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.

Just as an aside, I'm not against the theory of evolution per se, I'm just against the evolution nuts.

I appeciate your honest response. I agree that science education in high school is pathetic generally. I think my cat could do a better job. She trained me to let her out all hours of the day and night, and wait for her to come in.

I think the confusion in biology begins with the incredible amount of information available. The number of observations is in the trillions even discounting all the material gathering dust in boxes in different institutions' basements. And it stretches from animal behavior in the wild to molecular biochemistry. My dad's been taking a new synthetic catecholamine for his heart. I've been tracking down some of the details of its interaction and I've got thousands of pages of material to go through.

Just this next month alone, we have lecturers coming from Johns Hopkins U and Humbodlt U in Berlin, to talk about chromosomal translocations and methylation of genes. These are the only two I can remember. The schedule is several pages long. Each entry gets a one line description.

There's a lot of money to be made by someone who can figure out how to make all this information easily available.

Happy Easter!

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.

Then you should get interested in Astronomy and Cosmology. The field is going wild with all the new observations.

And let's not forget, it was the "brilliant" scientists of the day who wanted to kill Galileo for stating that the planet earth revolved around the sun, and not vice-versa.

Since one can't be off-thread on a crevo thread...

Actually it was for saying that the earth spun, which caused the tides. Galileo didn't believe the moon caused the tides because that would be astrology and therefore, a superstition. Mostly the other guys were jealous because a couple of the popes were Galileo's students and Galileo drew pensions from two Italian kingdoms.

There's a book published in the last couple years in English of Galileo's daughter's letters to him from the monastary. Its tedious to read, but full of gems. Galileo's letters to his daughter were destroyed by the Reverend Mother (his daughter?) to prevent them falling into the hands of his accusers.

Scientists are merely self-important idiots who insist on proof in a world where none exists... a fact which they bear out by beginning all of their "experiments" with a pre-conceived goal, and then continuing those models until they find one which fits their flawed theory.

Someone's been watching me balance my checkbook again.

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man.

That's part of the statement as well.

You keep forgetting that you said no arguments or observations can logically entail any scientific proposition. If no arguments can, it follows that no arguments invoking "theories" can either. Get it?

I probably should have left out the word "arguments," but I am not "forgetting" this. This is part of my point. Observations test theories because they either confirm or contradict deductions from the theory. IOW a theory (or rather the proposition "this theory is true") implies that certain facts should or should not be observed.

If theories are entailed by a set of facts, then testing them by means of facts would be pointless. The only sense in which facts might be said to entail theories at all is in the weak sense of mere compatibility, but this is useless as there will always be an infinite number of theories that are logically consistent with any given collection of facts or observations.

Of course it is certainly necessary that a good theory be consistent with known facts, but that is a minimal requirement. It is additionally necessary that additional facts beyond those currently known are deducible from the theory.

You are confused about a very simple point. That 'no arguments or observations can logically entail P' is somehow consistent with 'an argument invoking Q logically entails P'.'

I don't understand what you are trying to say here at all.

What you need to do is cut the rhetoric, the sophistry and the misrepresentations. I have asked you for facts supporting the theory of evolution and all you give is a long discussion on the meaning of the word "is" and the meaning of the word "alone". You clearly are being deceitful and trying to cover up the fact that there is absolutely no scientific proof of evolution, none at all. I have told you several times how scientific theories give proof: by experiments, by formulas which can be tested, by applying the theories to everyday problems and many other ways. You continue to fail to give the proofs which other scientific theories certainly do give.

Alright, squeeze your eye tightly shut, put your hands over your ears, and click here.

O.K., now go back to pretending like this never happened.

I love this quote from Dr. Feynman.

"... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd. I'm going to have fun telling you about this absurdity, because I find it delightful. Please don't turn yourself off because you can't believe Nature is so strange. Just hear me all out, and I hope you'll be as delighted as I am when we're through. "

- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), from the introductory lecture on quantum mechanics reproduced in QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Feynman 1985).

Actually there are multiple contributing factors, but how it happens doesn't matter -- what matters is that it happens, that is evolution.

Wrong. A theory that does not say how something happened is not a theory at all. As I say, the evolutionists keep saying that the theory of evolution is true, yet they cannot even say exactly what the theory is. A theory cannot be proven if there is no theory!

"Eugenicis is hardly "Darwinistic". At best it's a perversion of evolution, attempting to force-fit biological events to a social structure."

No it is not a perversion of evolution, it is the heart of evolution. Darwin himself advocated eugenics in his Descent of Man, as I already showed on this thread.

Gulity conscious

guilty conscious.....(sic)

Fletch- - - that sounds like a phrase YOU would craft in your own demented and inimitable phrase-crafting genius...(I think the poster MEANT guilty CONSCIENCE but actually created an entirely unique sort of malaprop, Norm-Crosby-ism!)

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?

I never said such a thing or even implied it - that's why you could not quote me on anything in your response. I also realize that you wish to divert the discussion away from evolution and talk about religion. Sorry, I will not play that game.

Its speculation. To "prove" that all DNA has a purpose,

That junk DNA is not junk is not speculation at all. This has been proven. The speculation came from the evolutionists who were looking for a way to make their theory believable. Here's proof that although we may not know what it does, fooling around with "junk DNA" is as dangerous to the organism as fooling around with genetic DNA:

Sidransky and his colleagues set out to develop a better technique based on changes in junk DNA--genetic material that doesn't appear to encode proteins. The team found that repeating sequences of bases, called microsatellites, mutate when the bladder cells become cancerous, omitting or adding sequences. Comparing junk DNA in bladder cells and normal cells of 21 patients who had been treated for bladder cancer, the researchers were able to diagnose a recurrence of the tumor in 10 of 11 patients--as well as to issue a clean bill of health to 10 patients.
From: Junk DNA Tips off Tumor Comeback

So let's see, what species ancestral to the platypus had the following features: -me-

So, you admit that God was high when he created the Duck Billed Platypus.

Stop misrepresenting my statements. I quite convincingly showed in my previous response to you that rock and rollers high on drugs are not a good source for scientific information. It seems like your only answer to questions about evolution is to bash religion. Very, very lame.

the list of links.

If you cannot bother to post the proof of evolution, I cannot bother to read it. If you cannot find it, I will not look for it for you. The utter arrogance of evolutionists to tell their opponents to prove their theories for them is unbelievable. It is also unbelievably lame.

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