Posted on 07/09/2003 12:08:32 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) -
The long-running debate over the origins of mankind continues Wednesday before the Texas State Board of Education, and the result could change the way science is taught here and across the nation.
Local and out-of-state lobbying groups will try to convince the board that the next generation of biology books should contain new scientific evidence that reportedly pokes holes in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Many of those groups say that they are not pushing to place a divine creator back into science books, but to show that Darwin's theory is far from a perfect explanation of the origin of mankind.
"It has become a battle ground," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of theNational Center of Science Education, which is dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom.
Almost 45 scientists, educators and special interest groups from across the state will testify at the state's first public hearing this year on the next generation of textbooks for the courses of biology, family and career studies and English as a Second Language.
Approved textbooks will be available for classrooms for the 2004-05 school year. And because Texas is the second largest textbook buyer in the nation, the outcome could affect education nationwide.
The Texas Freedom Network and a handful of educators held a conference call last week to warn that conservative Christians and special interest organizations will try to twist textbook content to further their own views.
"We are seeing the wave of the future of religious right's attack on basic scientific principles," said Samantha Smoot, executive director of the network, an anti-censorship group and opponent of the radical right.
Those named by the network disagree with the claim, including the Discovery Institute and its Science and Culture Center of Seattle.
"Instead of wasting time looking at motivations, we wish people would look at the facts," said John West, associate director of the center.
"Our goal nationally is to encourage schools and educators to include more about evolution, including controversies about various parts of Darwinian theory that exists between even evolutionary scientists," West said. "We are a secular think tank."
The institute also is perhaps the nation's leading proponent of intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have occurred without the help of an unknown, intelligent being.
It pushed this view through grants to teachers and scientists, including Michael J. Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The Institute receives millions of dollars from philanthropists and foundations dedicated to discrediting Darwin's theory.
The center sent the state board a 55-page report that graded 11 high school biology textbooks submitted for adoption. None earned a grade above a C minus. The report also includes four arguments it says show that evolutionary theory is not as solid as presented in biology textbooks.
Discovery Institute Fellow Raymond Bohlin, who also is executive director of Probe Ministries, based in Richardson, Texas, will deliver that message in person Wednesday before the State Board of Education. Bohlin has a doctorate degree in molecular cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas.
"If we can simply allow students to see that evolution is not an established fact, that leaves freedom for students to pursue other ideas," Bohlin said. "All I can do is continue to point these things out and hopefully get a group that hears and sees relevant data and insist on some changes."
The executive director of Texas Citizens for Science, Steven Schafersman, calls the institute's information "pseudoscience nonsense." Schafersman is an evolutionary scientist who, for more than two decades, taught biology, geology, paleontology and environmental science at a number of universities, including the University of Houston and the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.
"It sounds plausible to people who are not scientifically informed," Schafersman said. "But they are fraudulently trying to deceive board members. They might succeed, but it will be over the public protests of scientists."
The last time Texas looked at biology books, in 1997, the State Board of Education considered replacing them all with new ones that did not mention evolution. The board voted down the proposal by a slim margin.
The state requires that evolution be in textbooks. But arguments against evolution have been successful over the last decade in other states. Alabama, New Mexico and Nebraska made changes that, to varying degrees, challenge the pre-eminence of evolution in the scientific curriculum.
In 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to wash the concepts of evolution from the state's science curricula. A new state board has since put evolution back in. Last year, the Cobb County school board in Georgia voted to include creationism in science classes.
Texas education requirements demand that textbooks include arguments for and against evolution, said Neal Frey, an analyst working with perhaps Texas' most famous textbook reviewers, Mel and Norma Gabler.
The Gablers, of Longview, have been reviewing Texas textbooks for almost four decades. They describe themselves as conservative Christians. Some of their priorities include making sure textbooks include scientific flaws in arguments for evolution.
"None of the texts truly conform to the state's requirements that the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories be presented to students," Frey said.
The Texas textbook proclamation of 2001, which is part of the standard for the state's curriculum, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, requires that biology textbooks instruct students so they may "analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weakness using scientific evidence and information."
The state board is empowered to reject books only for factual errors or for not meeting the state's curriculum requirements. If speakers convince the state board that their evidence is scientifically sound, members may see little choice but to demand its presence in schoolbooks.
Proposed books already have been reviewed and approved by Texas Tech University. After a public hearing Wednesday and another Sept. 10, the state board is scheduled to adopt the new textbooks in November.
Satisfying the state board is only half the battle for textbook publishers. Individual school districts choose which books to use and are reimbursed by the state unless they buy texts rejected by the state board.
Districts can opt not to use books with passages they find objectionable. So when speakers at the public hearings criticize what they perceived as flaws in various books - such as failing to portray the United States or Christianity in a positive light - many publishers listen.
New books will be distributed next summer.
State Board member Terri Leo said the Discovery Institute works with esteemed scientists and that their evidence should be heard.
"You cannot teach students how to think if you don't present both sides of a scientific issue," Leo said. "Wouldn't you think that the body that has the responsibility of what's in the classroom would look at all scientific arguments?"
