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AAAS Board Resolution Urges Opposition to "Intelligent Design" Theory in U.S. Science Classes
AAAS ^ | November 6, 2002 | Ginger Pinholster

Posted on 11/07/2002 7:07:47 PM PST by 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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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To: gore3000
Did God create the Universe? Did he design it?

Well, for what it's worth, I think He did! And it seems that these two guys do as well: Doctors Thompson and Harrub respond to Rennie

FRegards, MM

981 posted on 11/13/2002 5:28:28 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
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To: Lurking Libertarian
You posted a doctored quote from Darwin.

No I did not. According to you and your fellow evolutionists if one does not post the whole book it is a 'doctored quote' an 'out of context quote' or some such insulting garbage. The part you wanted included shows quite well the dishonesty of Darwin. He is trying to pass himself off as maybe God created life while not saying it and being able to deny it later. Here's the whole thing again. The truth of my post#840 is irrefutable so that's why you are attacking the messenger (and note - the passage you wanted included is here):

As to evolution rejecting supernatural intervention specifically all we need to do is quote Darwin:-me-

... you reply adding the part in bold

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

First of all note that he ascribes totally material causes to evolution. Secondly one must ask is 'breathed' by whom. It seems to imply God, but note that he does not mention God which I think a Christian would have. He leaves the door open to a materialistic explanation later on which he is unwilling to talk about at this time because he wants to deceive his public regarding his religious beliefs as the following amply shows:

"P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray [his publisher] that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c, &c., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.

Or had I better say nothing to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs sharp counter to Genesis."
From: Daniel J. Boorstein, The Discoverers, page 475.

That he was deceptive about his religious views in the Origins is beyond doubt and that is why he waited until his views had gained ground that he went full front against Christianity in the 'Descent of Man' by finally saying what he meant all along - that man had descended from apes, that man was not specifically created by God. We also must add to his deception the quote below from Alamo-Girl's post:

"It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."

So from all the above, the case is pretty solid that both evolution is wholly materialistic and that Darwin was willfully deceiving his public about his religious views in the Origins.
840 posted on 11/12/2002 6:13 PM PST by gore3000

982 posted on 11/13/2002 5:34:37 PM PST by gore3000
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To: Right Wing Professor
Seems a very arrogant attitude to me and very uncivilized too. -me-

Arrogant, probably. I'm right, you're wrong, and it would be dishonest of me to imply, even as a social nicety, that I have the slightest reservation about that. Uncivilized, no. Nothing in civilization requires us to be nice to barbarians. I take a Victorian attitude; we should be compassionate to the peaceful savage, but when they're hammering at the gates, civilization gets out the boiling pitch (or the Gatling gun, to keep the metaphor straight)

Creationism is an atavistic holdover from a less-enlightened age of history, and when it attempts to use political power to regain what it has lost by the progress of the human intellect, the gloves come off.

I am repeating your entire post so that all can see what you really are. It should be noted in the above that the great professor (well known at home at dinner time) does not give a single fact in support of his position but instead keeps on with insults, smears and grandiose pronouncements.

As I have said before, I will say it again, an intelligent person which has the facts does not have to lower himself to smears and insults. An intelligent person that has the facts does not need to blow himself up in the eyes of others. His words, his statements will give more than sufficient proof of his worth. Your words above give no such proof, they prove the opposite.

983 posted on 11/13/2002 5:40:54 PM PST by gore3000
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To: Alamo-Girl
That Dembski and Wolfram dare to look for algorithms in evolution should not be offensive.

That anyone should look at alternative theories for anything should not be insulting to any scientist or anyone who believes in science. Only those who wish to have their ideology go unchallenged are opposed to inquiries and testing of their theories.

984 posted on 11/13/2002 5:44:02 PM PST by gore3000
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To: All
As I have said before, I will say it again, an intelligent person which has the facts does not have to lower himself to smears and insults. An intelligent person that has the facts does not need to blow himself up in the eyes of others. His words, his statements will give more than sufficient proof of his worth. Your words above give no such proof, they prove the opposite.

[PSYCHICMODE=ON; SPOOKYVOICE=ON] A haunting looms imminent! OOOOoooooOOOOO..... [PSYCHICMODE=OFF; SPOOKYVOICE=OFF]

985 posted on 11/13/2002 5:52:57 PM PST by Condorman
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To: gore3000
My prediction...only technology is science---evolution is... glop!
986 posted on 11/13/2002 5:55:32 PM PST by f.Christian
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To: Junior
... because everything was built into the program from the get-go, all processes are indistinguishable from natural processes.

There are no natural processes, except the slime in your brain.
</flaming idiot mode>

987 posted on 11/13/2002 5:58:45 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: VadeRetro
It doesn't help the ID-ists that such leading lights as trial lawyer Philip Johnson write books like Darwin on Trial full of warmed-over Duane Gish arguments.

Real good Vade, a two-fer. A double slime in one sentence. See what practice does?

Don't know much about Gish excepted that the one time you specifically insulted him for something (on another thread) he was correct. You were discussing what evolutionists call the first mammal. In one of your links Gish had said that all they had of it was a lower jaw and a paste up job of the upper jaw. When after much cajoling you finally posted a picture of the bones, guess what? The upper part of the head was a paste up job!

