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Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution
tboulay writes "The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation. The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a large textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards, then market those books nationwide. 'This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science,' said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution." Both sides are saying the issue it too close to call. Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways.
1. "Texans are all ass-backwards hicks and should be murdered" -Tolerant Liberal /.er that claims to have read an issue of Scientific American
2. "This is why America sucks" -EuroTard
3. "Religion is the root, trunk, branches, and leaves, of all evil" -Sgt. Atheist
4. "Intelligent design is not Creationism. It's philosophical." -Closet Creationist
5. "Science is..." insert simplistic, high-school-esque view of 'The Scientific Method' -Every
6. "Although this proposal, and the people behind it, are certifiable, the idea that a theory of evolution holds some special uncriticizable position because of the 'preponderance of evidence' is just as stifling to scientific progress as the dogmatic fervor with which academia held to Newton's theory of gravitation. A theory should always be accepted as necessarily conjectural, and all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory and replace it with a better theory." -Me
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I mean, this is the same state that gave us the amazingly anti-science George W. "I believe God wants me to run for president" Bush.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Seriously, for the country that's supposed to be the most modern and have the best technology (all ofcourse delivered through scientific study), it remains unbelievable that evolution is even questioned.
No such thing in Europe. Not even the Vatican and the Church of England (both the foundations for the US churches) doubt evolution theory. They even support it !
Wake up, Americans :-)
I am glad they open the way for my scripture to be taught side by side with christian beliefs once they step on this landmine! Prepare the pasta! We have learnin' to do!
California is a much larger textbook market than Texas. A much stronger claim can be made that California is the market that publishers try to satisfy. And California is the most likely market to demand evolution and reject its minimization.
Whew, thank God for Texas!
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
I do not recall any teacher or textbook saying that evolution proves that God doesn't exist. (For me, bigotted religious zealots did quite a good job of that all on their own).
I know there are those born again types who fervently believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old so they'll never be satisfied until the schools are beginning and ending each lesson with a prayer and throw out all textbooks in favor of bibles, but cummon, there have got to be SOME sane people in Texas.
The Digital Sorceress
OK, I'll bite. First of all, evolutionary theory should always be taught as the best theory that fits the available evidence. And it is the best theory. But as a good biology grad, I'm always interested in hearing about holes - so what, in your opinion are the biggest problems and holes?
Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution
Why would you even spell that out? I bet the NCSE also promotes teaching of water being wet and the sun being a hot thing we orbit.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I am a Christian who believes the Bible. I therefore believe that "God created the heavens and the earth." However, I also believe that Evolution is possible because it fits most of our current scientific views and it seems to be compatible with my beliefs. This includes the idea that even humans are descended from common ancestry with all other life on Earth. After all, the Bible does tell us that God created Earth, but not how he created it.
Students should not be told that the theory of evolution is wrong. Nor should Students be told that it is right, either. The fact is that as a scientific community, we still do not know for sure. Also, every day we disprove things we thought we knew "for sure". This is the nature of Science. We have to teach what we think we know, and present it as such. Doing anything else would be dishonest.
You seem to be under the impression that modern evolutionary theory is in some way largely dependent on the raw data collected by Darwin. He was an excellent naturalist and an amazing observer/investigator - but this is simply not true.
It is not bad to provoke thought and questions regarding evolution. But starting with the axiom that life was created and shaped through some unseen intelligence is bad.
and your an idiot who obviously never took biology in high school let alone college.
To what "problems" or "holes" are you referring? Can you name one?
No. Intelligent design creationism allows for no falsification; evolutionary theory on the other hand most certainly does. That is indeed a part of the point; ID is not science because it makes no testable predictions and is for a lack of a better term: worthless. Evolutionary theory by contrast is as has been described by many others to be the very foundation on which one can understand biology.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Telling kids true things is not indoctrination. I suppose your wishy-washy factual relativism would have us teach math students that SOME people believe that 2+2=4, and SOME believe that 2+2=5, and we must NOT SAY that the fivers are wrong, because their god hates to be contradicted. Idiocy.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Evolution is not "flawed", it is incomplete, a work in progress. It is adjusted as we go to deal with new data. Unlike the the bible which is inherently not factual and really hasn't seen any progress in centuries.
