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."
Oh, this was from the National Review! But this, in contrast to Lesie Carr's yammerings from the Socialist, er, Progressive Sociology Network, is quite correct. Hunter's A Civic Biology (publ 1915 IIRC), the text used by John Scopes, was indeed both racist and taught negative eugenics.
I've pointed out in several threads that there was indeed a revival of "scientific racism" just around this time (the 10's and 20'). This revival was pretty clearly (in my mind at least) associated with unprecidented levels of immigration at the time from poor Eastern European and Mediterranean countries into Western Europe and America.
But why did scientific racism need to be revived? Because evolution had undermined the classical "scientific racism" of the 18th and 19th Centuries! Again, you're giving the racists way too much credit in implicitly justifying their rationales. (Even if you do so selectively, and ignore the scientific racism that existed under the creationist paradigm before Darwin.)
Clearly it was the racism that was primary, and the scientific justifications that were secondary, and contrived.
True, but he has a history that comes along with his posts.
He is inconvincible and would most likely be since this thread is an opinion topic purely. The "evidence" has been previously produced.
I did not respond to him. My first response on this thread was to tell all non-Texans to butt out of a Texas concern(jokingly of course). We have only two cheeks(not counting the nether regions).
On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
You must be suffering from sleep deprivation. Although I haven't read the whole thing yet, I never disagreed with the National Review article (in fact I just cross posted with you, and expressed by agreement with the point about Hunter's textbook being racist it in the post immediately preceeding yours). I disagreed with that "Darwin was a racist" posting you quoted from the discussion forum at the Progressive Sociology Network.
Try to keep things straight. (How can you manage to confuse a conservative source like National Review and a far-left venue like the Progressive Sociology Network anyway?!)
Darwin held some views that would be considered racist by today's standards, but in the context of his own time his views on race where notably liberal. It only makes sense to denounce Darwin as "racist" if you hold to the ahistorical "all dead, white European males are racist almost by definition" standard of the radical left. Do you hold to that standard? Because if you do, you must also denounce Abraham Lincoln as racist. Indeed Lincoln was much more explicit and definite on the inferiority of blacks than Darwin ever was.
Here are some of Darwin's comments on race. You can see the stereotypes he embraces here -- e.g. "cheerful" negroes, "diminutive" Portuguese with "murderous countenances" (although he was referring to slave holders) -- but note the dates and consider the virulent and negative racism that was a commonplace at the time:
"I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England, if she is the first European nation which utterly abolish is it. I was told before leaving England, that after living in slave countries: all my options would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the Negros character. It is impossible to see a negro & not feel kindly toward him; such cheerful, open honest expressions & such fine muscular bodies; I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Haiti [where the slaves successfully revolted and gained their freedom]; & considering the enormous healthy looking black population, it will be wonderful if at some future day it does not take place." -- Charles Darwin to Catherine Darwin (May 22 - July 14 1833) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Vol. 1 1821-1836 (1985), pp. 312-313"A few days afterwards I saw another troop of these banditti-like soldiers start on an expedition against a tribe of Indians at the small Salinas, who had been betrayed by a prisoner cacique...Two hundred soldiers were sent; and they first discovered the Indians by a cloud of dust from their horses' feet, as they chanced to be travelling...The Indians, men, women, and children, were about one hundred and ten in number, and they were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every man. The Indians are now so terrified that they offer no resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his wife and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they fight against any number to the last moment. One dying Indian seized with his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and allowed his own eye to be forced out sooner than relinquish his hold. Another, who was wounded, feigned death, keeping a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman. he answered, "Why, what can be done? they breed so!"
Every one here is fully convinced that this is the most just war, because it is against barbarians. Who would believe in this age that such atrocities could be committed in a Christian civilized country?" -- Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Chapter V
Source:
http://home.att.net/~troybritain/articles/darwin_on_race.htm
"Any God powerful enough to will the Universe into being would not need to be tinkering about with His creation. He would have thought it all out ahead of time and known what would happen, where it would happen, and when it would happen...and herein lies the irony of the entire Christian-Creationist dogma. Christians are very big on claiming omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience as characteristics of God...but in reality, they do not believe it...for in their world, God must act directly from time-to-time to "fix" His creation, insert a species here, or take one out there.
To paraphrase Darth Vader, I find their lack of faith disturbing."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/943130/posts?page=2117#2117 Lovely viewpoint you have there. If you really were ever a fundamentalist, you would know the entire thrust of your statements are intended insults, and false.
Nope.
I remember arguing with a creationist here on FR who claimed God had to spin the earth back up periodically with his hand to keep it going.
ROFL!
Science is a continual process, thus the initial studies which indicated eggs were bad for you have been modified somewhat by additional ongoing research. The biggest problem we face today regarding environmental issues is simply that we haven't enough data. Again, initial studies which indicate global warming may simply be part of a natural cycle...we won't know for sure until we've studied the phenomena over many more years. As far as your geologic questions relating to catastrophism, personally through my studies I believe catastrophies have impacted the earth on both local and global levels at various times in the past, but one must be careful with the pronouncement that a certain formation was caused catastrophically - sometimes an extensive sequence really is just that...something laid down over the course of many years without being triggered by something catastrophic.
I remember that post...interesting perspective to say the least...
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