Festival of Tractionless Trolls
Posted on 07/09/2003 12:08:32 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) -
The long-running debate over the origins of mankind continues Wednesday before the Texas State Board of Education, and the result could change the way science is taught here and across the nation.
Local and out-of-state lobbying groups will try to convince the board that the next generation of biology books should contain new scientific evidence that reportedly pokes holes in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Many of those groups say that they are not pushing to place a divine creator back into science books, but to show that Darwin's theory is far from a perfect explanation of the origin of mankind.
"It has become a battle ground," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of theNational Center of Science Education, which is dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom.
Almost 45 scientists, educators and special interest groups from across the state will testify at the state's first public hearing this year on the next generation of textbooks for the courses of biology, family and career studies and English as a Second Language.
Approved textbooks will be available for classrooms for the 2004-05 school year. And because Texas is the second largest textbook buyer in the nation, the outcome could affect education nationwide.
The Texas Freedom Network and a handful of educators held a conference call last week to warn that conservative Christians and special interest organizations will try to twist textbook content to further their own views.
"We are seeing the wave of the future of religious right's attack on basic scientific principles," said Samantha Smoot, executive director of the network, an anti-censorship group and opponent of the radical right.
Those named by the network disagree with the claim, including the Discovery Institute and its Science and Culture Center of Seattle.
"Instead of wasting time looking at motivations, we wish people would look at the facts," said John West, associate director of the center.
"Our goal nationally is to encourage schools and educators to include more about evolution, including controversies about various parts of Darwinian theory that exists between even evolutionary scientists," West said. "We are a secular think tank."
The institute also is perhaps the nation's leading proponent of intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have occurred without the help of an unknown, intelligent being.
It pushed this view through grants to teachers and scientists, including Michael J. Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The Institute receives millions of dollars from philanthropists and foundations dedicated to discrediting Darwin's theory.
The center sent the state board a 55-page report that graded 11 high school biology textbooks submitted for adoption. None earned a grade above a C minus. The report also includes four arguments it says show that evolutionary theory is not as solid as presented in biology textbooks.
Discovery Institute Fellow Raymond Bohlin, who also is executive director of Probe Ministries, based in Richardson, Texas, will deliver that message in person Wednesday before the State Board of Education. Bohlin has a doctorate degree in molecular cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas.
"If we can simply allow students to see that evolution is not an established fact, that leaves freedom for students to pursue other ideas," Bohlin said. "All I can do is continue to point these things out and hopefully get a group that hears and sees relevant data and insist on some changes."
The executive director of Texas Citizens for Science, Steven Schafersman, calls the institute's information "pseudoscience nonsense." Schafersman is an evolutionary scientist who, for more than two decades, taught biology, geology, paleontology and environmental science at a number of universities, including the University of Houston and the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.
"It sounds plausible to people who are not scientifically informed," Schafersman said. "But they are fraudulently trying to deceive board members. They might succeed, but it will be over the public protests of scientists."
The last time Texas looked at biology books, in 1997, the State Board of Education considered replacing them all with new ones that did not mention evolution. The board voted down the proposal by a slim margin.
The state requires that evolution be in textbooks. But arguments against evolution have been successful over the last decade in other states. Alabama, New Mexico and Nebraska made changes that, to varying degrees, challenge the pre-eminence of evolution in the scientific curriculum.
In 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to wash the concepts of evolution from the state's science curricula. A new state board has since put evolution back in. Last year, the Cobb County school board in Georgia voted to include creationism in science classes.
Texas education requirements demand that textbooks include arguments for and against evolution, said Neal Frey, an analyst working with perhaps Texas' most famous textbook reviewers, Mel and Norma Gabler.
The Gablers, of Longview, have been reviewing Texas textbooks for almost four decades. They describe themselves as conservative Christians. Some of their priorities include making sure textbooks include scientific flaws in arguments for evolution.
"None of the texts truly conform to the state's requirements that the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories be presented to students," Frey said.
The Texas textbook proclamation of 2001, which is part of the standard for the state's curriculum, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, requires that biology textbooks instruct students so they may "analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weakness using scientific evidence and information."
The state board is empowered to reject books only for factual errors or for not meeting the state's curriculum requirements. If speakers convince the state board that their evidence is scientifically sound, members may see little choice but to demand its presence in schoolbooks.
Proposed books already have been reviewed and approved by Texas Tech University. After a public hearing Wednesday and another Sept. 10, the state board is scheduled to adopt the new textbooks in November.
