Charles Darwin Knew: Science and Freedom

BreakPoint with Charles Colson | 1 Mar 04 | Charles Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

Almost 150 years ago, Charles Darwin knew something that the scientific establishment seems to have forgotten -- something that is being endangered today in the state of Ohio.

In Ohio, high school science students are at risk of being told that they are not allowed to discuss questions and problems that scientists themselves openly debate. While most people understand that science is supposed to consider all of the evidence, these students, and their teachers, may be prevented from even looking at the evidence -- evidence already freely available in top science publications.

In late 2002, the Ohio Board of Education adopted science education standards that said students should know "how scientists investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards did not say that schools should teach intelligent design. They mandate something much milder. According to the standards, students should know that "scientists may disagree about explanations . . . and interpretations of data" -- including the biological evidence used to support evolutionary theory. If that sounds like basic intellectual freedom, that's because it is.

The Ohio Department of Education has responded by implementing this policy through the development of an innovative curriculum that allows students to evaluate both the strengths and the weaknesses of Darwinian evolution.

And that has the American scientific establishment up in arms. Some groups are pressuring the Ohio Board to reverse its decision. The president of the National Academy of Sciences has denounced the "Critical Analysis" lesson -- even though it does nothing more than report criticisms of evolutionary theory that are readily available in scientific literature.

Hard as it may be to believe, prominent scientists want to censor what high school students can read and discuss. It's a story that is upside-down, and it's outrageous. Organizations like the National Academy of Sciences and others that are supposed to advance science are doing their best to suppress scientific information and stop discussion.

Debates about whether natural selection can generate fundamentally new forms of life, or whether the fossil record supports Darwin's picture of the history of life, would be off-limits. It's a bizarre case of scientists against "critical analysis."

And the irony of all of this is that this was not Charles Darwin's approach. He stated his belief in the ORIGIN OF SPECIES: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." Darwin knew that objective science demands free and open inquiry, and while I disagree with Darwin on many things, on this he was absolutely right. And I say what's good enough for scientists themselves, as they debate how we got here, is good enough for high school students.

Contact us here at BreakPoint (1-877-322-5527) to learn more about this issue and about an intelligent design conference we're co-hosting this June.

The Ohio decision is the leading edge of a wedge breaking open the Darwinist stranglehold on science education in this country. The students in Ohio -- and every other state -- deserve intellectual freedom, and they deserve it now.

[js1138]

Were you aware that gravity is artificially designed? Think about it. All the experiments designed to study it are designed. Therefore the object of the experiments is designed.

[Right Wing Professor]

D'accord. Mais en Massachusetts, on doit epousez les anchois avant d'eux faire un douche.

[Right Wing Professor]

Epouser, I mean. I hope that's a word.

[Junior]

Evolution describes the change in allele frequency within a population over time. Everything else is a creationist strawman.

[Mr. Silverback]

A classroom is not where we have free and open scientific enquiry. Students are not free to proclaim that 2+2=5.

Hmmm...so you believe that if kids find out that some scientists believe this...

Bacterial flagellum with rotary motor, with the following features (after Bacterial Flagella: Paradigm for Design, video, ]:
Self assembly and repair
Water-cooled rotary engine
Proton motive force drive system
Forward and reverse gears
Operating speeds of up to 100,000 rpm
Direction reversing capability within 1/4 of a turn
Hard-wired signal transduction system with short-term memory.

...is too complex to arise from random processes, that's the same as allowing them to "to proclaim that 2+2=5". Uh-huh. Never mind that proclaiming that 2+2=5 is not "free and open enquiry," so you point is silly to begin with.

The classroom is also not a place where Constitutional law is decided, so why don't we prevent civics teachers from telling their students that people have different views of the 2nd Amendment? Why allow the classroom to reflect reality?

Mr. Colson should stick to preaching (or burgling).

Ah yes, meanspiritedness and ignorance, nice package. Colson's crimes occurred three decades ago, and he has spent those three decades more than balancing them out, that's the meanspiritedness part. The ignorance part is this: Colson was not a Watergate burglar; he went to jail for messing with an FBI file. But hey, who needs facts when you're defending evolution, right?

[Mr. Silverback]

There is nothing currently scientific about intelligent design.

Come again?

[Last Visible Dog]

Absolutely, 100% blatantly false. Par for the course.

Really. You think interpreting data is the same thing as creating a repeatable experiment. Amazing!

People that think they are cocksure are usually wrong. Thanks for providing supporting evidence.

The test of those predictions, then, is to go out and dig up fossils to see if their locations are in accord with the predictions of the theory.

