Posted on 12/11/2002 3:19:35 PM PST by jennyp
Columbus - The State Board of Education yesterday unanimously adopted a set of science standards that makes Ohio the first state to require students to examine criticisms of biological evolution.
But board members also agreed to a last-minute disclaimer stating that their action should not be construed as support for the controversial concept of intelligent design, the idea that life had to be guided by a higher power.
Without the disclaimer, at least a half-dozen board members had intended to vote against the standards because they feared it would give schools a green light to bring religion and philosophy into science classes.
The compromise effectively ends a tumultuous, yearlong debate on how to best teach the origin and development of life.
That debate made Ohio the flashpoint in a battle 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 77 years ago.
"Clearly, it was being misrepresented by adults fighting their own battles and using these standards to fight their own battles," said board member Joseph Roman of Fairview Park, who introduced the disclaimer the board adopted yesterday.
The state academic standards don't dictate what local school districts teach, but they provide a powerful incentive by outlining what students must know by the time they graduate. While intelligent design will not be on the new 10th-grade graduation tests, evolution will.
Local districts that decide to teach intelligent design also could face a legal challenge, said Christine Link, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. She said intelligent design is a form of creationism, and courts have ruled that teaching creationism is unconstitutional in public schools.
"If any school district implements the teaching of intelligent design, the ACLU will act swiftly," Link said. "Our concern is this gives local districts a false green light."
Board members traveled here Sunday sharply divided on how to come to grips with the issue. The disclaimer that emerged resulted from an 11th-hour compromise fashioned by board members Martha Wise of Avon - a staunch evolutionist - and Deborah Owens Fink of Richfield, who led the charge to bring evolution alternatives to Ohio classrooms.
"Neither side got what they wanted, totally," Wise said. "But this is a win-win."
Stephen Meyer of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute in Seattle, called the board's action "historic." Already, intelligent design organizers have set up shop in New Mexico, which will soon be drafting its own science standards.
"This represents an important milestone in the effort to ensure that students learn the full range of relevent scientific evidence," Meyer said.
But the disclaimer satisfied most evolutionists.
"The board made a clear statement and said 'no' to pseudo-science," said Patricia Princehouse, a Case Western Reserve University professor and a board member of Ohio Citizens for Science.
The new standards will help Ohio recover from the black eye it received two years ago when a national study gave it a failing grade for not even mentioning evolution in its science standards. Retired California physicist Lawrence Lerner, who headed the study, said Ohio would have received an 'A' this time had it not made a point of singling out evolution for critical analysis. Instead, it will get a 'B' or a 'C,' " he said yesterday.
"Ohio has the opportunity of leaping from the bottom of the heap to a par with excellent state standards," Lerner said. "The compromise would place Ohio in the mediocre middle."
I know, but it's all so dreary. I've given up adding to the placemarker list for that person. It's just one (or should I say 1127) wildly elliptical howler after another. But if you want to compile a new list, go right ahead.
We are talking about millions and billions of years here, as you pointed out no one suggest using carbon dating past 50,000 years.
Carbon normally occurs as Carbon-12, but radioactive Carbon-14 may sometimes be formed in the outer atmosphere as Nitrogen-14 undergoes cosmic ray bombardment. The resulting C-14 is unstable and decays back to N-14 with a measured half-life of approximately 5,730 years. Thus the ratio of stable C-12 to unstable C-14, which is known in today's open environment, changes over time in an isolated specimen.
Consider the dating of a piece of wood. As long as the tree lives, it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, both C-12 and C-14. Once the tree dies, it ceases to take in new carbon, and any C-14 present begins to decay. The changing ratio of C-12 to C-14 indicates the length of time since the tree stopped absorbing carbon, i.e., the time of its death.
Obviously, if half the C-14 decays in 5,730 years, and half more decays in another 5,730 years, by ten half-lives (57,300 years) there would be essentially no C-14 left. Thus, no one even considers using carbon dating for dates in this range. In theory, it might be useful to archaeology, but not to geology or paleontology. Furthermore, the assumptions on which it is based and the conditions which must be satisfied are questionable, and in practice, no one trusts it beyond about 3,000 or 4,000 years, and then only if it can be checked by some historical means.
The method assumes, among other things, that the earth's age exceeds the time it would take for C-14 production to be in equilibrium with C-14 decay. Since it would only take less than 50,000 years to reach equilibrium from a world with no C-14 at the start, this always seemed like a good assumption.
That is until careful measurements revealed a significant disequalibrium. The production rate still exceeds decay by 30%. All the present C-14 would accumulate, at present rates of production and build up, in less than 30,000 years! Thus the earth's atmosphere couldn't be any older than this.
Efforts to salvage carbon dating are many and varied, with calibration curves attempting to bring the C-14 "dates" in line with historical dates, but these produce predictably unreliable results.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
Where in the world did this come from? BTW, the only C-14 being measured is that absorbed by formerly living critters, not the sum total of C-14 in the environment. Nice try, but your contention just don't fly.
As for radiometric dating in general, maybe you'd like this little website:
You might want to try this page. http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-189.htm
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