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."
The Rise of Scientific Racial Ideology
It's for a seminar, so it won't be there forever. Dumb question - if I save it as HTML on my hard drive can I save the actual image or am I just storing the link?
Evolution certainly does pertain to origin of life. Neodarwinism says that we got here by molecule-to-man evolution (mutation + natural selection). That would require that life "originated" from a proto-bacteria of some type, and I have yet to speak of a neodarwinian naturalist who doesn't believe that that proto-bacteria arrived on the scene either by abiogenesis or panspermia (chuckle). You can PRETEND that it doesn't speak of origins but we all know that it does, don't we? Only those whacky theistic evolutionists (Christian mutation - haha) believe that God unleashed DNA or some such on the planet and then guided its evolution.
You speak of the "only viable alternative." In post 2894 you state, Since evolution and creation are the ONLY two viable options for origins of the universe and life." Maybe you missed it the first 4000 times on FR as well, but surely you understand there are numerous (nay, infinite) creation myths, right?
Maybe you missed it the first time I used the word "viable."
You asked us to "get it thru [y]our thick skulls," that we don't live in your community which is apparently made up of 100% christian fundamentalist YEC bible literalists. However, now I beg you to please understand that in my community, some believe in vastly different creation myths than you. Reality ain't that bad, exmarine... jump on in, the water's fine.
Not 100%, but we are a force. By the way, Jesus Christ is no myth - no serious or respected scholar (believer or unbeliever) doubts he was a real figure. Only atheists with slanted historiography and bad scholarship believe he was a myth.
That's why there are no flying squirrrels.
Interesting that conservatives agree that economies can't be designed, but some think ecologies can be designed.
Depends on how you save it. You should probably right click on all images and save them. Then save the source. You may have to edit the source to point to the local images.
Stultis: Make up your mind. Which is the issue, "testing" or "proof"? If the later, please cite an example of a scientific theory, preferably (for purposes of comparison) a biological one, that you consider to have been "proven".
HalfFull: < -- Insert Response Here -- >
Hello, Condor, glad you are checking on my responses and will try to answer Stultis. Believe it or not, I post on FreeRepublic sporadically, since I work and travel a lot, and have family activities and hobbies that don't include the computer. Because of this, I am several hundred posts behind on this thread. But, it is nice to know that folks like yourself are there to remind me when I miss a response. Thanks.
Anyway, as I remember it, I was making the point that many attempts have been made in the laboratory with the poor fruit fly to simulate mutations and multi-generational conditions that would hopefully result in the fruit fly turning into another species. These attempts have failed, of course, and all we see is freak fruit flies with one wing, for example. I used the word "test" concerning this (perhaps the term, simulation would have been better)...that this test/simulation was trying to somehow "prove" that such evolution is possible. The "test" failed.
As far as an example of a biological "proof", I think this same example applies. We have pretty much "proved" by the many simulations, that the fruit fly cannot be forced into evolving into another species, (like a butterfly, for example).
Another example of something proved in biology is the process of photosynthesis...whose processes can actually be observed and measured. That is science. Evolution, however, cannot be observed (past or present), and its processes cannot be measured. It is not science, but something believed in merely by ardor and faith (i.e., religion)
A "completely misses the point" placemarker.
I'm still kind of curious about your reaction to Darwin's comment on the Turks. Is it your opinion that It would have been a good thing for the Turks to overrun Europe? Anyway, as long as we're bashing Darwin's character, we might as well post the entire offensive letter, so we can see what a miscreant he was.
C. DARWIN TO W. GRAHAM.
Down, July 3rd, 1881.
Dear Sir,
I hope that you will not think it intrusive on my part to thank you heartily for the pleasure which I have derived from reading your admirably written 'Creed of Science,' though I have not yet quite finished it, as now that I am old I read very slowly. It is a very long time since any other book has interested me so much. The work must have cost you several years and much hard labour with full leisure for work. You would not probably expect any one fully to agree with you on so many abstruse subjects; and there are some points in your book which I cannot digest. The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this. Not to mention that many expect that the several great laws will some day be found to follow inevitably from some one single law, yet taking the laws as we now know them, and look at the moon, where the law of gravitation—and no doubt of the conservation of energy—of the atomic theory, etc. etc., hold good, and I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there be purpose if the lowest organisms alone, destitute of consciousness existed in the moon? But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? Secondly, I think that I could make somewhat of a case against the enormous importance which you attribute to our greatest men; I have been accustomed to think, second, third, and fourth rate men of very high importance, at least in the case of Science. Lastly, 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 civilised 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. But I will write no more, and not even mention the many points in your work which have much interested me. I have indeed cause to apologise for troubling you with my impressions, and my sole excuse is the excitement in my mind which your book has aroused.
I beg leave to remain,
Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully and obliged,
CHARLES DARWIN.
Saying Creationism "is not science" is merely a philosophical statement predicated upon one's definition of science. According to YOUR definition, it's not science. But I reject your definition of science, and you can't prove that your definition is true. I give no validity to axioms (truth by definition). If you would like to discuss the deeper philosophical implications behind your definition of science, then first give me your explicit definition so I can dissect it.
Once you reject scientific inquiry, how do you determine which of these myths you want to use to answer questions about observed phenomena?
This is another statement predicated on your DEFINTION of science. Give me your definition of science doctor, and then I'll give you a lesson in philosophy.
Quoting some idiotic bs): The problem is, wings would have no genuine survival value until they reached the point of flight. Birds' wings and feathers are perfectly designed instruments. Those with crippled or clipped wings cannot fly, and are bad candidates for survival. Likewise, the intermediate creature whose limb was half leg, half wing, would fare poorly -- it couldn't fly, nor walk well. Natural selection would eliminate it without a second thought.That's why there are no flying squirrrels.
Lack of preditors: the reason there are so many nuts.
Crap. Science is what scientists do. There is general agreement on the meaning of the word. You can make up any alternative definition you want, but it does nothing more than classify you as outside the bounds of regular social communication.
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