The reason why evolutionists get on Gish and smear him is that he is one of the few non-evolutionist paleontologists out there and he does not let them get away with the nonsense they like to pull on the public.The number of lies and totally deceitful practices of paleontologists is legion. There was Nebraska Man which turned out to be the teeth of a pig. Piltdown man which was another complete fake. There's the first primate which is two anklebones and a lower jaw from a thousand miles away. There is Lucy whose face (and the only claim to its being human) is more than 50% plaster, There's the 'ancestors' of the platypus - a couple of teeth from S. America and some 20,000,000 ago - OF A TOOTHLESS ANIMAL. The list could go on forever, but the point is clear - paleontology is total nonsense. If Johnson and Gish are exposing it for what it is then we should thank them, not insult them.

988 posted on 11/13/2002 6:01:13 PM PST by gore3000
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To: Right Wing Professor
There is no Nobel Prize in biology.

I know that very well, still prizes go for people for work in biology and your semantic response does not address the challenge posed to you and your fellow evolutionists which is:

what Nobel Prize winning discovery in biology EVER does not tend to disprove evolution?

(Aside to lurkers - note that while the evolutionists insult me, and make excuses, they do not take up the challenge posed to them. A challenge which should be excruciatingly easy for them to take up IF EVOLUTION WERE TRUE).

989 posted on 11/13/2002 6:10:45 PM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
Your past triumphs are remembered nowhere outside of your fantasies. There are plenty of proto-mammal and early mammal skulls which wonderfully document the rise of mammalian earbones.

Gish's Ph.D. is in biochemstry, not paleontology. The Piltdown fraud will be 100 in 2012. I could go on as well but won't bother.

990 posted on 11/13/2002 6:11:46 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
It's good to know you feel you must earn your Indian name.
991 posted on 11/13/2002 6:21:03 PM PST by Gumlegs
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To: Gumlegs
I'm coasting these days. I do just enough to keep it from lapsing.
992 posted on 11/13/2002 6:23:59 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
Among biologists, there is no agreement on what constitutes a species or whether the important mechanisms for mutations have even been identified.

Wrong and right. Biologists know quite well what constitutes a species, they have known for thousands of years. A species is a group of organisms which can reproduce with each other and produce viable offspring. The evolutionists have tried to confuse the issue for their own purpose but that is the only legitimate definition of species.

However, I did say you were right in the above. The mechanisms of mutations have not been identified at all. That means the evolutionists have no evidence to support their theory but of course that does not stop them from saying their gibberish is science.

993 posted on 11/13/2002 6:25:33 PM PST by gore3000
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To: VadeRetro
Still, I admire your dedication. In my case, I'm doing all I can to get away from my Indian name. Unfortunately, Running Sores appears to be secure.
994 posted on 11/13/2002 6:28:26 PM PST by Gumlegs
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To: Gumlegs
Unfortunately, Running Sores appears to be secure.

No one's going to fight you for that one. By comparision, anyone who hangs around on crevo threads would tend to say, "Hey! I could be called 'Argues-with-Nutcases!'"

995 posted on 11/13/2002 6:33:54 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
Awaiting post 1000 placemarker.
996 posted on 11/13/2002 6:42:22 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: Right Wing Professor
Newton worked long before science had a distinct existence.

To say that Newton was not a scientist is beyond the pale. Now you have really shown yourself to be just a raving ideologue with no common sense. You just spew nonsense like a water fountain. Guess you consider the charlatan Darwin an example of a 'true' scientist?

Darwin the Charlatan

One of the most interesting things about the Origin of the Species is that it gives proof of nothing:

he cannot prove it, but please believe him.
All these causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.

He cannot prove it but it's true:
We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely, unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between their past or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record.

There is no proof but I believe I am correct:
it deserves especial notice that the more important objections relate to questions on which we are confessedly ignorant; nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know all the possible transitional gradations between the simplest and the most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied means of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we know how imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these several difficulties are, in my judgment

In the future I will be proven right (like Miss Cleo?):
Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will reveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class.

Contradicting what he said before of living fossils:
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Both sides prove me right:
it follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive formations probably serves as a fair measure of the lapse of actual time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within this same period, several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming into competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time.

The future again:
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches.

Glorification of war and death:
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life

You prove the eye did not evolve
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

Of course, the great "scientist" Darwin has also been proven wrong numerous times by real science:
1. His racist brachyo-cephalic index for lower species has been shown to be a farce.
2. His numerous statements on apes being the progenitor of man have been shown to be false.
3. His theory that the characteristics of each parent "melded" in the children was proven wrong by Mendellian genetics.
4. The fossil record, 150 years later still does not show gradual evolution.
5. His hero, Malthus, the original chicken little, has been proven wrong by the tenfold increase in humanity while nutrition improved.

997 posted on 11/13/2002 6:46:21 PM PST by gore3000
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To: All
Placemarker.
998 posted on 11/13/2002 6:51:19 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: VadeRetro
ID-ists constantly portray Dembski as bringing the authority of information theory onto the side of ID. That's like saying Behe brings all of molecular biology with him, or that Henry Morris brings all of hydraulic engineering.

You keep getting better with every post! A trifecta! Three smears in two sentences! Too bad you cannot back anything up eh? Too bad neither you nor any of your evo friends can even discuss what Dembski says, let alone refute it.

999 posted on 11/13/2002 6:51:43 PM PST by gore3000
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To: All
1000?
1,000 posted on 11/13/2002 6:52:27 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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