This is interpreting the data to see if it meets the prediction - this is not an example of a repeatable experiment (BTW: where is the repeatable aspect). A repeatable experiment would involve something like duplicating the fossil record findings in the lab to see if a repeatable experiment will meet predictions.

Basically the experimentation phases is completely skipped and all you are doing is interpreting data.

So if I put forth a theory that claims you are ugly - then by looking at you I say the data supports my thesis that you are ugly therefore I have created a repeatable experiment that supports the thesis: you are ugly. Yeah right.

(the above example of fictitious - I have no idea if general_re is ugly or not)

[Last Visible Dog]

D'accord. Mais en Massachusetts, on doit epousez les anchois avant d'eux faire un douche.

Seulement s'ils souhaitent partager des indemnités d'assurance

[William Terrell]

I have my own explanation and opinion. You can't deny that when evolution is sought to be taught as a theroy and not fact, the scientific community is up in arms. The religious community is up in arms over evolution being taught as fact.

Reminds me of the kindergarden schoolyard, is not, is too, is not, is too, is not, is too. . . .

I don't care if creationism and evolution butts heads in schools, or schools that want to teach faith based origins of man try to downplay evolution.

I hold both to be, as they are taught, equal malarky.

[Mr. Silverback]

In physics they'll go back to learning the steady-state model of the universe and that the earth doesn't move, since cosmology is just a theory and there are disagreements among scientists.

Could you name me a Cosmologist who believes that the Universe is steady state? Could you name me a cosmologist who believes the Sun (and/or the rest of the Universe) revolves around the Earth?

In mathematics they'll say calculus isn't real because no one can really do an infinite number of operations and there are disagreements among mathematicians (I heard a cheer somewhere for this).

Can you name any mathematician who believes calculus is invalid? Can you name any published scientist who believes that the proofs of calculus by astronomers and spacefarers are not real?

(I heard a cheer somewhere for this)

Wow. The weight of evidence behind your histrionic predictions is truly massive. NAMBLA's cheering for the age of consent to be lowered to 8, so tell me, will it happen tomorrow, or next week?

[Seruzawa]

I don't really give a crap. I just like to watch people get all exercised proving that they themselves are nothing more than advanced pond scum.

[steve-b]

The classroom is also not a place where Constitutional law is decided, so why don't we prevent civics teachers from telling their students that people have different views of the 2nd Amendment?

An excellent, if unintentional, analogy. Promulgating the notion that the Second Amendment was not written to guarantee an individual right is just as intellectually dishonest as promulgating creationism (though, in both cases, it is reasonable to explain that some people believe the codswallop in question).

[Last Visible Dog]

the above example of fictitious

the above example IS fictitious

[steve-b]

Do you believe that the germ theory of disease, the theory of gravity, the atomic theory of matter, etc. should be taught as "theories", with equal time given to evil spirits, the four elements, and phlogiston?

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Just want you not to tell lies to schoolkids.

So applying a disclaimer to textbooks is a lie?

And please don't get me started on the honesty of scientists. I could give you numerous examples of scientific fraud and dishonesty. Heck, there's a ton of material out there that addresses it. Start here:

SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I realize this is a bit dated, but I'm sure I could find some more recent stuff if you'd like.

[steve-b]

This is interpreting the data to see if it meets the prediction - this is not an example of a repeatable experiment (BTW: where is the repeatable aspect). A repeatable experiment would involve something like duplicating the fossil record findings in the lab to see if a repeatable experiment will meet predictions.

So, in your world, the only way to test the theory that Shakespeare (rather than, say, Francis Bacon) wrote the Shakespearean canon would be to clone Shakespeare, give the clone a supply of ink, parchment, and quills, and observe the result?

[Mr. Silverback]

[Evolution] deals with changes in allele frequency within a population over time.

John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, disagrees. From his ‘15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense’:

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

So, we once again have the evolutionist "Heads you win, tails I lose" argument: Evolution theory includes the origins of life arising from non-life, but it doesn't include the origins of life arising from non-life.

[Mr. Silverback]

Johnson is a lawyer, and his opinion of evolution is probably as valuable as my opinion of tort law;

Three words: Rules of evidence.

[William Terrell]

I've read a large number of these crevo threads. Most of them have excerpts from anti-evolution books that cite studies and research, not to mention commonsense, that refute each and every precept of intra-species evolution.

Look for them. Read something besides the tomes that are consistant with and support your beliefs.

You're trying to comb the wrong hair. I lean toward the physical materialization of thought forms, myself.

[William Terrell]

None of those are theories. They are presently observable fact in the here and now. Intra-species evolution isn't. The other realms may actually exist, but they are not provable with existing instrumentation. They are in the same category of notion as evolution.