Criticism Of Evolution Can't Be Silenced

Eagle Forum ^ | August 16, 2006 | Mrs. Schlafly

[jla]

Criticism Of Evolution Can't Be Silenced

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by Phyllis Schlafly, August 16, 2006

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The liberal press is gloating that the seesaw battle for control of the Kansas Board of Education just teetered back to pro-evolutionists for the second time in five years. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the movement to allow criticism of evolution are grossly exaggerated.

In its zeal to portray evolution critics in Kansas as dumb rural fundamentalists, a New York Times page-one story misquoted Dr. Steve Abrams (the school board president who had steered Kansas toward allowing criticism of evolution) on a basic principle of science. The newspaper had to correct its error.

The issue in the Kansas controversy was not intelligent design and certainly not creationism. The current Kansas standards state: "To promote good science, good pedagogy and a curriculum that is secular, neutral and non-ideological, school districts are urged to follow the advice provided by the House and Senate Conferees in enacting the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001."

This "advice," which the Kansas standards quote, is: "The Conferees recognize that quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society."

The newly elected school board members immediately pledged to work swiftly to restore a science curriculum that does not subject evolution to criticism. They don't want students to learn "the full range of scientific views" or that there is a "controversy" about evolution.

Liberals see the political value to teaching evolution in school, as it makes teachers and children think they are no more special than animals. Childhood joy and ambition can turn into depression as children learn to reject that they were created in the image of God.

The press is claiming that the pro-evolution victory in Kansas (where, incidentally, voter turnout was only 18 percent) was the third strike for evolution critics. Last December a federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, prohibited the school from even mentioning Intelligent Design, and in February, the Ohio board of education nixed a plan to allow a modicum of critical analysis of evolution.

But one strikeout does not a ball game win. Gallup Polls have repeatedly shown that only about 10 percent of Americans believe the version of evolution commonly taught in public schools and, despite massive public school indoctrination in Darwinism, that number has not changed much in decades.

Intelligent judges are beginning to reject the intolerant demands of the evolutionists. In May, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the decision by a Clinton-appointed trial judge to prohibit the Cobb County, Georgia, school board from placing this sticker on textbooks: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

Fortunately, judges and politicians cannot control public debate about evolution. Ann Coulter's new book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," has enjoyed weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

Despite bitter denunciations by the liberals, funny thing, there has been a thundering silence about the one-third of her book in which she deconstructs Darwinism. She calls it the cosmology of the Church of Liberalism.

Coulter's book charges that evolution is a cult religion, and described how its priests and practitioners regularly treat critics as religious heretics. The Darwinists' answer to every challenge is to accuse their opponents of, horrors, a fundamentalist belief in God.

Although the liberals spent a lot of money to defeat members of the Kansas school board members on August 1, they are finding it more and more difficult to prop up Darwinism by the censorship of criticism. The polite word for the failure of Darwinism to prove its case is gaps in the theory, but Ann Coulter's book shows that dishonesty and hypocrisy are more accurate descriptions.

Evolutionists are too emotionally committed to face up to the failure of evidence to support their faith, but they are smart enough to know that they lose whenever debate is allowed, which is why they refused the invitation to present their case at a public hearing in Kansas. But this is America, and 90 percent of the public will not remain silenced.

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Further Reading: Evolution

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[RobRoy]

Yes, I agree. But at the time, it solved a lot of problems.

[Dante Alighieri]

Actually, it completely threw off research in human evolution. It created a lot of problems - I don't think it explained any.

[MEGoody]

One would presume that believers in evolution, at least in the U.S., also believe in free speech and wouldn't want to silence those who disagree with them.

Although, after reading some evols on these threads, I do wonder.

[Dante Alighieri]

There's a difference though when you try to make creationism/ID part of school cirricula as part of your agenda. Certainly, they are entitled to their own opinion. But science isn't a democratic process - what is or what isn't accurate is decided by research, not by vote. And the research points towards evolution.

[Conservative Texan Mom]

"I am always amazed at the fact that most Christians are conservatives when they are hell bent on moving on to a communist paradise. Sounds more like hell to me than paradise."


Do you personally know many Christians?

[Conservative Texan Mom]

"I'm not bashing them I am giving you an honest look at your religion and its true political leanings. Its rational study of people who are still living in the 7th century. Oh were those muslims or christians?"


Just read this statement and it is clear that you are speaking from ignorance.

[Oberon]

You realize that the strictest definition of a species is the inability to breed with predecessors, right? Even by the strictest definition, they have speciated.

Really? An inability to breed with precedessors?

