Further to Greg's prediction that: "there will be more articles in
the public press about physics in 1998 than about evolutionary
biology", attached is an article in the public press which reports on
yet another big split among evolutionists, namely over the NABT's
backdown on whether evolution is an "unsupervised" and "impersonal"
process:
==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE==================
The Washington Times, February 24, 1998, Tuesday, Pg. A2
HEADLINE: Evolutionists split over biology lessons; How to
deal with God's existence along with Darwin upsets teachers
BYLINE: Larry Witham; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
An effort by biology teachers to accurately define evolution, a
topic they must present in the nation's high schools, has split top
American evolutionists over the correct approach to take.
The dividing line is whether presentation of Charles Darwin's idea
about the origin of natural diversity, including humans, must
sidestep the question of God's existence or rebut it head-on.
"There seems to be in the social discussion a lot of confusion on
what evolution is," said Alvin Plantinga, a University of Notre
Dame philosopher whose fall letter to the National Association of
Biology Teachers (NABT) spurred the new debate.
The letter prompted the NABT board, which represents 8,000
biology teachers, to alter a key paragraph in its statement on
teaching evolution so it did not offend religious Americans.
In protest, another group of ardent evolutionists said the move
was an unnecessary concession to creationists.
The NABT asked critics to submit alternatives that might unite
biologists on the issue. "At NABT we welcome an open and
honest debate on the merits," said Wayne Carley, executive
director of the NABT.
"It is a living document," he said of the organization's three-page
1995 "Statement on the Teaching of Evolution." "I don't
anticipate more changes in the document soon."
Mr. Plantinga said that Darwinism presents the concepts of
"descent with modification" and the rise of new species by natural
selection - but that many Darwinists also conclude that evolution
refutes God's existence.
"The first two seem like appropriate scientific themes," Mr.
Plantinga said. "The third seems like a theological gloss."
His letter to the NABT last fall, also signed by world religions
scholar Huston Smith, questioned the association's saying that
evolution is an "unsupervised, impersonal" natural process.
That might offend many Americans, Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Smith
added, because 90 percent of them believe "a personal agent -
God - supervised in some way our arrival on the planet."
Mr. Carley now agrees. "To say that evolution is unsupervised is
to make a theological statement," not a scientific one, he said.
The NABT board meeting in October at first voted against
dropping the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal." Later, at
the urging of Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for
Science Education (NCSE), an anti-creationist group, a new vote
favored the deletion.
Then battle lines were drawn among evolutionists.
University of Tennessee botanist Massimo Pigliucci issued a
protest statement. To date, it has garnered the signatures of more
than 100 evolutionists.
Dropping the two words "represents the first wedge of a
movement intended to surreptitiously introduce religious
teachings into our public schools," Mr. Pigliucci's statement said.
In an interview yesterday, he said he is working with other
biologists to draft new wording that does not compromise but
also does not insult American believers.
"It is not going to be perceived as 'in-your-face,' " like the 1995
statement, Mr. Pigliucci said. "But evolution will be presented as
a naturalistic process."
His group will submit their alternative to the NABT board. His
co-writers include Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin and
Brian Charlesworth, president of the Society for the Study of
Evolution.
After the protest earlier this month, Mrs. Scott of the NCSE
circulated her response to what she called "l'affaire NABT."
"NABT was not knuckling under to creationist pressure, but
responding in a responsible manner to a perception on the part of
religious Americans that it was making an antireligious
statement," Mrs. Scott said.
While the debate over evolution and God as creator may prompt
many Americans to think of the 1925 John Scopes "Monkey
Trial," Mr. Plantinga said arguments have become far more
sophisticated.
"The NABT thing may be a straw in the wind, but more and more
the discussion is about clarifying what is scientific about the parts
of evolution and what is philosophical," he said.
Other science groups also want to improve the teaching process.
In 1996, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued
national science standards that said evolution is one of five major
concepts in science.
To expand on that for school teachers, the academy will issue this
spring a guide titled "Teaching About Evolution and the Nature
of Science." It will be sent to 15,000 teachers and state science
supervisors nationwide.
This week in Texas - which along with California is the nation's
largest textbook buyer - organized creationists have mailed an
appeal to school district leaders not to buy "the three most
offensive biology textbooks."
The buying pattern of Texas effects all U.S. textbooks sales.
Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Huston, in their letter to the NATB, said
that more care in describing evolution might avert such attacks by
more "extreme" religious views that reject conventional science.
Mrs. Scott agrees.
She said members of the biology teachers association are not
anti-religious and should not be perceived as such. "Such a
perception is inaccurate, but it is also injurious to members of the
NABT, the teachers who must teach evolution."
She said that while the NABT and the science center still fight
meddling creationists, they have no desire to tell American
students that God has nothing to do with natural laws or that life
is meaningless.
One critic of evolution, University of California at Berkeley law
professor Phillip Johnson, has weighed into the debate saying that
Mr. Pigliucci and his allies are the more honest in the l'affaire
NABT.
"I salute the Open Letter's candid statement that the American
public correctly perceives a direct conflict between neo-
Darwinian evolution and the Judeo-Christian concept of a
personal God," he said.
If Mr. Pigliucci has galvanized some of the leading evolutionists
in the field to his side, supporters of the NABT statement also
have high standing in the sciences.
Joseph McInerney, publisher of the evolutionist Biological
Science Curriculum Studies textbooks, favored deleting the two
words. "Teachers are at the front, dealing with direct challenges
to their teaching from real students and real parents who have
immediate questions and immediate demands," Mr. McInerny
said.
In next month's Discover, a science magazine, Matt Cartmill,
president of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists, will say scientists should not risk having
evolution "evicted" from public school because it sounds anti-
religious.
"Many scientists are atheists or agnostics who want to believe
that the natural world they study is all there is, and being only
human, they try to persuade themselves that science gives them
the grounds for that belief," Mr. Cartmill writes. "It's an
honorable belief, but it isn't a research finding."
****BOX
TEACHING EVOLUTION
The National Association of Biology Teachers altered the
opening paragraph of its 1995 statement on teaching evolution by
deleting two controversial words (IN ITALICS):
The diversity of life on Earth is the outcome of evolution: an
UNSUPERVISED, IMPERSONAL, unpredictable and natural
process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is
affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and
changing environments. GRAPHIC: Photos, A) Massimo
Pigliucci; B) Charles Darwin's 1835 voyage to the Galapagos
Islands off the coast of Ecuador resulted in his theory of
evolution opposed by fundamentalists.; Box, TEACHING
EVOLUTION, By The Washington Times
===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE===================
See my Darwin Day post for more details.
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
--------------------------------------------------------------------