Skeptical News for 18 March 2009Skeptical News for 18 March 2009Archive of previous NTS Skeptical News listings
By EVA-MARIE AYALAeayala@star-telegram.com
Don't believe in the theory of relativity?
Students wouldn't have to and could not be penalized for it in school under proposed legislation filed Friday.
Teachers could not be penalized, either, if they reject plate tectonics or the kinetic theory of gases.
The bill says that neither student nor teacher could be penalized for subscribing to any particular position on any scientific theories or hypotheses.
"Students could claim they believe anything they wanted in anything in science and if that's what they say, the teacher would be forced to give that student an A," said Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science. "That's how bad this bill is written."
But Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, who filed the bill, said it is not an out for students, because they must still be evaluated on course materials taught.
"They can be lazy if they want to . . . but teachers are still in charge of the grading system," Christian said.
The bill does not address evolution specifically, but that seems to be its target. Its goal is to reintroduce the ability to teach "weaknesses" of scientific theories. After two days of heated debate, the State Board of Education narrowly voted this winter to remove a requirement that Texas public schools teach weaknesses in the theory of evolution.
The board is expected to finalize new science standards next week.
Christian said he filed the bill to allow teachers to continue to teach the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution.
"If students have every opportunity to learn about every idea, it empowers students to have a better ability to debate," he said. "If they are exposed to and know the other side of things, they will be able to come back and debate that side."
But Schafersman said scientists and science educators pushed for the weakness language to be removed because it is not based on science. He said the proposed legislation would allow educators to teach creationism, a biblical explanation of the origin of humans, if they wanted.
"That is against the law," he said. "Every court case has said creationism is religion, and you can't bring religion into schools."
Schafersman said that for Texas to compete nationally and globally, the education standards must be based on "good science and not get bogged down with these religious interventions into our secular schools." He also said that Christian doesn't understand that all science is theoretical.
Supporters of the bill said teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution, which has been included in curriculum for the past two decades, has not hurt Texas, which they say is known internationally for medical schools and facilities.
"The state is successful and will continue to be so," said Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the Plano-based Free Market Foundation, which promotes Judeo-Christian values. "It's important that we fix the curriculum to allow for scientific progress and debate."
"The bill specifically allows students to be taught about a subject and, even though they might not personally agree with it themselves, they are taught to understand it," Saenz said.
Evolution debate
The State Board of Education is expected to finalize science standards next week. The board is expected to hear further discussion in teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution on Wednesday.
Education bills
On Friday, the last day to file bills, a few dozen education-related ones were submitted. Here are a few to watch.
Power shift Four lawmakers filed a joint bill that would move much of the State Board of Education's current responsibilities — including developing state curriculum and textbook selection — to the education commissioner.
Principal spending State Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, filed a bill that would limit how principals can spend campus discretionary funds raised at the school level from vending machine profits or through other means. Principals could use the funds only to directly benefit the general welfare, educational development and morale of students, which would not include staff development activities.
Allergies issues One bill would require schools to have a plan to handle severe allergic reactions. The plan would include communicating individual student needs and training staff on how to respond during an emergency. Another bill would require schools to keep anaphylaxis medicine on hand.
History lessons Proposed legislation by state Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, would require social-studies curriculum to include Latino and African-American history.
EVA-MARIE AYALA, 817-390-7700
Posted on: March 18, 2009 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton
Dylan Krider at the Examiner notes that the New Scientist has taken down an earlier article about how to spot creationist rhetoric in putative scientific articles. The original article was here, where it now says:
New Scientist has received a complaint about the contents of this story. It has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience
Krider found another copy of the article here and he sums up the telltale signs of anti-science rhetoric in ostensibly scientific publications that the article pinpointed:
Here's some of the code words Gefter says give away a book's closeted ID agenda.
Sounds accurate to me. I'll be curious to see what New Scientist does with the article now.
Guest Columnist
David Klinghoffer
Issue date: 3/17/09 Section: Opinion
Students and faculty who care about open debate should be aware of a revealing postscript to the Ben Stein imbroglio at UVM.
An entertainer and a legal scholar, Stein was first invited to be this year's graduation speaker. Then, because he has criticized Darwinian evolution, he was pressured by University President Daniel Mark Fogel to withdraw, and he graciously did so.
In The Burlington Free Press, UVM biology profesor Nick Gotelli applauded this outcome, assailing Stein as a "notorious proponent of intelligent design" and questioning his scholarly credentials.
As a senior fellow at a think tank well-known for its advocacy of intelligent-design theory, I was taken by Gotelli's self-declared openness, expressed in his article, to inviting "controversial" speakers to campus on occasions other than commencement.
That, Gotelli wrote, would expose "intellectually bankrupt" ideas, like intelligent design.
"We at UVM fully support this kind of free speech," he wrote.
I assumed that just possibly Gotelli was sincere. So I e-mailed him. Perhaps, I suggested, he would advise me on finding a campus forum for a debate about Darwinian theory on some occasion other than commencement.
I suggested that rather than Ben Stein, it might be illuminating to put up a scientific Darwin critic against a Darwinian advocate like, oh, Gotelli.
It was a pipe dream of mine. Darwinists usually shun debates, hiding behind the excuse of not wanting to grant public recognition to doubts about Darwin - doubts shared by most Americans and a daring minority of mainstream scientists.
Of the latter, the Discovery Institute maintains a list of almost 800 admitted dissenters. Sure enough, Gotelli wrote back in a huff, turning me down flat.
When I read his response, I thought, "Wouldn't it be amusing to publish this on the Discovery Institute's blog?" Then I reflected disappointedly, "No, it's a private correspondence, that would be unethical!"
In his e-mail, after throwing around the scare word "creationism" - associated with na've Biblical literalism - and mixing it up with other insults, Gotelli withdrew his suggestion that Stein, or anyone associated with intelligent design, would make an appropriately "controversial" campus speaker.
"Academic debate on controversial topics is fine," he explained, "but those topics need to have a basis in reality."
Wait a minute. I thought allowing controversy on campus was, in Gotelli's mind, to be praised for exposing "bankrupt" ideas? Ah, you see, but when a Darwinist is challenged to debate, that principle doesn't apply.
What should we make of this fellow? Hypocrisy, normally accompanied by embarrassment, is the wrong word for Gotelli's about-face on free speech.
A hypocrite wouldn't seek to publicize his own hypocrisy. Maybe the right designation for Gotelli is a cynic?
That's someone who treats ideas as chess pieces. When it suits your purposes, you advance an idea - like "free speech." When it doesn't suit your purpose, the same idea becomes expendable, a useless pawn.
But no, a cynic is typically smart enough to keep his cynicism a secret. He wouldn't rush to offer his correspondence to some website for publication.
The person who would do that isn't a hypocrite or a cynic - he's a fool - one who has unintentionally cast a troubling light on the condition of free speech at UVM.w
David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has been doing a good job tracking the latest act in the depressingly long disaster flick known as Creationism. While many of the postings I have done here at Reality Base focus on broader views of what humans do in science and what they think of as spiritual endeavor, the ritual burning of science education going on in Texas demands as much illumination as possible.
The details of the situation have been covered in a number of places, but here is the quick overview: The Texas State Board of Education is in the midst of deciding its science education standards. These are the specifications for what should be taught and what students are expected to know in the state of Texas. The board, which has far too many creationists on it, recently included reviews from representatives of the Discovery Institute, a front for the Intelligent Design "movement." This will ensure another sad attempt to get evolution labeled "just a theory" and present the creationists' non-science as an "alternative view."
We have seen all of this before, of course. This case is particularly dangerous because in this review cycle, guidelines and textbook selections are reviewed together. The sad spectacle of a state's public science education bureaucracy being hijacked by a religious viewpoint is bad enough, but it's the textbooks that are the real problem. Texas is a big market for textbook publishers. The less scrupulous among them are willing to bend to market forces and downplay those aspects of biology that are considered troublesome (i.e. the foundational theory of evolution).
I have written before about the schizophrenia of the creationists. They are willing to accept the fruits of science that ensure their quality of life and health, but feel free to reject those parts that conflict with their particular interpretation of their particular religion. Perhaps we should demand some consistency and ask that they hand in their cell phones and relinquish the use of antibiotics. The self-imposed blindness is maddening.
These creationists are practicing religious intolerance in a nation founded on the opposite principle. The part of the story that does not get enough press, however, is the damage this does to the scientific and, hence, economic enterprise of our country. Students in countries we are bound to compete against are not being subjected to this pruning of the scientific tree. A 12-year-old interested in biology in India, China, or Germany is not being given half the story because some bullies in the community made it onto a school board.
Worse, by striking at the roots of science education, they threaten the scientific enterprise of the nation—our greatest resource and the engine of our strength. These school board charades are a threat that must be confronted.
In 1955 the federal government stepped into the long battle for racial equality in education, and the desegregation of schools began. That was a good idea. Maybe it's time for mandatory national standards of science education (which include evolution) to be determined by scientists, and not bullies.
Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester who studies star formation and stellar death using supercomputers. His new book, "The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate," has just been published. He will be joining Reality Base to post an ongoing discussion of science and religion—you can read his previous posts here, and find more of his thoughts on science and the human prospect at the Constant Fire blog.
By Damon Agnos in Schools Wednesday, Mar. 18 2009 @ 8:59AM
Our area is embarrassingly known as home of the Discovery Institute, the think tank responsible for pushing the theory of intelligent design all over the country. But at least a University Place high school student is helping us save face by being on the right side of the modern Scopes Monkey Trials. (Or maybe he makes us look worse, because he points out that our schools are teaching creationism?)
