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."
Then they should not have endorsed atheism as the official state religion thru their rulings on evolution. None of you has responded to my charge - Evolution is the ONLY politically mandated scientific theory in existence. You can't defend that.
Here's the good news, however, at least for those creationist freepers who have expressed the conviction that the demise of evolution is just around the corner: If some creationistic theory ever genuinely succeeds as science, then religious objections to teaching it in the public schools will likewise be irrelevant.
Most people want creationism taught in public schools. That's a fact. Evolution is mandated only because of the POWER of the courts and the Federal Govt. If creationism is ever given a fair chance to stand up on its own without the coercive suppression by the govt, it will bury darwinism. That's why you people are so afraid of giving it equal time. Your theory can't stand up without the force of govt. behind it. But you know what, I don't like dictators, and I don't like people like you trying to tell my kids what they will learn. I don't like indoctrination into atheism. You don't own my kids - got it?
By the same token, if evolution should ever fail as a scientific theory, then you may well be able to have it removed from public schools on constitutional grounds (because the valid secular purpose of teaching science will have been eliminated if evolution is no longer part of science). In the meantime whining will do you no good. A better bet (and less of a long shot than finding a scientifically successful theory of creation) is to work towards the elimination of government schools. I'm actually with you on that one.
You people don't know the first thing about the Constitution. The Law of the Land means nothing to a group of people with no moral accountability, so they mold it and shape it like a piece of clay. Govt. schools are already a miserable failure. Homeschoolers bury them in every category (sweet irony).
How can you say that Hitler was more racist than those in his time when it was through pandering to racism that he came to power?
Because a) he came to power more on ultra-nationalism than on overt racism (that came later), b) pandering to the lowest common denominator doesn't mean the whole society is morally bankrupt, and c) despite a racist undercurrent in that society, Hitler led them to far greater heights of racism than had been the case prior to his inciting them up to his own rabid level.
I think we'll have to add this to the "Gore3k said *what*?!?" file...
Is it truly your contention that Hitler was no more racist than was average for the 1930's? *Really*? Please expand upon this topic, I'm sure we'll be fascinated to hear your, um, unique views on the topic of how Hitler wasn't atypically racist.
In addition, for your information, the excuse 'everybody does it' was completely discredited by the degenerate which at FR we call X42.
True, but since that's not the basis for his point, why are you "informing" us of this?
Hint: His point was not "everyone does it", his point is that contrary to the attempts of some posters (*cough*ALS*cough*) to paint Darwin as some sort of rabid racist and philosophical kin to Hitler, the fact remains that while Hitler was far more rabidly racist than his own already xenophobic culture, Darwin was much *less* racist than the merely chauvanistic culture he was raised in. For his day and culture, in fact, he was amazingly enlightened.
This is not an "everyone does it" point. On the contrary, his point is that Darwin was able to rise above what "everyone else" was doing.
That both Darwin was racist and that racism is an integral part of his theory is shown quite well by the following:
[In man the frontal bone consists of a single piece, but in the embryo, and in children, and in almost all the lower mammals, it consists of two pieces separated by a distinct suture. This suture occasionally persists more or less distinctly in man after maturity; and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania, especially, as Canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the Drift, and belonging to the brachycephalic type. Here again he comes to the same conclusion as in the analogous case of the malar bones. In this, and other instances presently to be given, the cause of ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more frequently than do the modern races, appears to be, that the latter stand at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their early semi-human progenitors. -- Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter 2.]
If you think that's "racist", you're reading it wrong. And if that's the best example you can find, your case is apparently not very strong.
When Darwin refers to "ancient races" in this passage, it's not an implication about some races being more "primitive" than others -- he's talking about ancient fossils (i.e., prehistoric man), which were of course more primitive in structure than modern man.
Since when does a majority decide what truth is? (I forgot there is no truth in atheism). It's a plain fact that evolution is atheistic.
Most Christians in America believe that evolution is compatible with theism.
Even if that is true, most people who call themselves Christians are only nominally so. They have been dumbed down by the public schools and have been conditioned to to allow other people to think for them. I have yet to meet a Christian evolutionist who can adequately defend that position.
Therefore the best idea, so long as we have public (government) schools, is to simply teach the current content of science (whatever it be) and either not comment on the relation of any scientific theory to broader theological or philosophical questions, such as theism, or to clearly distinguish such questions from science per se.
Again, the govt nor you have no right or authority to teach my kids anything. My kids are mine. Get that thru your head. If I want to train my kids in the ways of Christ, what's that to you? Butt out.