Evolution is not taught as fact, it is only perceived by narrow-minded dingwallies as being taught as fact.
Religion sucks moosebladderthroughahairystraw. All religion.
That concludes this series of disjointed comments and attacks.
What I wish these extremist nuts would understand is that the theory of evolution does not, ipso facto, rule out the possibility of a supernatural creator. Evolution is simply an ever-refining description of how life unfolded on Earth. No one is staking any claim in the theory concerning who or what (if anyone or anything) might have initiated or guided or overseen the process. There are tens of millions of Christian clergy, theologians, and laity who accept evolution as the process that God used to achieve his purposes. Even among evangelicals, most no longer subscribe to the literality of Genesis -- they understand the "six days" of creation as metaphor. They also understand that the Bible is not meant to be a complete, literal history that can be quantified (a la Bishop Usher) to produce a firm figure for the age of the universe.
So, who are these Christians who are on the anti-evolution bandwagon? Not Christians in general. Not even evangelicals. It's a tiny subset that still insists that evolution "denies God," that the universe was literally created in six days, that species were set and defined at the moment of creation, etc. In other words, a minority of a minority of a minority, if you will. And yet, these vastly outnumbered idjits carry incredible weight and influence, especially in the heartland, and people cower in fear of upsetting them.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
First off, Darwin is only marginally close to what current evolutionary theory holds. Really. Darwin didn't even know about genetics and the work that Mendel was doing while he was busy observing finches. Equating "evolution" with "Darwin" is just plain ignorance.
We don't want this enshrined in sanctioned science curriculum because "the cell is too complex to have evolved!" is not an evidence-based, scientific argument. Using that as curriculum will simply encourage kids to have sloppy thinking patterns and be unable to actually tell good science from bad.
Feel free to re-evaluate all the observations you want. The data and experiments are out there. The problem is that when people HONESTLY look at all the data, evolution is really the only answer. And teaching anything other than that is a disservice to our children.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Science has nothing to do with "using our own minds". I can't determine the existance or non-existance of the Higgins Bossom and my opinion about it is completely worthless, as well as any conclusions I might reach on my own using my studies, judgement, rational thought, whatever... ... because I'm not a physicist, nor do I work, investigate or experiment in the field.
That's the crux of the problem when creationists say "we want both theories to be taught, so the kid can choose for himself". The kid doesn't have the tools to prove or disprove any theory on scientific grounds, and nor should he... ... ultimately, to the common joe, science requires faith. So what's the difference between science and religion then? Science constantly delivers tangible results (as shown by the existence of cloned sheep and the Nintendo Wii) transparently, and is willing to unfold it's full body of knowledge and possibilities to anyone willing to dedicate to it.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Of course, the obvious answer to that is that the creator carefully placed all the oil where it would be as if it were the product of ancient plants and dinosaurs; and the same goes with all the rest of the Earth's geological strata, all observable astronomical events, etc. Anything older than 4000BC (or whereever else you put the crucial date) is planted evidence.
In other words: if you believe in Creationism, you believe that God is lying to you.
There's no other conclusion to come to. Everything in the universe hangs together too well for it to be a coincidence. Either it all actually happened the way it looks like it happened, or else Someone has spent a great deal of effort arranging things to make it look that way.
There are a number of interesting aspects to this, not least of which is the idea that if the universe has been carefully faked to look the way it does, would it not be against God's will to reject all that and believe something completely different? Might Creationism actually be blasphemous?
This is, by the way, one reason why most scientists reject Creationism (both young-Earth and old-Earth; the only difference between them is philosphical hair-splitting, anyway). Contrary to popular belief, a lot of scientists are deeply spiritual people who believe strongly in their quest to explore the universe. I can easily imagine whole idea that anyone wants to simply dismiss such a wonderful, exotic, complicated thing as being a lie would be deeply distasteful to them --- it certainly is to me.
China is pushing for a new world currency.
Now is not the time to be teaching religion in the public education system. America needs to teach proper science if she expects to survive the next 20-50 years.
