State science standards in election spotlight (ID/Creation Kansans need to vote!)

The Wichita Eagle ^ | August 1, 2008 | LORI YOUNT

[GodGunsGuts]

With five seats on the State Board of Education up for grabs this year, education advocates say how children learn about evolution hangs in the balance -- and who voters choose could affect Kansas' national reputation.

A frequent flip-flop between moderate and conservative majorities on the 10-member board has resulted in the state changing its science standards four times in the past eight years.

Conservatives have pushed for standards casting doubt on evolution, and moderates have said intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom.

In 2007, a new 6-4 moderate majority removed standards that called evolution into question.

This year, none of the three moderates whose seats are up for election are running again. Only one of the two conservative incumbents is running for re-election...

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

I confused what the Pope has said about intelligent design with what IDers say about the same.

Thank you for acknowledging that.

Nevertheless, based on the Pope’s past statements, I still maintain that his beliefs about how life got started falls under the intelligent design umbrella.

I would say, rather, that he leaves room under his umbrella for intelligent design as well as room for evolution as it's commonly understood. He's being clever that way.

[bezelbub]

SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES ESTABLISHED BY CREATION SCIENTISTS
DISCIPLINE	SCIENTIST
ANTISEPTIC SURGERY	JOSEPH LISTER (1827-1912)
BACTERIOLOGY	LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-1895)
CALCULUS	ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)
CELESTIAL MECHANICS	JOHANN KEPLER (1571-1630)
CHEMISTRY	ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691)
COMPARATIVE ANATOMY	GEORGES CUVIER (1769-1832)
COMPUTER SCIENCE	CHARLES BABBAGE (1792-1871)
DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS	LORD RAYLEIGH (1842-1919)
DYNAMICS	ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)
ELECTRONICS	JOHN AMBROSE FLEMING (1849-1945)
ELECTRODYNAMICS	JAMES CLERK MAXWELL (1831-1879)
ELECTRO-MAGNETICS	MICHAEL FARADAY (1791-1867)
ENERGETICS	LORD KELVIN (1824-1907)
ENTOMOLOGY OF LIVING INSECTS	HENRI FABRE (1823-1915)
FIELD THEORY	MICHAEL FARADAY (1791-1867)
FLUID MECHANICS	GEORGE STOKES (1819-1903)
GALACTIC ASTRONOMY	WILLIAM HERSCHEL (1738-1822)
GAS DYNAMICS	ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691)
GENETICS	GREGOR MENDEL (1822-1884)
GLACIAL GEOLOGY	LOUIS AGASSIZ (1807-1873)
GYNECOLOGY	JAMES SIMPSON (1811-1870)
HYDRAULICS	LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519)
HYDROGRAPHY	MATTHEW MAURY (1806-1873)
HYDROSTATICS	BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662)
ICHTHYOLOGY	LOUIS AGASSIZ (1807-1873)
ISOTOPIC CHEMISTRY	WILLIAM RAMSAY (1852-1916)
MODEL ANALYSIS	LORD RAYLEIGH (1842-1919)
NATURAL HISTORY	JOHN RAY (1627-1705)
NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY	BERNHARD RIEMANN (1826- 1866)
OCEANOGRAPHY	MATTHEW MAURY (1806-1873)
OPTICAL MINERALOGY	DAVID BREWSTER (1781-1868)
PALEONTOLOGY	JOHN WOODWARD (1665-1728)
PATHOLOGY	RUDOLPH VIRCHOW (1821-1902)
PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY	JOHANN KEPLER (1571-1630)
REVERSIBLE THERMODYNAMICS	JAMES JOULE (1818-1889)
STATISTICAL THERMODYNAMICS	JAMES CLERK MAXWELL (1831-1879)
STRATIGRAPHY	NICHOLAS STENO (1631-1686)
SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY	CAROLUS LINNAEUS (1707-1778)
THERMODYNAMICS	LORD KELVIN (1824-1907)
THERMOKINETICS	HUMPHREY DAVY (1778-1829)
VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY	GEORGES CUVIER (1769-1832)

I put a different color on those who died before The Origin of Species was published....

