Posted on 02/12/2004 7:43:32 AM PST by ThinkPlease
Columbus - The State Board of Education gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a 10th-grade biology lesson that scientists say could put "intelligent design" in Ohio classrooms.
Setting aside an impassioned plea from the National Academy of Sciences, the board voted 13-4 to declare its intent to adopt the "Critical Analysis of Evolution" lesson next month.
The academy warned that doing so would give a green light to teaching intelligent design, the idea that life is so complex that a higher being must have created it.
The disputed lesson plan has thrust Ohio back into the middle of a national fight over how to best teach the origins and development of life on Earth to public school children.
That fight is between supporters and critics of Charles Darwin's theory that life evolved through natural processes, a battle that has raged since the "monkey trial" of biology teacher John Scopes nearly 80 years ago.
"It's a sad day for science in Ohio," said Patricia Princehouse, who teaches biological evolution at Case Western Reserve University. "This opens up the reputation of Ohio scientists to ridicule nationally and internationally."
Board member James Turner of Cincinnati, who supported the lesson plan, said he believed some members of the scientific community were overreacting.
"I think this is a case of passion lacking perspective," he said.
“I reject the notion that this lesson somehow advances the notion of intelligent design or creationism,” Turner said.
Princehouse and other scientists complained that much of the language in the lesson plan came from Jonathan Wells' “Icons of Evolution,” a seminal text in the intelligent design movement. The board’s standards committee Monday deleted the title of the book from the lesson plan’s bibliography, but critics complained that Wells’ ideas remained.
Princehouse and others vowed to fight the measure and predicted a court challenge if the lesson plan stands. The board will take a final vote on the measure next month, although changes to the lesson are possible through June.
Board member Martha Wise of Avon, who opposes the lesson plan, said support for the measure reflects a turnover on the board that has left it more conservative than the body that approved the state’s science standards 14 months ago. Supporters of the lesson plan said it simply reflects the science standards the board adopted in December 2002, which called for students to examine criticisms of biological evolution. They also argue that Ohio’s curriculum will include more arguments on behalf of evolution than standards in most other states.
“I wish intelligent design were in the lesson — then there would be something to complain about,” said Robert Lattimer, a Hudson chemist and outspoken intelligent design supporter. “But it’s simply not there.”
Teachers are not required to use the model curriculum, but exams such as the state’s new graduation test will test children on what the curriculum covers.
Debate about the lesson plan rose to such a fevered pitch this week that the board’s president, Jennifer Sheets of Pomeroy, took the extraordinary step of admonishing her colleagues against attacking one another or members of the public.
Tempers continued to flare after the vote. Board member Sam Schloemer said Ohio Department of Education officials were pressured by intelligent design advocates on the board to make sure the writing team of educators and scientists came up with a lesson plan sympathetic to intelligent design. He called on Gov. Bob Taft to intervene.
“Senior level staff members at the Department of Education are ready to revolt,” said Schloemer of Cincinnati. “They’re totally embarrassed by this whole process. If the governor would call it off, it would be gone.”
Taft spokesman Orest Holubec said the governor had no intention of getting involved in the board’s work. “The governor has faith in the board members and expects they will approve curriculum based on the standards they adopted in 2002,” he said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: sstephens@plaind.com, 216-999-4827
With luck, nothing. Of course, maybe they're only placemarkers. "Kilroy infected here."
With luck, nothing. Of course, maybe they're only placemarkers. "Kilroy infected here."
Very well debunked. I might listen again if they had a theory of their own backed by positive evidence, instead of just consisting of an attack on another theory.
I'm completely familiar with discredited Behe-ite claims of "irreducible complexity," which is just the old chestnut about the eye moved down to the cellular level. I'm uninterested because there's nothing to learn there.
ID will never have anything to teach us. It's based upon the principle of "When you get to a mystery, stop! Publish! You're done." You don't learn anything that way.
Feel free to explain yourself. "When you get to a mystery, stop! Publish! You're done." is exactly what ID is and does. How will it ever teach us anything?
This kind of ignorant strawman is what needs explaining.
And how a cell forms accidently at odds exceeding the limits of gullibility.
The models I've seen posted with stupdendous odds attached to them are all some kind of instantaneous zapping together of a complex structure. IOW, it's really the creation model, not the evolution model. I doubt even God would make a cell that way, personally. It's too improbable.
Woo-hoo! Sounds like fun!
metacognative: Yes, ID predicts than when you find living structures that could not possibly have assembled by chance, self-deluding darwinites will pretend it isn't so!
In plain English, without the gratuitous slur, "NO". There is no ID theory, hence no biological predictions.
[pretending that ID were a scientific theory with researchers]
OK, is there any group doing research to find such a thing? Keep in mind that the earlier proposals, such as eyes, blood clotting cascade, and flagella, have all been shot down.
BTW, standard biology doesn't claim that things "assembled by chance"; it claims that they evolved.
OK. Standard biology, using the phylogenetic tree, makes predictions. For example, if a retrotransposon, pseudogene, etc, is found in a single species of whale and also found, in the same place in the genome, in a single species of cow, then it will also be found (in the same place) in the genomes of all species of whale, all species of cattle, as well as all specie of goats, deer, and sheep and also hippos and giraffes.
If these predictions are not fulfilled, then there is a major problem with our understanding of biology.
But, one of the reasons that the standard theory is standard, is that this, and many, many other predictions of the same general type, are always fulfilled.
Please explain how any variation of ID, or creationism, or anything else, can make equally strong predictions.
If the evidence points to a conclusion, consider it. What is so hard to understand?
Indeed. The evidence of anatomy led Linnaeus and others to classify animals and plants into a tree structure. Now the evidence from molecular biology provides evidence for exactly the same tree structure. Every part of the genome that's been analyzed points to the exact same tree, over and over again.
If there were some exceptions to this, it might be interpreted as the whim of some designer. But there aren't any exceptions. The hypothesis of a designer increases neither the number nor the specificity of the predictions made by the standard theory.
In fact, the lack of exceptions points to the conclusion that either the hypothetical designer is constrained to follow the rules of standard biology, or that there simply isn't one. Occam's razor, anyone?
Darwinites are the ones giving up real science for a belief system that doesn't stand up to the facts.
OK. Let's see some real scientfic predictions made by using ID "theory". ... If a pseudogene is found in chimps and baboons it will be found where else? If a retrotransposon is found in a single species of dog and a single species of cat, it will also be found where?
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