That's a burning question.
Posted on 07/09/2006 4:41:41 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
State Board of Education panel may look at guidelines for classroom discussion of science controversies
Less than five months after evolution won a round in the State Board of Education, some board members want to reopen the debate.
Colleen Grady, a board member from the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, wants to add guidelines to the state science standards for teaching on such topics as evolution, global warming, stem-cell research and cloning.
Grady said she views her proposal as a compromise to ensure that differing views are considered when teaching such hot-button issues.
"We would provide a template so schools would be comfortable discussing controversial issues," she said last week.
Grady sits on the board’s Achievement Committee, which is expected to discuss the proposal when it meets Monday in Columbus. A vote on whether to recommend the proposal to the full board is not scheduled but possible.
Talk of revisiting the issue has raised concern among scientists who have long fought efforts that they say undermine Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now, they argue, some board members want to subject other areas of science to heightened scrutiny.
"This is so transparent," said Steve Rissing, a biology professor at Ohio State University. "These are not controversial areas of science."
In February, the board voted 11-4 to eliminate portions of curriculum guidelines for 10 th-grade science and an accompanying lesson plan calling for the critical analysis of evolution.
Critics argued that "critical analysis of evolution" was tantamount to calling for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design, the notion that some life forms are so complex that a higher intelligence, maybe God, had to be involved. Both, they argue, are religious beliefs unsuitable for the science classroom.
Committee co-chairman Jim Craig, of Canton, said he was aware of recent discussions of the issue, but nobody has shown him a proposal.
Getting a majority of committee members to agree on any recommendation will be difficult, he said. While Grady and a few others are pushing her proposal, others on the committee say that no more changes are necessary.
"I don’t think either side wants to get back to the point where it was," Craig said, referring to two meetings this year that were dominated by sometimes-bitter debate.
Deborah Owens Fink, a board member from Richfield who is supporting Grady’s proposal, said modifying existing language should be less controversial than ideas the board has considered in the past.
Specifically, Grady proposes taking existing language in 10 th-grade science standards — "Describe that scientists may disagree about explanations of phenomena, about interpretation of data or about the value of rival theories, but they do agree that questioning response to criticism and open communications are integral to the process of science." — and adding to it: "Discuss and be able to apply this in the following areas: global warning; evolutionary theory; emerging technologies and how they may impact society, e.g. cloning or stem-cell research."
It is very unusual to find fossils from the same series farther apart than a few thousand years but closer together than a few million. In addition, it is common for the distance between fossils to increase the farther back in time they initially formed.
I just like pointing out that we have observed selective breeding producing remarkable changes in morphology in fifty generations. If members of a species are separated by a physical barrier, the time required for the divided populations to diverge in physical form would be a geologic eyeblink, even assuming thousands of generations.
A lot of the odd physical forms we see are the result of sexual selection, which produces results as rapidly as breeding programs conducted by humans.
Someone else emailed me and said I was wrong to be arguing with you. So be it. I apologize. I like that name, newbie! Are you a gamer?
Good point.
It's amazing how important sexual preference is to many organisms. Since speciation is a result of a drastic decrease in gene flow, any change that affects mating patterns will necessarily start speciation.
The interaction between competing species and within species is likely more important than weather patterns.
Population size is also important. Large populations like ours make it less likely that a given allele will fix. Aside from increasing the availability of new niches to fill, large scale catastrophes tend to reduce the size of populations so that new alleles fix more quickly. Too small and Founder's Effect can reduce variation or kill off a population. Some organisms respond to stressors by increasing mutation rates.
The interactions we find in any environment, which includes all species contained by it, produces a complex system sitting on the edge of Chaos. Any change to an input of one of the feedback systems that comprises that 'edge of Chaos' can result in extreme changes to the system output.
Get a grip. It's "illustrating absurdity with absurdity".
Religion has done some good things as well.
And Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Thanks for the ping!
Wow! a piece of a monkey skull and a hand drawn diagram with hand drawn monkey skulls - powerful evidence
You are wrong on at least three points.
I know you hate evolution, but you really should study just enough to know the difference between apes and monkeys. Those two lines diverged many millions of years before the human-ape split. That was comparatively recent, back perhaps 6 million years or so. Just a little study might make your posts a little more factual.