Colin Moyer is a senior at Curtis High School (which also gave us the estimable Isaiah Thomas). He was just awarded a 2009 ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship—one of only 16 nationwide—for successfully fighting the teaching of creationism in his high school biology class. Says the press release:
Moyer was shocked when his popular tenth-grade biology teacher began teaching a view of evolution that focused more on religious views than on scientific facts and didn't tolerate criticism. "A class that was usually interactive was suddenly single-sided," said Moyer. "Students were not allowed to ask questions, and there were no textbooks or tests."
Moyer began to read books and articles on evolution. He soon realized that his teacher was promoting creationism in the guise of "intelligent design," the same approach that was ruled unconstitutional in a 2005 case in Dover, Pennsylvania (Kitzmiller v. Dover).
Moyer contacted the ACLU and then the National Center for Science Education for advice. With their support, he worked out an agreement with the school administration. The issue was quickly resolved, and the teacher was forced to stop teaching intelligent design.
Category: Intelligent Design
Posted on: April 27, 2006 11:04 AM, by Ed Brayton
To those who claim that we've never seen one species turn into another, I give you the Oklahoma University IDEA Club. It used to be known as the Creation Science Society. In fact, their webpage initially said:
Welcome to the University of Oklahoma IDEA Club website! We are no longer the Creation Science Society. Our new name is Intelligent Design & Evolution Awareness Club. That's IDEA Club for short!
Voila, a perfect example of sympatric speciation that happened right before our eyes. The actual speciation event took place sometime between August 18, 2003 and October 5, 2003. Here is their information sheet about the Creation Science Society, from the wayback machine. It says:
We hold that God, conceived of as a personal, transcendent agent of infinite power and intelligence, has through direct, primary agent causation and indirect, secondary causation created and designed the world for a purpose and has directly intervened in the course of its development at various times (including prehistory, history prior to the arrival of human beings).
And here is their new statement, from the IDEA club FAQ:
Although Intelligent Design itself is not a religious theory, the IDEA Club at OU would like to recognize that while we do not have a specific religious affiliation, our mission statement does say that we hold "that the identity of the Designer is consistent with belief in the Christian God." Our claim that life was designed by intelligence is a "scientific" claim, while our claim that the Designer is the Christian God is a religious one. For this reason, we promote Intelligent Design "as a scientific theory" but "hold, through other arguments, that the identity of the Designer is the Christian God." These "other arguments" while logical and rational, are typically philosophical, historical, and religious in nature. The reasons we believe the Designer is the God of the Bible are not scientific in nature. Our beliefs concerning God do not rely upon scientific evidence and it is not our goal to convert anyone to Christianity by way of scientific argumentation.
The problem, of course, is that there are no transitional forms. The new species appears abruptly and "fully formed", as the creationists like to say, in only a few weeks time. Someone get Niles Eldredge on the phone, I think I've discovered evidence for the punctuated equilibrium theory of creationist speciation.
Review by Duroyan Fertl 13 March 2009
Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present
By John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark & Richard York
Monthly Review Press, 2008
240 pages, $33.95
In recent decades a form of militant creationism — masquerading as science under the name of "Intelligent Design" — has gone on the offensive, promoting the teaching of biblical creationism in schools, and carrying out a broader "wedge strategy", aimed at transforming the place and nature of science in society.
Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present, is almost overdue in this respect. It traces the rise of the "design" phenomenon, and its relationship to conservative, right-wing politics, and places it in the context of a 2500-year-long debate between materialism and creationism that lies at the heart of Western civilisation.
Critique of Intelligent Design is a tour de force through the historical contest between science and belief. While the book focuses largely on recent centuries, it also traces the debate back as far as the fifth century BCE to Greek philosopher Socrates, and the third century BCE Greek materialist Epicurus, each of whom gave lasting form to the opposing arguments.
That this is not simply a history book becomes clear early on. In identifying the minds behind the "design" movement — a reworking of pre-Darwinian natural theology — the authors find at the heart of the project not merely the reintroduction of religious ideas into classroom science, but the roll-back of scientific thought since the Enlightenment.
In fact, the authors show how the proponents of intelligent design see themselves as fighting a war against materialist science and reason that dates all the way back to ancient Greece.
While the chief targets of intelligent design adherents are Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and — above all — Charles Darwin, key architects of the movement, like William Dembski of the right-wing Discovery Institute, also take aim at Epicurus, and the first century BCE Roman Lucretius poet, as the forefathers of the naturalism and materialism they seek to purge from society.
Their aim is not simply to incorporate evolution into creationism, or vice versa, but to gradually substitute the materialist outlook currently dominant in the sciences with a return to faith and a belief in "divine providence".
The intelligent design movement's agenda extends well beyond the natural sciences, as becomes clear from a study of a very influential figure in the design movement: the author CS Lewis — most famous for his Christian parables posing as fantasy books in the Narnia series.
Now a patron figure for the intelligent design movement, Lewis was once a materialist, but became an outspoken source of Christian apologetics. He advocated an essentially fundamentalist Christian worldview, where materialism poses an absolute threat to religion and belief.
As the authors unearth the history and providence of its rise, intelligent design is revealed to be little more than a stalking-horse for full-blown creationism, which rejects evolution, science and — ultimately — the idea that all existing things are determined above all by their physical nature, rather than by ideas, beliefs or religion.
What makes intelligent design most dangerous, in the eyes of the authors, is that it conducts a deliberate, insidious strategy of undermining scientific education and knowledge by stealth.
Instead of simply counterposing creationism to evolution, intelligent design injects religion into science by playing on people's doubts or ignorance, and attempts — as creation science tried years before — to give a "scientific" gloss to religious doctrine.
As the book illustrates, this strategy is even stated explicitly in the drafts of some of the intelligent design movement's key documents, most notably the infamous 1999 "wedge document", and the book Of Pandas and People, which laid out the strategy of undermining science and materialism in favour of religious doctrine.
Another danger lies in the political connections of the intelligent design movement. Like its forerunner, "creation science", which relied on such patrons and spokesmen as Ronald Reagan, intelligent design has some powerful backers, including former US presidential candidate John McCain.
Critique of Intelligent Design is not the first book to unpack the design movement's agenda, however. What makes it unique is that it avoids the temptation of engaging in a point-by-point refutation of the arguments, preferring instead to go to the heart of matter, and challenge the ideas of intelligent design on a fiercely materialist — and Marxist — basis.
The discussion of Marx's materialist approach is a vital part of this approach. Despite being a key target of intelligent design's proponents, Marx is frequently ignored or excluded in materialist and sociological critiques of creationism and its offshoots, largely for political reasons. Critique of Intelligent Design, therefore, fills a void in the generic argument for materialist evolutionism, especially on the question of religion.
Marx's critique of heaven as a precondition for the critique of Earth — and the very material interests of those who promote intelligent design — stands firmly alongside the revolutionary discoveries of Darwin as an affirmation of scientific materialism and poses a serious challenge to idealist and creationist arguments.
This is, of course, why the strategy of the intelligent design advocates is not limited to attacking Darwin, and naturalism within science, but has spread out into the political sphere through its attacks on social science. The implications of evolution and materialist science fundamentally threaten the central tenets of creationism and undermine the literal interpretation of the Bible upon which it relies.
Despite the conciliatory attempts from many materialists, from Epicurus to Stephen Jay Gould, to accommodate religion in the "gaps" between scientific knowledge, the intelligent design movement is dedicated to one thing alone — the reintroduction of creationist fantasy into scientific methodology.
Two centuries after Darwin's birth, and 150 years after the publication of On the Origin of the Species, the knowledge that material reality is amazing and intelligible on its own terms, without the need for gods and demons, remains under assault.
Critique of Intelligent Design offers the tools to understand and defend the critical, materialist, thought that underpins the natural and social sciences alike, and to see that, as Darwin concluded his major work, "there is a grandeur in this view of life".
From: Cultural Dissent, Green Left Weekly issue #787 18 March 2009.
March 15, 2009
Darwin may have been a keen observer, but he only explained the survival of species, not the arrival of species. The full title of his book is "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Who are we to believe are the favored races? Darwin believed (in his book "The Descent of Man") that Negroes and Aboriginals were subspecies. I would think if you were an evolutionist you would have to believe this. I guess that would make you a racist.
When modern Darwinists say it is the foundation of biology, medicine and genetics. they will conceal this fact. Modern biology states we are one species separated into people groups.
The Bible states that we are of "one blood." It was written more than 2,000 years ago.
If we look at the DNA, it is a digital error-correcting, redundant, overlapping information storage and retrieval system incapable of being reproduced by chance. James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered the DNA molecule, came to the conclusion to be so complex that it could not happen by chance and that aliens (The godless version of Intelligent Design) must have planted the seeds of life on Earth and called it Panspermia.
Psalms 139:13-14 NIV say "we are knit together in our mother's womb, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made."
Scientifically speaking, finches reproduce finches, whether they have big beaks or small beaks. We have lots of humans with big beaks and small beaks, but they are still humans.
I think schools should teach children science, not evolution or creationism: Those subjects can be taught at home or in philosophy classes. Teach children how this marvelous creation works. Evolution is a grownup's fairy tale.
Joseph Conkle
Mansfield
Before touching on any new subjects in this ongoing discussion about transcending the traditional science v. religion debate, I thought it would be good to reprise some themes and keep the narrative quasi-linear. A month or so ago, I tried to lay the groundwork for getting past the usual categories in the way we publicly discuss science and religion (what I called the Sullen, the Silly, and the Snarky). The usual debates about creationism/evolution or quantum mechanics/New Age philosophy miss the point: Which direction do we turn now?
