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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."
Gobineau's "The Inequality of Human Races" was published in 1853.
Sounds like Darwin was influenced by Gobineau!
...and ALS adds, in the next message:
sure does
more evidence towards the obvious
This is really a most fascinating little revelation of what passes for "evidence" in the mind of the creationist: an off-the-cuff, gratuitous and wrong assumption.
I don't suppose either of you thought to search the full-text, online editions of Darwin's works for the word "Gobineau"?
Naw, that would violate the whole spirit of creationism.
For the rest of you, who might be interested in more conventional forms of evidence, Gobineau (I actually searched for "Gobin" in case of misspelling) is not mentioned in either The Origin of Species (1st or 6th edition) or The Descent of Man. It might be interesting to check the volumes of letters as well, although Darwin had no discernable interest in crank science so I doubt it will turn up.
One of them was almost certainly Martin Luther.
Hmmm. Lessee how close Luther really comes to anticipating Nazism's approach to the "Jewish question":
Jews are bloodsuckers (check)
blood libel (check)
diseased (check)
burn their synagouges (check)
confiscate their homes and property (check)
deny them protection from assault (check)
make them to work at hard labor (check)
kill 'em outright (nope)
Aha! See! Luther didn't advocate death camps. Nothin' like the Nazis ('cept for burning the blood-suckers' synagogues and all that).
All I find in that one is Heartlander resonding with another link (#77) and VadeRetro (#84) pointing out several obvious deficiencies therein, e.g. the usual lies about the Cambrian explosion, bald denial of gene duplication, and no explaination for Archaeopteryx's reptilian characteristics.
There was no response to Vade's substantive critique. Was the "butt whooping" delivered in disappearing ink?
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It has been proved to you that Darwin considered other races fit for extermination. The man was a lying hypocrite saying one thing to some and another to others.
interesting title darwood choose for his racist screed, doncha think?
Yes, a lie0me
I guess that's what Darwin gets for quoting a CREATIONIST
No, that's what he gets for quoting a racist. That's what he gets for quoting a LIE. That's what he gets for not being a scientist and digging up all the garbage he could from whatever source to support his racist views. His racism and that of evolution is totally indisputable - as is his not being a scientist. Seems I recall asking a few hundred posts back for an example of ONE (1) experiment in the Origins and receiving no response - as usual.
Compare to:
"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world." Darwin to Graham, July 3, 1881.
If you read my post you would have had no need to ask that - the genome gets copied in almost every one of the 100 trillion cells in the body. That takes a lot of work to copy what you call garbage, what evolutionists call garbage and what scientists call 'non coding DNA'.
Just what are you claiming? That all noncoding dna is regulatory? that none of it is 'junk'?
Yup, and not just me, real scientists do also, that is why just about all biological research in the last decade is going into discovering the use of that non-coding DNA. As I pointed out already genes are useless unless turned on, and regulated by DNA outside of the gene. Evolutionists, if they were scientists should have been aware that this had to be true even before its discovery - as most scientists were aware of and that is why they looked for such controls - disregarding the statements of the morons of evolution.
So, at least one pseudo gene has a use; therefore they all do? BTW, isn't this an example of a gene being hijacked into an entirely new function?
As I have said, and as real science has proven - and continues to prove, the concept of junk DNA is false, the concept of 'pseudogenes' is also false. It is totally made up, it is an argument from ignorance. The article I posted ( Post# 3118 )shows quite well the contortions of evolutionists at seeing their nonsense scientifically disproven.
But you confirm what is in dispute, that the textbook debate is about religion.
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