Reflectorites
Here are excerpts fron couple of newspapers discussing Kansas and
the ID movement. Note how the ID movment is now the `official
opposition' to Darwinism in the USA!
Some brief comments of mine are in square brackets within the text.
Steve
=====================================================================
http://cjonline.com/stories/071700/kan_evolution17.shtml ... Kansas News
The Topeka Capital-Journal ... Sunday, July 16, 2000 Evolution criticized
as lacking evidence ... KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Scientists, attorneys and
teachers who support intelligent design instead of naturalistic evolution
presented their side of the debate at a day-long symposium .... More than
350 people attended a national symposium called "Darwin, Design and
Democracy: Teaching the Evidence in Science Education" .... It featured
presentations by biochemist Dr. Michael Behe, biologist Dr. Jonathan
Wells, origin-of-life expert Dr. Walter Bradley and others. Topics included
problems with how textbooks present evolution, what intelligent design
means and whether it is science or religion, and responses to evolutionists'
criticisms of intelligent design.
Wells' presentation took aim at familiar textbook examples of evolution,
such as H.B. Kettlewell's peppered moth experiment. .... One of the
problems with that story is that the familiar photographs of light and dark
moths resting on tree trunks were in fact staged, Wells said. Peppered
moths don't normally rest on tree trunks; they were manually placed there
and photographed. ...
...Bradley questioned the way biology textbooks present chemical
evolution and the origin of life. "There is a big disconnect between what
I'm seeing in the textbooks and what I see in the technical journals," he
said. ... the 1998 high school textbook "Biology: The Dynamics of Life"
which was used in Topeka ...discusses the famous Miller-Urey amino-acid
experiment of 1953 but mentions none of its problems.
Attorney John H. Calvert defined intelligent design as a scientific theory
that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of
life and its diversity. ID holds that design is empirically detectable in nature,
he said. "Other sciences use design detection -- the SETI search for
extraterrestrial intelligence program, the forensic sciences, arson
investigation, cryptoanalysis, and archaeology," he said.
Behe, whose book "Darwin's Black Box" introduced the concept of
irreducible complexity which signals the presence of design, presented
responses to evolutionists' criticisms. In a pre-lecture interview, he
addressed several criticisms from biologist Dr. Kenneth Miller's recent
book "Finding Darwin's God." ... Behe also said that no experiments show
that evolution can produce irreducible complexity. "In fact, the experiments
all point in the other direction," he said. Irreducible complexity remains a
big problem for the Darwinist viewpoint, Behe said. The symposium was
sponsored by the Intelligent Design network Inc. in Shawnee Mission. .....
Copyright (c) 2000 The Topeka Capital-Journal/CJ Online. ....
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usatoday.com/life/dcovwed.htm ... USA TODAY ... 07/19/00
... Evolution's next step in Kansas: Ballot box ... On trial: Professor John T.
Scopes was a Dayton, Tenn. high school teacher. (AP) JOHNSON
COUNTY, Kan. - ... Not since the Scopes Monkey Trial, argued 75 years
ago this week on the lawn of a Tennessee courthouse, has the public debate
over Charles Darwin's theory of evolution been so hot. There have been
other attacks, including the Alabama Board of Education's adoption in
1995 of a disclaimer for biology textbooks that says evolution is unproven
and the removal of the word "evolution" from Nebraska's science
guidelines in 1999.
But it was the Kansas Board of Education's 6-4 vote to drop evolution as
an area of required science instruction that captured the world's attention,
inspiring campaign-trail questions for presidential candidates, Land of Oz
jokes on late-night TV, and scathing criticism from the National Academy
of Sciences and other science and education groups. ... Kansas board
chairwoman Linda Holloway, who voted for the standards, says the media
blew the thing way out of proportion. "People criticize us -- me -- saying,
'You give the state a bad name.' But the first word that went out on the
wire was wrong - that Kansas banned evolution." Indeed, it remains legal
to teach evolution in public schools. But ...
because references to evolution are left out, the subject won't appear on
state assessment tests, creating a disincentive for teachers to cover it and
an opportunity to introduce alternative viewpoints. ...
Holloway says she is optimistic about the outcome of her Aug. 1
Republican primary. But of the 10 seats on the board, five are on the ballot,
and three of them belong to incumbents who voted for the standards. So
evolution activists are counting on voter turnout to change the board's
ideological mix to one that would adopt an earlier draft of the standards
that emphasized the importance of evolution. A coalition of organizations
supporting evolution went all out last week , sponsoring a statewide array
of events culminating in a reenactment of the Scopes trial featuring actors
Ed Asner and Shirley Knight, both Kansas natives, among others. ...