[dread78645]

This guy (dread78645) is clueless. He doesn’t understand the argument. The size of the population is not related to the detrimental mutation rate until a certain threshold level is reached. Rather, it is the health of the gene pool that is in question here. The threshold point at which the population size would deteriorate is not known - only the direction of the ratio of deleterious vs. neutral vs. beneficial mutations.

Marvelous!
I look forward to reading Dr. Pitman's research paper in Genetics.

I also look forward to Sean's explanation of why he states that "detrimental mutations outnumber beneficial mutations by at least 1,000 to 1" when the actual figure is 1,000 to 58 (Sarah B. Joseph and David W. Hall, -- Spontaneous Mutations in Diploid S. cerevisiae, Genetics Dec 2004)

And why he rejects the numbers given in Table 5 of John Drake, et al -- Rates of Spontaneous Mutation, Genetics Apr 1998.

Or what he considers a "detrimental mutation".
Is lactose intolerance a benefit or detriment?
What about blue eyes, benefit or detriment? In Europe? What about in Africa?, etc.

Especially interesting will be how he derives 6,500 years for mankind.
Was it St. Augustine of Hippo? or Bishop James Ussher?, -- or did Sean himself receive a divine revelation?

Anyway,
Man, ggg. I can't tell you how thrilled I am hearing of his Nobel Prize winning paper: "Threshold points of detrimental mutation in H. sapien"
This is so exciting!

[allmendream]

How about their amazing discoveries? What amazing vistas of discovery open up once one is rid of the notion that the evidence all points to an old earth? Shouldn’t they be at the forefront of Scientific discovery if the empirical method is such an adverse burden?

[tacticalogic]

Who wouldn’t even allow kids to read them on their own time or allow them into the school library?

When did this happen?

[allmendream]

Other than the church he belonged to, do you have any personal statements of Faraday's that would support him specifically thinking that the earth was only a few thousand years old or rejecting the evidence of biological evolution?

How about the physical constants he derived? Were they based upon empirical data (Science) or were they based upon a specific interpretation of the Bible (Creationism)?

[js1138]

I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a tropical storm. Good to know things here are exactly as I left them.

[js1138]

The discussion of "degeneration" is interesting. John von Neumann had something to say about it. Not that he was qualified to speak on information theory or anything.

Anybody who looks at living organisms knows perfectly well that they can produce other organisms like themselves. This is their normal function, they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t do this, and it’s plausible that this is the reason why they abound in the world. In other words, living organisms are very complicated aggregations of elementary parts, and by any reasonable theory of probability or thermodynamics highly improbable. That they should occur in the world at all is a miracle of the first magnitude; the only thing which removes, or mitigates, this miracle is that they reproduce themselves. Therefore, if by any peculiar accident there should ever be one of them, from there on the rules of probability do not apply, and there will be many of them, at least if the milieu is reasonable. But a reasonable milieu is already a thermodynamically much less improbable thing. So, the operations of probability somehow leave a loophole at this point, and it is by the process of self-reproduction that they are pierced.

Furthermore, it’s equally evident that what goes on is actually one degree better than self-reproduction, for organisms appear to have gotten more elaborate in the course of time. Today’s organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which were vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it’s inconceivable how any kind of description of the later, complex organisms could have existed in the earlier one. It’s not easy to imagine in what sense a gene, which is probably a low order affair, can contain a description of the human being which will come from it. But in this case you can say that since the gene has its effect only within another human organism, it probably need not contain a complete description of what is to happen, but only a few cues for a few alternatives. However, this is not so in phylogenetic evolution. That starts from simple entities, surrounded by an unliving amorphous milieu, and produces something more complicated. Evidently, these organisms have the ability to produce something more complicated than themselves.

The other line of argument, which leads to the opposite conclusion, arises from looking at artificial automata. Everyone knows that a machine tool is more complicated than the elements which can be made with it, and that, generally speaking, an automaton A, which can make an automaton B, must contain a complete description of B and also rules on how to behave while effecting the synthesis. So, one gets a very strong impression that complication, or productive potentiality in an organization, is degenerative, that an organization which synthesizes something is necessarily more complicated, of a higher order, than the organization it synthesizes. This conclusion, arrived at by considering artificial automata, is clearly opposite to our earlier conclusion, arrived at by considering living organisms.

