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 bet the Pope didn't consult with g3K before making his announcement. Failure to include the thinking of such a recognized expert has to cast the result in doubt.
</sarcasm>
D'oh!
Always with the insults, always the semantic garbage, always with the excuses. Whatever the title is, it's a lie - it proves nothing, it's just plain garbage. You always link to it, because it sounds good, hoping noone will read that trash. Post the darn thing already - I need a good laugh. Stop playing games and show your hand.
Still talking about the meaning of the word "is" and the meaning of the word "alone"? You going to law school or have you been attending the church of the kneepadder? Are you ever going to tell us what is the proof of your statement that evolution is a science or are you going to keep with the silly rhetoric which no one gives a darn about?
Continuing to repeat the lie that has already been refuted as if repeating it on and on will make it true. It is you and gumlegs that the Pope was directly speaking to about materialists who use evolution to attack the teachings of the Church. Further, if you think I am going to pay attention to the interpretation of Christian theology according to a pair of atheists like yourself and Gumlegs, you are totally insane.
I gave proof that non-coding DNA is not junk twice already. It disproved the speculation of the know-nothing evolutionists that it was just plain garbage. If you have any proof against my statement, you post it. I have not seen proof of anything from the evolutionists on this thread on anything. All you folk know how to do is talk nonsense.
No what I say, and I continue to say is that the theory of evolution is total garbage, promoted initially by a charlatan that did not know beans about biology and continued to be promoted by a bunch of sophists and liars who can never give a straight answer to a straight question. Evolution for 150 years has been saying that man descended from lower species. It has never, never given proof of it. You and your friends have never given proof of it either because you have no proof of it at all. That is why you spend your time insulting people, insulting religion and making sophistic excuses for your idiotic theory.
Hee-hee-hee. I'm not lying about anything. AndrewC merely pointed out that the Pope qualified his statement by noting that to be unobjectionable to Catholic teaching, there had to be recognition that man is a special case.
(To AndrewC: Is this the way you would understand our exchange on the Pope's statement?)
Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back; you've shown little except your own blindness.
JOHN PAUL II EVEN POINTED OUT HE WASN'T THE FIRST POPE TO ACCEPT THE POSSIBLILTY OF EVOLUTION!!
In a strange sort of way I do admire your ability to miss absolutely everything you don't like.
I don't believe Gore3000 was the first person to say that junk DNA isn't junk. The idea goes back quite a period. Over 95 percent of DNA has largely unknown function
Over 700 studies have demonstrated the role of non-coding DNA as enhancers for transcription of proximal genes. This includes a/o:
Over 60 studies have demonstrated the role of non-coding DNA as silencers for suppression of transcription of proximal genes. Such silencer genes include a/o:
This was sometime after 1996(it was not a dated reference). Things have changed, since we now have the complete genome,(or so the Clinton News conference asserted). But apparently, "junk" is not junk. Time will tell.
Oh, come on. You first.
You can point out as much as you like, and you can spin as much as you like also but the meaning of the following paragraph speaks for itself:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
From: Darwin, "The Descent of Man", Chapter V.
This may be a valid point. It would appear to be a step down if you look at the evolutionary scale from, say, mollusks to G3K.
Good post, but time has told already. That the non-coding DNA is junk was just an evolutionist assumption. That some non-coding DNA is indeed necessary has been proven already as you and I have shown. It is up to the evolutionists to prove their totally unscientific, totally baseless assumption (and I may also say - totally contradictory of their theory of survival of the fittest since clearly carrying around 95% garbage in the genome of some 50 trillion cells is a large, totally unnecessary burden and certainly not an example of "fitness").
And Kaganovitch slaughtered 7 million Ukrainians because of his hatred of Christians. Slansky helped turn Czechoslovakia into a slave labor camp because he too hated Christians. Rosa Schwartz, the sexual sadist who operated out of Kiev tortured thousands of Christians to death. Marx's real motive for his theories was to destroy Christianity. Trotsky wanted international communism in order to eliminate the bourgeois (a code name for Christian). The Rosenburgs gave the A-Bomb to the Soviets because they wanted Christian civilization wiped off the map. From 1917 on, the CHEKA, NKVD, Statsi, Polish Secret Service and other communist agencies found good recruiting grounds in those whose faith was anti Christian. One former communist mass murderer from Estonia is now hiding out in Israel because that government refuses to extradite him to face crimes against humanity
You want to blame Hitler on Christians? Explain why 150,000 Mischlinge served in the Wehrmacht and Kreigsmarine.
I would prefer to view people as individuals whose acts reflect on themselves but if you insist on playing identity politics and a faith over one billion people find solace in, there is lots more dirt to throw.
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