"Get a grip. It's "illustrating absurdity with absurdity"."
Exactly. What I was actually saying was pure scientific evidence is called lies, but the people yelling liar have no proof whatsoever of their faith.
BUT, I was attacking the wrong person, and for that I apologized.
And I am not an outright atheist, I just know that man is no medium to be telling stories of how it all started without physical evidence to back it up. And the evolutionary record is deep. Like it or not. I don't believe anything unless I have the evidence to back it up. And evolution is more than enough evidence to make a stance. And furthermore, it wasn't until very recent history that religion did anything but rape cultures. We are lucky to now have men like George Bush who want to make the world a better place without raping, pillaging and colonizing.
Folklore and fairy tales are so much more reassuring!
"Newbie" is beyond games, we even use it here. The closest thing to gaming I do is watching my husband play Max Payne on his PS2...
Is there something in the water in Ohio?
Ok, all is well. I'll try to be more civil, and more obvious as to what I am getting at. Not to mention, I'll try to get to point with the right person. One self kick in the butt for me.
That's a burning question.
Notice too how evolution is getting lumped with things that I doubt were even in their curriculum. Was stem-cell research and cloning a part of the curriculum to begin with?
Socialism started with the animal rights activist Voltaire, then the animal rights activist Schopenhauer, then Darwin's promotion of sterilizing non-caucasian races by famine relief, then Wagner the animal rights activist, then Galton the promoter of eugenics and now Peter Singer the promoter of eugenics, animal rights, and famine relief. Turning people into domesticated animals has been in the curriculum since Eramus Darwin during the French Revolution.
"The cases which I have here given all relate to aborigines, who have
been subjected to new conditions as the result of the immigration of
civilised men. But sterility and ill-health would probably follow,
if savages were compelled by any cause, such as the inroad of a
conquering tribe, to desert their homes and to change their habits. It
is an interesting circumstance that the chief check to wild animals
becoming domesticated, which implies the power of their breeding
freely when first captured, and one chief check to wild men, when
brought into contact with civilisation, surviving to form a
civilised race, is the same, namely, sterility from changed conditions
of life.
Finally, although the gradual decrease and ultimate extinction of
the races of man is a highly complex problem, depending on many causes
which differ in different places and at different times; it is the
same problem as that presented by the extinction of one of the
higher animals- of the fossil horse, for instance, which disappeared
from South America, soon afterwards to be replaced, within the same
districts, by countless troups of the Spanish horse. The New Zealander
seems conscious of this parallelism, for he compares his future fate
with that of the native rat now almost exterminated by the European
rat. Though the difficulty is great to our imagination, and really
great, if we wish to ascertain the precise causes and their manner
of action, it ought not to be so to our reason, as long as we keep
steadily in mind that the increase of each species and each race is
constantly checked in various ways; so that if any new check, even a
slight one, be superadded, the race will surely decrease in number;
and decreasing numbers will sooner or later lead to extinction; the
end, in most cases, being promptly determined by the inroads of
conquering tribes."
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_07.html
"Why is there no option for "monkey"? Do not many creationists believe that the theory of evolution states that humans came from monkeys?"
I don't know what creationists believe I don't know if the theory of evolution every said anything. Is the theory of evolution a person's name? I can read and I have read Desent of Man and you can decide for yourself if Darwin states that humans "came from" monkeys.
"The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is
descended from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think,
be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we
are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on
first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never
be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind-
such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and
bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed
with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and
distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals
lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were
merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a
savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to
acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his
veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic
little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the
life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the
mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs- as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies,
offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse,
treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by
the grossest superstitions.
"
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_21.html
Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,
and race with race. Various checks are always in action, serving to
keep down the numbers of each savage tribe,- such as periodical
famines, nomadic habits and the consequent deaths of infants,
prolonged suckling, wars, accidents, sickness, licentiousness, the
stealing of women, infanticide, and especially lessened fertility.
If any one of these checks increases in power, even slightly, the
tribe thus affected tends to decrease; and when of two adjoining
tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the
contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and
absorption. Even when a weaker tribe is not thus abruptly swept
away, if it once begins to decrease, it generally goes on decreasing
until it becomes extinct.*
* Gerland, ibid., s. 12, gives facts in support of this statement.
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_07.html
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