Date: Monday, October 13, 1997 06:22:06
From: zpub@zph.com
Subj: ZNS-10/13/97 BIOLOGY TEACHERS DON'T CHANGE STATEMENT
To: zphevents@info.harpercollins.com
ZONDERVAN NEWS SERVICE (10/13/97)
BIOLOGY TEACHERS REJECT CHANGING EVOLUTION STATEMENT
(RNS) The National Association of Biology Teachers has rejected the
assertion of two leading scholars who say the group's official statement
supporting evolution goes beyond the limits of provable science.
Meeting in Minneapolis, the NABT's eight-person board of directors voted
unanimously last Wednesday (Oct. 8) not to alter the wording of its
"Statement on Teaching Evolution," as had been urged by retired
University of California at Berkeley religion professor Huston Smith and
Alvin Plantinga, a University of Notre Dame philosophy professor.
In a September letter to NABT, Smith and Plantinga did not argue against
evolution. Rather, they said the NABT statement went beyond the limits
of provable science by insisting that evolution was an "unsupervised"
and
"impersonal" process.
The pair -- both pre-eminent in their respective disciplines -
maintained that since science could not prove or disprove any divine
role in setting the evolutionary process in motion, both "unsupervised"
and "impersonal" should be dropped from the statement.
Wayne W. Carley, executive director of the Reston, Va.-based teachers'
group, said NABT directors felt "rather strongly" about not changing the
statement. "We believe it. Evolution is real," he said.
The directors also rejected the professors' assertion that because
surveys say 90% of Americans believe in God, the "logical vulnerability"
of NABT's statement undercuts the credibility of science and provides a
"legitimate target" for advocates of creationism -- belief in the
biblical account of the universe's origins.
"The fundamental issue is not what people believe, but that science
isn't a matter of public opinion but is based on testable hypotheses,"
Carley said, adding that altering the statement would have given
creationists "just the aid and comfort Smith and Plantinga argue
against."
In response, Smith said the NABT board's decision perpetuated "bad
science" by adhering to "our current pseudo-scientific myth." "... How
can empirical science pronounce on whether the evolutionary process that
evidence unfolds was or was not divinely monitored without violating its
pledge to adhere to factual evidence?" he said. "I do not think it will
be too long before biologists will look back on the (NABT statement)
with the same embarrassment that theologians remember their predecessors
refusal to look through Galileo's telescope."
(Other items deleted...-WTY)
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-- --Bill Yates--wtyates@aol.com--wtyates@vcnet.com--Editor, WorldVillage Believer's Weekly--Moderator, AOL Christian Writer's Workshop--http://www.vcnet.com/wtyates/