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 think the problem is that the Bible doesn't say it happened that way. Some people take Genesis a little too close to heart, forgetting that it originated with primitive polytheistic desert nomad tribes.
God, or the Bible's version of him?
Genesis is also incompatible with the scientific dicoveries we have made.
I feel sad when I see people whose belief in God depends upon a 2500 year old work of fiction.
The articles you reference don't explain 0.01% of the genome. THAT is a FACT.
This from the guy who's computer monitor is a clay pot full of acid with metal bars in it.
Scientist---the real kind...are coming to the conclusion that oil has nothing to with plant and animal matter.
Common bacteria create the "fossil" residue.
Sad are the ravings of lunatics---evolution---the anti-truth/reality---facts!
God and the Bible will never be sad--wrong!
Evolution will be the laughingstock of ages--eternitiy...you will pay a very dear price for!
There was a time when the majority of scientists rejected the idea of creation -- specifically the idea that the universe could have been formed at a specific, measurable moment in time.
Perhaps we are getting back to that view with string theory, but for the last 70 years, astrophysists have been following the evidence rather than preconceptions.
The Bible is already very wrong in many areas of science. God is a different matter, completely separate from any fictions written.
I'm hoping some theory comes along to replace evolution. Not because of an inherent dislike for evolution as can tell from what I've written here, but because that would just be plain exciting to live in a time of such scientific revolution. I was too late to live through Einstein's era, so maybe I can catch the theory that will replace evolution.
I don't give it very good odds though. I think I'll just keep following Quantum theory, better odds of revolution there.
Wrong, absolutely wrong. I already posted proof showing that this evolutionist prediction is absolutely false in post#375.
You posted an interesting assertion that is subject to verification. At this point in the history of biology there are far more interesting speculations than answers.
I will be watching and waiting for more answers. In the meantime, evolution is true or false, regardless of the morality of its proponents.
Everything is always in context. It is a huge mistake to assume that all the "information" required to produce an organism is encoded like a computer program in DNA. Genes depend on the vast enterprise of life to support and interpret them. All the fossil evidence suggests that this enterprise has been growing in complexity.
Your cheeky protest merely shows your fierce bias and hints at what must be serious ignorance of the facts on the other side.
I was reading recently, something to the effect that there has not been a computer created sufficiently hefty enough to calculate the odds of a very tiny fraction of a fraction of the components--I think of a human body--the eye or some such. I forget. First time I'd read that. Interesting.
Certainly there's been insufficient time in the existence of the universe for anything more than a the first syllable or even the first letter or two of the genetic code to occur by chance. . . . if my specifics are off, the principle is valid.
Even the experiments that replicated natural conditions?
What really bothers me about your ideas is that you have taken it upon yourself to limit God's omnipotent capabilities. What part of omnipotent do you not understand?
Our omnipotent God is perfectly capable of saying: "Let this next quantum event create a universe from which will spring forth stars, galaxies, planets and life from elemental particles. I have set the universal constants such that all this will occur without my needing any further intervention." What part of omnipotent do you not understand?
Man is not potent enough to plan his projects such they will work perfectly from the get go. God has no such limitations. He is perfectly capable of creating a universe such that life will evolve from what we see as random events. What part of omnipotent do you not understand?
I find it shocking that you would attempt to limit God's power to that which you, a man of limited power, can conceive. Not only is it shocking, it is an insult to the very nature of God. What part of omnipotent do you not understand?
Why do you insist that God play by your rules? Why would you want to forbid God's allowing for abiogenesis? What part of omnipotent do you not understand?
400 posted on 3/28/02 9:30 PM Hawaii-Aleutian by Jeff Gordon
God does have evolution--PLAN...
"If the Christ of God, in His sorrowful life below, be but a specimen of suffering humanity, or a model of patient calmness under wrong, not one of these things is manifested or secured. He is but one fragment more of a confused and disordered world, where everything has broken loose from its anchorage, and each is dashing against the other in unmanageable chaos, without any prospect of a holy or tranquil issue. He is an example of the complete triumph of evil over goodness, of wrong over right, of Satan over God,-one from whose history we can draw only this terrific conclusion, that God has lost the control of His own world; that sin has become too great a power for God either to regulate or extirpate; that the utmost that God can do is to produce a rare example of suffering holiness, which He allows the world to tread upon without being able effectually to interfere; that righteousness, after ages of buffeting and scorn, must retire from the field in utter helplessness, and permit the unchecked reign of evil. If the cross be the mere exhibition of self-sacrifice and patient meekness, then the hope of the world is gone. We had always thought that there was a... potent purpose---of God at work in connection with the sin- bearing work of the holy Sufferer, which, allowing sin for a season to develop itself, was preparing and evolving a power which would utterly overthrow it, and sweep earth clean of evil, moral and physical. But if the crucified Christ be the mere self-denying man, we have nothing more at work for the overthrow of evil than has again and again been witnessed, when some hero or martyr rose above the level of his age to protest against evils which he could not eradicate, and to bear witness in life and death for truth and righteousness,-in vain."
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