click the pic
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."
Meanwhile I really wish you'd answer my question, which I posed to you in all seriousness, with no macho debate points sought. It's just you, me, and a few other bleary-eyed regulars here anyway, sequestered in the Smokey Backroom. I think you creationists have a fundamental internal contradiction you're not dealing with when it comes to the flagellum vs. The Fall. Do you agree there's a contradiction there, or not? If not, how do you resolve it?
God gives being to each thing without stint or reservation. You can say "my puppy is good," and "that cougar ripping the living entrails out of my puppy is bad," but the cougar is too busy being a cougar to heed your commentary.
I'm inclined to believe the goodness of God is in the freedom with which he gives being to the world and the things in it (which being is not just a quality imparted, but is God's own being expressed in physical creation). I don't think He "controls" everything in a strict, mechanical sense. Instead God allows each thing to be fully itself. Even though it's being is entirely a gift from God, there are no strings attached. I suspect that God, in creation, is to some extent exploring the possibilities of physical being. If that experience is limited only to joy and pleasure, excluding pain and suffering, then God's self exploration is limited. God creates and sustains all things, and experiences all things.
I don't think, from within the web of the world, there is any telling what balance of joy and suffering, "good" and "bad," represents a "proper" balance. There may be many worlds that God has created (that exist as manifestations of physical being within God). It may be the case that in some of those worlds pleasure predominates, and in others pain does. Whether we are in one of the "better" ones or the "worse" ones there is no telling. In yet other worlds there may be no pleasure or pain at all, but only dances of particles or plasmas.
Now I'm not suggesting that God is amoral, I'm not even suggesting that God's morality is "beyond" our own in that it is of a completely alien kind. I suspect, for instance, that the "love" we feel and experience is at least in some sense "like" the love God feels. I believe God loves the world, but that does not mean the world must be absent of pain and privation, just as a parent can love a child that is horribly crippled, or even one with a twisted personality or character.
I also think that Gods wants the world to be the best world it can be, just as we wish for our own children to be the best people they can be, whatever their handicaps. I'm not preaching a fatalism that says we should accept evil and not try and mitigate or eliminate it. I believe very much the opposite. At the same time, though, I think we can become closer to God by loving the world in ALL it's aspects (even those we choose and strive to change) in the sense that we recognize them all as manifestations of God's freely given being.
Be that as it may, for whatever reason, you are evading a pertinent, interesting and well framed question from jennyp. I'm certainly interested in your response, if you'd reconsider engaging the question.
Non Sequitur.
Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].
click the pic
Your insults are worlds better than your tantrums.
There are grownup conversations in progress, and the noise level is too low. Your little games won't work.
Well, it was accepted that there was "a relationship", based on sequence comparisons... ;)
To: AndrewC
Yes. So you demonstrated that they are very alike. Did anthrax come from Aquifex aeolicus or is it the other way? Or was the gene for MOTA transferred from a flagellar bug to Anthrax?
Anthrax and A. aeolicus have very similar proton transport systems, in the form of motA, ExdB/ExbB, and TolQ/TolR. In the absence of more information, we cannot say what the exact relationship bewteen the two is, but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?
1,153 posted on 12/06/2002 1:01 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1151 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?
I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.
I did not expect anything until the numbers were shown. If the expectation were 1.0, I would not make my first two statements.
1,159 posted on 12/06/2002 1:53 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1153 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]To: AndrewC
Actually, I meant "what did you expect me to say?" rather than "what did you expect to find?" ;)
I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.
I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.
And eventually, we can accumulate enough evidence to begin to lean in one direction or another about what the relationship is - do they share common ancestry? Did one of them just scarf up the genes from the other? Maybe they both obtained the same gene from a third source?
We'll make a materialist out of you yet.... ;)
1,160 posted on 12/06/2002 2:48 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1159 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]To: general_re
I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.
Yes, some judgement can be made by taking other information into consideration. COGS has little cladistic trees for each COG.
(snip)
This must be viewed in light of the photosynthesis experience.
As for the materialism, been there, done that.
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
1,161 posted on 12/06/2002 3:37 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1160 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]Materialism explains some things very well, and other things not at all. The trick is knowing which is which...
1,163 posted on 12/06/2002 4:07 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1161 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]The trick is knowing which is which...
That is the question.
1,164 posted on 12/06/2002 4:19 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1163 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
LOL! He's trying his usual tactics, but he's got nothing to work with, which makes it kinda amusing (in a slightly pathetic way, like a has-been comic recycling a tired old vegas routine on Letterman).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.