I think that some relatively simple combinatorial discussions of artificial automata can contribute to mitigating this dilemma. Appealing to the organic, living world does not help us greatly, because we do not understand enough about how natural organisms function. We will stick to automata which we know completely because we made them, either actual artificial automata or paper automata described completely by some finite set of logical axioms. It is possible in this domain to describe automata which can reproduce themselves. So at least one can show that on the site where one would expect complication to be degenerative it is not necessarily degenerative at all, and, in fact, the production of a more complicated object from a less complicated object is possible.

The conclusion one should draw from this is that complication is degenerative below a certain minimum level. This conclusion is quite in harmony with other results in formal logics, to which I have referred a few times earlier during these lectures. … There is a minimum number of parts below which complication is degenerative, in the sense that if one automaton makes another the second is less complex than the first, but above which it is possible for an automaton to construct other automata of equal or higher complexity. …

There is thus this completely decisive property of complexity, that there exists a critical size below which the process of synthesis is degenerative, but above which the phenomenon of synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, in other words, where synthesis of automata can proceed in such a manner that each automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher potentialities than itself.

(Reproduced in Papers of John von Neumann on Computing and Computer Theory, W. Aspray and A. Burks, eds., MIT Press, pp 481-482)

[tpanther]

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/11/05/intelligent_design_trial_concludes/

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/id-book-banning/

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/the-silliest-th.html

[GodGunsGuts]

==Other than the church he belonged to, do you have any personal statements of Faraday's that would support him specifically thinking that the earth was only a few thousand years old or rejecting the evidence of biological evolution?

Nope, I don't have any specific statements. The non-conformist church he belonged to were "biblical literalists" and were very exclusive. In other words, you had to prove yourself to become a member. Faraday rose to the level of deacon. Farady was 69 years old (and going senile) by the time Darwin's Origins came out.

==How about the physical constants he derived? Were they based upon empirical data (Science) or were they based upon a specific interpretation of the Bible (Creationism)?

I'm glad you keep pushing me on Faraday. The more I find out about this man, the more I am in awe of him:

Michael Faraday was among the scientific giants of the nineteenth century. He discovered electromagnetic rotation, electromagnetic induction, and the dynamo. He made significant advances in electrochemistry and produced aluminum by electrolysis. He isolated benzene. And in a brilliant technical insight, he reconceived wine-glass-like chemical vessels to produce the first test tubes. Renowned for his strong empirical research, Michael Faraday also believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. His whole life, both inside the laboratory and out, was dominated by his faith as a member of the Sandemanians, a small Protestant sect in Britain. His science was inseparable from his religion.

Faraday's faith influenced several aspects of his science: his motivation for research; his theoretical orientation; the experimental problems he pursued; his interpretation of phenomena; and his public communication of science. These are most fully and clearly documented in an excellent and provocative book by Geoffrey Cantor (1991).

The Sandemanians believed in both moral law and physical law, and it was the latter belief that made Faraday's science thematically religious. For Faraday, humans could seek no higher goal than to reveal God's laws of creation. Faraday's devotion guided his patient and detailed observations and, on occasions, his great caution in asserting his conclusions. By contrast, Faraday saw religion as independent of science. He did not subscribe to the popular natural theological arguments of his day, that one could prove God's existence from observations themselves. Religion was primary. While science might indeed reveal God's wisdom, our knowledge of or faith in God surely did not depend on it.

The Sandemanian community was small, exclusive, and tightly knit. Their Biblical beliefs in social unity, reciprocity, and harmony resonated in Faraday's views of nature. Faraday commented extensively on the "economy" of nature, by which he meant God's unified design. For example, in his discovery of electromagnetic rotation, Faraday was able to resolve several anomalies in how a current-carrying wire attracted or repelled a magnetic needle. While others before him had noticed the same phenomena, they had relied on a scheme of electical forces as centrally focused, or as directionally only in and out. Faraday, instead, interpreted the motions in terms of circles. Cycles and circles, Cantor notes, were common themes of unity in nature at the time.

Faraday's conception of unity also involved symmetry of action. Thus, when he observed a wire revolving around a magnetic pole, he inferred that a magnetic pole should also revolve around the wire. His inference preceded the confirmation by experiment.