State board member Bob Craig said he had heard of the Intelligent Design theory.
"I'm going in with an open mind about everybody's presentation," Craig said. "I need to hear their presentation before I make any decisions or comments.
State board member Mary Helen Berlanga said she wanted to hear from local scientists.
"If we are going to discuss scientific information in the textbooks, the discussion will have to remain scientific," Berlanga said. "I'd like to hear from some of our scientists in the field on the subject."
9 year olds are expected to think for themselves these days, maybe choose woodwind, brass, or strings, and they don't care what the state wants, or what their parents want for that matter. It's a little young for any of this; at 9 they should be learning to read and do arithmetic. 12 years old is functional decision age for most. Anyway, I'm concerned with the U, where no one wants any Creationism, they all want the current state of the art.
You mean like global warming, scientology, Christian Science, socialism, Krishna Consciousness, etc. You are advocating a kind of wishy-washy, relativistic, intellectual affirmative action that conservatives should be solidly against.
I have no problem with creationism, or intelligent design, or any other theory being in textbooks and curricula provided only that it EARN its way in there the same way any other theory has done or would be expected to do.
For a theory to be included in the science curricula, this means that it must FIRST earn standing in the market place of scientific ideas. It must prove its worth to working scientists such that they begin to test, implicate and employ the theory in their ongoing research. There is even an objective manner of determining if and when this has occured, since there is a professional literature in which scientists describe their research.
I've got news for you, goodseedhomeschool: All of your earnestness will not accomplish this. Hovind speaking 8 THOUSAND times a year will not accomplish this. Trying, even successfully, to persuade people on computer bulletin boards will not accomplish this. Even indoctrinating highschool students in creationism will not do this.
You've got to do the one thing creationists have never successfully done, and very, very seldom even try to do. (Because they can't. Duh!) You have to put together a coherent theory or body of theory, build a scientific research program around it, and produce some results.
If you do that -- if scientists are actually using a theory -- it will eventually be included in curricula as a matter of course. You won't need to wail and piss and moan on computer bulliten boards, or in front of school boards, or maintain a popular movement with huge mailing lists, or oooh and aaah over unctuous charlatans waving degrees from diploma mills. But so long as you fail to do the first thing, none of the rest will do any good in the long run, and in fact will only do harm, both to our educational standards AND to religion.
Just as well. Before Kansas reversed itself, we were considering refusing to accept biology credits from any school system that taught creationism. There no reason why a science department should accept pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo from fundamentalist religious fanatics, any more than we should accept the prohibition on usury in the Koran as a valid form of economics, or Vedic astrology as a branch of science.
Funny, considering Dimensio's a libertarian, and far less statist than me, you or any other conservative.
To: ALS
It does NOT further conservativism, I have told you this, WHAT? 3 or 4 times? It is SCIENCE.
Because it is science, when conservatives ATTACK IT, it discredits conservatives in the eyes of the public.
If ID actually got into schools because of "conservatives" it would DISREDIT the ENTIRE conservative movement.
It would mkae us look like a bunch of flat earther, anti science zealots, and would DESTROY ANY credibility that we have.
SO, YES, It does FURTHER the conservative movement, it gives us credibility.
1,132 posted on 07/02/2003 11:07 PM CDT by Aric2000 (If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance god)
EVOCRITE noun [U]
barking chihuahua that pretends to believe something that they do not really believe or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time.
But when we test our theories we test all applicable presuppostions at the same time. In historical fact, science has modified or abandoned even very fundamental, "philosophical level" presupositions, as well as (and sometimes in preference to) theories, simply because they did not work, or because other and incompatible presuppositions worked better.
For instance it used to accepted as a core presupposition, inherent in and necessary to science as such, that force is only transmitted by physical contact between material bodies. For this reason Newton's law of universal gravitation should have been immediately rejected as "non-scientific". (And in fact this argument was made.) The problem was that Newton's idea worked, and it worked remarkably well. As a result the theory was retained that the presupposition was abandoned.
Incidently, this undermines the creationist complaint that scientists refuse to acknowledge God as a mechanism in scientific theory, and systematically rule out non-natural causes entirely. Well, they do, and they believe (quite correctly, I assert) that there is very good reason for doing so. BUT... If you could come up with a theory including non-natural mechanisms that clearly WORKED -- that solved genuine scientific problems, and advanced research that led to the accumulation of well ordered and useful knowledge -- then this objection would be dropped. The "nature of science" is determined by it's theories, and will ALWAYS be modified to accomodate a truly successful theory.
Anyway, back to the main point I wanted to get to, which is the problem with your philosophy of presuppositionalism. It pretends that it is allright for "me" to woodenly adhere to my pressuppositions, come what may, because "thee" will do the same. But "thee" (science) doesn't do the same. Presuppositionalism thus fails as a means for religionists to either incorporate or challenge science. (I'm not saying that incorporation or challenge is necessarily impossible, btw, but just that this doesn't work.)
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