This isn't a game! The Chinese are working hard to build a first world nation - one with an economy that will shortly dwarf the US economy. If the US abandons proper education, there is no way it will be able to compete in the 21st century. Someone please shut down these religious nutballs before they do any more harm.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Most Catholics, if they look to the Church for guidance, are fully aware that evolution is acknowledged by the Church.
I'd actually prefer if the Church didn't weigh in on the subject at all, and admitted it's the provenance of science, not faith.
Asking the Church to promote an anti-creationist viewpoint is one step closer to having the Church's opinion taken seriously on other scientific matters.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Actually that isn't what happens with science. It might seem that way to some, but it isn't. There is a lot of discussion about the various parts of evolution. Currently, the entire 'tree of life' is under attack and has been for some time. Were you aware of that?
Evolution is just another scientific theory. It is by far and any way the front runner because nothing else even comes close. This theory, like all theories is constantly changing to take into account new information.
Did you realize that Gravity is a scientific theory? It also is under contention. Some scientists have a different gravitational formula that explains certain galactic motions without dark matter. Of course, since we haven't actually found/identified dark matter, that is also under contention.
Now, just because something is a scientific theory, and it's not perfect, do you doubt it's generalities without contradictory proof? Only if you are ignorant, stupid, or take any religious text as literal fact despite the voluminous quantity of contradictory data, which to me, is the same as the first two reasons.
Whether you like it or not, evolution has been observed many times by mankind. It does exist without any reasonable doubt. If you want to quibble about the fine details, that's expected. However, just because you don't know how many ounces of gas your car burned going to the grocery store, it doesn't mean that the car doesn't exist.
(Yeah, I know, that comparision is going to have every smartass without a car making a comment about there is no car... And the Matrix fans making spoon references... I know, have fun with that...)
Math: given these axioms we can prove "2+2=4".
Physics/biology/etc: We think nature follows these rules and as long as we don't see evidence to falsify these rules we assume they are correct. Else you need to search for a new rule that does match all your observations.
Would you say that "the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees" is an absolute truth? How about in non-Euclydian geometry?
Jesus Christ people, you don't use an apostrophe to pluralize a noun. Fucking cut that shit out.
Screw evolution, I'd like to see basic literacy skills make a comeback.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The origin of life is NOT part of evolutionary theory. And those teaching that it is just plain wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Origin_of_life
I don't understand why textbook publishers would look to Texas as being the standard vs. going to california. How does area of a state have anything to do with how many text books they're going to purchase? Especially when california has almost 50% more people than Texas? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
You need to brush up on what "theory" and "proof" means in science.
And the same goes for the ones who moderated your post "Insightful".
it's in my head
There really is an amazing amount pointing towards it being true, and we see it all around us taking place, from moths changing colours over decades to remain camoflauged to the massive varaity of dog breeds there are.
As of late we even have DNA to back up the claims of old.
>but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students.
Oh right, so we're to ignore the massive amount of evidence backing up evolution, forcing school kids to think about life and instead teach religious crap to them from birth?
Makes me sick, it really does.
Don't panic
Next we'll be teaching that gravity is "Just a theory" and that there are other reasons that things might fall to the ground, and that planets might move in their orbits -- if you believe in planetary orbits, that is.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I really wanted to use my mod-points here, but this is the second comment to make the erroneous statement that "evolution" is about the start of life on Earth.
In very stern, irrefutable terms I would like to say WRONG!
"Evil-ution" makes no claims as to the origin of LIFE. "EVA-lution" is about the change in an organism over a period of time.
Oh, and while I'm at it, please don't make the mistake of assuming evolution has anything to do with humans descending from monkeys or apes. This is another common fallacy. Humans and apes share a common ancestor. Apes are not going to evolve into humans at some point in the future. Humans are not going to become GODS!
One last nit-pik: Evolution is not a path. We are not going to some higher order in the future. Evolution only says your ancestors were strong enough to get you here. Your children are not necessarily going to be around after you pass. We are here because we are strong enough to exist in the current environment. If global warming is real and the Earth changes so that humans cannot exist, too damn bad.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
If you're saying there is no proof, it's impossible to "prove" without a time machine. However, there's a tremendous amount of strong, dramatic evidence. Certainly there's far more evidence in favour of evolution than there is evidence supporting creationism/intelligent design. If that's not enough, we'll also have to take all other "theories" out of the classroom, starting with the theory of gravity. After all, we only have a large body of evidence that our model of gravity works.