The concept of divine unity in nature influenced Faraday most deeply and extensively in his research on the relationships between various forces of nature (on what we would now call the conservation of energy). Faraday's famous findings on the mutual effects of electricity and magnetism were natural products of these inquiries. The very same beliefs led Faraday to investigate other similar relation-ships, as well. For example, he tried to find how electricity affected polarized light or produced heat. In 1828, he projected a solar spectrum on a copper plate, expecting to show how light could induce electricity under the appropriate conditions. Though these investigations did not yield the same positive results as his electro-magnetic research, they do illustrate the religious orientation that guided his scientific thinking throughout. For Faraday, all these forces must be unified in God's world and his aim was to demonstrate how.

Most impressive of these studies was work done over three decades on the relationship between electricity and gravity. These forces differ greatly and Faraday remarked on this several times--gravity follows straight lines of force only; it is not transferable to other bodies; it exhibits attraction only, no repulsion; etc. Still, Faraday's religious outlook convinced him that a "gravelectric" effect was there, waiting to be elucidated, just like the once unknown electromagnetic effects. He recorded in his Diary on March 19, 1849:

Gravity. Surely this force must be capable of an experimental relationship to Electricity, Magnetism and the other forces, so as to bind it up with them in reciprocal action and equivalent effect. Consider for a moment how to set about touching this matter by facts and trial.

By later that summer Faraday was conducting experiments. He adapted his earlier work on electromagnetic effects, attaching a galvan-ometer to a wire wound around a coil, which would now experience gravitational freefall. His Diary on August 25 captured his ethusiastic expectations:

 

It was almost with a feeling of awe that I went to work, for if the hope should prove well founded, how great and mighty and sublime in its hitherto unchangeable character is the force I am trying to deal with, and how large may be the new domain of knowledge that may be opened up to the mind of man.

Faraday's spirit was buoyed when he first observed some deflection of the galvanometer needle. He reflected on his experimental arrangement, though, and in later trials he twisted the wires to prevent possibly inducing a current from a loop in the wire passing through the Earth's magnetic field--and he was disappointed to find that the needle no longer moved.

Faraday's evidence suggested that no gravelectric effect existed. Yet in September, he was at work on yet another test, again using his earlier successful work on electromagnetic induction as a model. The apparatus followed the design of an 1831 experiment where a metal bar oscillated through a wire helix. Again, no "success." And again, Faraday retained the same conviction that had promoted all his earlier work. He presented his findings to the Royal Society in November, 1850, noting that the results "do not shake my strong feeling of the existence of a relation between gravity and electricity, though they give no proof that it exists." Indeed, Faraday continued to reflect on the problem. He returned to experiments in 1859, anticipating that the longer freefall distance possible in a lead shot tower would reveal the effect. Throughout all his gravelectric investigations, Faraday applied the same style of thinking that led to his highly celebrated electromagnetic discoveries. Religion motivated and guided both.

Even more remarkably, perhaps, religion shaped Faraday's most "progressive" theoretical thinking. Faraday was unusual for his time in conceiving electricity and magnetism more in terms of fields of force than in terms of distinct particles with forces acting at a distance. For the Sandemanians, God's word in the Bible was immediate and direct. So, too, were his actions in nature. Faraday denied gaps in the physical world. Forces could not act across empty space, for example, but only through a medium. Nor could they could exert influence simultaneously, rather only in real time. Thus the contemporary concept of atomism--of matter in discrete billiard-ball-like units--was unthinkable for Faraday the Sandemanian. Instead, matter was continuous, with each point a center of complex webs of forces. While Faraday never fully developed or formalized this framework, it strongly governed his thinking. Most importantly, it meant that his models of electricity and magnetism continued to be valid when field theory later took hold.

Finally, Faraday often serves as a model for public communication of science. His popular Christmas Lectures for children are perhaps the most well known. In addition, he actively promoted science education in schools. This, too, was part of Faraday's religious mission. The Sandemanians were relatively private in many respects, but they occasionally opened their meeting house services on Sunday to "enlighten" the public. Faraday, likewise, saw it as part of his mission to open the world of science to nonscientists and to bring an understanding of God's creation to everyone. And this Faraday did with great enthusiasm and skill. Over a hundred years later, his Natural History of a Candle still serves as an exercise to introduce chemistry students to exemplary scientific methods.

