Creationism and ID were not discussed. What is your evidence for "not discussed?" Two representatives from the un-Discovery Institute were present. There was plenty of advance publicity on who was coming and what reception should be given their shtick. Why would you imagine their known agenda was "not discussed" inside the meeting? What evidence do you have? The Knight-Ridder article cites considerable pre-meeting controversy of which the participants must have been aware.
The AP article, written after the meeting, says this:
Both proponents and critics of intelligent design -- an emerging belief that life did not evolve randomly but instead progressed according to a plan or design -- testified Wednesday before the state Board of Education about the adoption of new textbooks.
Worse for your viewpoint, the quotes that follow are presented as if from the meeting itself. I thus assume that they are. I will include just one of many.
"Please do not include creationism and intelligent design in the textbooks," implored Jennifer Walker, a member of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "These are not science and this textbook is about science."
There is nothing wrong with LAVANDERA's statements. They are fully backed up by other sources. I wonder at the willingness to hurl false accusations at the presumed infidel dogs as a matter of Holy War convenience. I'm not a Christian, so I can't tell Christians what a Christian is supposed to be like. I will say yet again that creationists are repellent as supposed examples of moral behavior by Christians. If what you and Discovery are doing to CNN here--and what gore is doing to the long-dead Darwin on another thread--amount to Christian behavior, I hope I never become afflicted with faith.
Again, Beckwith and Bohlin only pointed out errors in textbooks.
Their idea of "errors" is Wells's idea of "errors" and it's anything to do with the massive amounts of evidence for evolution. That in turn has a lot to do with Wells and every other ID-ist being a witch doctor who thinks evolution is ungodly if not Satanic. That in turn is why CNN's coverage--which in this instance is in no way out of line with AP's or Knight-Ridder's--does not contain any misstatements of which I am aware.
Now you go on to the Miller-Urey experiment. This is interesting to me because you have argued many times that the origin of life has nothing to do with evolution. So I ask you, is OOL and abiogenesis part of evolution? Be consistant.
Evolution in the "variation and natural selection" scenario only begins after some kind of imperfect self-replicator exists. I continue to say this because it is true. Abiogenesis is thus a separate area. It is discussed on these threads all the same and I talk about it. It's a much more speculative area than whether evolution has occurred, but there is a growing body of research out there to be misinterpreted to others by people who prefer magic. It would be a shame if they got away with that.
Let me apologize that I missed some material in your Inherit the Spin link. I didn't give it a hard read since it is part of a different if parallel dialog in which Wells published Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution and The NCSE Published a set of brief replies. It is not written as an answer to Gishlick's utter demolition of Icons of Evolution in his review of same, nor do I see where Wells has written such.
You obviously don't see one, either, as you join Wells in pretending not to see most of what Gishlick says. Gishlick's criticisms are there and unrebutted. You made no reference to most of the arguments except to invite me to believe that I see them being answered. You need to fake that better. OK, you tried to do for Wells what he hasn't done for himself when you said:
OK. How does this deal with the Miller-Urey experiment as currently shown in textbooks? Wells is dealing with what is currently in textbooks and Gishlick is not.
The material cited, whether in textbooks or not, backs up the contention that there was plenty of pre-biotic organic raw material out there. The presence of this stuff in space complements the Miller experiment nicely in demonstrating that this stuff is not that hard to cook up, even in seemingly forbidding environments. Wells zeroes in on lawyering about mistakes in the exact mixture of gases. Only a crude idea existed in the early fifties of what this mixture should be and still no one knows for sure. The important thing was showing the easy recombinability of CHON mixtures.
As far as him "dealing with textbooks," his criteria for grading textbooks are ridiculous:
In order to receive an A, a textbook must first omit the picture of the Miller-Urey apparatus (or state explicitly in the caption that it was a failure), discuss the experiment, but then state that it is irrelevant to the origin of life. This type of textbook would be not only scientifically inaccurate but pedagogically deficient.
Under Wells's grading criteria, the only discussion of the Miller-Urey experiments allowed would be a
cretinist ID-ist anti-evolution pamphlet. This is a pathetic sham.
As far as the Archaeopteryx material is concerned, no answer at all would have been a better idea. Did you really mean to quote this bit of incredible dumb-dumbing?
d) Calling bird-like dinosaurs “uncles” instead of “ancestors” of Archaeopteryx merely obscures the problem: Although an uncle isn’t the ancestor of his nephew, and the former can be younger than the latter, the two--by definition--are no more than a generation apart, and they are members of the same species.
He rebuts by interpreting the word "uncle" in its most literal sense. Do you read this stuff? I've used the word "uncle" in these discussions myself to refer to something offline but obviously highly related. Neanderthal Man, if truly offline, is such an "uncle."
