Posted on 09/27/2001 7:43:35 AM PDT by Nora
SEATTLE, Sept. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- An internal PBS memo made public today reveals an improper political agenda behind WGBH/Clear Blue Sky's ongoing series "Evolution", according to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. The memo describes how "Evolution" will be used to influence government officials and promote political action in order to shape how evolution is taught in public schools.
Dated June 15, 2001, the memo bears the title "The Evolution Controversy, Use It or Lose It: Evolution Project/WGBH Boston" The document outlines the overall goals of the ongoing PBS series Evolution and describes the marketing strategy for the series. The complete text of the PBS memo is posted at http://www.reviewevolution.com.
According to the document, which was leaked by a source within PBS, one of the goals of "Evolution" is to "co-opt existing local dialogue about teaching evolution in schools." Another goal is to "promote participation," including "getting involved with local school boards."
In addition, the document identifies "government officials" as one of the target audiences for the series, and it describes a publicity campaign accompanying the series that will include writing op-eds for newspapers and "guerilla/viral marketing."
"Clearly, one purpose of 'Evolution' is to influence Congress and school boards and to promote political action regarding how evolution is taught in public schools," says Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman. "In fact, 'Evolution's' marketing plan seems to have the trappings of a political campaign."
"Public television is funded in part by American taxpayers, and it should be held to high standards of fairness. It is inappropriate for public broadcasting to engage in activities designed to directly influence the political process by promoting one viewpoint at the expense of others," said Chapman.
According to Discovery Institute's John West, the political agenda behind "Evolution" is made even more explicit by its enlistment of Eugenie Scott as one of the official spokespersons for the series.
Scott runs the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an advocacy group that by its own description is dedicated to "defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools." According to the group's Web site, the NCSE provides "expert testimony for school board hearings," supplies citizens with "advice on how to organize" when "faced with local creationist challenges," and assists legal organizations that litigate "evolution/creation cases."
"The NCSE is a single-issue group that takes only one side in the political debate over evolution in public education," says West, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University. "It is inappropriate for public television to enlist NCSE's executive director as an official spokesperson for this program."
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Founded in 1990, Discovery Institute is a non-profit, non- partisan public policy center for science, technology, regional development, environment, and defense. More information about the Institute and its activities can be found at www.discovery.org.
KEYWORDS:
SCIENCE, EDUCATION
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/U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/
09/27 06:00
Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire
Despite my having a poor memory for whether the cleaner is a fish or a shrimp and the exact process and details, it's not relevent. To claim "...a bit of badly-memorized stump-the-dummies (be nice! No need to call yourself a dummy! I haven't called you one!)minutiae (as in your inability to present scientific evidence), demolished in a single web search", you have shown your ignorance of the entire process, save your recent web-search. This is a mere transparent mis-direct on your part in an attempt to not have to answer the "evolutionary" process that needed to happen in order for the situaton to even exist. So please, in your pomous wisdom, explain the behavioral processes and the reproductive requirements (despite insurmountable probability) that are to have been required for the "fittest" to behave like the most unfit and to have "evolved" and survived today.
To be quite candid, I really don't care if you happen to worship the god of your own intellect and bogus science, just don't use the term "science" (to which you avoid the definition of, as it applies to this discussion) to claim that evolution is a "fact". The only fact is your faith that it is fact. By all definitions of science, it is not fact, but theory at best and more probably a flimsy fairy tale for those adherents who need to have an excuse to be athiests.
baa
Uumm.....so does the Bible. Don't worry, I won't tell PH that you've become a believer.
;^)
-ksen
I liked (and voted for) the Republicans when they talked like that....
I don't think you are ever going to figure it out. The problem is never what leaders are going to do. Try just once in your life to get a clue. Right now Bush has 90 percent approval rating. Even Daschle and Gephardt are on his team. If his approval rating were 34 percent they would be screaming impeach him now and impeachment hearings would start tomorrow.
When a solid 60 percent of the people are in favor of something both parties will support it. One will blame the other for not supporting it fast enough.
If most people don't want it done no party will do it and only a handfull of politicians will even talk about it. Some will demogog a few suckers for some bucks to pretend to do somthing. I think that is where you come in.
The problem is not the leaders. It is the followers. You keep hoping for a leader. If you can get the followers leaders will fight to lead where ever the followers want to go.
You aren't denying that living things do reproduce themselves just like automobiles don't? That changes things, or it should. Are you being intentionally dense here?