Even so, the long-simmering national debate remains far from resolved.
Any discussion of the subject quickly grows emotional, raising issues of
morality, ethical responsibility and other implications for the meaning and
purpose of life. ... That same idea was central to the 1925 Scopes Monkey
Trial, in which teacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law
when he discussed evolution in a high school biology class. [This is false-
Scopes was a football coach who never taught evolution. His lawyers had
to get him to teach a couple of kids about evolution in the back of a
car, so that they could say without perjuring themselves that Scopes
had taught evolution!]
But unlike the Scopes trial, which pitted religion against science, the
Kansas standards mention neither God nor creationism, which holds that
God created humans whole, according to Genesis. [This is a caricature-while
most creationists might claim that, not all do. I don't for one.]
Many evolution skeptics are trying to recast the controversy as a matter of
good vs. bad science, promoting a concept they call "intelligent design" as
a better explanation for human existence. Much of the work of intelligent-
design researchers aims to refute Darwin's ideas about biological evolution
and natural selection. They suggest that some aspects of nature are so
complex and improbable that they could come only from an intelligent
source. Proponents don't identify the agent but also don't rule out God.
And they note that creationism is consistent with intelligent design - a point
that might raise philosophical problems among theorists but isn't necessarily
relevant in citizen efforts to keep evolution from dominating the biology
curriculum . From the intelligent-design movement, advanced by scholars
at respected universities, is emerging what could become a battle in science
research.
The anti-evolutionist ideas are routinely slammed by the overwhelming
majority of scientists, who argue - emphatically - that evolution theory is so
well documented as to be an observable fact. [Well it is-if finch beak and
moth colour oscillation is "evolution"!] The intelligent-design premise "is
like suggesting the stork theory as an alternative medical explanation for
how babies are born," says Leonard Krishtalka, director of the University
of Kansas' natural-history museum in Lawrence ... [It is interesting how
opponents of ID can never refute it with scientific arguments but have to
stoop to absurd rhetoric. This will backfire on them.]
Though there is little consensus in the debate, both sides agree that biology
education in public schools is inadequate. They base that on recent polls
suggesting that 50% to 80% of the U.S. (and Canadian, in some cases)
population think it's OK to teach kids both literal creationism and organic
evolution. But ... those who are comfortable with evolution and those who
aren't interpret the survey results differently. Anti-evolutionists tend to see
the numbers as proof that schools ought to be able to teach alternatives to
Darwin if parents want them to. And evolutionists see the numbers as
evidence that they haven't explained the science thoroughly enough.
There's one other meeting of the minds in all the fuss: a sense that
democracy will be better off for having had the evolution debate, however
heated. "We Americans, we're a disputational group, but we tend to abide
by the majority rule," says Kansas school board member Bill Wagnon...who
voted against the standards ...Whatever the outcome, he says, "we're going
to have to live with the consequences ... (c) Copyright 2000 USA
TODAY. ... [I've got news for him-we *are* living with the consequences
of Darwinism. Read the newspapers!]
=====================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is important to notice that it was not necessary for a scientist to
renounce religion in order to be a member in good standing of the new
order. Simple theism, such as Darwin possessed in 1859, interfered little
with the practice of science because it had no doctrines that prescribed
beliefs about the world. The more complex the theology, the greater was
the potential for interference. The problem, then, was not theism, but
positive theological content. Scientists who were theists could also be
positivists. Those who were orthodox usually became more liberal in their
theological views as they drew closer to positive science. The shift from
one episteme to another required not the surrender of religion as such, but
rather its replacement by positivism as the epistemological standard in
science. And this eventually took God out of nature (if not out of reality)
as effectively as atheism. That religion could continue under such terms
often concealed from participants what had actually occurred. Nor were
they the only ones deceived. In the new episteme reality was always an
inference. Men would never be able to claim certainty for their beliefs while
they continued within its boundaries. Popularizers of the new science who
spread a gospel of metaphysical materialism based on science's supposed
certain authority appreciated the real significance of what had happened as
little as did the theologians who thought successful accommodation of a
divinely revealed religion to the new science was a simple matter of
shedding a few antiquated superstitions." (Gillespie N.C., "Charles Darwin
and the Problem of Creation," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL.,
1979, p.153)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 24 2000 - 16:50:51 EDT