Satisfying the state board is only half the battle for textbook publishers. Individual school districts choose which books to use and are reimbursed by the state unless they buy texts rejected by the state board.
Districts can opt not to use books with passages they find objectionable. So when speakers at the public hearings criticize what they perceived as flaws in various books - such as failing to portray the United States or Christianity in a positive light - many publishers listen.
New books will be distributed next summer.
State Board member Terri Leo said the Discovery Institute works with esteemed scientists and that their evidence should be heard.
"You cannot teach students how to think if you don't present both sides of a scientific issue," Leo said. "Wouldn't you think that the body that has the responsibility of what's in the classroom would look at all scientific arguments?"
State board member Bob Craig said he had heard of the Intelligent Design theory.
"I'm going in with an open mind about everybody's presentation," Craig said. "I need to hear their presentation before I make any decisions or comments.
State board member Mary Helen Berlanga said she wanted to hear from local scientists.
"If we are going to discuss scientific information in the textbooks, the discussion will have to remain scientific," Berlanga said. "I'd like to hear from some of our scientists in the field on the subject."
No! In the creationoid world, it's a really huge number. (Besides, the exponent is 720, not a mere 72. Makes a difference to the creationoids.)
What-more-can-I-say placemarker.
Nope, the racism was all over Mein Kampf. What was not there at the beginning was extermination of the Jews, but racism towards them and treating them as inferiors was there all the time.
If you think that's "racist", you're reading it wrong.
No, I am reading it absolutely correctly. First the brachocephalic index which he used to put down some as inferior races was totally false, totally unscientific, total nonsense. Its only basis was his prejudices and those of his followers. Secondly, all humans are of the same species, regardless how much hatred he and those like him try to say otherwise. So there was absolutely no scientific justification for his statements, none at all. Further, as the quote shows quite well, it is an integral part of evolutionary theory. It is part of his 'proof' that evolution has continued even to the most recent times. He may not have called the 'ancient races' inferior races like Hitler, he was much too much a hypocrite for that but he said that they were much closer to chimps which amounts to the same thing.
Only evolutionists deny the obvious. It is pretty obvious that such colorfullness would make them a target of other fish and that there are absolutely no other benefits to it.
Gould, Steven Jay, ed. 1992. “Critical Social Ethics.” Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Gould, Steven Jay, ed. 1991. “Paradigms in Political Theory.” Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “Foucault's Critique of Functional Marxism.” Rethinking Marxism 3, no. 3&4: 297-307.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “The Analytic Defense of Functional Marxism and Law.” The Critical Criminologist 2, no. 3: 3-4,12,15-16.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “U.S. Disinformation and the DPR of Korea.” The Critical Criminologist 2, no. 4.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “Neilsen, K. and B. Ware Analyzing Marxism.” Radical Review of Books no. 2: 33-36. . (Book review).
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Non-Voluntary Compliance.” Philosophy Research Archives 14, 115-20.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Towards a Marxist Theory of the State.” Philosophy Research Archives 14, 1-22.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Truitt on Technological Determinism.” Nature, Society and Thought 2, no. 4: 508-16.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1988. “Vincent, Andrew Theories of the State.” Philosophical Books 28, no. 3: 177-82. (Book review).
Most of you guys weren't aware that the mild-mannered Harvard professor of paleontology led a double life as a professor of political science at Iowa.
Then there's this charming bit of snipping from the biography of Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore: (the posted parts are in blue)
A few days later Emma arrived back from Hastings with Etty, clearly `not one bit better.' They were just in time to celebrate Horace's sixth birthday and begin receiving a house full of guests. A troop of Wedgwood cousins were due, and Charles's sisters Susan and Catherine. A week afterwards Down House was groaning. There were ten children and six adults, not counting the staff and extra servants who catered for the crowd. `A good lot too many,' Charles lamented, `now poor dear Etty is so indifferent.' They had all come for the christening of his namesake, the defective baby Charles, which took place on the 21st in the parish church. Darwin's cold ,suddenly turned into my old vomiting,' and he was back to square one. It was all `very disheartening.' The work, the worry, the crush - it destroyed in a fortnight all `the wonderful good which Moor Park did me.' His health had vanished `like a flash of lightning."'
There was only one thing to be done. Both invalids had to go back to Dr Lane's: first Etry with Emma on the 29th, and when Emma returned two weeks later, Charles would `relieve guard' and join Etty, who was staying there all summer. Still he pressed on, piecing together one after another of `my many horrid puzzles,' declaring that `I would sooner be the wretched contemptible invalid, which I am, than live the life of an idle squire.' He dropped a letter to the Gardeners' Chronicle about dun-coloured ponies, trying to fathom the origin of the domestic horse, and then readmitted himself to the sanatorium.