A number of alternatives are beginning to emerge as researchers struggle to find some balance. There is, for example, the religious naturalism of Ursula Goodenough and others in which the narratives of science, free of supernatural agents, are seen as an appropriate source of "religious feeling." There is the reinvention of the sacred of Stuart Kauffman, in which nature's fundamental non-reductionism allows for a creative universe. Other researchers are exploring other avenues.
Some of these I agree with, and some I do not. But taken as a whole, you can see creative people are thinking creatively and it's leading in new directions. These perspectives may not all stay with us, but nonetheless their explication is a good thing.
My own direction has been to look to aspiration. Aspiration is what I call the Constant Fire. The aspiration to know what is true and what is real is, I believe, an ancient imperative in us. We stumbled into self-consciousness a hundred thousand or so years ago and slowly awakened to our interior responses to the external world. When an experience of the world took us beyond concerns about mere survival, when an experience made the world's elemental presence, its Being, stand out on its own, then we encountered life's "sacred" character. These experiences were hierophanies: gateways to that sense of the world's innermost luminous nature. The aspiration to draw closer to the barely expressible content of those experiences is the source of the strenuous effort that can manifest as a scientific investigation, the creation of art, poetry, music, or perhaps an engagement in some form of "spiritual life."
The aspiration, born of experience, to know and draw closer to the immediate and intimate cosmos is the root of it all. Make no mistake: Science and spiritual endeavor are not the same. They function differently, ask very different questions, and demand different kinds of attention. But in a common aspiration we can find them drawing into an active, parallel complementarity. That, I believe, is a different and better way of thinking about science and religion than endlessly throwing mud pies over evolution, creationism, and some group's definition of deity.
Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester who studies star formation and stellar death using supercomputers. His new book, "The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate," has just been published. He will be joining Reality Base to post an ongoing discussion of science and religion—you can read his previous posts here, and find more of his thoughts on science and the human prospect at the Constant Fire blog.
Mar 12th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
A science-friendly president overstates his case
DURING his campaign, Barack Obama promised to end two wars. The one in Iraq smoulders on. But "The Republican War on Science", to borrow the title of an influential book, is now over. On March 9th, as he lifted some restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research, Mr Obama spoke of "restoring scientific integrity to government". From now on, he said, scientists will be "free from manipulation or coercion," and the government will "[listen] to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient." Unlike a certain ex-president, Mr Obama will ensure "that scientific data [are] never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda."
Democrats have long argued that Republicans are anti-science. The party of George Bush, they contend, favours teaching creationism, denies that mankind is broiling the planet and blocks medical research out of religious pigheadedness. There is some truth to these allegations, but less than the slogans allege.
Although most Americans support the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public schools and Mr Bush has said he agrees, in practice this almost never occurs, and is quickly stopped by the courts when it does. Republican doubts about the severity of global warming are much more serious, and have undoubtedly slowed the adoption of carbon curbs. But such doubts are fading. Few Republicans still deny that global warming is man-made. A more common objection to Mr Obama's cap-and-trade proposal is that it would amount to a huge tax hike in the middle of a recession.
The stem-cell controversy is also complex. Stem cells are cells that have yet to decide what they want to be. That is, they can grow up to become skin cells, muscle cells or nearly any other type of cell. The most versatile ones are derived from embryos. Scientists hope that experiments using embryonic stem cells will help treat diseases such as Parkinson's and cancer. But such experiments destroy human embryos, so right-to-lifers object. In 2001, Mr Bush ordered that federal funds be used only for experiments on embryonic stem-cell lines that already existed.
Several states stepped into the breach: California, for example, set aside $3 billion for embryonic stem-cell research. With federal funds soon to flow, some states may now cut back. But overall, funding for stem-cell research will surely increase, raising hopes for many sick people.
Politics and science will still clash, however. Reasonable people disagree about what kind of research is moral. Mr Obama, for example, thinks that the use of cloning for human reproduction is "profoundly wrong". Plenty of libertarians disagree. Many of Mr Obama's supporters believe that experiments on animals are immoral. Resolving such disputes is a job for elected politicians, informed by science but not dictated to by scientists.
Good to goMr Obama likes to duck the thorniest disputes, for example by leaving it to the National Institutes of Health to decide what kind of embryos can be used in federally-funded experiments. Should researchers use only embryos left over at fertility clinics, which would otherwise be discarded? Or may they create embryos specifically to experiment on? Mr Obama did not say.
Other controversies loom. Many scientists doubt that "clean coal" technology is a practical way of tackling climate change. But there are coal mines in swing states, so Mr Obama loudly supports it. Drug firms say Mr Obama's efforts to squeeze drug prices will deter innovation. A recent Supreme Court ruling could do the same: it allowed a patient to claim damages from a drug firm when, despite six warnings not to inject an anti-nausea drug into an artery, a doctor's assistant did just that.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama's vow never to fiddle data rings a little hollow. Last week, for example, he declared that "[t]he crushing cost of health care causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds." The Economist credulously repeated this claim. But it is false. The study on which it is based found that number of bankruptcies in 2001 from all medical-related causes, not just the cost of health care. That includes people who could not work because they were sick. In politics, all too often, eloquence trumps accuracy.
Category: Creationism
Posted on: March 12, 2009 7:43 PM, by PZ Myers
Todd Wood teaches a creationism course at a bible college, and he has a creationism blog. He has one of the most promising introductions to his way of thinking ever.
Anyone who knows me at all knows that I break down creationist biology into four main components: design, natural evil, systematics, speciation, and biogeography.
That sentence alone is just a marvel.
Read the whole thing, though, and you'll laugh and laugh. He tries to justify all those "well-designed" predators like venomous snakes, and all he's got is the usual creationist answer to all those nasty critters. The Fall. The Curse. God had to do an amazing redesign act after Eve bit that apple.
I may have to check into that blog now and then for the comic relief.
Government will not get remaining guarantees on Lisbon next weekPakistani police clash with protesting lawyersPope apologises for decision on Holocaust denierUS moves closer to cluster bomb banTories to set up new parliamentary groupChina rebuffs US over Tibet policy criticismNICHOLAS BIRCH in IstanbulA TURKISH state body responsible for funding scientific research sparked outrage this week following media reports that top managers had ordered the editors of a monthly science magazine it publishes to remove a cover story on Charles Darwin.
Brought out amid worldwide celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the March issue of Science and Technology arrived a week late on newsstands on Monday with a cover story about global warming.
Newspapers and academics criticised the incident as meddling by the Islamic-rooted AK Party government, which passed a law last summer tightening its control of appointments to the Scientific and Technological Research Council (Tubitak).
"This incident makes it clear that Turkish science is in the hands of anachronistic brains who hold it in contempt," Tahsin Yesildere, head of the Association for University Lecturers, said.
Interviewed by the private television station CNN-Turk on Wednesday, Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society in London, described the changes to the magazine as an "astonishing" example of "cultural corruption and . . . intellectual dishonesty".
Amid mounting calls yesterday for the resignation of the senior manager accused of ordering the magazine changes, Tubitak issued a statement defending him.
"There is no question of censorship," the statement said, blaming the scandal on a last-minute decision by the magazine's editor to replace an agreed cover story on global warming with a 15-page dossier on Darwin.
The editor has been removed from her position, the statement added.
Tubitak's announcement failed to prevent one of the council's senior managers presenting her resignation yesterday, citing "an unacceptable change in mentality", and it is unlikely to convince Turks alarmed by the growing visibility of creationist claims here since the AK Party came to power in 2002.
In November 2006, AK Party's minister for education told Turkish television that "evolutionary theory overlaps with atheism, [creationism] with religious belief". Given that polls show only 1 per cent of Turks are atheists, Huseyin Celik continued, not teaching creationist claims in biology classes would be tantamount to censorship.
Yet with polls suggesting that barely a quarter of Turks accept evolutionary theories, analysts say it would be wrong to lay all the blame at AK Party's door.
Author of An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam, Taner Edis points out that creationism has been taught as part of Turkey's biology syllabus since the 1980s, when religious conservatives took control of the ministry of education and began "translating US creationist texts into Turkish and distributing them in schools".
Even before that, evolutionary theory was a hot potato in a country where many associate it with atheism.
In its 40-year history, Science and Technology magazine has only twice run evolution as a cover story.
"If you are at all interested in countries like Turkey making progress in natural science then this Tubitak affair is deeply worrying," Taner Edis says. "But Turkey – and Muslim countries in general – are pretty irrelevant on the international scientific scene today. The main risk is that they will become even more entrenched in their intellectual backwardness."
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology
It Sounds a Lot Like Creationism to Me
Category: Conservatives • Creationism
Posted on: March 13, 2009 2:46 PM, by Mike
I know I make the point a lot that much of movement conservatism/Modern Republicanism operates in a intellectuallycognitively similar manner to the creationist movement. But the reason the comparison is instructive is that creationism (whether young earth or intelligent design) is so obviously stupid that it forces you to confront what is actually going on. For many people, economics or foreign policy (or at least subtopics in these areas) are difficult enough that you are tempted to cede that they might have a legitimate point of view, but one that is nonetheless very different than yours. But creationism puts the lie to that.