Do you mean to say that sperm from one population won't fertilize an egg from the other population and produce a viable offspring, or do you mean that they simply don't crossbreed?

If it's true, it's momentous. Show me, please...?

[Conservative Texan Mom]

"I know what Christians believe no use harping about it to me. They also believe that god formed man out of a mud pie, that snakes can talk, and that language was developed because man built a building that was too high."

Since you have such infinite knowledge regarding Christianity, would you care to explain how the above equates to liberalism, and Communism?

[Conservative Texan Mom]

Thanks for pinging me.
Lively discussion...eh!

[Dante Alighieri]

Momentous? Hardly.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

[Oberon]

I hit the first link on your Google search and found a well-written hypothesis that appears to fit the facts as they are known. (In a PBS article on Pacific coast salamanders.)

However, the article contains quite a few assumptions that appear unproven and unprovable...which is only to be expected, as that's the nature of hypotheses.

Still, a well-controlled experiment this is not.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I'll post a few snippets from my link and leave it at that.

The reaction to the finds was mixed. On the whole the British paleontologists were enthusiastic; the French and American paleontologists tended to be skeptical, some objected quite vociferously. The objectors held that the jawbone and the skull were obviously from two different animals and that their discovery together was simply an accident of placement. In the period 1912-1917 there was a great deal of skepticism.

During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopithecus, the Peking man discoveries, and other Homo erectus and australopithecine finds. Piltdown man did not fit in with the new discoveries.

In the period 1930-1950 Piltdown man was increasingly marginalized and by 1950 was, by and large, simply ignored. It was carried in the books as a fossil hominid. From time to time it was puzzled over and then dismissed again. The American Museum of Natural History quietly classified it as a mixture of ape and man fossils. Over the years it had become an anomaly; some prominent authors did not even bother to list it. In Bones of Contention Roger Lewin quotes Sherwood Washburn as saying,

"I remember writing a paper on human evolution in 1944, and I simply left Piltdown out. You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it."

Finally, in 1953, the roof fell in. Piltdown man was not an ancestor; it was not a case of erroneous interpretation; it was a case of outright deliberate fraud.

[Dante Alighieri]

Proof doesn't exist in science - what's your point? Also, what Google Search?

[Oberon]

Proof doesn't exist in science.

No, but experimental evidence does. I refer you to post 83.

Look, you keep pointing me to bodies of information where researchers have looked and said "This information seems to be highly compatible with a macro-evolution model." Well, sure it does.

But that doesn't mean that we know for certain that the model is correct.

Look, let's dispense for a moment (for the sake of discussion) with natural selection, and address the process of manipulated selection. Let's say you start in a laboratory with a population of organisms in a controlled environment...no other living things get in or out of the environment, no exposure to other populations can happen. (I'd suggest something with a short life cycle and sexual reproduction, to maximize the rate at which genes are exchanged.) Let us also say that it's your express desire, as a researcher, to see if you can divide up the homogeneous population into multiple groups and force macro-evolution to happen in the lab, not through natural selection, but through human selection. Human selection should be much faster, because you'd have intelligence guiding the process, and likely-looking mutants can be selected for and fostered. How many generations of, say, earthworms would have to go by before you could produce two groups of earthworms that were not cross-fertile?

Yes, you can change the morphology...yes, you can change the behavior. Yes, you can change any number of traits you want to select for. Dog breeding has shown us that, as the teacup Chihuahua and the Irish Wolfhound are the same species.

But breeding two different species from a single one...that's a high bar to get over.

[Dante Alighieri]

Scientists are never absolutely certain. They may be highly certain however.

What of artificial selection? Speciation has been observed and the resultant species in many cases does not breed at all with the precursor species. Ergo, speciation, ergo, macroevolution.

[Oberon]

Look..."does not breed at all" doesn't mean "can't breed at all." If you can get past that point, you can't get the diversity of species we see in nature. At some point that line has to be crossed, or macro-evolution falls apart.

I'm willing to be agnostic on the matter, but to say that macroevolution is settled science is disingenuous.

[Dante Alighieri]

The only line is time. The Earth is billions of years old. What's your point? Possibly, Theobald's article might be instructive.

[Oberon]

What do billions of years have to do with it? Let's manipulate the process to force nature's hand. Enforce draconian behavioral controls; apply an LD-50 of Chlordane; expose the population to gamma radiation and mutagenic chemicals.

Could man make something akin to macroevolution happen in the lab?

That's the experiment I'd like to see.

[Dante Alighieri]

But, it already has. Speciation anyone?

[Oberon]

So you were there and watched it happen?

How fortunate for the rest of us that we have such an authority in our midst.