"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.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Not if the Universe wasn't empty.

“Empty” is axiomatic that there is something in it, that there is an absence of anything, or that it can ever be full.

[norton]

Wouldn't it be nice if 'we' could simply discuss this issue in rational terms?

I'm no way expert or involved in the "evo/creationism' debate - it's counterproductive and makes rational people act like idiots.
I'm not religious and I'm not anti-religious - this debate looks to be entirely based on opposing religious beliefs (pro/anti) and has vacated science despite all the learned terms and quotations.

If I remember this round of debate (ID) correctly, it started when a group of scientists made a statement along the lines of 'life and its components (eyes etc) seem to be too complex to have simply arisen, it appears to reflect an intelligent design'.

Bang!
Crash!
Religious war!

I can see absolutely no religious taint in the belief that Darwin's theories do not explain the entire process. Nor is there any sin in believing that those processes might eventually be discovered. Nor should it require combat to accept that there are theories about the origins of life that don't agree - isn't it sort of a requirement for science that hypotheses AND theories be questioned?
Alchemists were the scientists of their day and short range navigation worked quite well on the theory that the earth was flat - people are still trying to turn iron into gold (or poopies into usable fuel) and the earth was, in fact, proved to be not flat.

That seems to be the issue. I would expect devoutly faithful Christians (or any other religious group) to hold and defend their beliefs. What changes this thing is the equally religious fervor that (not all) scientists seem to possess regarding 'evolution' that is no longer Darwin but - faith.

Simply by demanding that ID NOT be discussed anywhere outside a church (known to be home to red-necks and papists who have read only one book in their entire lives, with third grade educations and few, if any, teeth) the 'scientific' side of the debate mirrors the absolutism of the 'bible is fact & the only fact' Garden of Eden proponents.

Either side might be right, neither side is likely to be entirely right, and there are certainly things that neither has guessed at as yet which would change either orthodoxy (more likely - both). But no one is going to find out so long as 'we' are debating over which God can kick the other guy's god's butt!

As an outsider I see no real problem in accepting that both ID and evolution exist. My understanding of Darwin's observations (limited) does not extend into how life began - only how it varies between different populations and may change within them. Since (I believe) the current spat arose when a group of scientists made a similar observation - that evolution itself does not apparently explain how and where the ability to evolve arose.
The resulting name calling and verbal mud wrestling is pointless.

'Science' should not be interested in proving the current theory but in addressing the gaps and (pre) assumptions of that theory in order to strengthen it or to find a better one.

[D Rider]

Dean Kenyon's Of Pandas and People

This is the same Dr. Dean Kenyon that wrote Chemical Predestination, the Bible of chemical evolution. Which is, as you know, where the action in evolution research has been for the last 30+ years.

Copied from his bio:" Dean H. Kenyon is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Biodynamics at the University of California at Berkeley, a Research Associate at NASA-Ames Research Center, and a Visiting Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford University.... Dr. Kenyon's current research interests focus on linguistic, statistical, and visual imaging analysis of coding and non-coding DNA sequences."

[Havoc]

So in essence you are attempting to say that because sin has been removed from the judgement of man, we can break the levitical laws.

That's a pretty huge leap. God moved judgement from Man to himself. There is still a judge over the situation. How then do you reach the conclusion that I said it's now ok to just up and break the law? Judgement belongs to God, just as does vengeance.

So please tell me once again, when did you become God so that you may judge me?

That's a pretty good question, when did I? I don't recall sentencing you for some crime. Or do you not know that passage in context either.

[aft_lizard]

So in essence you are attempting to say that because sin has been removed from the judgement of man, we can break the levitical laws.

That's a pretty huge leap. God moved judgement from Man to himself. There is still a judge over the situation. How then do you reach the conclusion that I said it's now ok to just up and break the law? Judgement belongs to God, just as does vengeance. >>>

You said the abdication of sin related to the fact that the punishment for breaking Gods laws when it came to the levitical laws, moved from the purview of man to God, and therefore in that stretch you claimed thats what gave us the right to break the levitical laws when it came to food stuff.