You start to comprehend the sheer disingenuity (or lies) that creationists put forth--they have to know, at this point, what scientists mean by theory. And they choose not to know (the more recent and sophisticated version of this strategy involves 'irreducible complexity', which is also routinely demolished by biologists). Perhaps that's why, unlike digby, I'm not surprised or astonished at all by willful ignorance by conservatives--the theopolitical ones have been doing this for years (italics original; boldface mine):
Krugman had to explain the "paradox of thrift" yesterday on television, something that seems pretty elementary to me just from my rudimentary understanding of Keynesian economics, but is apparently something that is entirely rejected by most conservatives. It's not that they don't understand it, it's that they refuse to believe it. They make their own reality (or, as I used to say during the Bush years, it's the politics of "you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes,") by building an edifice of knowledge and scholarship to make it appear that their "revisionism" is common knowledge. They are not content (or able) to make their arguments from the standpoint of a commonly agreed upon set of facts. They insist on offering a completely alternate narrative based on entirely different facts --- post modern politics at its most sophisticated.
Isn't this the Creation Museum in a nutshell? It's very sad: I certainly appreciate the conservative impulse and a healthy skepticism towards government (in my life, I've lived in Providence, New Haven, Long Island, and Boston, among other places. I realize that government can be corrupt). But Republican economics, as espoused by leading Republican politicians and pundits, is utterly insane, just as creationism is. Even David Brooks gets that....
By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Affirming the reality of an intelligent design for the creation and development of the universe is not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith, said the preacher of the papal household.
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, offering a Lenten meditation to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican officials March 13, said the controversy that has arisen between scientists supporting evolution and religious believers promoting creationism or intelligent design is due mainly to a confusion between scientific theory and the truths of faith.
The intelligent-design theory asserts that the development and evolution of life is such a hugely complex process that a supreme being, God, must be directly involved in it.
While some proponents of intelligent design claim that it is a scientifically valid theory, most scientists dismiss it as pseudoscience.
The arguments, Father Cantalamessa said, are due to the fact that, "in my opinion, there is not a clear enough distinction between intelligent design as a scientific theory and intelligent design as a truth of faith."
While science and evolution can explain part of the history of creation and how life exists, they cannot explain why, he said.
"Even those who eliminate the idea of God from the horizon don't eliminate the mystery," the preacher said.
"We know everything about the world, except how it started. The believer is convinced that the Bible furnishes precisely this missing first page. There, as on the title page of every book, is the name of the author and the title of the work," he said.
Father Cantalamessa's Lenten reflection focused on a verse from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans: "All creation is groaning in labor pains even until now."
The text, he said, is an indication that St. Paul believes that the entire cosmos -- not just humanity -- is waiting to be saved and restored to its original beauty by Christ.
The suffering of the cosmos "is not closed and definitive. There is hope for creation, not because creation is able to hope subjectively, but because God has a redemption in mind for it."
Christians contribute to keeping hope alive by respecting and defending nature, he said.
"For the Christian believer, environmentalism is not only a practical necessity for survival or a problem that is only political or economic; it has a theological foundation. Creation is the work of the Holy Spirit," he said.
Christians have an obligation to recognize that the moans of creation described by St. Paul "today are mixed with the cry of agony and death" because of "human sin and selfishness," he said.
END Copyright (c) 2009 Catholic News Service/USCCB.
Mark Hohmeister Associate Editor
I'll give them credit, the creationists are persistent.
Oh, I'm sorry, I guess they aren't creationists anymore. I meant to say proponents of a critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution.
Call them what you will, 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years after the publication of his "On the Origin of Species," they're still trying to use tax dollars to teach a Bible-based science that was left in the dust, well, at least 150 years ago.
This year's effort comes courtesy of state Sen. Stephen R. Wise, R-Jacksonville, who is sponsoring SB 2396, which on Tuesday was referred to the committees on Education Pre-K-12 (on which Wise sits) and Education Pre-K-12 Appropriations (of which Wise is the chair).
This bill would amend Florida Statute 1003.42, which prescribes courses of study in public schools, by adding: "A thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution."
We've been through this. Oh Lord, we've been through this.
In 2008, the House and Senate thankfully failed to agree on a bill that was to protect teachers who sought to teach the "full range" of scientific theory, though no actual persecuted teacher could be found.
In 2007, the state Board of Education listened to a parade of creationists at public forums but in the end had the guts to include evolution in the Sunshine State Standards.
Before that … oh, must we really review everything since the Scopes trial?
The creationists have evolved. The insistence that the world is 6,000 years old has been pushed to the fringe, and "creationism" and "intelligent design" have been zapped by the courts. So now the attack is simply to try to discredit any evolutionary theory.
Do you have the desire or courage to learn more about evolutionary theory (and maybe even what the word "theory" means)? Well, you're in luck next week.
Tuesday is Day 1 of the two-week "Origins '09: A Tribute to Discovery in the Year of Science 2009," and the series of lectures, films and more will start with Peter Harrison, a professor of science and religion at Oxford, speaking on "The Origins of the Conflict Between Science and Religion."
It's at my church, First Presbyterian, and if holding that one in a house of worship isn't enough irony for you, be sure to catch Harvard's E.O. Wilson, speaking March 23 on "Darwin's Four Great Books: The Origins of a Revolution." Wilson has won the Pulitzer Prize twice. He also has argued that religion is a product of evolution. His talk is at Bethel AME Church.
What we need are rational discussions of how science impacts our beliefs and moral systems.
What we don't need is legislators trying to drag any controversy that suits them into the classroom.
Florida Statute 1003.42, minus Sen. Wise's little amendment, is an amazing document. It mandates the teaching of the Constitution, the Holocaust, respect for the flag, the contributions of blacks, Hispanics and women to American culture, agriculture, conservation, the "sacrifices that veterans have made in serving our country and protecting democratic values worldwide" and even "kindness to animals."
Nowhere in there are the words "critical analysis." Yet.
Imagine if the standards were amended to require a "critical analysis" of every topic.
Should we invite a Holocaust denier to speak in every classroom? Perhaps students should be made to watch videos by those who think our priceless young men and women often die in vain while supposedly "protecting democratic values worldwide." Maybe Michael Vick could drop by to offer an opposing view on "kindness to animals." (I remember some horrid kids from my childhood who also could help with that one.)
There is a place for those views, for all views. It's over the neighbor's picket fence, in the home, maybe in the church. But not in the classroom.
Joseph Travis, dean of FSU's College of Arts and Science and an evolutionary biologist, said it perfectly this week when, addressing politics and science, he said: "We can disagree on policy … but let's not pretend the facts aren't what they are."
If you care to teach kids to burn the flag or want lay the veneer of whatever gods you worship over solid scientific accomplishments, that's your privilege.
But don't saddle the rest of us with it.
Contact Mark Hohmeister at mhohmeister@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2330.
LEGISLATIVE SALVATION FOR THE ICR?
House Bill 2800, introduced in the Texas House of Representatives on March 9, 2009, would, if enacted, in effect exempt institutions such as the Institute for Creation Research's graduate school from Texas's regulations governing degree-granting institutions. The bill's sole sponsor is Leo Berman (R-District 6), a member of the House Higher Education Committee. A member of NCSE called Berman's office to ask whether the bill would apply to the ICR's graduate school; a staffer answered that he thought that it would, adding that he believed that the bill's objective was to aid institutions that want to teach creation science or intelligent design. Berman himself seems not to have offered any public statement about HB 2800 so far.
As NCSE's Glenn Branch recounted in Reports of the NCSE, "When the Institute for Creation Research moved its headquarters from Santee, California, to Dallas, Texas, in June 2007, it expected to be able to continue offering a master's degree in science education from its graduate school. ... But the state's scientific and educational leaders voiced their opposition, and at its April 24, 2008, meeting, the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board unanimously voted to deny the ICR's request for a state certificate of authority to offer the degree." Following the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board's decision, the ICR appealed the decision, while also taking its case to the court of public opinion with a series of press releases and advertisements in Texas newspapers.
Now, however, it seems that HB 2800 would take the matter out of the board's hands altogether. Subchapter G of Chapter 61 of Texas's Education Code serves to regulate "the use of academic terminology in naming or otherwise designating educational institutions, the advertising, solicitation or representation by educational institutions or their agents, and the maintenance and preservation of essential academic records"; it provides, inter alia, "A person may not grant or award a degree or offer to grant or award a degree on behalf of a private postsecondary educational institution unless the institution has been issued a certificate of authority to grant the degree by the board [that is, the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board] in accordance with the provisions of this subchapter."
HB 2800 would amend subchapter G by providing, "The provisions of this subchapter do not apply to a private educational institution, including a separate degree-granting program, unit, or school operated by the institution, that: (1) does not accept state funding of any kind to support its educational programs; (2) does not accept state-administered federal funding to support its educational programs; (3) was formed as or is affiliated with or controlled by a nonprofit corporation or nonprofit unincorporated organization; and (4) offers bona fide degree programs that require students to complete substantive course work in order to receive a degree from the institution." Presumably the ICR would argue that its graduate school satisfies all four requirements.
For Texas's HB 2800 as introduced (PDF), visit:
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/pdf/HB02800I.pdf
For the story in Reports of the NCSE, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/rncse/28/2/setback-icr-texas
For chapter 61 of Texas's Education Code, visit:
http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/ED/content/htm/ed.003.00.000061.00.htm
And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Texas, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/news/texas
CREATIONIST BOARD CHAIR PROFILED
As the final vote on the proposed revision of the Texas state science standards approaches, the Austin American-Statesman (March 8, 2009) offers a profile of the chair of the Texas state board of education, avowed creationist Don McLeroy. Describing his conversion to fundamentalism as a dental student, the profile explained, "He is now a young earth creationist, meaning that he believes God created Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago," quoting him as saying, "When I became a Christian, it was whole-hearted ... I was totally convinced the biblical principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate scientifically." Particularly important to McLeroy is the biblical tenet that humans were created in the image of God -- although Sid Hall, a Methodist pastor in Austin, told the newspaper, "I would never want to discount those works, but to take [the passage that humans were made in the image of God] to mean something about how the universe is created is a stretch to me ... That's code to me for 'I'm going to take my particular myth of creationism and make it part of the science curriculum.' That's scary to me."