Baloney. My claims are based on the U.S. Constitution - the law of the land, and the right of EVERY PARENT to raise his own child without interference from DICTATOR! Parents who are offended can take charge of their children's education as they should if they are worth their salt as a parent, and take them to another school. School choice - WHAT A CONCEPT! It's none of your business what I teach my children. Teachers should be public servants not AGENTS OF THE ATHEISTIC GOVT.
He may be a little squishy liberal for this forum. Been noticing for a while that he sees Nazis and racists and sexists under every bed. Situational ethics are a hallmark of PC, too. The un-PC may be lied upon, scorned upon, shouted down and chased off as enemies of the people.
You're on to something here.
No, but I seem to remember phologiston and geocentrism - theories held to be true by the scientists of the day. The difference with evolution as compared to these other theories that went by the wayside is that it is the only option for an an atheist who requires a godless creation story in order to prop up his religion and give it legitimacy. Ergo, it must be defended at all costs. And the high priest gatekeepers of darwinism have done a terrific job of protecting it. In fact, they have enlisted the power of the U.S. Govt. to help them.
Darwin never visited the United States, but he was VERY strongly oppose
Never said he visited the US, you need to learn to read.
Or you need to learn to use commas. Now I'm seeing that your text, in #2564, was amibiguous:
Seems to me that at the same time that Darwin was spewing his racist rants in the US more than half a million WHITE MEN were dying to free blacks from oppression.
Without a comma it is unclear whether "in the US" modifies "Darwin was spewing" or "WHITE MEN were dying". Without even noticing the ambiguity, I applied it to the first and closest verb, as I think many readers would do. Now, however, I can see that you might have intended it the other way.
Whether he was in favor of the War or not is irrelevant, his racism justified slavery and gave support for it.
This is just factually wrong. As I noted, and documented, Darwin was passionately oppossed to slavery, and not shy about sharing this view (which he did long before the civil war). Secondly, at the time of the Civil War, most American scientists had not yet reacted to Darwin's relatively new theory. The scientific justifications for black inferiority and/or specific distinction, and thereby for slavery, were all couched in the CREATIONIST paradigm. See, for example, the writings of Louis Agassiz, Samuel Morton, George Robins Gliddon, Josiah Clark Nott, et al.
You don't know what you're talking about. What Constitution are you reading? The Establishment Clause was clearly intended for one purpose - to prevent the establishment of an official U.S. Govt. religion (i.e. Christian denomination!) as was done in England. You have obviously been duped by your govt school teachers. You need to read the writings of the founders as well as a true history of our early republic so that you can get a handle on this. In our early republic, there are SCORES of examples where the govt ADVANCED the cause of Christianity, e.g. Congress sanctioned and paid for the printing of a bible!; Jefferson went to worship services in the Capital building and with the Marine Corps Band to conduct worship; funds were provided for MISSIONARY trips to the indians. These are plain historical facts. Here is another FACT: There was never any question about the bible or prayer in schools until the Everson Case in 1947. QUESTION: Tell me why it is that it took the courts 175 years to act if what you say is true? Before you make statements such as the one above, you should get your historical house in order.
What are you yelling at me for? As noted in the message you are responding to, I'm not only in favor of school choice, but in the eventual elimination of government schools entirely.
You're not supposed to notice what is there for anyone at all reading the thread to see.
Haven't read to the end yet, but I can tell that nothing will have been added overnight to this thread about what's supposed to be in those Texas textbooks (alleged subject of thread) that isn't in there now. Thus, ALS "wins" again.
But no one's going to convince me that those books need some "different" science until I see something besides arguments recycled from the grab-bag of creationist screeches at evolution.
Prophecy fulfilled in spades, ruffles and flourishes, oak-leaf cluster. Big time.
YOu have no say in what parents want to teach their children. Creationists really don't care what YOU or any other darwinian elitist thinks should be in those textbooks in Texas. Do you live in Texas? Who do you think you are?
You must have a strong stomach to muck around in that particular cesspool.
Yadda, yadda, yadda...
Hey, gore, got any evidence of a psuedogene being transcribed?
(Didn't think so.)
Only evolutionists would be so arrogant and so unscientific as to claim that the vast majority of DNA is junk.
Only Gore3000 would respond with such a non sequitur.
The DNA evidence in that article does not rest upon any claim about whether the "vast majority" of DNA is junk or not. You're running off on a tangent again, *and* failing to address head-on the actual contents of the material you've been shown. I don't know whether that's by design or by ignorance, but neither option inspires confidence.
Furthermore, it doesn't take "arrogance" to state that the majority of human DNA appears to be unused (and unusable), since that's what all the available evidence actually indicates. On the contrary, it takes "arrogance" for you to dogmatically ridicule this conclusion in *opposition* to the evidence for it without any good reason of your own to offer.