Am I wrong or did I miss something there?

[Havoc]

Well, yes, you're wrong and missed something cause I never made any such statement. Tell you what, try reading it again.

[aft_lizard]

That is what you said. You said the death of Christ and the creation of his church was not to replace Judaism but a fulfillment of it. Als0 with him came a end to the sacrificial system and an end to the selling of forgiveness and the removal of that by taking the punishment for breaking Gods law as indicated in Leviticus from Man to God. You used all of that to say it was ok to eat pork and non-scaled fish, in essence breaking the levitical laws.

Just what I summed up in an earlier post.

[Havoc]

No, I pointed out scripture in which God spoke to the subject of the cleanliness of that which once was considered unclean..
to the extent of telling the apostle not to call common that which God has blessed. What part of that escapes you.

Men abused the old system, yes. And since you don't seem to get it, let me be plain - moreso than before as though that were possible.

Men once upon a time had the office given them by God to stand as judge of a court over other men's sinful actions.
In modern times it wouldn't be much different than being a
Justice of the court in any given judicial district in the USA. The judge's task is to here testimony, see and weigh the evidence, and adjudicate the matter by finding for or against the accused and applying sentence where needed. That is judgement. Using one's "better judgement" is in no manner the same as "adjudicating" an issue. You don't seem to have the concept that for people to end up before such a magistrate, they had to be accused of something to begin with. That accusation isn't judgement, it is merely the use of observation and communication to bring to the attention of proper authority that which has transpired. And somehow in your mind, the two have become one - probably from the same misunderstanding of abused out of context scripture that the world is ignorant of.

So, you summed up something in your earlier post; but, you didn't sum up what I said. You summed up some other argument you seem to rather be having.

[Havoc]

So in essence you are attempting to say that because sin has been removed from the judgement of man, we can break the levitical laws.

I want to revisit this because it seems to be at the core of your problem. Paul addresses this very issue in Galatians 6, in Corinthians and in Romans. He states plainly that we are not under the law - that would include the levitical portion of it. He asks and answers the question 'if we're not under the law, shall we then sin because we're under grace.' Paul rightly recognized that the law does address what is sin. The law existed to punish and stop sin. In absence of enforcement of the law, are we to sin as we will? His answer and mine is "God forbid."

I didn't speak to whether we're allowed to break the law as we choose. On the other hand, we are not under the law; but, rather under Grace as Paul notes in Galatians and his other writings. The question you asked earlier was when the rules for clean and unclean foods disappeared in God's eyes. That happened in the Acts and I answered to that affect with a citation. You didn't process that at all and still seem to think that after God blessed that which was once unclean and made it clean, it is still under rebuke. You have arrived at the same place as the judaizers. And it is with no astonishment on my part that you have. That's a central problem with the religion you've chosen and crops up over and again because it's a ground of authority your clergy roped it's chuckwagon to.. burdening you with the law and requiring you to come to the priest for judgement and forgiveness as in the old system which was done away with. That's great until you actually read and figure that out - until then they collect your 10% and keep going. And you are blissfully ignorant of scripture, yet armed to argue, by them, points you know nothing about. You should go thank them and consider why you don't know scripture.. it isn't entirely their fault; but, they are kinda counting on it. 10% adds up if you get enough people doing it. Just a thought.

[aft_lizard]

Boy you sure are rude. I bet people really like you.

The quote you had from Acts does not say anything about clean and unclean foods. I want it to sasy specifically that it is OK to eat prok, to eat crab to eat well you get the picture I want it to say, The levitical laws as it pertains to food are now lifted. It seems to me that you and others have instead of providing direct quotes for the questions I need answered have used the philosiphical arguments amongst the apostles and to those of the early churches.

