AAAS Board Resolution Urges Opposition to "Intelligent Design" Theory in U.S. Science Classes

AAAS ^ | November 6, 2002 | Ginger Pinholster

[Nebullis]

The AAAS Board recently passed a resolution urging policymakers to oppose teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" within science classrooms, but rather, to keep it separate, in the same way that creationism and other religious teachings are currently handled.

"The United States has promised that no child will be left behind in the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, CEO and executive publisher for AAAS. "If intelligent design theory is presented within science courses as factually based, it is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and to undermine the integrity of U.S. science education."

American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints, Leshner noted. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, he added, science-based information and conceptual belief systems should not be presented together.

Peter H. Raven, chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors, agreed:

"The ID movement argues that random mutation in nature and natural selection can't explain the diversity of life forms or their complexity and that these things may be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent," said Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "This is an interesting philosophical or theological concept, and some people have strong feelings about it. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution. Intelligent design theory has so far not been supported by peer-reviewed, published evidence."

In contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a "disputed view" within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through "disclaimer" stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.

"The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry," the AAAS Board of Directors wrote in a resolution released today. "AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of `intelligent design theory' as a part of the science curriculum of the public schools."

The AAAS Board resolved to oppose claims that intelligent design theory is scientifically based, in response to a number of recent ID-related threats to public science education.

In Georgia, for example, the Cobb County District School Board decided in March this year to affix stickers to science textbooks, telling students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Following a lawsuit filed August 21 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the school board on September 26 modified its policy statement, but again described evolution as a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other family teachings. The exact impact of the amended school board policy in Cobb County classrooms remains unclear.

A similar challenge is underway in Ohio, where the state's education board on October 14 passed a unanimous, though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But, their ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science, and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."

The Ohio State Education Board is inviting further public comment through November. In December, board members will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels. Meanwhile, ID theorists have reportedly been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey, and other states, as well Ohio and Georgia.

While asking policymakers to oppose the teaching of ID theory within science classes, the AAAS also called on its 272 affiliated societies, its members, and the public to promote fact-based, standards-based science education for American schoolchildren.

[gore3000]

For any latecoming lurkers, a good summary of punctuated equilibrium.

More gaaarbage from your buddy Lindsay. I think you tell him what nonsense you need and he puts it up on the web. Note that the guy not only never gives references, he does not even sign his name to the drivel he posts.

Here's what S.J. Gould the co-founder with Eldredge of punk-eek had to say about what punk-eek states:

Doug [the interviewer]: What got you started thinking about punctuated equilibrium?

Stephen Jay Gould: It wasn't broad philosophical or political issues as I think many people assume. It really comes right out of an operational dilemma in paleontology.

I had been trained, as Niles Eldredge had, in statistical methods for the study of subtle changes in evolution. Evolution at that time was defined as gradualism. The two were virtually equated; to see evolution meant finding gradualistic sequences, but every paleontologist knew that they had effectively never been found, and that was a frustration.

As it turns out, the naive assumption behind this kind of statistical training was: maybe gradualism could be subtle, and the only way to see it is to do precise measurements because the eye can't pick up changes at this slowness. Indeed one of our thesis advisors, John Imbrie, who was probably the best statistically trained paleontologist, learned his biometrics for exactly that reason. He went out and did a dissertation on the Devonian strata of the Traverse group in Michigan, which is an unusually well preserved sequence. He studied some thirty brachiopod species and found that all but one of them had stayed stable. He ended up leaving paleontology, which is the irony; he didn't see what I think punctuated equilibrium saw — namely, that maybe you ought to revise your assumptions. Instead of recognizing stability as a frustrating negativity, consider it a signal about the main weight of the fossil record itself.

