The evolving Darwin debate

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.

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.

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.

Even the evolutionists here who happen to be atheists seem to agree in this.

You have it backwards. Atheists are evolutionists because of their atheism. They had been looking for an atheistic explanation of life since ancient times and atomism did not quite cut it.

If there is no proof then how can it be a valid theory?

There is no proof, there's evidence, despite your claims to the contrary. That's what is required for a theory. Take advanced math if you want to get into proofs.

Pick any you like. Else you will say I picked the weakest.

The second one is pretty cool because it's the one where Darwin said about the absence of certain fossils, "The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." He was saying that if no one finds these fossils, evolution theory could fall apart.

A hundred years later, after much stumbling, infighting and doubt they were found and verified. The process itself should show you that there isn't the kind of pro-Darwin censorship you are so convinced of (the reason none of the creationist arguments are ever published in a journal). It looked like they were found by a scientist, one who didn't accept evolution either, but then the find was later discredited even though it would have made Darwin's prediction true. This scientist pushed his 'find' for the rest of his life, ignored, despite that it would clear up one of the major perceived problems with evolution theory.

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.

Item 2 in the creationist playbook: redefine science completely away from accepted definition when it turns out evolution is scientific and creationism isn't.

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 doesn't look for anything. It simply disgards bad tosses. In non-sexual organisms, fatal mutations are inconsequential because the rate of reproduction ensures plenty of good copies. In sexual reproduction, most fatal mutations are weeded out before conception.

Most mutations are neutral or non-fatal.

Your statement about genes "not working yet" implies that a stairway doesn't exist if it doesn't reach the landing. But it is possible for neutral or garbage DNA to contain partial stairways that suddenly become significant when the last board becomes available.

The existence of junk DNA is proof that previous tosses are not thrown out. Much of what is currently non-functional was probably functional in a previous context.

You are absolutely wrong. Social Darwinism was not the misuse of Darwinian theory, it was putting Darwinian theory into action:

How is that different from building and using a bomb? Does the bomb disprove chemistry and physics? Does the fact that physicist might want to kill people make killing the only proper use of physics?

Evolution was not hijacked by evil doers. Darwinism is the soul of Nazism

Let's analyze your implied Syllogism: "Darwinism is the soul of Nazism. Nazis are Darwinists. Therefore Darwinists are Nazis."

Yup, You get an A+ in pure logic. Good thing logic is the soul of your argument.

Darwin's big atheistic buddy Haeckel. Also, it was Darwin's other great buddy, the atheist Huxley who coined the term "amoral" as a defense of the immorality in Darwinian theory.

Let's see how this one scans: "Darwin had a friend who defended an immoral action. Darwin also defended immoral actions. Therefore Darwin's scientific theory is technically false."

Yup, another A+ in logic. Good thing you base your arguments on logic.

They also do not purport to prove that religion is false.

Astronomy, physics, geology, archaeology, geometry, taxonomy (classification of animals), they all disagree with the Bible at some point, just as evolution does.

You think that if the theory of gravity was false we could have made it to the moon by using it?

As has been pointed out, there is no one "Theory of Gravity" however, there are many theories as to how gravity works, and no one is quite sure of any yet. I really think we're far closer to the truth with evolution.

Newton's laws of gravity (specific mathematical formulae) were quite useful in the trip to the moon however.

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.

The jury has been in for quite some time.

There are some friends of O.J. who refuse to believe that DNA evidence proves anything -- who refuse to believe that enormous and improbable strings of nonfunctional DNA found in different species implies common ancestry.
There are some friends of O.J. who don't believe in radioactive dating and believe that earth is less than four billion years old.
There are friends of O.J. who don't believe that the continual finding of intermediate fossils implies the existence of intermediate species.
There are friends of O.J. who believe it takes a huge number of mutations to produce a large an viable structural change in an organism, and who ignore recent laboratory experiments (reported in the current Scientific American) demonstrating that a change in just a few molecules on and existing gene can dramatically alter the body plan of a fruit fly.

So I guess we have a hung jury, and you win. Truth is on your side, just like it was on O.J.'s.

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.

I believe no such thing. I say that selection is a crooked gambler that keeps its winnings and is never required to pay its debts. I say nothing about who or what entity might have rigged the game, but evolution describes the game.

His hero, Malthus, the original chicken little, has been proven wrong by the tenfold increase in humanity while nutrition improved.

We'll go over the other stuff in the other thread, but we agree here: Malthus (an Anglican pastor no less, hehehe), was an idiot.

Even after an organism is established, what has been created before is not necessarily available, because without any context, it is useless. Which is why, perhaps, DNA contains so much junk.

"Junk" is simply stuff currently in disuse. In a changed context it is available for repair and re-use.

Some grandeur! War and famine he calls grandeur! As I said, the bad qualities pointed out are intrinsic to the theory of evolution.

No one ever said evolution/nature is nice. But because something isn't pleasant, it is automatically not true? God-sanctioned barbarism abounds in the Bible too, do you not use this fact to end your belief there?

Furthermore, if evolution were to be true, the examples of gradual evolution in the fossil record should be the rule not the exception.

That is one problem with evolution. There's no way we'll ever find all of the fossils necessary to close up every little hole to make people like you happy. They'll probably find every fossil, documented evolution chains for millions of species, and you'll point to the one they can't find and say "That disproves your theory."

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.

This was in another thread. But in Mein Kampf, his speeches, private conversations and writings, he always insists that he is doing the right Christian thing, and continually proclaims himself a Christian. His troops' belt buckles even had "Gott Mit Uns" (God with us) inscribed on them. He made the Concordat with the Vatican, and therefore had no problems with the Church once its position of political power was taken care of. He strongly believed in the power of the church, as long as it was subordinate to the state.

We can play "he wasn't a real Christian" all we want in other cases, but in this case we're going for people using Christianity to evil ends, whether or not they believed it in their hearts.

"Junk" is simply stuff currently in disuse. In a changed context it is available for repair and re-use.

But the point is that it is totally out of context. in order for it to be useable, the ordering of the DNA helix must be radically altered. Even then we don't know enough about DNA in general and DNA ordering specifically to know what (if anything) will happen. All we know is that the more we learn about DNA and RNA, the more complex these supposedly simple building blocks actually are. To date chance mutations and rearrangements of DNA sequencing seem to be more deleterious than otherwise. But even of that we cannot be sure.

Even then we don't know enough about DNA in general and DNA ordering specifically to know what (if anything) will happen.

Makes it pretty tough to be a designer, also. Not much like doing a blueprint or writing a computer program. If code reuse depended on chance, you'd expect nature to be pretty cruel. You'd expect to find lots of unused sperm cells, lots pregnancies that fail in the first couple of weeks, a number of deformed and/or inadequate children. You'd expect to see a world in which millions of offspring die young for each one that survives to reproduce.

Nothing like the well ordered, designed world we actually see.

<];^)

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