What else are you willing to sacrifice in favour of trimming out all topics but the completely, irrevocably proven ones? Certainly the biology, chemistry and physics textbooks are completely laden with theories as opposed to proven facts.
Social studies, philosophy, and history have also got to go. They are the very definition of theoretical topics. Every article is written by somebody with a subjective viewpoint, and some events reported in the history books probably never happened.
The really sad thing about that statement is that you clearly have no concept of how ignorant it makes you look. We've known that the earth was round since before your religion even existed. We've known that the earth was round before science even existed. Where do you get this crap from?
I mean, scientists still can't give a definitive answer on how the first cells were formed, only some scifi-esque ideas.
Uh, no?
There is not one "definite answer", that's correct. However, there is a number of competing, plausible theories. Definitely a far cry away from "scifi-esque".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Indoctrination is teaching someone to unthinkingly accept an idea. That's what schools *do*. It's their purpose for existence. Make everyone think similarly enough that society continues to function. I'm for teaching evolution, but only in a certain way. Present the evidence, and gently lead the students to the accepted conclusion. Two birds with one stone: teach the children to think critically and show them the current accepted theory, and why it is currently accepted.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
They pretend they don't exist.
Any contradictions you can find, someone has already come up with convoluted explanation of why it's not "really" a contradiction.
When they say the bible is "literal" they don't mean the same thing you and I mean when we use the word.
They mean that it absolutely, positively, without any question, means whatever they believe it means, not what it seems to actually, you know, say.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
>Since evolution is not a fact,?P>
Wrong. Evolution is an observed fact. It has been observed in nature and in the laboratory. You have stated a false premise, so any conclusions drawn from your premise are also false. Your remaining paragraphs continue this pattern of logical fallacy. Perhaps you should learn something about evolutionary biology that isn't parroting the mouth breathers at Answers In Genesis.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Well, unless you go to college, or do some self study, you are unlikely to be "reasonable informed" on very many things.
i.e. 90+ percent of the people who have a problem with evolution ARE NOT reasonably informed, some aren't informed at all.
That's kind of the point of university, a place where people can study, and GET informed. Self study works for some, but reading a 90 page synopsis of evolution written by a "hostile witness" is not the way to become "reasonably informed" about anything.
The problem with your statement about "opinion hold more credit" is that opinion has no place in science. Science is about facts, there is room for opinion about what theory best explains observed facts, but a theory that ignores the facts, isn't scientific. An expert in the field knows more about it than a layman, typically. i.e. he is more informed. So no matter how reasonably informed you think someone is, as a layman, they are likely to be less informed than an expert.
So do you think it's snobbery to let an MD make medical decisions over someone who watches general hospital a lot?
Also I wouldn't take the advise of an MD on building a bridge, over that of a civil engineer.
Nothing to say here... move along
Sigh.
This really illustrates the torturous path of creationist thinking. You will concede as much as is so blindingly obvious as to be certifiable if denied, and then as soon as you perceive a conflict with your dogmatic interpretation of your precious book, it's suddenly "not science".
If a single population becomes two reproductively isolated populations, and each one continues to change, what mechanism do you propose would keep the divergence between the populations below some upper bound? Perhaps God step in and say "nope, that's one micro-evolution too far. You'd be different species, and we can't have that."?
Why can various related but distinct species still interbreed (e.g. horses and donkeys or lions and tigers)? If your answer is that they are the same "kind", then why are the offspring usually only weakly fertile? Can't you see that continuing genetic divergence in the respective species will only push the descendants of each species further apart, and eventually they won't be able to interbreed at all? Have you heard of ring species?
While selection usually changes the frequency of existing alleles, new alleles are being constantly created through mutation. Most mutations are deleterious, but not all; multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria are a good example of a repeatedly observed beneficial mutation.
