The evolving Darwin debate

In an effort to influence high-school science curriculum standards, more than 50 Ohio scientists issued a statement this week supporting academic freedom to teach arguments for and against Darwin's theory of evolution.

Released Wednesday, the statement was signed by 52 experts from a wide range of scientific disciplines, including entomology, toxicology, nuclear chemistry, engineering biochemistry and medicine. Some are employed in business, industry and research, but most teach at state and private universities. A third of the signatories are employed by Ohio State University.

To enhance the effectiveness of Ohio science education, as scientists we affirm:

That biological evolution is an important scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom;

That a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science;

That a science curriculum should help students understand why the subject of biological evolution generates controversy;

That where alternative scientific theories exist in any area of inquiry (such as wave vs. particle theories of light, biological evolution vs. intelligent design, etc.), students should be permitted to learn the evidence for and against them;

That a science curriculum should encourage critical thinking and informed participation in public discussions about biological origins.

Religious or anti-religious indoctrination in a class specifically dedicated to teaching within the discipline of science;

The censorship of scientific views that may challenge current theories of origins.

Signatories released the statement as the Ohio State Board of Education works to update its curriculum standards, including those for high-school science classes, in accordance with a demand from the state legislature issued last year. Advocates of inclusion of evolution criticisms believe the Ohio scientists' statement echoes similar language in the recently passed federal education law, the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." Report language interpreting the act explains that on controversial issues such as biological evolution, "the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist."

As part of its efforts to update the science standards, the Board of Education held a moderated panel discussion on the question, "Should intelligent design be included in Ohio's science academic content standards?" The debate was conducted during the March 11 regular board meeting and included two panelists from each side of the issue, who were given 15 minutes each to present their arguments. One of the panelists in favor of including "intelligent design" arguments (the idea that biological origin was at least initiated by an intelligent force) was Dr. Stephen Meyer, a professor at Whitworth College in Washington state and fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

Meyer has written extensively on the subject, including a column for WorldNetDaily in which he criticizes the PBS series "Evolution." The series, he wrote, "rejects – even ridicules – traditional theistic religion because [religion] holds that God played an active (even discernible) role in the origin of life on earth."

Additionally, Meyer co-wrote a February 2001 Utah Law Review article defending the legality of presenting evolution criticism in schools. The article states in its conclusion that school boards or biology teachers should "take the initiative to teach, rather than suppress, the controversy as it exists in the scientific world," which is a "more open and more dialectical approach." The article also encourages school boards to defend "efforts to expand student access to evidence and information about this timely and compelling controversy."

Dr. Robert DiSilvestro, a professor at Ohio State and statement signatory, believes many pro-evolution scientists have not given Darwin's theory enough critical thought.

"As a scientist who has been following this debate closely, I think that a valid scientific challenge has been mounted to Darwinian orthodoxy on evolution. There are good scientific reasons to question many currently accepted ideas in this area," he said.

"The more this controversy rages, the more our colleagues start to investigate the scientific issues," commented DiSilvestro. "This has caused more scientists to publicly support our statement." He noted that several of the 52 scientists on the list had signed after last week's Board of Education panel discussion.

However, panelist Dr. Lawrence Krauss, chairman of Case Western Reserve University's physics department, said intelligent design is not science. ID proponents, he explained, are trying to redefine "science" and do not publish their work in peer-reviewed literature. In a January editorial published in The Plain Dealer, Krauss wrote that "the concept of 'intelligent design' is not introduced into science classes because it is not a scientific concept."

Promoters of ID bemoan "the fact that scientists confine their investigation to phenomena and ideas that can be experimentally investigated, and that science assumes that natural phenomena have natural causes," his editorial continues. "This is indeed how science operates, and if we are going to teach science, this is what we should teach." By its very nature, Krauss explains, science has limitations on what it can study, and to prove or disprove the existence of God does not fall into that sphere of study.

Krauss was disappointed in the Board of Education's decision to hold a panel discussion on the subject, saying the debate was not warranted since there is no evolution controversy in scientific circles.

"The debate, itself, was a victory for those promoting intelligent design," he said. "By pretending there's a controversy when there isn't, you're distorting reality."

But Meyer counters that a controversy does exist over the validity of Darwinian evolution, as evidenced by the growing number of scientists publicly acknowledging the theory's flaws. For example, 100 scientists, including professors from institutions such as M.I.T, Yale and Rice, issued a statement in September "questioning the creative power of natural selection," wrote Meyer in his WND column. But such criticism is rarely, if ever, reported by mainstream media outlets and establishment scientific publications, he maintains.

At the Board of Education's panel discussion, he proposed a compromise to mandating ID inclusion in science curriculum: Teach the controversy about Darwinism, including evidence for and against the theory of evolution. Also, he asked the board to make it clear that teachers are permitted to discuss other theories of biological origin, which Meyer believes is already legally established.

But such an agreement would only serve to compromise scientific research, according to Krauss. "It's not that it's inappropriate to discuss these ideas, just not in a science class," he concluded.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science gives proof of its assertions.
Alright then, please give me three examples of scientific theories that have been demonstrably proven. Should be easy, if scientific theories really are proven, as you insist. Why do you stall?
The theory that heavier-than-air powered flight is possible has been demonstrably proven. At least one mathematical proof that it was not possible had previously been offered (Simon Newcomb). Asked to comment, Orville Wright said something like 'our proof seems to fly better than the good doctor's...'
The theory that the Earth is round has been demonstrably proven. That one was no more than a theory 550 years ago.
The theory that the mechanism of a repeating rifle could be operated by the exhaust gas of the rifle itself has been demonstrably proven.