At the board's January 21-23, 2009, meeting, McLeroy successfully proposed a revision to section 7 of the draft of the high school biology standards to require that students "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record." As NCSE explains in its call to Texas scientists, the requirement is not only unworkable and confusing, but also evidently intended to promote the idea that living things were specially created in their current forms. Moreover, a detailed analysis by the Stand Up for Real Science blog strongly suggests that the documentation that McLeroy provided in support of his revision at the January meeting was in fact taken wholesale from creationist sources. Undaunted, McLeroy told the American-Statesman that at the board's March 25-27, 2009, meeting, he plans to "pitch another idea that he says should be taught in public schools: the insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of cells" -- apparently a reference to the "intelligent design" notion of "irreducible complexity" due to Michael Behe.
David Hillis of the University of Texas, Austin, told the newspaper, "McLeroy's amendments are not even intelligible. I wonder if perhaps he wants the standards to be confusing so that he can open the door to attacking mainstream biology textbooks and arguing for the addition of creationist and other religious literature into the science classroom." He added, "If Chairman McLeroy is successful in adding his amendments, it will be a huge embarrassment to Texas, a setback for science education and a terrible precedent for the state boards overriding academic experts in order to further their personal religious or political agendas. The victims will be the schoolchildren of Texas, who represent the future of our state." Hillis is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the 21st Century Science Coalition, which has recruited over 1400 Texas scientists to endorse its call for the Texas state board of education to adopt state science standards that "acknowledge that instruction on evolution is vital to understanding all the biological sciences" and omit "all references to 'strengths and weaknesses,' which politicians have used to introduce supernatural explanations into science courses."
Preparing for the March 25-27 board meeting at which the final vote on the standards is expected, McLeroy is arming himself with "a large binder that is adorned on the front with a picture of Albert Einstein" and contains "numerous passages from books -- such as [Kenneth R.] Miller's and others on evolutionary theory -- and articles that he plans to use as ammunition in the fight this month over what should be in the state's science standards." One page from his binder, the American-Statesman reports, shows a diagram of the fossil record from a book by Miller, with McLeroy's gloss, "What do we see?" 'Sudden appearance' of species." Miller -- a professor of biology at Brown University and a Supporter of NCSE, who recently received the Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of "his sustained efforts and excellence in communicating evolutionary science" -- told the newspaper, "That diagram shows evolution. If he thinks it says evolution does not occur, he is dead wrong. It's really quite the opposite."
For the profile of McLeroy, visit:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/03/08/0308mcleroy.html
For NCSE's call to Texas scientists, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/creationism/analysis/analysis-proposed-texas-educational-knowledge-skills-teks-am
For the Stand Up for Real Science blog's analysis, visit:
http://www.anevolvingcreation.net/collapse/index.htm
For the 21st Century Science Coalition, visit:
http://www.texasscientists.org/
And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Texas, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/news/texas
ANTIEVOLUTION RESOLUTIONS INTRODUCED IN OKLAHOMA
Two bills in the Oklahoma House of Representatives -- House Resolution 1014 and House Resolution 1015, introduced on March 3, 2009 - attack Richard Dawkins's visit to the University of Oklahoma. The sole sponsor of both bills is Todd Thomsen (R-District 25), a member of the House Education Committee and the chair of the House Higher Education and Career Tech Committee. Both measures, if adopted, would express the strong opposition of the Oklahoma House of Representatives to "the invitation to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma." Dawkins spoke at the University of Oklahoma on March 6, 2009, as part of the university's celebrations of the Darwin anniversaries.
While HR 1015 ends with a plea for civility -- "the Oklahoma House of Representatives encourages the University of Oklahoma to engage in an open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian theory of evolution and all other scientific theories which is the approach that a public institution should be engaged in and which represents the desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma" -- HR 1014 attacks the University of Oklahoma's Department of Zoology for "framing the Darwinian theory of evolution as doctrinal dogmatism rather than a hypothetical construction within the disciplines of the sciences" and engaging in "one-sided indoctrination of an unproven and unpopular theory" while branding "all thinking in dissent of this theory as anti-intellectual and backward rather than nurturing such free thinking and allowing a free discussion of all ideas which is the primary purpose of a university."
At the beginning of his talk, which was repeatedly interrupted by cheers and applause, Dawkins opened by saying, "I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but it isn't everybody who's the subject of legislation ..." Quoting HR 1014's complaint of his alleged "intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking," he presented the stork theory of human reproduction -- illustrated with a parody of the creationist propaganda film Expelled -- as a view comparable to creationism. "They've lost in the courts of law; they've long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they've got left. And the one thing you can be sure of is that they don't actually know anything about what it is that they reject," he added. He also announced that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science would be donating $5000 to Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education, which fights against attempts to undermine evolution education in Oklahoma.
For the text of Oklahoma's HR 1014 and 1015 as introduced (documents), visit:
http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2009-10HB/HR1014_int.rtf
http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2009-10HB/HR1015_int.rtf
For information about the University of Oklahoma's celebrations, visit:
http://www.ou.edu/darwin/Site/Home.html
For videos of the beginning of Dawkins's talk, visit:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3646,Richard-Dawkins-at-the-University-of-Oklahoma---Introduction,Richard-Dawkins
For information about the Dawkins Foundation, visit:
http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/
For Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education, visit:
http://www.oklascience.org/
And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Oklahoma, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/news/oklahoma
Thanks for reading! And as always, be sure to consult NCSE's web site: http://www.ncseweb.org where you can always find the latest news on evolution education and threats to it.
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x310
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncseweb.org
http://www.ncseweb.org
Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools
http://www.ncseweb.org/nioc
Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism
http://www.ncseweb.org/evc
NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today!
http://www.ncseweb.org/membership
By Bart B. Van Bockstaele.
Representative Todd Thomsen of the state of Oklahoma has tried to ban world-renowned biologist Richard Dawkins from giving a lecture at the University of Oklahoma by introducing legislation to prevent him from doing so.
Links to the text of both resolutions can be found in a http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/268901. The lecture actually went through on 6 March 2006, regardless of Thomsen's opposition. In the introduction to the lecture, (click on the video-image to watch it) Richard Dawkins suggests that he should be flattered, since not too many people are the subject of specific legislation against them.
In the resolution Thomsen introduced, he accuses Richard Dawkins of not tolerating cultural diversity and diversity of thinking:
HR 1014: WHEREAS, the University of Oklahoma, as a part of the Darwin 2009 Project, has invited as a public speaker on campus, Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published opinions, as represented in his 2006 book "The God Delusion", and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking [...]
Richard Dawkins then asks if diversity of thinking includes "Intelligent Falling" versus the "Theory of Gravity" with formula and all:
dx/dt= 1 Cor. 1:10
Or, what about the Stork Theory of Human Reproduction, he asks, and he uses that to show his famous spoof of Ben Stein's movie Expelled.
THAT the Oklahoma House of Representative strongly opposes the invitation to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.
Professor Dawkins then goes on to say that people who reject science have lost in the courts of law, have long ago lost in the halls of science and continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. "Taking offense," he says, "is all they've got left. and the one thing you can be sure of, is that they don't actually know anything about what it is that they reject."
He goes on saying that what is really offensive is the bizarre idea that the University of Oklahoma should only talk about things the people agree with. He also questions the use of a university if it is only supposed to confirm the preconceived ideas of the students.
Dawkins also announces that he has asked the trustees of the American branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to donate 5000 dollars to Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education.
March 10th, 2009 Texas General 2009
As the final vote on the proposed revision of the Texas state science standards approaches, the Austin American-Statesman (March 8, 2009) offers a profile of the chair of the Texas state board of education, avowed creationist Don McLeroy. Describing his conversion to fundamentalism as a dental student, the profile explained, "He is now a young earth creationist, meaning that he believes God created Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago," quoting him as saying, "When I became a Christian, it was whole-hearted ... I was totally convinced the biblical principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate scientifically." Particularly important to McLeroy is the biblical tenet that humans were created in the image of God — although Sid Hall, a Methodist pastor in Austin, told the newspaper, "I would never want to discount those works, but to take [the passage that humans were made in the image of God] to mean something about how the universe is created is a stretch to me ... That's code to me for 'I'm going to take my particular myth of creationism and make it part of the science curriculum.' That's scary to me."
At the board's January 21-23, 2009, meeting, McLeroy successfully proposed a revision to section 7 of the draft of the high school biology standards to require that students "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record." As NCSE explains in its call to Texas scientists, the requirement is not only unworkable and confusing, but also evidently intended to promote the idea that living things were specially created in their current forms. Moreover, a detailed analysis by the Stand Up for Real Science blog strongly suggests that the documentation that McLeroy provided in support of his revision at the January meeting was in fact taken wholesale from creationist sources. Undaunted, McLeroy told the American-Statesman that at the board's March 25-27, 2009, meeting, he plans to "pitch another idea that he says should be taught in public schools: the insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of cells" — apparently a reference to the "intelligent design" notion of "irreducible complexity" due to Michael Behe.