Of course these ideas, which all logically follow from facts you seem not to dispute, contradict your book. That makes them "chicken shit science", right?
Wrong on all three points.
1) abiogenesis is not part of evolution. Evolution is a separate hypothesis that explains how life diversified once it was around. For all evolution cares, life could have arisen by abiogenesis, or poofed into existence by God or Cthulhu or the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Praise unto her name. May her holy hooves never be shod)
2) Irreducible complexity is not a problem for evolution. Systems can evolve where every part is needed to function. This is due to a number of processes: 1) Parts of the system can have other functions in earlier forms 2) A system can evolve in a non irreducibly complex way and then evolve to require part to function even if that part was previously optional (this occurs when systems evolve to optimize functions they could already do somewhat well). In fact, J.B.S. Haldane almost a hundred years ago predicted as a consequence of evolution that we would see such systems.
3) Others have already answered this. But to just demonstrate how incredibly wrong this is, , one of the largest young earth creationist ministries on the planet, and Answers in Genesis, the largest young earth creationist ministry on the planet, both agree that the evidence for speciation is so overwhelming that they list the claim that no speciation has occurred as an argument creationists should not use: http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/2996. That's how good the evidence for speciation is. Even the YECs agree it occurs.
Instead of claiming that this is about amorphous beliefs against beliefs please try to actually look at the evidence and learn a bit. Also, note that nothing in science is ever "provable." Proof is for math and alcohol. However, scientists can talk about evidence for or against a hypothesis. And the evidence for evolution is very strong.
I've argued before that this is the best line to take. Science marches on, after all, and if today scientists are starting to think something on a question of fact that contradicts the Bible... well, tomorrow they might have ironclad proof of it, and the day after that they'll have based some technology on it that pervades all our civilisation. And if your church has gone on record as saying that this discovery contradicts the Bible and is entirely false and heretical - then you're going to look a fool.
Much better to nudge God back one more gap and retcon the whole thing: explain how the new discoveries fit just fine with a more sophisticated view of what you've taught all along. Come up with some cunning logic and creative apologetics - I mean isn't that what Jesuits are for? Explain that God can be known through revelation and through tradition, but also through careful study of his creation. Position your religion to be able to incorporate science, rather than opposing it; that way you avoid making awful mistakes like the Church made with Galileo, and like the American Protestants are making with evolution. You don't want to do that.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"It's not the Catholics who are the problem, it's certain fundamentalist Protestants."
My brother saw his science teacher out mass, and asked her if she believed in evolution. She told him that she did not, but she was forced to teach it anyway.
I grew up in California, where our priest was about as openly gay as you can get without actually screaming it from the church roofs. Here in Arizona, however, the Catholics are competing with the protestants and the mormons for "most fundamentalist" and "most brain dead." I hope this is not the case in the rest of the country. I never enjoyed mass, and never believed, but I could at least tolerate the liberal California churches. Out here, they are something else.
And I guarantee most of them do not believe in evolution, despite what the Vatican says.
"Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be" Rev. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.
The Catholic Church still supports intelligent design, but they believe that it co-exists with evolution. They follow the idea that God created the big bang, and evolution itself was his design.
But a lot of people don't understand that reasonable expectation is not the same as faith.
This is mere sophistry. The base unit of a gas is a single molecule, but gasses have properties such as density, temperature, and pressure that individual molecules do not have. Similarly, populations of organisms have properties such as genetic diversity that individuals do not have. Natural selection is an emergent property of populations. It is dependent upon there being genetic diversity--a large degree of genetically heterogeneity among individuals, each of whom possesses a different set of mutations.
Nor is there any need for such a thing. Computerized genetic algorithms are quite successful in solving problems without any such mechanism.
I am using "preference" because separation of populations does not require complete incompatibility--it can occur by the gradual accumulation of variations that enhance within group mating preference relative to outgroup. In such a situation, genetic drift will eventually begin to impair outgroup reproductive success. There is no point at which there needs to be two individuals that are only compatible with each other, and completely incompatible with everybody else.
But if you insist on looking only at tiny finite elements, you can easily convince yourself that there are no such things as curves--which seems to be pretty much the error you are making in thinking about speciation.