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."
For anyone still Lurking on this discussion, the Stephanus 1550 version, root form of Greek, of John 1:3 is:
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
For online searches I use the Blue Letter Bible, which describes the Greek as follows:
The Authorized Version of 1611 (King James Version) utilizes the Textus Receptus ("Received Text") as the basis for the Greek New Testament. The Textus Receptus is based upon various Greek texts as well as some influence by the Latin Vulgate. The earliest work being prepared by Desiderius Erasmus, revised by Robert Estienne (better known as Stephanus), and further revised by Theodore Beza. The text produced by each, is substantially the same, there are some variations between their various editions.
The Blue Letter Bible utilizes the Stephanus 1550 edition.
The issue raised goes to the diety of Jesus Christ and I cannot speak hypothetically about someone I have known personally for decades. The testimony of the Word to my Spirit is confirmed in the above texts.
However - in the meantime - both neuro-science and artificial intelligence are going full tilt on a materialistic path which expects to find physical evolutionary causation for everything, e.g. consciousness, qualia, society, free will.
Would a theist truly be satisfied with an argument which meekly asserted "well . . . the Almighty is at least responsible for the flagellum of a bacterium?"Sad little God, the God of the Gaps!
Well, you haven't discussed the other verses I and others have listed so I figured you weren't comfortable doing so and many pointed to Jesus' involvement in creation. Something I say a number of times a year: Context is everything.
Besides that, your sources continue to support what we're saying, not what you're saying. We've provided a number of verses and you keep quoting John 1.
I don't speak ancient Greek. Everybody who does appears to translate the words to suit their preconceptions.
I'd have to vehemently disagree. The 16 Bible versions I checked support what I and others who disagree with you have said.
You can tell me until you're blue in the face that this means that Christ is the Creator, and I'll never agree.
I'll have to agree with Alamo_Girl, there's not much point in discussing this. As AG said: "eyes read the Bible but the Spirit within [us] reads the Word". As I see it your theology isn't Orthodox and what you say is considered heresy. I recommend Berkhof's Systematic Theology. It's a seminary textbook that, IMO, will help.
The nice part about these episodes when he hides out to let his lies and gaffes blow over is that everybody gets a vacation. He gets a vacation from us. We get a vacation from him. The only bad news is that good things end.
You alleged twice that Grandpierre misrepresented Pinker. I disagree and observe that Grandpierre drew the conclusion from Pinker’s statement that in “other words, moral reasoning assumes the existence of things that science tells us are unreal.”
I leave it to the Lurkers to decide whether Grandpierre misrepresented Pinker:
In How the Mind Works, MIT professor Harold Pinker argues that the fundamental premise of ethics has been disproved by science. "Ethical theory," he writes, "requires idealisations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behaviour is uncaused." Yet, "the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events." In other words, moral reasoning assumes the existence of things that science tells us are unreal (Pearcey, 2000). These formulations demonstrate that in practice scientific materialism is a monist view ignoring completely the autonomy of any other ontological levels.
"science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entities in the world... Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinite straight lines and perfect circles, and its deductions are sound and useful even though the world does not really have infinite straight lines or perfect circles. The world is close enough to the idealization that the theorems can usefully be applied. Similarly, ethical theory requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused, and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events. As long as there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close enough to the idealization of free will that moral theory can meaningully be applied to it. ...
Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognizing them as separate can we have them both."
This paper defuses the seeming threat of naturalistic materialism to morality, using some passages from MIT cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works as a target. Pinker, like his colleague Marvin Minsky, supposes that we must "idealize" ourselves as uncaused creatures in order to have morality. That is, he thinks we must pretend to have free will, even though science shows we don't. Naturally, and naturalistically, I take issue with this and try to show that we need not compartmentalize science and ethics. I suggest that this is not merely an academic issue, but has real world consequences for how we approach social deviance and destructive behavior. This essay appeared originally in the Humanist; see The Science of Stigma for an abbreviated version of this argument.
I think it's possible to build things whose behavior is indeterminate. For a smple example, consider program designed to forcast weather. You can describe all the cogs and wheels of the program, all the functions, objects, operators, but you cannot predict its output because you cannot predict its input.
Moving along to a more complex program, the mythical AI program, It would also have as its primary "object", creating an optimal response to a predicted future. To achieve even the level of a cat brain would require processing power we only dream about. And once again, to make predictions about the behavior of the catbot, you would have to have continuous access to its entire internal state, plus all its inputs. In short, the predictive device would have to parallel the device being predicted. This is equivalent to attempting to predict some arbitrary future state of your automata without running the program. Even worse, the grid on which the automata operates is not flat and unchanging. It is being changed continuously by other automata that are hidden from our spacetime perspective.
Kinda hard to find an NIV with the apocrypha, isnt' it. :-) I have the NJB myself and enjoy it but usually read the apocrypha out of my RSV, which I'm learning to hate - it's terrible in some sentence structures. Perhaps I'll drop it and use the NJB for the apocrypha as you do.
The NET that I previously mentioned contains some apocrypha, if that helps. Regarding the NET... I was told it reads easier than the NIV and is more accurate (literally) than the NASB. I'm not sure, but I think that's impossible! The NIV flows so smoothly and the NASB is more of a literal translation, I can't see any easy way to make one translation better than both. I need to further check the credentials and background of the NET authors... but it's free.
God of dysentery?
I can't say that with any certainty and neither can you. We have no way of measuring those laws in the past - assumptions must be made.
There is nothing scientific about presuppositions.
There is more to this debate that "science" - philosophy permeates this topic thru and thru. I have yet to get a definition of science from the so-called "scientists" here. They pretend that they have no philosophical presuppositions behind their assumptions, as if they are objective observers. It's laughable. It makes my wonder why there is such a thing as "philosophy of science" when evos do not ackowledge it exists. Perhaps they can use the governmental power to kill all academic cirriculum that includes such a course.
Again, never argue science with a scientist, it makes you look foolish and the scientist thinks your a buffoon!!
Haha. Thanks, but I don't need your lame advice. I am not really affected by what an atheistic anti-Christian neodarwinian thinks of me. I can live just fine with whatever contempt or enmity that atheistic evos feel for me, and I will just keep on keepin on. There's really not much you can do about it chief.
I don't think so. The world isn't rational so how do you live and function in it? How do you go about your day without an ordered world? Inquring minds want to know. You really need to explain it. Talk about postmodernism!
The world isn't rational so how do you live and function in it?
Show that a world must be rational in order to live and function in it. (start by what you mean by saying 'the world is rational')
How do you go about your day without an ordered world?
Good looks, money, and high intelligence.
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