Here he continued his half-begging, self-mocking letters, eliciting information while converting the donor - softening up breeders to obtain gulliver runts (pigeons) and softening up old presbyterians like Asa Gray at the Harvard herbarium: `It is extremely kind of you to say that my letters have not bored you very much, & it is almost incredible to me, for I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science.' Or, at least, true science as then was. He played backgammon with Etty every day, watching her tenderly for fear that he would have to relive the Malvern tragedy all over again. But no, she seemed to be getting her strength back, and Charles returned to Downe on 30 June much happier." Back to the grindstone; back to the old problem - the laws of variation.
It was turning into a long, hot summer - the time of the Indian Mutiny: an `Indian Summer' when he should have been in his meadow, watching his pigeons, salting his snails, not sitting indoors. He finally finished `variation' in July and posted pages to Huxley for checking. He was still trying to relate foetal divergence and the
[page] 456
distinctness of species - trying to put some embryological muscle behind his theory. Huxley agreed that the more distinct the adults, the earlier their embryos begin to differ. But Darwin had also cited French opinion that the specialized organs appear first in the foetus. Huxley would have none of this. The body is like a house, he laughed; the builder starts with the walls and rafters, not `the cornices, cupboards, & grand-piano.' The point was taken. With a sigh Darwin expunged the passages, `which I rather grieve about, as 1 wished it to be true; but alas a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone."'
Clearly, it was a case of two steps forward, and one back. He was still tabulating the ratio of varieties in plants a week later when young Lubbock spotted `the grossest blunder' in one of his assumptions, which cost him `2 or 3 weeks lost work.' He had to borrow the plant catalogues and start all over again. `I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid Dog in all England,' he howled. From then on he paid Downe's `laboriously careful Schoolmaster,' Ebenezer Norman, to do the tabulating in his free time." And Hooker too went to pains to help.
Others offered aid. Gray supplied details on American plants. He was not only a `cautious ... reasoner,' but clearly a `loveable man;' and Darwin, at the risk of seeming `horribly egotistical,' now told him what he was up to. He ran through his twenty-year labour, ending up: `As an honest man I must tell you that I have come to the heterodox conclusion that there are no such things as independently created species - that species are only strongly defined varieties. I know that this will make you despise me.' How species changed from their ancestral stock, he had come to understand from the 'agriculturists & horticulturists.' `I believe I see my way pretty clearly on the means used by nature to change her species and adapt them.' Hooker, he said, had already read his section on geographical distribution and `had never been so much staggered about the permanence of species."'
Gray was fascinated, admitting his long-held belief `that there is some law, some power inherent in plants,' causing variants to appear. `I suppose this is your starting point,' he ventured - and then asked ,can you get at the law of variation'? This was Darwin's cue. He knew that Gray had not cottoned on; they had similar interests but were working on separate lines. On 5 September he did what he told Wallace was impossible in a letter. He sent Gray a detailed account of his views, explaining the difficulties he faced, the `frightful' problems of embryology, facts which had kept him orthodox the
[page] 457
<SNIP to page 474>
Darwin
He struggled on through April, stripping off the references, smoothing the text, and removing the umpteen illustrations of every esoteric point. Finally he had boiled down Natural Selection to its core theory in 155,000 words. It was a most atypical science book for the age, turgid but saleable.
Lyell agented it, selling the idea to John Murray. Murray had one of the best back lists in London, with the Principles of Geology, Hooker's Himalayan Journals, Darwin's Journal, Layard's Nineveh, Grote's Greece, and even a Muck Manual for farmers, and he was already planning his autumn leads - an account of the search for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, Wellington's dispatches, and Samuel Smiles's Self-Help. `Does he know at all the subject of the book'? Darwin asked. There was some worry; after all, Murray had rejected Martineau's Eastern Life for its `infidel tendency.' Darwin added a PS to Lyell. `Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable'? - by which he meant that `I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c. &c.' Murray was reassured by Lyell, and indeed broke his cardinal rule and agreed to publish the manuscript sight unseen, offering Darwin two-thirds of the net proceeds.
