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.
Nope. Darwin was just bluffing - just like he was bluffing about the eye, about the fossils, and about all the objections to his theory. He did not prove anything, all he did was try to put the burden of proof where it did not belong - on his opponents. When one proposes a theory, the burder of proof is on the proponent.
You also ignore the incorrect predictions by Darwin which are central to the theory of evolution. The man was no scientist. He was, as I have said - a charlatan.
Sure you did.
You said "Evolution is impossible."
Can you show me the written connections? This is interesting."
Here's some examples from The Descent of Man:
Civilised populations have been known under favourable conditions, as in the United States, to double their numbers in twenty-five years; and, according to a calculation, by Euler, this might occur in a little over twelve years. (57. See the ever memorable 'Essay on the Principle of Population,' by the Rev. T. Malthus, vol. i. 1826. pp. 6, 517.) ....
There is reason to suspect, as Malthus has remarked, that the reproductive power is actually less in barbarous, than in civilised races. ...
Savages, when hard pressed, encroach on each other's territories, and war is the result; but they are indeed almost always at war with their neighbours. They are liable to many accidents on land and water in their search for food; and in some countries they suffer much from the larger beasts of prey. Even in India, districts have been depopulated by the ravages of tigers.
Malthus has discussed these several checks,
Some examples from the Origin of the Species:
In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. ...
A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.
So yes, Darwin's theory is heavily dependent on Malthus's discredited chicken-little theory.
My God has a sense of humor that your God is missing.
I am asking you to explain your God's reason giving us the Platypus. You make an excellent claim that the Platypus does not fit an evolutionary pattern (that you can see).
What do you suppose God was up to when He created the Platypus. My suggestion was that He was high. What it your suggestion?
Oh, and you can also respond about the Catalina Island rattle-less rattle snakes while you are at it.
As I told you before, Hitler was a liar, and his taking the good name of God for his anti-Christian deeds does not reflect on Christianity at all. However, his basing of his barbaric deeds on the already popular Darwinian theory which more than condoned, but indeed encouraged eugenics can be firmly placed at the hands of Charles Darwin himself as the quote on post#132 amply proves.
No Darwin proposed eugenics in order to help natural selection along - just like Hitler - as the quote in post#132 amply proves.
And you are thereby limiting God to words writen by men. Words writen by men and interpreted by men.
You claim the Bible is the word of God. Since this is debate about the teaching of science, please show some scientific proof that the Bible is something other than a work of historical fiction similar to "Gone with the wind."
You keep lamely repeating the above but just keep making excuses for providing proof of your statement. Show us the proof of your statement, show is the proof of macro-evolution. And BTW bashing Christianity proves nothing except to show the truth of my statement that evolution is an atheistic/materialist philosophy.
No I do not admit that at all. I believe that every life was put here on earth for a higher purpose than just to improve the race.
Fossils are not evidence of that at all. In 99.9% of the cases all that fossils show us is bones. Bones are not such complicated things at all. The real complicated stuff such as the brains, the internal organs, the genes, the DNA, etc. are not shown at all to us by the fossil evidence. And no, size does not matter - Dinosaurs were quite larger than any other animals.
Your statement is certainly true - there are trillions of cells in the human body - and they all have to work together to make it work.
In California now there is a fight between literalists or providentialists, and biological theorists. And you get in the textbooks both Genesis and Darwinian evolutionism as two "theories" of evolution. You see what that really means? The fundamentalist theologians in California (fundamentalism was well established there at the beginning of the century) don't know what a myth is. They believe it is a theory. They're in ignorance.And the biological theorists don't know that Kant has analysed why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution. One can have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution because the sequence of forms is a mystery; it just is there and you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be explained. It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong element of myth in the theory of evolution.
So both the theoretical evolutionists and the fundamentalist theologians are illiterate. That level of illiteracy is taught in the text books as "two theories"—neither one of which is a theory.
Important to note that "myth" does not mean "wrong."
No, the point is show us a better scientific explanation for how we are here. You can't. Therefore with the way science goes, evolution stays.
What natural conditions? What experiments? What proof did those experiments give? Seems evolutionists are fast and furious at making broad statements but they are very slooooooow in backing them up.
No, his hatred of Jews had quite the Christian beginnings. He was simply continuing a centuries-old Christian tradition. He was, however, much more efficient than his previous Christian brethren.
Whether it does or it does not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that such changes are not the engine for macro-evolution. The changes in allele frequency change only small things. All humans have alleles that differ from all other humans, that is why each of us is a little bit different from each other. However, we are all the same species, we all function the same in spite of these different alleles because they do not change funtioning. Otherwise these changed alleles would destroy the functioning of the gene and result in either death or severe incapacity. For you to have macro-evolution, which is what is needed for man to have descended from one celled bacteria, you need new genes, new systems, and totally new functions. Change in allele frequency does not provide that.
Interesting reading, haven't seen those parts. Thank you.
While an idiot in predicting what will happen to the human race, Malthus would have been correct had he applied his thinking to animals. I remember the deer starving during winter because their population grew too much for the available food.
Darwin applying this principle to less developed societies of the time may be correct too, as they did not have the means to grow more, other than to have more land (the Boers in South Africa are a good example of the limits of expansion of a primitive population).
It is, of course, sheer folly to apply this concept to an industrialized society.
To get facts from you is like pulling teeth. Let's see the facts of when, how, where, what, who. Also, I fail to see how the "interstellar medium" could have a single bit of similarity with an already formed planet.
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