David Hillis of the University of Texas, Austin, told the newspaper, "McLeroy's amendments are not even intelligible. I wonder if perhaps he wants the standards to be confusing so that he can open the door to attacking mainstream biology textbooks and arguing for the addition of creationist and other religious literature into the science classroom." He added, "If Chairman McLeroy is successful in adding his amendments, it will be a huge embarrassment to Texas, a setback for science education and a terrible precedent for the state boards overriding academic experts in order to further their personal religious or political agendas. The victims will be the schoolchildren of Texas, who represent the future of our state." Hillis is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the 21st Century Science Coalition, which has recruited over 1400 Texas scientists to endorse its call for the Texas state board of education to adopt state science standards that "acknowledge that instruction on evolution is vital to understanding all the biological sciences" and omit "all references to 'strengths and weaknesses,' which politicians have used to introduce supernatural explanations into science courses."
Preparing for the March 25-27 board meeting at which the final vote on the standards is expected, McLeroy is arming himself with "a large binder that is adorned on the front with a picture of Albert Einstein" and contains "numerous passages from books — such as [Kenneth R.] Miller's and others on evolutionary theory — and articles that he plans to use as ammunition in the fight this month over what should be in the state's science standards." One page from his binder, the American-Statesman reports, shows a diagram of the fossil record from a book by Miller, with McLeroy's gloss, "What do we see?" 'Sudden appearance' of species." Miller — a professor of biology at Brown University and a Supporter of NCSE, who recently received the Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of "his sustained efforts and excellence in communicating evolutionary science" — told the newspaper, "That diagram shows evolution. If he thinks it says evolution does not occur, he is dead wrong. It's really quite the opposite."
Category: Creationism
Posted on: March 10, 2009 12:35 PM, by PZ Myers
Schools in Hampshire, England are receiving information on how to incorporate creationism into the classroom. It's hard to judge whether this is good or bad without seeing the actual materials, but I'm inclined to say it's probably a bad idea, since it's supported by people claiming the point is to "analyse different views in a balanced way." That is the wrong way to teach this stuff.
I incorporate creationism into my introductory biology course, too, but I don't think I do it quite the way creationists want. What they want is that we be respectful of their views, explain it as an alternative, and nod sagely in the direction of Charles Darwin and Philip Johnson. We got a picture of what they want in Dover, Pennsylvania, when the school board mandated a vague statement about critical thinking that did not actually exercise any critical thought, and that waved a hand in the direction of some fifth-rate books that students ought to examine. No, that's not how you teach a subject in science.
For instance, I'm teaching a course in transmission genetics right now. If I taught it the creationist way, I would have said something like this:
Uh, this is a course in the theory of genetics. There are some other theories out there, maybe you can find some books on them somewhere, but, ummm, keep an open mind. We teach something about genes getting passed down from generation to generation. That's enough. There are some other details, I suppose, but right now we should spend some time on preformation and acquired characters, which I suppose are equivalent theories.
And then I could be done and sit down for the rest of the term. It sure would be easier. That's the thing about creationist "ideas" — they're so danged fuzzy and unteachable, either falsified already or so incoherent that they're untestable.
The way I actually teach genetics is essentially a temporal series of criticisms. I start with Darwin's pangenesis for a little historical background, and tell them this is wrong, and here's why, criticizing it on the basis of it's ad hoc nature and its failure to fit experimental observations. Then I introduce Mendel, and we see his view of particulate, quantifiable inheritance, and how it superseded Darwin, and then I show how parts of it are wrong, with experiments that show how it fails, which leads into linkage. And then I show how some of our initial concepts of chromosomal inheritance are wrong, with work done on extrachromosomal factors. Step by step, we build a case for a complex and detailed understanding of the rules of heredity by experiment…where even the experiments that go "wrong" (that is, don't show us the results we expected from existing theory) help us acquire a deeper understanding of the process.
In a way, it's a pretty ruthless business. Weak handwaving, of the sort that Darwin was doing in his theory of inheritance, doesn't cut it and gets chopped apart savagely with the bloody cleaver of experiment. Creationism is far, far weaker than Darwin's 19th century proposal, so you can guess how it fares.
When the proponents of creationism ask that their nonsense be taught in school, there is an implicit expectation that the scientists will put away their implements of destruction and suspend the savagery while their delicate little flower of unsupportable fluff is discussed reverentially. That is not going to happen. If it did, it wouldn't be a science class.
A lesson plan that includes creationism should plainly show that experiment and observation have irrefutably demonstrated that it is now a splintered pile of cack-minded gobshite, wrecked by a century and a half of discovery, and that its supporters now are reduced to pathetically feeble rationalizations that rely almost entirely on people's emotional dependence on the legitimacy of their religious beliefs. A science class isn't the place to rip into airy-fairy religiosity — we have other venues for that — but it should uncompromisingly demolish every attempt to link natural, material events to pious metaphysics. If a student comes out of such a class believing that maybe there is still something to the Genesis explanation of the origins of life, then the instructor has not done her job. Her job was to explain with science how the world works, and if anyone wants to smuggle in the seven days and the magic fruit tree and the talking snake, it should be so the teacher can show the students that that is not how it works.
I'm willing to grant creationism an hour or two in the classroom, as long as its role is to be an easy victim, to demonstrate how science can be used to eviscerate bad ideas (I also know from experience that most students find that extremely entertaining, as well as informative). From what I've seen of most of the creationist curricula advanced by these quacks, that isn't what they want. To which we have to say, then it isn't science.
Eric Freeman Jr.
Columnist
Updated: Monday, March 9, 2009
"Viewing present-day organisms as products of evolution provides the most productive framework for investigating and understanding their structure and function. As such, evolution is a unifying concept for science and provides the foundation for understanding nature."
If only these words were found in Louisiana's school board policy.
Instead, a product of anti-scientific religious orthodoxy inadvertently caused the snubbing of New Orleans in favor of Mormon country.
The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology moved its 2011 annual meeting from New Orleans to Salt Lake City, citing the Louisiana Science Education Act as the reason for the diversion. New Orleans hosted the meeting twice before Hurricane Katrina, but the group, in a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal, "could not support New Orleans as our meeting venue because of the official position of the state in weakening science education and specifically attacking evolution in science curricula."
"Utah, in contrast, passed a resolution that states that evolution is central to any science curriculum," Richard Satterlie, president of the SICB, said in the letter.
As Trojan Horse legislation paves the way for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, the Science and Education Act permits the use of external materials to supplant students' science textbooks to promote, as it claims, an open and objective discussion of scientific studies including — but not limited to — evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.
Among those who clamored for Jindal to veto the act — one of many across the country written under the false guise of "academic freedom," but the only one actually signed into law — was the American Association for the Advancement of Science, claiming the bill "disingenuously implies that particular theories, including evolution, are controversial among scientists," as well as the Editorial Board of The New York Times, which said the bill would "have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not."
The most notable dissenter, though, was Jindal's own teacher when he was pre-med at Brown University.
Arthur Landry sent the governor a message through the Louisiana Coalition for Science, saying, "Gov. Jindal was a good student in my class when he was thinking about becoming a doctor, and I hope he doesn't do anything that would hold back the next generation of Louisiana's doctors."
Sorry, Professor Landry. He did.
Louisiana should have passed this lesson in science more than 20 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court, deciding Edwards v. Aguillard, struck down the Creationism Act, which banned the teaching of evolution in Louisiana unless creationism was also taught.
In its ruling, the Court correctly held "a law intended to maximize the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of science instruction would encourage the teaching of all scientific theories about human origins. Instead, this act has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism."
There is a section in this bill preventing discrimination or promotion of any religion or non-religion, making this the crucial language that helped the bill become law. But creationism and intelligent design only come from belief systems, lacking the trial, error and analysis found in scientific studies.
By rehashing the "it's just a theory" defense, Jindal and our legislature have codified a false controversy. Our state government has now, at the same time, betrayed the economic interests of New Orleans by perpetuating the myth of a dilemma among scientists.
But at least we don't believe Jesus was American.
Eric Freeman, Jr. is a 22-year-old political science junior from New Orleans.
One of the trip wires of journalism is located along the fault line between creationism and evolution as explanations for the origin of man and other things.
Our Readers Who Comment are having a mostly civilized debate on this today because of Steve Hendrix's story about a Liberty University professor who takes his biology class to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in hopes of strengthening a biblical view of natural history.
That view, of course, has big trouble with Darwin and the theory of evolution.
Our readers are using their interpretations of science and religion to argue their points. While the majority of early comments ridiculed the creationist position, its defenders soon joined. Humor and sarcasm (not always the same thing) abound. Several readers wonder why the Post is bothering us with this story --- while readership of it and the length of the comment string grow by the minute.
We'll start with this exchange:
ajeffrey824 wrote, "...Evolution is just as much religion than creationism. Even those Christians who reject a young Earth do so based on their own beliefs... Follow a persons morality and ultimately I will discover his theology -- be it evolution, atheism, creationism, communism, or any other type of "ism"."
To which whorton1 replied, "...Evolutionary biology is absolutely NOT religious. It is a set of theories which attempt to explain the origin and development of species based on the observation of measurable evidence. Religion, on the other hand, deals with the spiritual. It's not supposed to explain things scientifically... Both science and religion are vital to humanity, and they can and should inform each other where they can, but substituting one for the other only undermines both."
Geot wrote, "This article seems to lump all Christians who believe that God created the world into a single group. A group which interprets the Genesis account to describe a 6 day period that occurred 6000-10,000 year ago. It is sort of a straw man, one that attributes the characteristics of a vocal minority to the whole. One that is also easy, and apparently entertaining, to pillory."