The theorems of mathematics are all rigidly proven....

Oh, please. You are giving me examples of singular propositions proven by simple instantiation. These are not scientific theories. A scientific theory is an interrelated set of principles and causal mechanisms used to explain the behavior or state of natural systems or entities.

The theorems of mathematics are all rigidly proven....

I fully agree that proof is possible in mathematics. Mathematics deals with formal systems. Natural science deals with nature. Demonstrative proof is possible in the former case because we know the rules that govern the system in advance. In the case of nature we do not know all the rules. (Indeed a purpose of science is to discover those rules.) This is one of the reasons that scientific propositions can never be proven.

This is one of the reasons that scientific propositions can never be proven....

Something which can never be disproven is by definition pseudoscience and not science. The normal definition of a pseudoscience is that it be non-falsifiable, but it appears to me that demonstrating that something could never be proven should do just as well. The basic quality you're looking for is guaranteed perpetual inability to get any sort of a handle on something. Witchcraft is still as good an example as anything else; how could you prove or disprove the existence of witches? Does that not make witchcraft a science by your definition?

So it hasn't yet been proven that the earth revolves around the sun?

That is a fact. Facts can be proven. A theory is more involved. Think Newton's theory of gravity. It sure seemed true, it tested true on earth. Then Einstein comes along with a better explanation. We can't know that someone else won't come up with an even better theory so we can't prove Einstein correct. We can only fail to disprove it.

to replace the already discredited theory of evolution.

already discredited? Saying something over and over doesn't make it so.

BTW, what about those whales, you remember from the other threads, the ones with the birth defect that gave them legs? Don't they cast a bit of doubt on the 'intelligence' of the 'designer'?

Has anyone ever shown that anything is actually 'irreducibly complex'? What could such a proof possibly look like?

Until we have a body of knowledge in this area, and a way of applying it to problems of natural history, the ID speculations have no place in the elementary science curriculum because they're without content.

Some useful references:

All those wasted man hours. What a shame.

If Jesus were here now He would say:
"Render unto science that which is science."
"Render unto mythology that which is mythology."

Teach science in science class.
Teach creationism, ID, etc in religion, mythology or philosophy clases.

Some useful references:

WARNING

Some of the sites listed lead to popup hell. Not only will you learn some false science, but you will be asked exchange your automobile, choose your game at world's largest internet casinos, etc.

Is anyone surprised that such sites would be associated with internet trash?

It helps in my work, because the protein I am most interested in is similar across species, with a similar function, yet the consequences of activating it are dramatically different. (Death in guinea pigs; a nasty skin rash in humans.) We ask, which are the differences (i.e. different amino acid sequences) that matter? How do they matter? Without the underpinning of evolution, the questions become meaningless. We cannot hope to predict how and why differences in function occur, without understanding how the protein diverged evolutionarily in the first place. Not only that, but by looking at the known divergence in other genes across species, we can make a hypothesis as to the nature of the protein in a species in which we have not yet isolated or sequenced it yet. And by using parts of the protein which have not diverged as much as expected, we can find the protein in new species.

I hope this helps you understand.

Mendellian genetics does not disprove evolution. Approximately one in ten thousand DNA bases will be mutated every time a cell undergoes division. Usually, there are repair enzymes to fix it; but if it is not fixed, and the mutation is in a germ cell, there is a small chance it will be a mutation in a gene. Many mutations have no effect. Most mutations are deleterious. If it is bad enough, it is lethal, and fertilization of that gamete cannot lead to a live birth. A very few mutations are favorable. If favorable, they give a survival advantage to the organism, which allows it more of a chance to reproduce, which helps to sustain the favorable mutation. It doesn't take very many generations for a favorable mutation to spread throughout a population. That is classic Darwinism.

As for your other point, that new functions cannot arise by chance: proteins only contain a handful of structures. It is by mixing and matching the structures that are there that new functions arise. Proteins that act as environmental sensors of oxygen, of "xenobiotics" (environmental compounds ingested or absorbed by the organism), or light sensors have a common structure and are present in organisms as varied as plants, insects, bacteria, and animals. Organisms are constantly shuffling genes and parts of genes; it is how we believe that novel functions arise. Now, as to how the proteins originally arranged themselves into functional structures, or how thousands of proteins work together to sustain life... these are questions which make many scientists wonder about intelligent design. If there was a creation event, it had to happen billions of years ago, and involved simple organisms such as viruses (which are not truly alive) or bacteria.

Your statement that any hypothesis is science regardless of proof is utterly ridiculous.

I never said such a thing. A hypothesis is testable, and either the experiment supports the hypothesis, in which case we want to test it again, or it disproves the hypothesis, in which case it is time to think of a new hypothesis.

Just because evolution cannot give any proof of its assertions either in the fossil record or in any other way, does not mean that real science does not. Science proves its theories with repeatable experiments, calculations, predictions and practical applications.

Evolution is a theory, meaning that it can be used to make testable hypotheses. So far, these hypotheses have stood up to repeated experimentation. The experimentation is not merely based on what one finds in the fossil record, and making testable predictions as to what may be found there, but is, these days, based on our knowledge of genetics. I happen to be a biochemist; the theory of evolution for me is a tool.

What's the big deal about "proving a negative? I can easily prove there is no thousand-dollar bill in my wallet.

I say there is a thousand-dollar bill in your wallet, but you cannot see it because it is caught in some transdimensional warp. No matter how hard you try to disprove a negative, there is always a "but" involved. BTW, when you find that $1000, could you lend it to me?

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