So that's what it came out of: the hope that statistical study would finally enable us to get around this source of frustration by revealing gradual, definitive change; but that didn't work either. At some point, one had to face a radical alternative: maybe what you were seeing wasn't its imperfections; maybe it was in fact the signal about how evolution truly did work. And that at least had the salutary effect that now the main thing you saw, in a literal sense, was no longer the imperfection that blocked your access to the phenomenon you wanted to study, but was actually the proper expression of geological time and the phenomenon itself. The idea of punctuated equilibrium came from a very conventional motivation based on an operational frustration in the actual practice of empirical work.
From: Powell's.com Interviews [the interview is not dated but it was made due to the publication of Gould's book 'Full House' which was published in 1996]

Now the above completely verifies my statement about punk-eek being opposed to and disprooving gradual evolution. Also please note Gould's concluding statement " The idea of punctuated equilibrium came from a very conventional motivation based on an operational frustration in the actual practice of empirical work. Punk-eek by Gould's own admission is a theory without evidence. It was designed to cover up the holes in evolution - just as I and others have said.

[AndrewC]

Gee, Patrick...I would have thought with your preoccupation of the SEVENTH PLANET, your answer would have been:

Please, speak respectfully. That is the homeworld of the Intelligent Designer.

PH, PW gave you away, too late to lie about it.

[gore3000]

You said that Dembski’s hope for a hidden message in the DNA ”doesn’t cut it” in your view as a positive proof for intelligent design. You elaborated in post #399 and #477 that your objections are that you can no reason for the “operating manual” to be hidden, that the “organism is the operator” and that a coding system should not have a dual purpose You are certainly welcome to your opinions, but objections do not constitute a counter (naturalistic) explanation for the origin of such an “operating manual” - if indeed one is found.

I hate to disagree with you and Dembski on this but I have a few problems with the above. One is theological, I really believe that we have free will and that God will not reveal himself in such a way. The second is both practical and aesthetic - such a message would waste resources which could be used to make for 'tighter code'. When one realizes that the DNA of an organism is replicated in just about all the 100 trillion cells of the body (with the exception of blood and sex cells) one sees what a tremendous waste of resources wasteful code is.

I know jennyp does not believe in tight code. She seems to have developed her skills in a bureaucratic or learning environment in the times when bloatware is no big deal. So to her careful step by step code which is easily decipherable by others is good code. However, in the days when 64k memory was the most you could have and you had to fit the operating system and perhaps a word processor in that space, resources were at a premium. In those days also programs were not written by bureaucracies but by a single person. The premium was on saving resources and doing as much as possible with what little you had. In those times all kinds of things were done including reuse of code, entering subroutines in different places and even using code as data. One of the most ingeneous ways was using an instruction in different ways by going into a two or three byte instruction at the 2nd or 3rd byte. We see this done in DNA. Normally DNA is read in three base pair sequences at a time. However, we have found that in some circumstances by entering on the 2nd or 3rd base pair a gene is made to produce a completely different protein. Like the programmer who did this back in the old days, this is only achievable by intelligence. Reuse of code in different ways to do different things requires intelligent design, no two ways about it. As you said further on " Algorithms are the expression of intelligence". Such an algorithm, reusing code is a sign of very high intelligence. This is the stamp of the Creator not a sequence that says 'Made in Heaven'.

[gore3000]

The minute you start making predictions based on random events, you are admitting that they are not random. -CalConservative-

Absolutely false. The existence of casinos belies this assertion.

No it does not. It is a false analogy. Yes, due to the odds the casino will win in the long run. However, probabilistic theory falsifies evolution. It tells us that a mutation will not spread unless it has a very favorable effect on an organism. Since science has taught us that a single mutation cannot by itself create a new function, or even a new gene, no mutation can have such a great effect that it will spread through a species. So probabilistic theory disproves evolution. In fact, that is the argument of Intelligent Design, that the probabilities are just to ludicrous for evolution to be true.

[AndrewC]

no chemical bonds exist between the nucleotide bases along the message-bearing spine of the DNA helix, demonstrating that physical and chemical forces are not responsible for the specific sequencing in the molecule.

