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.
Yes, clearly gore3000 -- who assured us in the message you responded to that Darwin was "a charlatan [who] did not know beans about biology" -- surpasses even the world's oldest and most prestigious professional scientific society in his authority. Sadly gore3000's guidance was not available when The Royal Society of London awarded Darwin its Royal Medal for Natural Science in 1853 (well before his evolutionary views were known) in recognition of his comprehensive series of monographs on the systematics, anatomy and physiology Cirripedia (Barnacles). I.e.:
DARWIN, Ch. (1851): A monograph of the fossil Lepadidae: or, pedunculated cirripeds of Great Britain.
DARWIN, Ch. (1851): A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. The Lepadidae: or pedunculated cirripeds.
DARWIN, Ch. (1854): A monograph of the fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain.
DARWIN, Ch. (1854): A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. The Balanidae (or sessile cirripedes), the Verrucidae etc.
On the other hand Darwin continues to be frequently cited by modern cirripedists, and his monographs are still found in biological libraries due to this continuing currency, so I suppose it is not to late for gore3000 to inform these scientists and librarians of their error!
How dumb can you get? Even allowing that this is you . . .
Your chronology is all messed up. The Miller experiment of the early 50s retains its importance. A meteorite strike in 1969 isn't going to call off an experiment that had been completed 15 years before in any event.
The point of both lines of evidence, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial amino acid synthesis, is that the imagined shortage of organics on the early earth is just that--imagined.
g3 still claims he can prove that there is NO junk DNA. He can explain every single base pair. I'm just asking him to post it. No one else has this information. A couple dozen articles doesn't cover a single human chromosome. Where's the beef?
Like all charlatans, the evolutionists always claim that the proof will be found. They have been saying that for 150 years, and they still have not found it.
I said nothing of the sort. I do think that our best chance of observing pre-biotic soup is under the ice of those moons.
If you want to engage in conversation, you need to listen and respond to whbat other people said.
BTW, why do you figure that all the great apes share the same genetic defect? Or whay embryonic whales have legs? You know what a guilty conscience is, don't you? It's when you try to lie to yourself.
Nope. You are wrong once again - as usual. You can not even understand simple English, let alone the wonderful simplicities of evolutionary science.
I said "From you point of view? When hell freezes over."
From your point of view there are no facts that move you from the wrong headed notion that the bible is an authoritative source for science.
Simply breathtaking!
I wander if g3k is any kin to the former VP, or if f.Christian is a any kin to the mutineer? Strange names for Frepers!
(The non-conformist in me made me do it.)
Bummer.
Actually I took that handle as joke on Al around the election. Conservatives always understand the joke, liberals do not.
An' dey didn't show respect. So you made 'em an offer dey couldn' refuse.
An' now dey sleep wit' da fishes.
Not really. I don't think I have ever seen a single non-evolutionist ever support abiogenesis on these threads, not one. Only evolutionists believe that abiogenesis is possible. Abiogenesis is the attempt to take the "God did not do it" atheistic/materialistic philosophy of Darwinism back even further. Most evolutionists have no problem with that at all. Most of them love the idea. The only reason some go around talking as you is that they know that by connecting the two they will just end up making evolution laughable instead of strengthening their atheistic position.
In addition, abiogenesis is almost a necessary proof of the theory of evolution. After all, if one admits that God exists, there is no necessity to evolution. The answer to a question can then completely legitimately be "God did it". And indeed that is the case because after all what are miracles except God's involvement in what goes on in the world? So yes, if evolutionists cannot prove abiogenesis, their theory is very weak indeed.
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