Again, in all the verbiage Wells has spilled in book and web page, Gishlick's main criticism and my own still holds. I'll let Gishlick say it first:
Archaeopteryx is frequently used for pedagogical purposes because it is easy to recognize its mixture of "bird" and "reptile" features and because it played an historical role in helping to cement Darwin's theory (it was discovered 2 years after publication of the Origin). Textbook authors like Archaeopteryx for these reasons and often illustrate their discussions with pictures of the Berlin specimen, one of the most beautiful fossils ever discovered, and remarkably complete. Textbooks also use Archaeopteryx as an example of how fossils are important for showing transitional features of evolution, and how the fossil record is good evidence that evolution has occurred.
Archaeopteryx looks just as much like a reptile as it does a bird. Just as much. No modern bird--not the young Hoatzin or anything else--comes near it in reptilian characteristics. Here's one list:
Dromaeosaurid Archaeopteryx.
Archy's skeleton is so reptilian that Fred Hoyle claimed it was just a dinosaur with faked feather impressions.
Look at the thing above. That does not look like a widdle birdie. It has a tiny sternum, unfused mani, teeth, jaws, no beak, and lots of caudal vertebrae, just for beginners.
What does Wells say about this minor embarrassment? He pretends never to have noticed it. He's trying to get the evidence thrown out on every grounds he can think of except the true grounds, that it proves him wrong. Look at the stuff you quoted. It's ridiculous! He's just repeating points that Gishlick and others have demolished.
Even Wells's claim that paleontologists do not think Archaeopteryx is "ancestral" is incorrect. Archaeopteryx has no features that would actually disbar it from being a direct ancestor of living birds. Whether it was a direct ancestor of today's birds or not is irrelevant: Archaeopteryx exhibits unique features of the last ancestor it shared with birds, so, regardless whether it is a lineal ancestor, it still preserves features that indicate what the last ancestor of Archaeopteryx and birds may have been like. In other words, Archaeopteryx has many features intermediate between those of its dinosaurian ancestors and its avian descendants, which is exactly what would be predicted by evolution. No amount of stridency on Wells's part can change that.
Tamzek may have explained it even more simply:
However, creationist claims have been refuted so often and so thoroughly regarding Archaeopteryx that very little remains for Wells to do except raise a smoke screen over whether or not Archaeopteryx was the actual species through which the genes of the last common ancestor of modern birds passed, or whether it was a closely related side-branch. Either way, it is clear evidence that a transition between the classes occurred.
What Wells is doing is just brazen dishonesty. That "uncle" business is the cherry on the whipped cream. What is this fossil doing existing? Wells does not say. Evolution demands that such things must have existed. Creationism and it's front organization of ID jeer that there are still gaps. We keep finding these things.
Since Darwin published we've found tons of them.
Oddly enough, creation and ID simply keep on jeering from the sidelines of science. But then, it's a Holy War for them.
What is your evidence for "not discussed”? Again:
The Institute’s goal is to inform policymakers and citizens about factual errors in how some textbooks cover evolutionary theory and to encourage textbooks to include information about both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory. The 41-page preliminary textbook review Discovery Institute distributed to the Board of Education focused on factual errors and the need to include additional information about four issues—the Miller-Urey experiment, the Peppered Moth experiments, the Cambrian Explosion, and Haeckel’s embryos. The only places that the report broached the subject of intelligent design was in reference to two textbooks that already discuss intelligent design theory. The textbook review noted how these two textbooks discussed intelligent design in a biased and highly inaccurate manner. While the Institute is not advocating that textbooks must cover intelligent design theory, it does believe that textbooks that already mention intelligent design should cover the theory accurately and fairly. Again, the Institute’s chief concern is that evolutionary theory be treated fully and accurately in textbooks, NOT that intelligent design be included.
Clarifying the Issues in the Texas Textbook Controversy
So what were the quotes in the articles from the men in question:
CNN-
RAYMOND BOHLIN, DISCOVERY INSTITUTE: Every theory has its weaknesses, has it's problems, and evolution seems to be the one theory in the textbooks that just isn't treated that way. We're just not told where its weaknesses and problem are.
AP-
Raymond Bohlin, an employee of the Discovery Institute, a nonprofit Seattle-based think tank that has led the intelligent design movement, said the theory has no religious foundation. "There is scientific dissent concerning Darwinism," Bohlin said. "There are weaknesses to the theory and those are not being represented."
The Knight-Ridder article-
"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."
and goes on to say:
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."