And since the available evidence does indeed indicate that most human DNA is "junk" of one type or another (retroposons, "stuttered" repetitions, etc.), that *is* the *scientific* position, not an "unscientific" one as you ironically assert.
Only evolutionists would be so arrogant and so unscientific as to claim that tons of DNA are there just to prove their theory.
Again and again you make this goofy claim. Again and again I (and others) insist that you point to any actual example of an "evolutionist" actually making such a silly assertion, as you repeatedly claim they do (or retract it if you can't support it). Again and again you fail to respond. Then again and again you repeat this nonsense.
I *again* ask you to support your claim, or retract it if you can't. Will your (non)response this time be any different?
Do you really think you're doing your credibility any good that way?
Only evolutionists would be so contradictory of their own theory to say that 95% of DNA, replicated in almost all the 100 trillion cells of the human body is useless.
You are invited to explain why you feel it's somehow "contradictory". Go for it.
In fact, the existence of neutral "junk" in the genetic code is an expected *result* of evolution. The fact that it's there is thus further *support* for evolution. Meanwhile, such "junk" is *not* something you'd expect to find if our DNA had been designed, is it?
The concept of pseudogenes on which evolutionists have relied so much as verification of their theory has been totally disproven by REAL science.
The one time you attempted to support this false claim when challenged, you provided links that actually *contradicted* your claim and *supported* the position that, indeed, much of our DNA doesn't do anything useful.
Care to try again?
And no, the well-known fact (discovered and known by *scientists*, thank you very much) that a few non-coding portions of DNA are in other ways necessary does *not*, as you have repeatedly and mistakenly asserted, prove that *all* of the huge amounts of non-coding DNA must therefore "do something". On the contrary, there is strong evidence that the vast proportion of non-coding DNA is, in fact, "junk". Want details of those studies? Just look at the links that YOU YOURSELF provided which you mistakenly thought supported your claim, but in fact said the opposite. Try actually reading them.
Pseudogenes rest on the concept that most DNA is junk
No, it doesn't. Pseudogenes "rest on the concept" that sometimes working genes get cut-and-pasted repeatedly during DNA replication (through known mechanisms), and that one of the copies can become damaged/broken so that it no longer functions (which causes no problem for the organism because one of the other copies is still intact and continues to work fine). It's like having two copies of Microsoft Word on your computer, one of which has gotten damaged. That doesn't matter since the other one still works, but the broken copy is still lying around on your hard drive, and will continue to be there if you buy a new computer and copy your old files to the new computer, and so on even through multiple future computers (analogous to passing on your DNA to your descendants, errors and all).
Contrary to your claim, pseudogenes still exist whether or not "most" DNA is junk or not.
and that the junk is just the useless remains from previous evolutions.
It quite demonstrably is. Or perhaps you could suggest some other explanation why, for one example out of *thousands*, human chromosome 2 has a "fossil" centromere in it? Why would a designer put one there? And why is it in precisely the same position it would have been in had human chromosome 2 been formed in one of our pre-human ancestors by the accidental end-to-end fusion of two matching primate chromosomes, if that's *not* where it actually came from?
Lucy, you gots some 'splainin to do...
Science has shown that it is that very junk DNA which controls the genes and an organism's operation.
You are, yet again, grossly misrepresenting research results on this topic.
Yes, a small handful (out of *millions*) of segments of non-coding DNA plays a role in gene expression -- this is to be expected actually. But it's only your own presumptions (*not* "science") which turns that into the wildly overblown and completely unsupported claim that therefore all non-coding DNA is functional and "controls the genes and an organism's operation".
On the contrary, many studies (including one *YOU* linked) show clearly that most of the non-coding DNA *is* unused and not in any way vital (or even significant) to the organism which contains it.
This has been explained to you again and again. Again and again you simply re-parrot your original claims without actually dealing with the many corrections which have been posted to you.
The layering methods I am familiar with would be:
1. Gradual Erosion of Hills or mountains - Local sediments
2. River flooding - potentially larger geographic area, typically thin layers of silt and mud
3. Oceanic incursions - usually sand layers local to coastline
4. Volcanic - Local layers of various materials including ash
5. Magma incursions into the crust - typically not an even layer more of a bulge of material.
Those are all I could think of off the top of my head, please add more if you like.
Is there an orthodox geologic explanation to how the layers of sediment were deposited, taking into consideration the local additions to the column. I am not looking for anything to extensive, just a summary of the general consensus.
Thanks in advanced.
JMO
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