Being a practical man, Murray was more concerned with the title. Darwin was set to call it An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties through Natural Selection, and even with the Victorians' propensity for top-heavy titles Murray saw the profits draining away. Sample chapters went off to him, including the `dry and dull' one on distribution that Hooker's children had enjoyed, accompanied by the squeal, `God help him if he tries to read it.' Darwin thought it `will be popular to a certain extent ... amongst scientific and semi-scientific men,' but not with the literary set; and it was too `intolerably dry and perplexing' to sweep Vestiges-like through the novel-grubbing middle class." Murray must have agreed because he anticipated printing only 500 copies.
In late May Darwin's health failed again, but a week's hydropathy fortified him for the proofs. He needed it; the prose appalled him in print, and he made drastic revisions, blackening pages and pinning notes to the smudged mess, offering to defray the cost. Through late June he continued chopping and changing; `my corrections are terrifically heavy,' he told Lyell. He bemoaned the `miserable' mire to Hooker; but the man was `deep in the mud' of his own proofs, writing up the flora of Darwin's favourite colony, Tasmania. Here Hooker publicly signalled support for Darwin. Not that he would
[page] 474
Breaking Cover
compare his effort with the Origin of Species. That, Hooker beamed, would be like putting `a ragged handkerchief beside a Royal Standard.' Huxley too was generous. He had only one cavil: that domestic races 'originating from a single stock (say bulldogs and greyhounds, descendants of the same wild dog) do not produce sterile offspring when crossed, as distinct wild species do. Until breeders achieved this degree of separation - actually made new species from a single stock - the analogy with natural selection remained incomplete. `You speak of finding a flaw in my hypothesis,' Darwin rallied him, `& this shows you do not understand its nature. It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw & holes as sound parts.' But `I can carry in it my fruit to market for a short distance over a gentle road; not I fear that you will give the poor rag such a devil of a shake that it will fall all to atoms; & a poor rag is better than nothing to carry one's fruit to market in.'
Darwin was `as weak as a child' by September and barely able to carry anything, however delicately. He planned a long sojourn at a spa when it was all over, perhaps the new one beside the bleak Yorkshire moors, at Ilkley, suitably remote from anywhere. Through fits of sickness and gloom he trudged on, scrawling on the revised sheets, driven by `an insanely strong wish to finish my accursed book' and `banish the whole subject from my mind!' Murray absorbed the enormous £72 bill for corrections and upped his estimate of the Origin's saleability, fixing to print 1250 copies and setting the publication date for November. The title continued to evolve under Murray's selective pressure. It had slimmed down to On the Origin of Species and Varieties by Means of Natural Selection, when Darwin improved matters more by docking `and Varieties.'
Clean sheets of the `abominable volume' went off to Lyell. Darwin remained `foolishly anxious' about his verdict, keen for him `to come round,' more so than for `any other dozen men.' Lyell did indeed give Darwin `very great kudos,' and others noted `how eager Charles Lyell is ... about Darwin's forthcoming book on Species.' But then, as Lyell's relative Bunbury admitted, it is `sure to be very curious and important ... however mortifying it may be to think that our remote ancestors were jelly fishes.' Lyell was still grappling with imponderables, still sensing that `the dignity of man is at stake.' How to accept a soulless ape ancestor while saving human face? Darwin had little sympathy. `I am sorry to say that I have no "consolatory view" on the dignity of man. I am content that man will probably advance, and care not much whether we are looked at as mere savages in a remotely distant future."'
[page] 475
Far reaches of the four corners. Globe Trotter. Stretching light across the heavens in a moments time. A particular permanent wave. A wave of saints led by the King of Kings, who is light. Knees begin to bend as they shake in fear. It is time for the wrath of the Lamb to appear.
Isa 40:22
22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
You must submit your will grasshopper.
Brother, I have been reading to many posts by f.Christian, it kind of feels good.
This is just factually wrong. As I noted, and documented, Darwin was passionately oppossed to slavery
If he was, he never said so in his public writings which is what matters. In those he spread racial hatred. In addition he also, in his private correspondence to others went so far as advocating the extermination of inferior races. The man was a lying hypocrite in addition to all his other character failures:
"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."
Darwin to Graham, July 3, 1881.
Read the Bible yourself. You are not being kept from it. You have no excuse for not understanding it.
Mat 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: Mat 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth [his] sheep from the goats: Mat 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Mat 25:34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: Mat 25:35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Mat 25:36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Mat 25:37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed [thee]? or thirsty, and gave [thee] drink? Mat 25:38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took [thee] in? or naked, and clothed [thee]? Mat 25:39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? Mat 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me. Mat 25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: Mat 25:42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: Mat 25:43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Mat 25:44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Mat 25:45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of the least of these, ye did [it] not to me. Mat 25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
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