Posted on 10/18/2006 12:14:50 PM PDT by JoAnka
Polish MEP calls for ‘scholarly debate’ on evolution
Polish European Parliament deputy and biology professor, Maciej Giertych, is calling for an end to the monopoly of Darwinian theory in the teaching of evolution in schools.
'I am a scientist, I am a geneticist, my specialty is population genetics and I reject the theory of evolution on the basis of the field of science I represent. I find that in many fields of science there are scientists who reject the theory of evolution because in their fields they also find evidence against the theory.’ says MEP Maciej Giertych.
For the past decades, biology classes in Poland and around the world have focused practically exclusively on Darwinian theory when tackling the subject of evolution. Prof. Giertych and his colleagues see room for reform in this respect.
'Schools are teaching evolution as a fact and there seems to be very little reference to new research that would either support or negate the theory of evolution. There is so much new evidence that is being simply ignored by the school textbooks.’
But when last week in the European Parliament Giertych and a group of non-Darwinian scientists organized a conference, a whiff of controversy was in the air. Some commentators were quick to label Giertych a religious bigot, ridicule his views and boldly question his competence. Prof. Kielan-Jaworowska:
'There are people who still believe that not the earth is going round the sun but the sun round the earth. His views have nothing to do with science; I would not call him a scientist. We are deeply ashamed that he got the title of a professor and that he is a biologist.'
But not everyone feels that ideology on the verge of religious bigotry is on Giertych's side of the debate. Dr Otto Neuman of the Polish Creationist Society:
'That is a heritage of communism when evolutionary doctrines were taught in schools like a kind of religion.'
Meanwhile Giertych and his non-Darwinian colleagues say they want to stay away from the emotional dispute and focus on an honest scholarly debate in the spirit of academic freedom. A debate, which, they feel, should lead to biology classes being more diverse and open to newest findings.
'The proponents of the theory of evolution are not prepared to sit down and look at the evidence and present their own evidence for the theory of evolution. Debates on the subject immediately develop into philosophical conflict, a lot of emotions are involved and a tendency to label the other side as ignorant, as motivated ideologically - whereas what is needed is a serious scientific debate and confrontation of results.'
Whether a debate is possible, remains to be seen. First, scholars on both sides must recognize each other as partners. And that is still to be achieved. Prof. Kielan-Jaworowska again:
'I don't think scientific discussion with him is possible.'
In response to such attitudes the non-Darwinian side of the conflict is calling for less prejudice and more access to public debate. Prof. Giertych again:
'Since the opponents of the theory of evolution are finding evidence against it, we are struggling to get this into the public domain. We want the media and the textbooks to recognize the fact that there exists empirical evidence against the theory of evolution.'
The liberal archbishop Życiński of Lublin, has criticized Prof. Giertych's call for scholarly debate. However the official Catholic Church position on the subject was reiterated by the late Polish Pope, John Paul II, who in a 1996 statement to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said, "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of evolution."
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Not a good idea. Evolution in and of itself is not the only thing that is being taught. Scientific method, research methods, and other valuable scientific skills are taught within the topic of evolution. Whereas the only real lesson taught in ID, at this time, is theological and idealogical. Not very good lessons to build objectivity in the sciences, IMO.
Mainly because the hoaxer engineered a second find, Piltdown II. The problem was that the critics, although correctly claiming that Piltdown I represented not a single species but two -- the jaw from an ape and the skull from a human -- had not seriously considered the possibility of deliberate fraud. Therefore they were effectively arguing that it was a fortuitous association of ape and human materials, misinterpreted as a single creature. Therefore when a separate, second such association was produced, the chance association argument became untenable. (Even though, as the Talk Origins page points out, several important critics persisted.)
Thanks for the ping. BTW, your idiotic posts are easy to find.
Um, No. What you said was:
the biggest names of TOE in England Europe and the USA bought into to it
When in fact (until Piltdown II at least) only a rather small MINORITY of leading evolutionists "bought into it," and its critics included a number of the world's leading anthropologists. (Several of the British scientists supporting it weren't actually experts in human anatomy.)
By the time Sir Arthur Smith Woodward wrote The Earliest Englishman in 1948, he was probably one of the last evolutionists on earth who took Piltdown seriously as a potential human ancestor. (Although some others still accepted it as a genuine hominid, it was dismissed as representing some odd side branch of human evolution at best.)
Some researchers recognized early on that Piltdown didn't fit. Friedrichs and Weidenreich had both, by about 1932, published their research suggesting (correctly) that the lower jaws and molars were that of an orang (E.A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, revised edition; The MacMillan Co., 1946).
This is what a 1946 textbook shows, several years before the claims for Piltdown were completely falsified. Your statement is inaccurate.
Kudos to the banned (from FR) Carolina_Guitarman for pointing this out to me today!
That's one more than I thought there were.
So, what's with the claim there are at least 100?
So far, there's at least one, but the one is a historical perspective with full knowledge that Piltdown was a fake. Thus, we still have zero theses which assume Piltdown as a real fossil to be interpreted.
[me] Of course the fact that you can't agree among yourselves about which mutually exclusive slots they belong in hurts your argument! How could it not?It depends on the disagreement. Evolutionists disagreeing whether habilis should be called Australopithecus habilis or Homo habilis actually reinforces the theory that habilis is a transitional between old ape & new human, since a transitional is by definition somewhere between the two, and so it should be expected to have some features that are within the normal range for the old species and/or some that are within the range of the new one. Such a species would be expected to create controversy over which genus it most reasonably belongs under.[you] Then do you also believe that disagreements in the pro-evolution circles damage evolutionists' arguments?
The kind of disagreement that would threaten an evolutionary theory of a species' origins would be something over when the split from the ancestral species occurred. For example, if there was a strong line of evidence that humans & apes split off 20 million years ago (which would contradict the other lines of evidence that point to 4-6 million years) then that would be a serious controversy, because it would have the potential of falsifying the theory that humans came from apes.
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