Faraday's influence was so vast that it is hard to imagine nineteenth century science without him. It is equally hard to imagine Faraday's science without his religion.

Reference

• Cantor, Geoffrey. 1991. Michael Faraday: Scientist and Sandemanian. New York: St. Martin's Press.

[tpanther]

We’ve been wishing to take that off your hands...up here in north Georgia we’d need several to turn around our drought.

[tpanther]

Absolutely a FANTASTIC article, and more validation to what we knew all along: it DOES make a difference how one approaches science, with God or without God.

This relates how science benefits while normalcy of homosexualtiy and other perversions and global warming junk science is destroying science as espoused by godless liberals.

[rwfromkansas]

Nonsense. The state has never had them be taught with creationist texts. They at most have only allowed a discussion of the issue. I don’t have a problem with that.

Hey, the evidence for evolution is pretty strong. I admit that. Whatever happens happens, but your view somehow Kansans won’t be able to go to a good college if they make the changes is nonsense and extreme hyperbole from someone clearly fired up on an issue and not clear on what the state has done in the past.

[GodGunsGuts]

==How about their amazing discoveries? What amazing vistas of discovery open up once one is rid of the notion that the evidence all points to an old earth? Shouldn’t they be at the forefront of Scientific discovery if the empirical method is such an adverse burden?

I have been reading the Journal of Creation for some time, and I must say, given their statement of purpose, they are succeeding smashingly:

“Started in 1984, Journal of Creation brings you in-depth, peer-reviewed comment, reviews and the latest research findings that relate to origins and the biblical account of Creation, the Flood and the Fall....Presenting the latest in creation research, Journal of Creation keeps you up-to-date on creation/evolution controversies, pointing out the latest flaws in evolutionary arguments.”

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a tropical storm. Good to know things here are exactly as I left them.

We've been keeping your seat warm. Hope there wasn't too much to deal with.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Thank you for that third link, because it shows how utterly empty the claim that the books weren't allowed in the school library is:

This is why, in the section that requests remedy, the Complaint reads,

b. an injunction pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 65 prohibiting the defendants from implementing their intelligent design policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, and requiring the removal of Of Pandas and People from the School District’s science classrooms....

The word “library” does not appear in the Complaint. In fact, before the case was filed, I specifically recall that the ACLU...made sure that everyone involved on the plaintiffs’ side understood that we were not trying to ban Pandas from the library, because the ACLU doesn’t do that sort of thing.... Public school libraries have a specific educational mission and their collection should be aimed at that (graduate level textbooks are not appropriate, nor a library with all creationism books and no science books), but this does not exclude having some creationist books.

Very generous of you to rebut your own point.

[GodGunsGuts]

It’s clear you have no idea what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t wade into areas you don’t understand. Or if you do, you should at least take it upon yourself to learn as you go. You have done neither. Shotgun blasts of disjointed information does not an argument make. If you think you can dismantle Dr. Pitman’s work, please do so in an intelligent, logical manner, using specific arguments and taking care to cite all your sources, and I will forward them to Dr. Pitman for comment. Until then (I’m not holding my breath), Adios.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

That is an interesting article about Faraday—thanks. I think one thing it demonstrates is what Coyoteman has always said: that it’s not belief or motivation that determines whether one is a scientist, it’s method. There’s no indication there that Faraday ever let his deep beliefs influence his interpretation of his results—in fact, when he got results other than what his beliefs led him to expect, he reported them without spin, rather than trying to come up with excuses for why his experiments didn’t find what he was looking for. Good for him.

[metmom]

that’s gonna leave a mark!

You'd think,.... or maybe hope.....

Me? I'm not so sure.

[GodGunsGuts]

Perhaps you missed the part that would today be characterized by Allmendream et al, as “stupid”:

“Renowned for his strong empirical research, Michael Faraday also believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. His whole life, both inside the laboratory and out, was dominated by his faith as a member of the Sandemanians, a small Protestant sect in Britain. His science was inseparable from his religion...Faraday’s faith influenced several aspects of his science: his motivation for research; his theoretical orientation; the experimental problems he pursued; his interpretation of phenomena; and his public communication of science.”

Bottom line: Faraday belongs to a long and illustrious line of Creation Scientists who have made some of the most significant contributions and discoveries in the entire history of science.