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.
Bilge? You don't relate the nits you pick in the background material to the evolutionary pathway presented in the later part. You assume / hope that any scoffing you can do anywhere tarnishes the conclusion. You fly through the text finding gaps in the author's (perhaps anybody's) research. Are gaps proof of IC?
But, most tellingly, while you attack the completeness of the presentation, you dodge the author's key point:
But view it as a secretory structure, it is NOT IC, remove the filament and it still works, remove the hook and it still works, remove the motor and it still works, not as well as with the motor, but it still works.An AndrewC reply is my idea of "all giftwrap, no present."Thus, if the flagella is a secretory system that has been co-opted for a motile function (while still retaining some of it's secretory function), then the ICness of the system is in the mind of the beholder, and a clear path for it's evolution is opened up.
The text of deleted posts still shows and can be replied to on the "My Comments" screen. It's a bug that probably won't be around forever.
Yes, gore's a cute one. His own proclivities to spout abuse are well known, but don't call him on his own behavior!
gore3000: Who cares?
Not you.
gore3000: It still does not tell you if the organism from which it came from had the features of the platypus or not.
It tells you that it had the skull of something more like a platypus than even the platypus's nearest relative, the echidna.
Therefore does not tell you if it was a platypus or not.
It tells you that, if you're looking for extinct relatives of the platypus, this is one.
Therefore it does not tell you if it was the ancestor of the platypus.
It tells you that, if you're looking for extinct relatives of the platypus, this is one.
Absolutely, bilge. The story is just so. There was more evidence for the Mesonychus, Worms, and Lynx and you know where they went.
The challenge of the argumentum ad Behe is that there's supposedly no way an IC thing (which turns out to have lots of non-essential parts) could have evolved at all. But, when it becomes obvious that the thing at least could have evolved, the next ditch ("Where's the evidence for that?") is always retreated to without acknowledgement.
I forget what you think you did on worms. Lynx, I remember. You attempted to demonstrate, or attempted to appear to demonstrate, that nothing Malthusian is going on when lynxes and hares overpopulate and crash in staggered cycles. As someone once told you, you don't score nearly the points you think with your style of argument. Why do you assume no one but you can see through essentially transparent attempts at razzle-dazzle?
That is because with just so stories, anything "could" have evolved. That is Dawkins faulty assertion.
You, both times.
[Clack][Clack]
I'll dig up more info on the poor starving Lynx if you really want to bring that up again. There is a paper showing that Lynx move (nearly 3000 miles IIRC) rather than die as you contend.
The point is, by showing the manner in which something may have evolved the author is demonstrating that one need not rely upon "Godidit" as an explanation. Whether the evolution in question occurred as stated is irrelevant insofar as it illustrates that such processes could take place without resorting to the supernatural.
The point is, by showing the manner in which something may have evolved the author is demonstrating that one need not rely upon "Godidit" as an explanation. Whether the evolution in question occurred as stated is irrelevant insofar as it illustrates that such processes could take place without resorting to the supernatural.
In your dreams. I realize you need to believe this about No-Kin, but that will never be my problem.
I'll dig up more info on the poor starving Lynx if you really want to bring that up again. There is a paper showing that Lynx move (nearly 3000 miles IIRC) rather than die as you contend.
You brought it up; do as you please. That starving lynxes look for redder snowfields elsewhere is no shock. That many still starve would be no surprise either. When the hares get scarce, they tend to get scarce all over.
Anything supposedly irreducibly complex could have, yes, so arguments that it could not possibly have are just wrong. All that is needed is some kind of scaffolding effect. In the flagellum case, the "scaffolding" is its secretory function.
That depends on your definition of "supernatural".
You even give more credence to the author's argument than he does. He only suggests a possibility. The word is credulous.
Credulous? For not resorting to the "My Invisible Friend" explanation just because a particular non-magical scenario isn't nailed down? Shouldn't claims involving supernatural beings be the ones that have to be nailed down solidly?
Why provide anything that is rejected a priori?
Yet here is the argument to which you are blind.
The recognition of the fundamentally biological nature of genetic change and of cellular potentials for information processing frees our thinking about evolution. In particular, our conceptual formulations are no longer dependent on the operation of stochastic processes. Thus, we can now envision a role for computational inputs and adaptive feedbacks into the evolution of life as a complex system. Indeed, it is possible that we will eventually see such information-processing capabilities as essential to life itself.
Referenced previously and often.
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