Otherwise our argument comes full circle. If you are to take word for word the biblical account for creation, and then interpet a philosiphical argument to mean the abdication and allowance of eating what was once considered unclean, then maybe you can understand why I have been giving you the run around, otherwise continue your bashing and name calling of me,call me ignorant and unknowledgable, but remember this if you can only answer with philosophy and not written fact then you are in nothing but the same boat I am.

[JohnnyM]

Maybe this can help:

Mark 7:
18 And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him,
19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.)

JM

[aft_lizard]

Thanks thats all I wanted.

[Havoc]

You really don't know scripture do you. And, no, I haven't invoked philosophy. I understand you're giving the run around because you think your line of argumentation is somehow so well crafted that my responses would lead down a predictable path. When they failed to, you were left trying to pigeon hole me into an argument you wanted to respond to and were disarmed because it wasn't the one you got.

Secondarily, History is history. The guy that shot Kennedy is no less the guy that shot Kennedy whether the law with regard to his punishment changed or not. The leap you are attempting is an embarrassment and you don't even have the good sense to be embarrassed. Whether the law is useful to God's latest covenant with all of mankind as opposed to the first one (with Israel) has nothing whatever to do with how God created everything. It just has nothing at all to do with it.

As for being rude, I imagine a am from your perspective. You come unprepared to an argument, cuss me out, etc and then show and admit that you don't know the subject. When
I note you aren't prepared, I'm rude. You're the one who
was here "3 days" discussing this. Did you expect the knowledge of what the Bible actually says to just spring up into your head. Since you're arguing against it, one would hope you'd have some idea what you're arguing against. When you don't, it occurs some of us might be a little put off that you're actively denouncing something when you don't even know what you're denouncing. It's a position that's more than a tad intellectually vacant.

You are speaking on a public forum. Has that sunk in? You don't look bad because of anything I've said. I understand your ego is hurt by the facts in this case; but, if you really cared about that, you would have bothered to know what you were arguing against before coming in here and making a butt of yourself to the point you felt compelled at least to apologize to me for cussing me. Apology accepted btw. The apology doesn't repair your position.. study does.
And that isn't rude, you just don't like it being said when you know it's true and are to some extent both embarrassed you don't know, embarrassed you're wrong and angry to be holding a position you can't defend. All of those things stem from your own choices and actions or lack thereof. I'm not the one being rude here, you are - and to both myself and yourself. Take a hint.

[Havoc]

Thanks JM. You might duck, cause once he puts that next to the Eucharist, you may be the next to get a cussing lol.

[aft_lizard]

Its very very very rude to talk about another freeper behind his back "christian"

[Havoc]

Ah, excuse me. I did fail to ping you, didn't I. And yet with only you, I and Him here, you managed to see it. How does that work? ;)

Take a break. You seem to need one.

[aft_lizard]

Strike my last attack on you I read the one atacking me behind my back before I replied to the big issue.

Look, you seem to have a major misunderstanding of me and of my whole argument. Thats fine. Its easy to do, look its over.

My whole point of sticking with the levitical argument was that you said either take all of GODs word or none of it at all, if you had however quoted Jesus and the food or the story of the stoning of the prostiture(which, correct me if I am wrong deals directly with the punishment issue of the levitical laws), This argument would have ended along time ago.

That being said, the reason being is that the way I was interpreting your answers(and btw you are very knowledgable on the bible far more than me anyways) was that you seemed to put forth biblical philosophy rather than biblical fact, and by doing so I felt in my argumentative mind that negates the argument as that which began between us, either take it at its word or dont take it at all, in other words what would my philosophical reasoning behind evolution and creation differ from philosophising on what Jesus meant, what is the new judgements and what have you.

I know in your mind there is a big difference, and thats fine. But at least see what my argument is there.

[aft_lizard]

please delete 738 for me thanks.

[aft_lizard]

ooops I mean 737