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.
It's not just American, you're dealing with a worldwide conspiracy here.
I don't anticipate you proving anything to them either, not because of conspiracy, but because of lack of merit.
Sounds close so far, except it's missing an element of continuity. If, for example, your conditions state that landing on heads is more advantageous, then with each flip that is heads, the next flip should be even more likely to be heads. Say that after each heads flip, you add 50mg weight to the heads side.
Check comment 136, and we'll go through the list.
No it hasn't, you have. It is just accepted that evolution is the best scientific explanation so far, and it has withstood so many scientific attacks (attempts at falsification) that it is generally believed that the theory as a whole may never be falsified. But in science it often happens that old theories are displaced by new ones, and evolution is no exception to this possibility.
Well, there goes the physics and chemistry I took. Come to think of it, there was no mention of God in all my computer science courses either -- they're out.
What a dumb nation we'd end up being if you had your way.
You mean to live without the practical benefits of scientific theories that themselves haven't been proven yet. Relativity hasn't been proven (and Quantum people think it may be completely false), yet millions get their energy from nuclear power. A theory need not be proven in order to be useful.
The worst part about your misunderstanding of science is that if you had your way, all science would stop. We'd declare a theory "proven" and thus all need for further research would stop -- why work more when it's been proven? The scientific method never proves theories, and the work of discovery always continues, refining, replacing, correcting, but never proving.
Yet he also admitted his ignorance and predicted that according to his model, many things must be found. And guess, what, they were, long after his death. That's evidence.
As I said, if you're going to go ad hominem, let's start with the misogynist Paul, then we'll move to that drunkard Noah, and then the immorality of half the other characters said by God to be good. Moses even lied to Pharoah's face! "Let my people go" yeah, to the desert for a few days to worship is what he said to Pharoah and to which Pharoah finally agreed, not to go free, yet they took off. So much for honesty.
The predictions were made before the discoveries. The fossil record so far has not contradicted evolution theory. And check out the evolution of the horse for example.
I have no problems with attacks on Darwin in themselves. He was not the greatest of men and clearly, as you've shown, had his faults. It is trying to attack his theories by showing his character that is out of line.
It is also quite interesting that you equate an attack on Darwin as an attack on the Bible.
The only reason for the Bible mention was that those are people you admire, and the Bible is the source for your creation myths. If evolution can be falsified by showing Darwin was a bad man, then the Bible can be falsified by showing those characters were also bad.
Darwinism is your religion.
I have no religion. If people were to propose "Darwinism" to me as a religion, on religious precepts, with only Darwin's written words as the absolute truth, I would reject it too.
Since we're going after general concepts and theories in this thread, and not purely one written book, let's widen it.
Name 100 instances of Christianity and its teachings and tenets being misused by evildoers. Shouldn't be hard at all. Don't forget that number includes Hitler.
Here you give a very good example of the scientific method as applied to the theory of evolution at work. Individual scientists may not agree with the accepted methods of the theory, and when given scientific reasons for doing so are not derided or laughed at, but their ideas are accepted by many as possibilities.
Notice that none of these scientists are rejecting evolution theory, just arguing about its mechanisms. Science at work, it's lovely, as opposed to "The Bible says so, end of discussion."
And what color is the sky on your planet?
There is no mystery her as far as evolutionists are concerned. We are quite clear, and perfectly consistent, in holding that no scientific theory logically entails any conclusion regarding either the existence or non-existence of a super-natural realm or supernatural entities, and hold that such opinions are necessarily extra-scientific. Even the evolutionists here who happen to be atheists seem to agree in this.
There are, of course, those scientific atheist types who believe that evolution and other scientific theories do imply atheism, but this view is not held by any freepers in the evolution camp so far as I can tell. (On one occasion I even offered to make a ten dollar donation for each example from FR's extensive archives of an evolutionist clearly arguing that the theory implies atheism, but had not a single taker.)
OTOH it is a number of creationists and IDers here who assert (often enough quite explicitly) that one particular theory (evolution) carries implications (in this case negative ones, apparently) regarding the supernatural, whereas nearly all other scientific theories do not. The closest we can ever get to an explanation of how evolution implies atheism is something to the effect that it "leaves God out". They problem is that every other theory in every other field of science "leaves God out," but this is never considered by creationists to imply atheism except in the case of one particular theory in biology.
The point to all this is that your correspondent (Virginia-American) was not egaging in incantation, but simply expressing the continuing puzzlement on the part of evolutionists here as to why the indifference of scientific theories to the supernatural is happily tolerated by creationists (in this case by gore3000) in every instances save one.
In truth we all know what the reason is, and we all know that these pretensions about only opposing "atheistic materialism" is hypocritical posturing without any principled and consistent philosophical foundation.
Do you think God was high when he created the Duck Billed Platapus? Joan Osborn seemed to think so in her song "What if God Smoked Cannibus."
Since you do not believe in micro evolution or transitional species, you need to have some explaination for this creature that lays eggs and nurses its young.
Proven impossibility?
Where, when, how, by whom?
Quite correct, as I argued for you in message #122:
there are no arguments or observations that entail with logical necessity that the Heliocentric Theory is true... [T]he evidence for the heliocentric theory is very, very, very strong, such that it is perverse to deny it confident, if formally tentative, assent. But a very, very, very strong case is not the same as a "proof". A proof is a demonstration that a proposition is not merely irrefutable as a practical matter, or on the basis of present knowledge, but rather that it must be true, regardless of any possible future discoveries. NO scientific claim has this characteristic. ALL scientific claims are subject to revision, replacement or abandonment as may be required by future discoveries, or the creation of stronger theories.
What do you disagree with above? Do you think, along with gore3000, that some scientific theories (such as the heliocentric theory) should be stamped as "proved" and thereby exempted from the otherwise universal requirement that that theories remain vulnerable to the results of continuing investigation of nature?
You creationists need to work on your talking points. On the one hand you whine about being the victims of supposed scientific dogmatism, and on the other hand you are working hard to assert a (invalid) philosophical basis for scientific dogmatism with this false notion that scientific theories are "proven".
Sure it does: Survival
For example, consider "Creationism" as a gene defect. Creationism evolved as the answer to Bronze Age man's quest for understanding the universe. As the gene of modern science evolved, Creationism is slowly being killed off by this new a better gene of understanding the universe. One of Creationism's last gasp attempts at survival is the modern ID gene mutation. This mutation evolved in a myth hostile environment and it too will soon become extinct.
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