

[Fester Chugabrew]

The biblical texts have no eyewitness accounts for the creation. The texts that we have now are copies of copies of translations from sources we don't have anymore.

They relate events witnessed by the first humans. You are correct that they are tenuous from the standpoint of scientific study, but there is still more credible substance to them than there is to the completely unsubstantiated notion of a 4.5 billion year old earth.

The stories in them go in direct opposition from the physical evidence we have right now before us . . .

Hardly. The texts speak of an orderly, intelligently designed universe. All indications are that the universe remains on a more or less steady course. Especially the part of the universe inhabited by humans. You want to put science up against the laws of nature, design, and all the consistencies observed and recorded throughout history? Be my guest. You haven't even begun to explain how order can arise out of chaos apart from an intelligent agent.

[js1138]

... the completely unsubstantiated notion of a 4.5 billion year old earth.

You are priceless.