TwoCentsWrth wrote, "For extra credit the professors should have the students read the testimony from the Dover, PA trial in 2005. It was especially enlightening to see that the human chromosome 2 shows evidence of having merged from two separate chromosomes similar to two distinct ones that other primates have. That was a real test for evolution and it passed."
chris15 wrote, "Only a fool would expect balance between superstition and science. These misguided people are creating their own reality, which is fine as long as they stay out of mine."
slim2 wrote, "They also brought the head of the university's physics department to make the case some people can walk on water."
Nosmanic wrote, "I don't care if you believe that evolution was done by God as long as you don't believe Darwin's Therory is a conspiracy to corrupt Christian or pushing your believes on other people which I think is almost impossible for Americans to NOT do."
jimkahan asked, "Gee, can I go to the Air and Space Museum to prove to my students that the Earth is flat?"
jollyolympian wrote, "It's weird. I went to 12 years of Catholic school, and we were always taught evolution. In our biology classes, sure, God made evolution happen, but they were never mutually exclusive... I don't understand the science vs. religion debate. It doesn't have to be either/or..."
Bill1230 wrote, "...The enormous complexity of life at the biochemical level largely demolishes the argument for evolution. Darwin never anticipated the complex biochemical mechanisms necessary to sustain life, and simple statistical analysis dictates that these myriad mechanisms could not have evolved by chance..."
jneps replied, "...don't assume that the thousands of scientists who have unequivocally established the validity of Darwinian evolution are stupid enough to be in error. Common sense will tell you that the scientific method, which has allowed man to split the atom and walk on the moon, is as valid here as in any other scientific demesne."
jr_cville wrote, "...this piece of journalism is irresponsible, in my opinion, because it props up a dogmatic, literal interpretation of the Bible without questioning it. The subtext of the story: If Creationism has its own college class dedicated to it, then it must have merit, right?... If the overwhelming scientific consensus is true, and life on Earth evolved over billions of years through mutation and natural selection, that shouldn't make it any less mysterious and awe-inspiring."
jocali wrote, "...We readers deserve better from the Post. Strong though the temptation may be to create (ha) buzz through cheap and easy shots like calling anyone who isn't a biblical literalist a "Darwinist", I plead to your better editorial angels for journalistic restraint. Let's apply a little fact-based editorial judgment before printing stories that distort reality, scientific or otherwise, for the sake of juicy, contrived controversy..."
tedplaw wrote, "I have a crazy uncle who believes he was abducted by aliens. Why doesn't the WP do a story about him, since you're doing stories on people who believe ridiculous nonsense... failure to print their stories shows that the WP has an anti-alien abductee bias."
checkers2 wrote, "So until evolution offers real tangible proof, rare as it might be, to me it is not real science, just conjecture. All of the debate is really about two unprovable theories- creation & evolution. One group wears ties to church and attempts to discover how they are supposed to relate to each other and their God; the other group wears white coats to the digs and attempts to discover a reason why their life is so miserable. But both are scientific theories that will never be proven, just accepted on one side or the other."
sql_yoda replied, "checkers2 - the idea that an intelligent designer created the world as it is now, in a scientific theory, would first require you to prove that the designer exists. this cannot be done. it cannot be a scientific theory because it cannot be disproven. i am rapidly tiring of these same stupid arguments"
andrewpatejr wrote, "It's regretful that Liberty students are not fully exposed to the beauty of Darwinism, which is, in reality, NOT opposed to Christian understanding, but to the contrary, quite compatible with its finest expressions."
sjoyce4 wrote, "I was disappointed that this story never once referred to the irrefutable scientific method of radiological and Carbon 14 dating... Creationists...always ignore, skip over or refuse to debate this piece of science. The obvious reason, it would seem, is that they haven't invented a rebuttal... That level of pure science (the Laws of the Universe) are irrefutable."
garryh, in an extended post, concluded by writing, "The way I see it, both religion and life have evolved over time and will continue to do so. Someday, I hope that people glory in the uniqueness of our fleeting existence, rather than embrace bigotry to anoint their selves as morally superior."
We'll close with jamesd1, who wrote, "40 percent of Americans are functioning retards, I guess. Darwin bad. Jesus good. Pro Choice bad. Pro Life good. Taxes bad. Freedom good. Foreigners bad. Americans good. Sex bad. Abstinence good. Science bad. Supernatural good. "If I close my eyes super-duper tight and wish really really hard it has to be true." What a country. We're doomed."
All comments on this article are here.
By Doug Feaver | March 11, 2009; 7:39 AM ET
Kazmer Ujvarosy March 10, 2009
After abstaining from movies for many years, finally I took the risk of parting with $10.50, and went to see "Expelled."
No regrets. It was money and time well spent.
"Expelled" convincingly documents how people in academia are shunned, ridiculed, blacklisted or fired if they happen to question the parroted fables of inorganic and organic evolutions of complex systems from simple beginnings.
The testimonies of victims leave no doubt that there is no freedom of speech in scientific circles when the validity of nature´s Darwinist interpretations are questioned or challenged.
At the same time we learn about the magnitude of ignorance and delusion both sides display.
In spite of the fact that the nonexistence of life has never been demonstrated, and in spite of the fact that the principle of biogenesis has never been falsified, Ben Stein wants to know what caused life to arise.
The principle of biogenesis, as we find in the Oxford Dictionary of Biology (4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2000), states: "biogenesis: The principle that a living organism can only arise from other living organisms similar to itself (i.e. that like gives rise to like) and can never originate from nonliving material."
So in essence Ben Stein is asking a stupid question because absolutely no demonstrable evidence exists that at one time no life existed at all, or that life is the product of some kind of cause, be that God or nonlife. No doubt, Stein and other believers in life´s origin should keep in mind what Peter T. Mora wrote: "How life originated, I am afraid that, since Pasteur, this question is not within the scientific domain" (Nature, July 20, 1963).
No doubt Ben Stein believes that God is responsible for life. He seems to be unaware of the fact that life´s existence is prima facie evidence of life´s eternity because it stands uncontradicted for as long as it is overcome by contrary evidence. Above all, Ben Stein should know better that God is life itself. But if he believes that life is created, then most irrationally he believes that the Creator himself is created, because we are told that God is the highest form of life that exists.
Even David Berlinski, who intellectually outshines practically all of the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), has the delusion that an unspecified "designer" is responsible for the origin of life. He thinks that ID is an alternative scientific theory for the explanation of life´s origin and it should not be expelled from scientific discussions. Hopefully sooner or later Berlinski will arrive at the realization that no rational explanation exists for the origin of life simply because what is everlasting has no origin, being itself the origin of all things created.
The headquarters of the Intelligent Design movement is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Bruce Chapman is its president.
Chapman correctly points out that the complexity of life cannot be the result of imagined Darwinian processes. But Chapman himself believes that an intelligent cause designed life. He has this delusion in common with the rest of the ID fans. They fail to see that whereas the discernible features of the cosmic system are best explained by an intelligent cause, the discernible features of life are not explainable by an intelligent cause. Life itself needs no cause beyond itself, simply because life itself constitutes the intelligent cause of the universe. Life, in short, is the cosmic system´s input and output. Being the cause of the universe, life is supernatural relative to the universe it generated for the reproduction of itself.
Evidently Chapman is following the logic of Discovery Institute´s Stephen Meyer. Meyer argues that, whenever we trace information back to its source, we always come to an intelligent agent. So when we find information in life then it is rational to postulate that the information content of life similarly had an intelligent source.
Sounds rational? Not really. If we pay attention to Meyer´s reasoning we find that he is mixing up cause with effect. Because he can trace the source of an ancient hieroglyphic to an intelligent agent, namely to human intelligence, he believes that he can trace the same human intelligent agent to an intelligent source, which imaginary source or "designer" necessarily must exist beyond and above human intelligence. What Meyer fails to notice is the fact that whereas the cause of any effect needs to be identified, it makes absolutely no sense to identify the cause of the cause, simply because a cause is not an effect. In short, an effect has a cause, but the cause itself cannot have a cause. The universe has a cause, but that ultimate cause has no cause, because otherwise it could not be a cause but simply an effect.
In the final analysis Stephen Meyer and others like him are just as irrational as Richard Dawkins who likes to ask the stupid question, "If God created the universe, who created God?" ID fans similarly ask the stupid question, "If human intelligence created the ancient hieroglyphics, who created human intelligence?"
The fact that human intelligence is viewed by ID proponents as an effect of a cause that exists above and beyond human intelligence demonstrates that they believe in a super-human intelligence that to the best of our knowledge has no demonstrable existence. As a matter of fact not even the Bible implies that intelligence exists above and beyond human intelligence.
When we read in Genesis that the Creator generated the universe for the production of man in his own image, we are faced with one unknown agent only, namely with the question of the Creator´s identity. Because man is clearly identified as the climax or output of creation, and the universe as the system which produces that output in the input´s image, based on that information it is rational to propose that man constitutes the cosmic system´s initial input as well.
Indeed, the theory that man constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system´s input and output, is reinforced by the teachings of Jesus Christ.
When in Revelation 22:13 Christ discloses, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," he identifies himself as the cosmic system´s input and output. Note also John 10:30 where Christ identifies himself as the Creator, parent seed, or Logos spermatikos of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
Ironically, many theologians and evolutionists are in the habit of assuring us that the accounts of creation in the Bible are not fact-based, but faith-based. However it is beyond any doubt that this is a misconception. Even Philip, Christ´s disciple, demanded tangible evidence for the Creator´s existence. Christ, without hesitation, presented the Father´s body for Philip´s examination. In John 14:8-9 we find this exchange of words:
Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ´Show us the Father´?"
Paul in his letter to the Colossians also assures us that Christ is the Creator of the universe, and not something what is intangible or empirically not verifiable:
By Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible …; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Logically Christ, being the generative seed of the universe, is everlasting. The universe has no power whatsoever to act upon the initial cause of its own origin, just as a tree has no power to act upon its own parent seed.