This statement has been called into question by someone. Here is a little background information for you. Make up your own minds.

chemical bond

---

A strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule or crystal. In general, atoms combine to form molecules by sharing or transferring electrons in their outer shells. Typically chemical bonds have energies of about 1000 kJ ;mol-1 and are distinguished from the much weaker forces between molecules. See also covalent bond; electrovalent bond; hydrogen bond.

hydrogen bond

---

A type of electrostatic interaction between electronegative (fluorine, nitrogen, or oxygen) atoms in one molecule and hydrogen atoms bound to electronegative atoms in another molecule. It is a strong dipole-dipole attraction caused by the electron-withdrawing properties of the electronegative atom. Thus, in the water molecule the oxygen atom attracts the electrons in the O-H bonds. The hydrogen atom has no inner shells of electrons to shield the nucleus, and there is an electrostatic interaction between the hydrogen proton and a lone pair of electrons on an oxygen atom in a neighbouring molecule. Each oxygen atom has two lone pairs and can make hydrogen bonds to two different hydrogen atoms. The strengths of hydrogen bonds are about one tenth of the strengths of normal covalent bonds. Hydrogen bonding does, however, have significant effects on physical properties. Thus it accounts for the unusual properties of water and for its relatively high boiling point. It is also of great importance in living organisms. Hydrogen bonding occurs between bases in the chains of DNA (see base pairing). It also occurs between the C=O and N-H groups in proteins, and is responsible for maintaining the secondary structure.

[gore3000]

You mean here?

The link is not a refutation, it is joke on the color I use. Methinks I should take it as a concession that my statement in post#521 is correct and you cannot refute it?

[Tribune7]

Even when it comes to abiogenesis, naturalistic scientists have produced positive evidence on their side:

Jen, there is more evidence for civilization on Mars, than abiogenesis.

[gore3000]

When the breakaway populations are small, that's when the (gradual!) evolution happens.

You are pointing out another of the problems with punk-eek - it relies on mutations in fairly small populations. We know that it is much easier to spead a mutation amongst a small population than a large one, on this all agree. Howeverw we all know that the vast majority of mutations are harmful and even evolutionists agree with this. So what does this mean to punk eek? It means that for every favorable mutation it has to overcome dozens, perhaps hundreds perhaps thousands of unfavorable ones. This makes punk eek just about impossible.

That's probably why we cannot find the fossils either - they don't exist. That's why punk-eek in addition to the many scientific problems in addition to the one mentioned above has no evidence to show for itself. It is merely a hypothesis invented by Gould and Eldredge (see my Post#581 ).

BTW - Nice tree, very well made and shows the hypothesis quite well. Did you do it yourself? If so you can join the ranks of evolutionist academia. Tree painting is one of the most sought after qualifications (besides a complete set of Crayola crayons)!

[Nebullis]

Notice that AndrewC has left out a few bonds, such as van der Waals.

My suggestion, if you are interested in the truth, is to, first, pick up a chemistry text, study the chemical interactions in DNA molecules and then make up your mind. Second, understand that Meyer's claim that a lack of chemical bonds demonstrates "that physical and chemical forces are not responsible for the specific sequencing in the molecule." is a non sequitur. Such a claim is in no way demonstrated from the (false) information given. Consider that other molecules interact with the nucleotides in DNA.

I'll leave it at that. Some, here, are too ignorant to know better. Others, here, are too dishonest to treat it with the contempt it deserves.

[gore3000]

Guess that according to you it proposes that God created life and human beings???????? -me-

No. Are you saying that any theory that does not propose as much is inherently materialistic? Do you know what 'false dichotomy' means?

Yes I know what false dichotomy means and it does not apply here. Evolution specifically rejects any supernatural intervention. It specifically rejects any kind of creation. It atributes all transformations of species to material causes. So yes it is materialistic. That is why Karl Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin.

[Doctor Stochastic]

No stenography so far. The ID guys seem more and more like something out of Carl Sagan's fiction. I have done work in stenography and nothing in genetics looks like stenography.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Processes that proceed with a drift component have events at all time scales.

