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."
BTW 'Freak' is duplicated in the first section. Please substitute 'humorless pedant'.
:-)
Care to try again?
You weren't supposed to READ the links. They were like the links on designeduniverse -- intended to give the impression of vast scientific support for a position, but heaven forbid you actually read them.
Another thinly veiled anti-Christian insult. Tell you what, go read the U.S. Constitution until it sinks in.
If they want to teach the kids the Wicca religion instead of science, is that OK? Community standards and all that.
Show me in the Constitution where it says that the Federal Govt is in charge of enforcing science curriculum. This is a free country - this isn't China or N. Korea or Cuba. In this country, there is individual freedom. If people in some backwoods Manhattan (hehe) community want to teach Wicca, the govt has no right to stop them. The people rule in this country, not a group of 9 black-robed oligarchs. The issue is personal freedom! Get that thru your head. I don't give a flip what you think about my community - you don't live here and you have no right to tell us how to live. Get that thru your thick skull.
Already discussed earlier in the thread. Read the thread. Govt school curriculum (wherever applicable) is wholly consistent with atheism, just as teaching design would be consistent with theism - and they don't allow that.
That would be nice if the govt would leave homeschoolers alone, but they don't.
I don't dispute your right to teach your unfortunate kids any bizarre idiocy you want. What I do dispute is your right to force me to accept such nonsense as 'biology'. Capisci?
Prophecy fulfilled in spades, ruffles and flourishes, oak-leaf cluster. Big time.
Indeed!
We agree. I only hope you apply that as a general principle.
That would be because it is not consistent with science.
Dang. The sources of the original fake Darwin quote posted by ALS wasn't on the net. I had to get the book and scan it. He went even further than simply quoting out of context. What was presented as a single quote from a letter turned out to be assembled from two partial sentences from tow separate letters to two different recipients. to top that off, the quote started with a capital letter, even though it started in midsentence.
Needless to say, the full context demonstrated that the fabricated quote said the opposite of what what the author intended.
That thread got pulled pretty soon thereafter, but I have the material to recreate the context. An the fabricated quote is heavily featured on many creationist websites. Shamelessly.
Teaching anything other than Genesis might (or might not) be consistent with atheism. Being consistent with atheism is easy, which why you have fallen behind this weasel-wording instead of defending your earlier claim of government schools teaching atheism. Foam at the mouth, make wild and false claims, then distract and slide the bar.
Teaching design would make more sense if there existed some evidence for a designer or a design process, if there were a body of scientific knowledge behind that label, if "design" were anything but a publicly proclaimed wedge strategy for creationism.
He's all yours. Out for a few before the rest of my life falls apart.
Unfortunately you are correct if "The Mysterious Origins of Man with Charlton Heston" is an example of our level of education.
BTW, creationism/ID is nothing more than a disguised religion being pushed across this country.
If you want to keep your kids away from the best scientific theory we have for the diversity of life, that’s your business. However, pushing a disguised religion into the science class, IMHO, is adding to the erosion of the education of our children.
How about the Earth is flat? Should that be taught just because you "have a say"?
So I'm not allowed an opinion on the content of schoolbooks in Texas, but the opinion of the Discovery Institute of Seattle, funded by unnamed millionaires from site unknown, would seem to be most welcome. Is Seattle in Texas now?
Well, let's read Hitler's own words:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross."
Hitler, of course, was not "inspired" by Christianity to kill Jews; he was using words that he thought would appeal to his audience. But just as Hitler's appeal to Jesus doesn't discredit Christianity, his appeals to "science" do not discredit evolution.
Sounds funny, but prominent creo Malcom Bowden is still a geocentrist if not a flat-earther. They use his stuff a lot, while deemphasizing the peculiarity of his flavor.
OK, I was slow getting out of my chair but now I'm outta here for a few.
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