Posted on 03/24/2002 7:03:09 PM PST by scripter
Scientists urge 'academic freedom' to teach both sides of issue
Posted: March 24, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Julie Foster © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
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.
The statement reads, in its entirety:
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.
We oppose:
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 bacterial flagellum for one. You can see an explanation of it here: Bacterial Flagellum.
The method of proof is by showing that the different parts of the structure are so specific and so interconnected that they would be useless for anything except working with the other parts. The idea for intelligent design came about from the discussions pro and against evolution in the 19th century. Specifically from Darwin's quote below:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. "
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", Chapter 6.
That was mine, my first deletion ever!!! In response to another poster's frustration with a certain participant in this thread, I compared said participant to a poorly programmed chatterbot with no learning function.
'Twas indeed ad hominem, but openly and intentionally so.
Ah, but my dear friend, if you'd gone on to read the next sentence (and obviously you didn't): "But I can find out no such case". And no such case has been found, darling.
See my post, just above this one to Virginia.
You are putting the cart before the horse. It is evolution which has been claiming for some 150 years that it is true, that it is science. Yet it cannot show the truth of its statements that species evolved gradually all the way from insignificant bacteria to humans. Where is the proof of evolution?
Perfect example of evolutionist arrogance, nothing can be said except what they say. I talked about intelligence. I said that the evolutionists give selection the qualities of intelligence, memory and thinking. No natural "force" can have those qualities, yet nothing without those qualities can design anything. So you and your fellow evolutionists may not be saying the above because it is totally absurd, but you are certainly trying to imply it. Selection cannot create anything. Selection is a purely destructive force. It can only cull what already exists, it cannot create anything new. Evolutionists have never been able to prove therefore how anything new has arisen that would justify their claim that selection achieved the turning of a miserable amoeba into a human being.
No it is not working on the 10th toss and that is the great lie of evolution - that it just takes a little mutation to achieve great things. I have already explained how because of genetics even after such a great change is accomplished it would be very hard to spread it through a large population. In order for evolution to have been responsible for the descent of man from an amoeba thousands of new genes, thousands of new proteins, thousands of new characteristics had to have arisen. These things could only have arisen by the creation of new genes and to make a gene that works takes a large amount of random tries and each one up to the last is the first try. The reason is simple - selection does not know what it is looking for, selection cannot act on a gene that is not working yet. Selection can only act when the gene is complete and in working order. So you cannot create a gene through selection, it can created by random chance and that is an almost total impossibility.
From a God's eye perspective, you haven't proved anything. It's not the kind of proof required in mathematics. The events can't be re-run in a laboratory. But people are executed based on this kind of reasoning.
Okay, since you say that evolution can provide at least the same kind of proof as given in court, let's see the proof of macro-evolution from the above perspective which you claim already exists.
No they do not, genetics teaches us it is very hard to spread a new gene. In fact, it is because of the difficulty in spreading new genes that Gould broke from the Darwinians and started punk-eek and why Kirmura broke from them also and developed the theory of genetic drift.
First of all, read my post#193 where I explain why it does contradict evolution. For a full explanation on the theory and how it works go here:
There's a difference between non-theistic and atheistic. Evolution is atheistic. It is also not science. Note how the evolutionists never give any proof for their theory but just try violently to deny that any proof of any scientific theory is impossible.
No, it's called "logic". Who said anything about evolution having intelligence?"
Perfect example of evolutionist arrogance, nothing can be said except what they say. I talked about intelligence.
You were responding to me and you were criticizing what I had written. Your comments about intelligence didn't make any sense in the context. Now you make up silly insults. Just deal with the question.
I said that the evolutionists give selection the qualities of intelligence, memory and thinking.
An utterly false statement, but I understand that it is one you probably believe. That would be your own short-sightedness at work. You can't imagine a process that doesn't involve intelligence so you believe others think as you do. You are wrong.
No natural "force" can have those qualities, yet nothing without those qualities can design anything.
No problem, life isn't designed.
So you and your fellow evolutionists may not be saying the above because it is totally absurd, but you are certainly trying to imply it.
No, we're not saying it.
Selection cannot create anything. Selection is a purely destructive force. It can only cull what already exists, it cannot create anything new.
Selection is only part of the process.
Evolutionists have never been able to prove therefore how anything new has arisen that would justify their claim that selection achieved the turning of a miserable amoeba into a human being.
See above.
Now deal with what we were actually talking about. Your suggested falsification is not a falsification. Does your silence imply that you finally acknowledge this?
I was not referring to me, I was referring to the great scientists who you malign with your statements about science. If science had proven nothing, if science had not advance knowledge, if science had not given us useful applications from their theories, we would still be living in caves. It is an insult to both these scientists and to the intelligence of the readers of this thread to say that science proves nothing.
Don't you evolutionists see what ridiculous nonsense you are spouting in order to defend your theory? Are you telling us that the earth does not revolve around the sun are or you just indulging in time-wasting semantics and sophistry?
See above.
You tell me where the proof is above. I see none except double-talk. Where is the scientific proof that man descended from a simple amoeba? Where? And no the magical word "selection" proves nothing.
Really? Where's the proof of the gradual evolution of the bacterial flagellum? Or of the gradual evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes? Or of the bat's sonar system?
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