At this point the argument may be raised that man is not the cosmic system´s input and output, or pinnacle of all life forms in the universe. Indeed, whether it is true or not, we can´t be absolutely certain. Precisely for this reason the theory of creation is tentative, just as scientific theories are supposed to be.
In any case just because we are not absolutely certain that man constitutes the existing highest form of life does not mean that the theory of creation is not fact-based but faith-based.
Man´s existence is an undeniable fact. What is faith-based is the speculation that a being superior to human life exists, which superhuman being is reproductively isolated from human beings. But if either ID proponents, evolutionists or creationists keep insisting – in the total absence of evidence – that human life is not the pinnacle of life forms in the universe, then they are the ones who irrationally believe in the existence of superhuman beings.
As a matter of fact Christ never told us that anything superior to his own being exists. He only affirmed his own existence and his identity with the Father, but never the existence of a being beyond and above himself. Being the Creator of the universe, he is most qualified to know that no being superior to himself ever existed.
The main point is that whereas amusingly Intelligent Design theorists refuse to specify the inferred designer´s identity, the Most High´s identity doesn´t remain unidentified in the Bible: Christ identifies himself with the existing highest form of life, i.e. with the parent seed of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
The cosmic system, stated in a nutshell, is best described as a heuristic system that involves a process by which the parent seed of the universe or input program improves its performance by learning from its own human output as a result of information feedback in the form of prayers.
When evolutionary cosmologists attribute to nonlife the creation of the universe and life, and evolutionary biologists seek to derive from a primitive life form the complexity and richness of life, they irrationally seek to derive from simple causes most complex effects. Getting from a simple cause more than what it has is contrary to reason.
The record is clear that when Darwin and his deluded disciples advocate evolution from a simple beginning they actually advocate hocus-pocus. As Tryon Edwards (1809-94) remarked, such ingrained delusions are "rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic."
As science is, above all else, about cause-and-effect relationship, the true test of a theory or explanation in science is the central question: "Is the proposed cause of a phenomenon sufficient to bring about the effect attributed to it?"
Because we know that complexity´s evolution from any kind of inferior cause is irrational, therefore it is rational to propose that the initial cause of the universe is no lesser in qualities than the qualities we find in the universe. Thus this logical inference from a highly complex effect to a cause greater in complexity than the effect itself points in the direction of the existing highest form of complexity or intelligence.
To summarize, whereas Darwinists posit common descent from a simple beginning, rational scientific minds posit common descent from the existing highest form of life or intelligence. As we have no confirmable evidence that intelligence superior to human intelligence exists, we are constrained to propose tentatively that human intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image or likeness.
Thus, whereas in modern cosmology a human being is incorrectly considered to be part of the universe, in traditional cosmology a human being is considered to be the seed of the universe. This scientific theory of creation by human intelligence is labeled "religion."
This brings us to the so-called "Anthropic Principle."
Contemporary cosmology just can´t get over the discovery that our universe is ingeniously bio-friendly, i.e. that the cosmological parameters are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of human beings.
In our experience the parameters or determining characteristics of plant and animal systems are delicately fine-tuned for the production of reproductive cells because those systems are reproductive cells unfolded. We find, in other words, that the parameters of a hen are fine-tuned for the production of eggs because an egg generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. Also we find that the parameters of an apple tree are fine-tuned for the production of apples because an apple seed generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. So when we find that the parameters of our universe are fine-tuned for the production of human beings, then the rational explanation seems to be that it is so because intelligence akin to our intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image.
Needless to say, in Expelled none of the proponents or critics of Intelligent Design came even near to this conclusion.
Richard Dawkins, who established a foundation ironically called "reason and science," and claims to be "clear-thinking," argues that even if life was seeded by intelligent designers on this planet the alien beings would themselves have to have evolved from lesser and lesser complexity. He is absolutely convinced that organized complexity or any designing intelligence comes late in the universe and cannot exist at the beginning. To illustrate, Dawkins believes that because an oak tree yields the highly organized complexity of acorns later than the rest of the tree, therefore no acorn existed and played any role in the tree´s generation. In essence he denies that the oak tree´s parent seed ever existed, and similarly denies that the Parent Seed or Creator of the universe ever existed.
So what´s so wrong with Dawkins and the rest of the evolutionists? The diagnosis seems to be that they are incapable of discriminating between cause and effect. If we tell them, intelligence is the cause and the universe is the effect, then they ignorantly ask, "What caused intelligence?" In other words they ask, "What caused the cause?" Faced with this stupid question we can only give this answer: "Nothing caused the cause. Only an effect can have a cause. A cause is necessarily without a cause because it is not an effect."
George Washington wisely observed:
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
Don Oldenburg • USA Today • March 8, 2009
Science journalist Hannah Holmes started connecting with nature as an infant at her family farm in Maine. Not only did she grow up tending to farm animals, but, with both parents biologists and no veterinarian in town, her home became a refuge for orphaned and rescued wild critters. Some of her best childhood pals included a couple of raccoons, a chipmunk and an owl. Her flying squirrel exercised by ricocheting off her bedroom walls. One sparrow even learned to hop on the door handle to let itself in.
So what could be more natural than Holmes' latest book, "The Well-Dressed Ape," seeking a better understanding of her place and that of the human species in the world of nature?
Sure, it brings to mind Desmond Morris' groundbreaking "The Naked Ape," which in 1967 analyzed humans compared with other animals. But in this Homo sapiens saga, Holmes devotes much of her attention to examining herself and how she, as representative of her species, fits into the natural scheme.
The book begins with the author standing buck naked before a mirror, inspecting all of her attributes feature by feature — unabashedly, though not always with clinical dispassion.
The author of "Suburban Safari" (a look at the creatures and plant life in Holmes' own backyard) and "The Secret Life of Dust" (about, yep, dust), Holmes expands from her personal characteristics to explore how the human species evolved into what we are today. She investigates territorial behavior, reproduction, diet, communication — just about everything about human mental and physiological life.
In the process, she dishes up a feast of provocative science and engaging trivia, from how the human neck evolved ideally for running without head-bobbing to how human "odorprint" affects choice of mates. Wonder why humans cook their food? It's here. So is why humans have so little "fur," why human mammary glands are enlarged, and why we're among the sweatiest of species.
The book is saturated with hard-core scientific evidence as well as theories, mysteries and arguably some pseudoscience. Most of Holmes' answers revert back hundreds of thousands of years to interpretations of how the species evolved. A fascinating though not a fast read, "The Well-Dressed Ape" clearly is not destined for the creationists' best-seller list.
It should be noted that in fleshing out the bio basics, Holmes has way too much fun. Though much of the book is written well, with a Discovery Channel demeanor, the author wisecracks nearly page-by-page. Clever humor seems as irresistible to her as the cookies she confesses are "too easy to capture" in her section on body fat.
Holmes writes that she wanted to crank herself through "the biologist machinery" to see her animal self more clearly. After all, trying to understand ourselves is an attribute exclusive to Homo sapiens. To that end, her book succeeds affably.
And where it falters, the result of excessive wordplay and obsessive science, well, that's only human, too.
By Bart B. Van Bockstaele.
Rep. Todd Thomsen, has filed two resolutions in the Oklahoma House to oppose the teaching of the theory of evolution at the department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma and to oppose an invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak on Campus.
Sometimes, facts are stranger than fiction, and here are these facts:
HR 1014 - By Thomsen
A resolution disapproving certain actions of the University of Oklahoma regarding the theory of evolution; distribution.
HR 1015 - By Thomsen
A resolution opposing the invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak at the University of Oklahoma and encouraging certain discussion; distribution.
Both resolutions were filed on March 3, 2009. To the best of my knowledge, they have not been discussed or voted and they are not binding. It is truly remarkable however, that a politician is trying to tell a scientific institution that it cannot teach science, and that it cannot invite prominent scientists.
The danger here is great. The theory of evolution is not merely a funny story we tell our children to amuse them just before bed.
Not teaching evolution in zoology class, is comparable to not teaching arithmetic in maths class, or not teaching gravity in physics class. In other words, without it, there is simply no science to talk about, just a collection of loose, unrelated facts that make no sense.
The theory of evolution is the basis of biology. Without it, as Dobzhansky is reputed to have said, nothing in biology makes sense. Biology without the theory of evolution is as useless as physics without classical mechanics or relativity.
This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com
Published: Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 9:19 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 9:39 p.m.
David Pulley's statement [3/6/09 letter re your article on Professor Behe's lecture about intelligent design] that "the debate is purely whether we evolved naturally or supernaturally" is incorrect. Behe does not advocate creationism, which has been discredited by the fossil record and other evidence. He is a respected biochemist who agrees evolution is a fact and concurs with scientific data on the age of the earth and universe. He does disagree in part with the theory on how evolution occurs by proposing there is an intelligent design behind it. Therefore, the debate is whether we evolved naturally or through a synthesis of the natural and supernatural.
To objectively consider the synthesis position requires believers to put aside the concept of an omnipotent god, and requires scientists to put aside the presumption that observable phenomena cannot be influenced by a life force with no physical basis.
Einstein wrote, "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." That is why Behe states, "If you want to understand this [debate] you can't rely on somebody else, you've got to look at it yourself and come to your own conclusions."
Religion and science should be kept separate if there isn't an intelligent and involved god (i.e., no god or an uninvolved life force). But if an intelligent and involved god does exist, then religion and science are inherently intertwined.
Holly Budd
Leland