The evolving Darwin debate

WorldNetDaily ^ | March 24, 2002 | Julie Foster

[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.

[PatrickHenry]

Nice post. After 30 years of solitary study, in my la-BOR-a-tory, I have decoded the genetic code. Here's the deciphered text:

Darwin was a fink.
The platypus is my chosen creature.
The fossil record is bunk.
All evolutionists are slimers.
Don't think; don't ask questions.
Join the Taliban and fight against the infidels.

I believe this is the proof we've been seeking.

[VadeRetro]

We need to keep that under our hats. Freepmailing you a black capsule.

[gore3000]

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

You object to the word spirit in the quote I gave you and argue that it should be mind not spirit. I did not change the paragraph, it was cut and pasted exactly from the article posted by an evolutionist, so you have no call at all to call me names for it.

As to the what the translation should be for the word there, I do not have the original, which is in French since the speech was given in France. However, from the context - and particularly the end of the encyclical, you can see that he meant spirit not mind.

[PatrickHenry]

Have you seen this? One Human Ancestor, Indivisible?. It's new from the Washington Post.

[Jeff Gordon]

Is that like a troll?

Exactly like ...

[VadeRetro]

Hah! It's from the communist atheist satanic Washington Post so we don't have to believe it!

A new question to ponder: am I a lumper or a splitter? One lump or two?

[VadeRetro]

So ore-gay's an oll-tray but I won't ell-tay.

[gore3000]

It tells you that it had the skull of something more like a platypus than even the platypus's nearest relative, the echidna.

As I pointed out in the post you responded to the fossil found had teeth. That means it had a different way of feeding itself than the platypus, therefore there are differences for sure between this creature and the platypus we know and love because the platypus is extremely well equipped for the way he lives and eats. What these differences are though, we cannot tell. A pile of bones (and in this case just the head) cannot answer the question posed to you: what exact animal has the traits from which the peculiar traits of the platypus descended. Obduron does not answer the question.

To recapitulate, the platypus has traits only seen in species as far apart evolutionally as snakes, mammals, fish and birds. Which did it come from? How did all those traits develop graudally in an evolutionary way? That is the question and that is the answer you cannot give.

[VadeRetro]

As I pointed out in the post you responded to the fossil found had teeth. That means it had a different way of feeding itself than the platypus, therefore there are differences for sure between this creature and the platypus we know and love because the platypus is extremely well equipped for the way he lives and eats.

The skull is reported as "more generalized." That means "less specialized." That means "not yet fully a platypus." It's a transitional. That's what you wanted, right? (WRONG!)

[AndrewC]

I believe the original address was in French.

Thanks for the correction. Your link confirms my impression of the Pope's message.

[gore3000]

but that doesn't mean that the results won't happen on their own under natural circumstances.

That is very true however, let's look a minute at why we do experiments. Most experiments are done to show how something can be accomplished, not that something might have happened. The reason is quite simple, if something happened, the best proof is to look for evidence of it having happened instead of doing an experiment. The reason why this is the best way is that no matter how one tries, an experiment cannot exactly replicate natural conditions - even if those conditions are known. In the matter of abiogenesis, we do not even know what the natural conditions were when life first arose.

[gore3000]

I'm just pointing out that none of these experiments were due to random chance.

I dot think he quite understands your point. The experiment was designed, it embodied the knowledge gained by human beings for ages, it uses the artifacts it took human beings ages to develop. This multiplies the odds in favor of the experiment by a tremendous factor. This is not true in nature, and it makes what would be almost impossible at random seem possible.

[gore3000]

"Anyone know the Latin for mind and spirit?"

Mind is mens. Spirit is spiritus. Of course the spelling differs depending on the construction such as mens in the possesive is mentis and spiritus in the adverbial is spirito. However, as already posted, the Pope's encyclical was written in French.

[AndrewC]

as already posted, the Pope's encyclical was written in French

Thanks! It's all Greek to me. :^)

[gore3000]

"If I had a billion years, I could rigorously test the Theory of Evolution. I could impose pressure on an ecosystem, and predict its response. For instance, I could heat the ecosystem by 10 degrees C, and expect to see an increase in hairless critters. I could do that same experiment a few times, and the theory could be supported if the results fit my prediction.

Sounds like a very interesting experiment! However, don't think I will hang around that long to see if it works! :)

Problem also is that if it took that long to get hairlessness, I do not think the few billion years of life on earth would be sufficient to turn a bacteria into a man. However, there is one other problem with saying that "evolution did it" in such an experiment. We know very well that humans (and all species) are highly adaptable. This is already in our genes. There is a tremendous amount of redundancy in human biology as well as in the species as a whole. This adaptability could be the cause of such a change.

"I believe, that we have seen evolution at work within our lifetimes. In response to the pressure of antibiotics, many species of bacteria have changed, to develop a resistance. That observation is entirely in line with the predictions of the Theory of Evolution. As I said, I'm no expert, but I can make a scientific prediction, based on the concepts in the Theory of Evolution: If humans continue to misuse antibiotics, bacteria will continue to change -to evolve- to the point where very few of the currently known crop of antibiotics will have any value at all."

The above is a very common misconception of what evolution is. It is due to Darwin's willfull misrepresentations. As proof for his theory he gave common examples of small adaptations. However, for man to have descended from bacteria, there would have been a need for very large changes in the organism, in fact, what would have been needed should not even be called changes, it should be called transformations. The above are examples of small changes, not transformations.

[gore3000]

"Uh, no, that's the whole point of science and the search for explanatory theories: i.e. that there are reasons that things are as they are and mechanisms that cause them to be so."

Okay, since evolution claims to be science, what is so wrong for Christians and others to ask what those mechanisms are? I mean science is science because it opens itself to questioning. What is wrong with Christians asking questions of evolutionists? Is it not science?

[Jeff Gordon]

And he not making any progress towards enlightenment.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I gave proof that non-coding DNA is not junk twice already.

This isn't you in post # 568? Post your proof.

[gore3000]

So the DNA sequence in the gene is the same as the DNA sequence in the protein. - me -

Proteins contain no DNA. This is worse than your "how many genomes per gene?" of last year.

The sentence you quoted does not say that protein contain DNA. I gave you an article explaining how proteins are made. I explained to you that DNA is the code for how proteins are made. It showed you that there is a one to one relationship between the DNA code and the sequence of amino acids in a protein. Either you did not read what I posted, or you are too obtuse to understand even that simple explanation, or you just like to insult me. I don't know which Vade, but your statement is absolutely wrong and is a total misrepresentation of what I have said.