[gore3000]

Every individual gets half the alelles from each parent so the 'frequency' of alelles in a population changes with each birth. This is a truism of genetics. -me-

I have show this to be false in post 203. I expect you will want to promptly revise your statement.

Okay, let's examine your proof:

Aa X AA = n[.5(Aa) + .5(AA)]
3A : 1a = .5n(3A : 1a)

I am not sure what you think it proves, but it certainly does not disprove my statement above. A child receives half the alleles of the mother and half of the father. So when the child is born let's say the mother has two alleles in the same gene AA and BB and the father has CC and DD. The child will have either AA and CC, AA and DD, BB and CC or BB and DD. Let's say he ends up with AA from the mother and DD from the father. Then there will be one more BB and one more DD in the population than before (this goes for all the other alleles in an organism) So the mix is different. Very slightly but it is different. Eventually it does even out due to the laws of probability, however my statement is nevertheless true.

[Nebullis]

Stenography?

[gore3000]

So the task of ID'ers is to provide some positive evidence for this designer. Otherwise they're simply complaining about the current gaps in knowledge.

If you look at the paintings in the Sistine Chapel do you think that they were painted at random by material forces? Don't think so. If after seeing that you see some other paintings by Michelangelo in museums and such can you tell who the painter was? Pretty likely you could. These paintings are the material expression of Michelangelo's intelligence. You cannot see his intelligence, just like you cannot 'see' anyone else's intelligence, but by their deeds you can come to know of their intelligence. ID says the same thing, by the Creation you can tell that a work was intelligently designed. There's your evidence and it is everywhere. You can find it in the Universe, you can find it in the creation of life, you can find it in the process whereby each new baby is created from a single cell. There's your evidence.

[Condorman]

I'm not sure what you think it proves

This does not surprise me.

Alelle frequency is a function of populations, not of individuals. You have repeated the two equations, but you have not understood them. If you want, I would be happy to explain them. You have proven only that you have a poor grasp of biology.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post and for sharing your views in detail!

I do not see Intelligent Design as a competitor in the fossil arena as you do, nor do I see it as an endeavor focused on history.

To the contrary, I see Intelligent Design focused on analyzing the internal mechanism of biology, particularly where algorithmic features appear. IMHO, the information age itself will drive this search for the undlying algorithms even if the Intelligent Design movement were quashed.

In support of my view, I point to Stephen Wolfram on Natural Selection. Wolfram says At some level it is not surprising that there should be an analogy between engineering and natural selection. For both cases can be viewed as trying to create systems that will achieve or optimize some goal...…[I]n the end, therefore, what I conclude is that many of the most obvious features of complexity in biological organisms arise in a sense not because of natural selection, but rather in spite of it.

The underlying algorithmic structure is the basis of Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. And research continues into a mathematical theory of everything:

Max Tegmark Is ``the theory of everything'' merely the ultimate ensemble theory?

Jürgen Schmidhuber Algorithmic Theories of Everything

Iain Stewart Department of Computing, Imperial College, London

IMHO, finding such algorithms will do injury to the evolutionary theory of random mutations - even though that was not the intended result of the mathematics. Of course, the philosophers and theologians will highlight the ontological consequences when it happens.

If I could make a recommendation to the evolutionist community it would be not to "bet the farm" on the randomness component - being malleable as research continues is prudent. Anyway, that's my two cents...

Thank you for the discussion! It has been very informative!

[gore3000]

Which reminds me (post 518): The arrangements of matter required for life are not determined by chemical properties.

The DNA arrangement of an organism is the code for all life. DNA is not arranged in any way according to any kind of chemically determined sequence. If you wish to dispute that then address your statements to me and post relevant facts to support it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post and the analogy/analysis!

If biological engineering continues to progress and allows us to create new machines, the rules of engineering and intelligent design will be applied. Ironically, it is ‘only’ here that naturalistic evolution allows it to happen.

IMHO The Design Theory is more of a ‘theory of everything’ and not limited to biology.

I agree! Please see my post 597 to jennyp!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your initial reactions! There are a number of other research projects which might be of interest to you. I've offered a few links at #597.