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.
I always wondered why they don't demand to include God in quantum mechanics for instance: ... and the electron tunnels through the barrier, so God will (or should I say insh'Allah).
You are quite wrong on that. The examples given were from his published works. His mysoginism, racism and immoral barbarism are part of the theory of evolution. Darwin catered to the lowest instincts in man - that is the reason for its popularity.
Who says that it has to be answered here on earth? As I 've mentioned, it is quite clear that the ID math model of life origins on earth says that there isn't enough time for such complexity to have come about by naturalistic processes. This ID model isn't the only such model or speculation from those out of the evolutionary field itself. It is simply a recognition of a very REAL problem that's been known in the evolution camp for some time. The mathmaticians simply put numbers to an already known problem with the EvoTheory itself. It IS part of the scientific process to propose solutions to KNOWN PROBLEMS with any theory. The time/complexity problem has been a KNOWN PROBLEM with EvoTheory WITHIN ITS OWN FIELD for at least three decades.
The proposal that earth was "seeded" by intelligent life from outside our system says that life originated elsewhere. Once we get to this particular ELSEWHERE, it will probably be quite clear in that DIFFERENT SYSTEM how life came about.
There IS CONSIDERABLE data on EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE. There are renowned projects in the scientific community SEARCHING FOR extra-terrestrial life. They are funded with serious dollars by institutions of higher learning and by dollars from the government itself. There are RESPONSIBLE sightings of objects and phenomena that are unexplained but which are clearly indicative of ETI.
Do you believe that this vast universe contains only OUR intelligent life form? Saying "yes" to that question is as religious a statement as to say that the earth was created in 6 days.
If we have to wait to get the answers in perspective because the data doesn't fit here, then so be it. I'm an adult. I can handle it. Everything doesn't have to start and end with earth and man.
You ask ten evolutionists what the theory of evolution is and you get twelve answers. Some theory! Evolutionists cannot even tell you what the theory is!
Makes one wonder how an evolutionist could ever go on a plane! I mean, trusting one's life on what they consider a totally unproven theory seems totally insane!
You constantly repeat the mantra that the theory of evolution is valid while at the same time you deny that any proof of it is possible. If there is no proof then how can it be a valid theory? If there is no proof, how can it be called science. If there is no proof how is it different from an atheistic/materialistic belief?
No it hasn't, you have. It is just accepted that evolution is the best scientific explanation so far,"
If there is no proof for it then it is not science, it is a belief. Your continued insistence that it is science in the absence of any proof shows that the claims of evolution are totally bogus and that it does not belong in the public schools but its own church.
Wrong on several counts. Physics and chemistry are proven sciences, evolution is not. They also do not purport to prove that religion is false. In addition to which, you can teach biology perfectly well without teaching evolution. In fact, IMHO you can teach it better without teaching evolution.
Wrong, the applications of the theory prove the theory correct. Everything you see around you is proof, practical proof of some scientific theory. You think that if the theory of gravity was false we could have made it to the moon by using it? Of course not. As I said, you set a ridiculous standard of proof in order to excuse the failures of your theory.
Further, even by your own admission above, a scientific theory needs be useful. What benefits to mankind has the theory of evolution provided?
How is that proof of anything? How is that proof of the correctness of his theory? When one bases a theory on false assumptions, the theory itself is false. A building cannot stand when its columns fall. Let's see how much of Darwin's phony theory has been disproven:
1. His racist brachyo-cephalic index for lower species has been shown to be a farce.
2. His numerous statements on apes being the progenitor of man have been shown to be false.
3. His theory that the characteristics of each parent "melded" in the children was proven wrong by Mendellian genetics.
4. The fossil record, 150 years later still does not show gradual evolution.
5. His hero, Malthus, the original chicken little, has been proven wrong by the tenfold increase in humanity while nutrition improved.
The biggest scientific refutation of Darwin though is that he never gave an iota of proof for macro-evolution and that now, 150 years later, the proof looks even less likely to ever be found than it was when he made his totally unfounded assumption.
As I already told you, the quotes were from his theory. His theory is mysogenist, racist and barbaric. Let me give another quote on the barbarism of the theory of evolution from the concluding paragraph of the "Origins':
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life,
Some grandeur! War and famine he calls grandeur! As I said, the bad qualities pointed out are intrinsic to the theory of evolution.
I have, it's phony. The starting point of it is a re-classified and renamed skeleton from a hyrax, a totally different genus from the horse.
Furthermore, if evolution were to be true, the examples of gradual evolution in the fossil record should be the rule not the exception. An example or two of gradualism (even if they were valid) is not proof.
Okay, this I have to see. Tell me how the murderer of Christians and Jews misused the teachings of the Bible. You make a lot of broad accusations, let's see you prove them with specifics.
No, they are arguing about the theory itself. The theory that Darwin posited. That evolution occurs gradually. The theories of Gould and Kirmura have just as many problems as those of Darwin but different ones. Gradual evolution is the foundation of Darwinism and it has been totally blown out even by its friends - thanks to as I mentioned when this discussion started Mendelian genetics.
Well put. One of the opponents of teaching "Intelligent Design" in Science courses criticizes it because it cannot be examined by the Scientific Method. "We don't study theology, simply because nobody has invented a 'theometer,'" she pithily stated.
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