I see nothing about ID and definitely nothing about creationism – but it gets better…
You quote this:
"Please do not include creationism and intelligent design in the textbooks," implored Jennifer Walker, a member of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "These are not science and this textbook is about science."
So now if we use ‘your’ standards, let’s evaluate the Sierra Club:
The Big Book of Bush
Candidates endorsed by the Sierra Club
So now you support CNN and the Sierra Club? I don’t think you do but you continue the guilt by association campaign. Be consistent and remember that on the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.
Look, as I pointed out in a link earlier that you ‘might’ have read:
The National Association of Biology Teachers [NABT] in their 1995 Official Statement on Teaching Evolution stated the following:
"The diversity of life [all life] on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."
It took seven years of prodding from conservative groups before they revised the statement. According to the NABT's executive director, the change was made ``to avoid taking a religious position'' that might offend believers. The two words that were removed from their statement were; 'unsupervised' and 'impersonal'. These two words made the NABT's statement religious and faith-based. To illustrate, change the words to 'supervised' and 'personal'. Either way, both statements would be outside the purely 'material constraints' that science now (ironically thanks in part to Darwin) currently imposes. Their statement boldly claimed that there was no intelligent cause (force, etc.) behind mankind and all existence.
Do you understand that these textbooks will be used for approximately six years and all data should be correct? The NABT official statement on evolution was a religious statement. I am not endorsing religion in science textbooks but the current information should be correct.
Anyway, here is what these two gentlemen discussed (the actual 41 page report):
A Preliminary Analysis of the Treatment of Evolution in Biology Textbooks
Their idea of "errors" is Wells's idea of "errors" and it's anything to do with the massive amounts of evidence for evolution. That in turn has a lot to do with Wells and every other ID-ist being a witch doctor who thinks evolution is ungodly if not Satanic. That in turn is why CNN's coverage--which in this instance is in no way out of line with AP's or Knight-Ridder's--does not contain any misstatements of which I am aware.
OK, I’ve pointed out that these two gentlemen only wanted to dispute errors in textbooks (in many posts). They did not want ID in textbooks and creationism was never on the table. I am going to say flat out that there are currently errors in textbooks and not just in science textbooks. We live in an era of political correctness and evolution has become a politically correct type issue.
If one were to pose problems with the theory of common descent and cite religious sources that person would be labeled a creationist and disregarded. If one were to cite problems with the theory of common descent and refer to peer-reviewed papers, that person is called confused because the person cited has no problem with the general evolutionary theory.
We have been through this before…
And the even NCSE has an agenda. They are against ‘creationists’ and not against textbook corrections – or are they? What is the problem here? Is it scientific to wrongly label someone creationist and ignore the individual and the facts presented? Heck, let’s just label people; creationist, atheist, Christian, IDist, Marxist, neo-Darwinist, naturalist, troll, liberal, witchdoctor, Luddite… and stop arguing. This is what it is currently done by both sides.
So I say again:
Did CNN fabricate and misrepresent? Yes
Are you consistent with your ridicule of others? No.
Has Wells addressed your issues? Maybe, read and see.
Are textbooks correcting errors that Wells pointed out? Yes.
But now let me add something beyond this CNN article.
Look, if someone decides to believe only science holds ‘the truth’, it is known that that person will die knowing many wrong things about science. This is a fact as we know many great scientists have died with incomplete or wrong theories, or lacking other important knowledge. So if someone limits ‘truth’ to only ‘metaphysical naturalism’ (or current science) they are defining what ‘they’ believe ‘truth’ to be, and will be ‘ultimately’ wrong. Again, I say they will be wrong as they will die misinformed about what they have defined ‘truth’ to be.
Now, many can and will accept this as “well, that’s life”, but the point is they have established what many would consider a religion. ‘Truth’ as only defined by man and the formation of an individual’s worldview around this ‘truth’. We know that morality as only defined by man is relative so why not ‘truth’? Science has not always been defined as metaphysical naturalism.
You might say here that I have made a leap between science (as currently defined) and religion so let me clarify:
religion:
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back -- more at RELY
Date: 13th century
1 a : the state of a religious b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
(Obvious emphasis mine)
One can state that ‘some’ who believe in a supernatural entity have shut the door to science. Can the believer in a supernatural entity say the same about those who base their worldview on the metaphysical naturalism that they consider to be the only ‘truth’? Beyond this, which individual’s ‘truth and morality’ is relative and which is stationary?
How is one who adheres strictly to science as truth different than a Creationist? Is it because they allow for mistakes and corrections? Then let the mistakes be known and the corrections take place. Lest this be your Holy book, correct the errors as you have done in the past – should now in the present – and will in the future.
I apologize for the long delay but my family takes precedence.