When we see one particular line of fish morphing into amphibians in ascending layers of the geologic column, one particular line of dinosaurs morphing into birds, what we see has parallels with even smoother changes we can see in the fossil record. It has parallels with the evolution of microorganisms we see happening now. It has parallels with observed instances of speciation in modern times.
When you see a car, you not only have to assume a designer but you can identify the designer. When you see an organism, you can't prove a designer and don't have to assume one.
You sure that you are not confusing that with the new "Harry Potter" book?;-)
baa
BZZZT wrong answer! NO evidence of life originating from non-life. It has NEVER been replicated in a laoratory environment and NEVER benn observed! More of your non-scienfic, non-FACTS.
baa
Ridiculous! I cannot replicate a black hole in my lab either. Should we then not teach about black holes either? Re-read post #145 by ThinkPlease.
Do you believe Genesis to be an accurate scientific explanation for the origin of life on earth?
In your defense, the conflicts in the Balkans has a religous undercurrent as well.
For direct info on how to counter the bias in this programming.
CP
Are you playing "That's not it?" I linked you the evidence for dinos-to-birds. I gave you 200+ vertebrate transitionals. I gave you examples in-line from the fish-amphibians sequence. And, without having laid a glove on any of that, you sit back and say "Nobody has yet proven . . ."
Such unimpressive performances are why I still say the main evidence against evolution seems to be that nobody can make a creationist see the evidence for it.
This is a mere transparent mis-direct on your part in an attempt to not have to answer the "evolutionary" process that needed to happen in order for the situaton to even exist.
No, you've claimed the existing situation cannot have evolved. But a detailed examination of the scenario makes it clear there are adequate pathways from completely non-symbiotic lifestyles into the present situation. Your claim of impossibility was based upon misrepresenting what's happening out there. That's false witness, Brother!
So please, in your pomous wisdom, explain the behavioral processes and the reproductive requirements (despite insurmountable probability) that are to have been required for the "fittest" to behave like the most unfit and to have "evolved" and survived today.
Gave it already. You are bludgeoning me with your inability to get things.
The shrimp just have to be hungry enough to experiment with nipping bits of bacteria, small animal pests, and necrotic tissue from fish. And the fish have to like it. The shrimp don't have to start out by swimming into the fish's mouth. They probably would start well away from the mouth. Over time, the behaviors can get more elaborate as trust builds.
Why don't the fish cheat and eat the shrimp? Those that do lose the advantage of the symbiotic relationship. If there's insufficient advantage to either party in the relationship, you can expect it to disappear over time.
spurrious reasoning, based upon the false assupmtion that the "laboratory" needs to be a confined building/space". By "laboratory" you very well know that the term is appied to "controlled envirnment, where external influenes are prevented from affecting the results of a controlled experement". A laboratory testing can very well and inded does occur in the "field" of an event happening.
Black holes can be taught, but not much about them can be taught as "fact" because they are nearly impossible to subject to proper testing to fully understand their nature.
baa
The assumption on your part is that fish morph into amphibians rather than amphibians were designed and created by re-using DNA code from fish.
We can look at automobiles that change each model year, and one could claim that they evolved or one could claim that their designers changed them.
Likewise, one can look at fish and amphibians and make either claim, so this clearly has NOTHING to do with whether or not fish or cars reproduce themselves.
Moreover, I already showed that fact to you, and you either failed to grasp it or chose to ignore it, when I pointed out that the VERY FIRST life form must have evolved from an inanimate object, and clearly you aren't going to claim that inanimate objects reproduce their own offspring.
Ergo, Reproduction hasn't been shown by you to be germaine to this debate. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with how cars change every year...
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
The theory of evolution is a model that best describes the current understanding of the diversity of life here on earth.
A scientific theory can be modified by data points when they no longer fall within the framework of that model. So I am certainly open to discard evolution should evidence (real, verifiable, peer reviewed) come along that is at odds with the evolutionary model. Religion on the other hand (being set down by God) has no checks and balances. Our notions of God are completely subjective as apposed to objective. So with that in mind, do you wonder that all of us (living in a solipsistic universe) have our own ideas of what God is? How then can you use "God" to define or help define the observed models we create to describe this physical universe?
First of all, Genesis has NOTHING to do with proving or disproving Evolutionary Theory. It is at best a straw man. Let's stick with scientific facts and avoid religion, shall we.
Second, Black Holes started as a theory and then were supported by experimental laboratory evidence, including various radio telescope data of which you of all people show be aware.
In contrast, Evolution started as a theory and has gone on to be bereft of scientific evidence of abiogenesis.
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