Bill Allows Teachers to Contradict Evolution 1049
Helical writes "In an attempt to defy the newly approved state science standards, Florida Senator Rhonda Storms has proposed a bill that would allow teachers to contradict the teaching of evolution. Her bill states that 'Every public school teacher in the state's K-12 school system shall have the affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins.' The bill's main focus is on protecting teachers who want to adopt alternative teaching plans from sanction, and to allow teachers the freedom to teach whatever they wish, even if it is in opposition to current standards."
Re:Contradict a Theory? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Contradict a Theory? (Score:5, Informative)
Apes, monkeys, and humans all evolved from a common primate ancestor. Due to differing environments and differing pressures and selection criteria for said differing environments, the populations of primate ancestor-species evolved in separate directions.
The 'missing' fossil evidence question is a red herring: every time a transitional fossil is found, the creationists say "OK, what came between that one and the next one?"--moving the goalposts, in other words. Archaeology is not geneology: you will not get a continual record of every generation back to when time began.
In addition, fossils are not the only evidence. There are patterns of genetic structures, there are cases of comparative anatomy, there are multiple other lines of evidence to choose from.
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:5, Informative)
There's a simple, unambiguous test anyone can apply to objectively determine whether a theory is scientific. That is: is the theory falsifiable? Does the theory make predictions that could potentially be proven wrong by evidence? Intelligent Design fails this test.
So if you have kids, and they are taught intelligent design in this school system, then sue. You'll win. Every time a judge has heard the issue, he's ruled that intelligent design is not science. Because it's not, and it's easy for anyone impartial to see that.
Re:Contradict a Theory? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you are mistaken.
Here's a hint: if evolution really predicted that every time a speciation event occurred there would be a "loser" species that would go extinct, then it would predict that there would be exactly one species of organism on the entire planet. Obviously then, either evolution is absolutely ridiculous (since there is obviously more than one species in existence) or you don't understand it. Which is more likely?
Hint number two: both branches of a speciation event can "win" because they can fill different ecological niches. Monkeys lost out on the "high intelligence and tool-making" niche; humans lost out on the "living in tall trees" niche.
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Informative)
No. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to teach your kids that "God did it" is an acceptable answer to anything you don't personally understand, then fine, do that in your home or church or wherever... BUT don't pollute my children into believing that crap also. I'd like my kids to have a fair chance in the world economy, where in most 1st and 2nd world nations, they can manage to keep science to true scientific endeavors.
Here's some evidence for you. (Score:5, Informative)
And as to transitional fossils - here's my favorite, one you can even partially test on your own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal. Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as 'irreducibly complex' - just Google around a bit.)
It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Fossils representing over 11 separate stages have been found. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.
Common descent explains this, and many other similar things, handily. I'm still waiting on creationist explanations. Can you point me to one?
Re:Science != Teleology (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Contradict a Theory? Hardly. (Score:2, Informative)
There is no contradiction simply because relatively primitive forms may still exist in nature.
Also, note that monkeys are not "intermediate life forms". They are valid scientific taxa that have a biology, just like (remarkably like in many respects) you or I and represent a different lineage of primates, albeit related to our own. While unlike us, they do show a variety of traits that were likely present in our most recent common ancestor that we no longer prossess due to evolution that has taken place among the hominid linneage of primates (ie extensive hair over their entire bodies and more strongly ridged brows, "knucle-walking", prehensile tails, at least in New World monkeys etc.), they have subsequently evolved in other ways that would differentiate them from our most recent common ancestor, just as we have done with respect to other characteristics (larger frontal cortex, more upright gait, development of language and tool use, like chimps and gorillas, etc).
Those who would advocate non-science instruction in our class rooms are advocating putting US students at a disadvantage to Russian and Chinese students, who are not taught non-scientific, dogma as a substitute for science. In a sense they are a bit like terrorists, trying to undermine what actually makes America strong, the search for the truth. It would be better if they simply took the commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness" to heart, instead of ignoring it.
If they REALLY want to seek the truth, they might also want to reflect on why they look a lot like their parents (at all levels of organization, even at the level of their DNA), and why their parents were a lot like their grandparents, and
However, if I had to guess, they won't as the "leaders" of the religious community pushing this "alternate science" nonsense really hate to see their business model tampered with. For them its monkey (ape) see monkey (ape) do (put money in the collection plate), other monkeys (ape) put money in the collection plate and with a little kick-back to the political monkeys (apes) they keep their business model alive (and tax-exempt), of course at the expense of scientific truth, if necessary. It is no wonder that commandment about "thou shall not bearing false witness" is about as popular today as the Gospel according to Judas. Their religion has simply evolved to keep the business model alive; not to provide any semblance of the truth!
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:4, Informative)
>OK, now, prove to some fundamentalist teacher or other that it's not scientific, when they 'know' that it is.
That's already been taken care of. The US Supreme Court settled that hash in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) in a 7-2 decision. This is just the latest round in election year grandstanding by fundie politicians. This will go nowhere, even in Florida.Re:Good point... (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. We've seen speciation occur.
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:3, Informative)
Okay... I'll bite.
Evolution is not the reason we are here.
That is ambigenisis.
Evolution is an observed process (including the development of new species of insects in the last 100 years).
Evolution is driven by random mutations (observed), natural selection (observed), sexual selection (observed) and other selection pressures. A good example for you would be this: Catholics have a strong pressure to produce lots of children from people who find it easy to believe in god.
Over time, more of the population is likely to believe in god because of this group. A lot of atheists tend to produce less or no children. So, over time, they will become a smaller part of the population. After as little as 500 years, you might have a population mostly made of followers of belief systems that promote having lots of kids.
Now that atheist types and homosexual types are not forced to hide (by fear of death) among the religious population and procreate, over time, they are likely to become less common.
The reason I BELIEVE in evolution is that by the scientific method, it is based on hard facts. Theories based on those facts have been used to predict unknown things. When observed and measured, those unknown things turned out to follow the prediction of the theories (most recently genetic frequencies and the morphology of that fossil up in canada).
On the other hand...
I hope we can both agree- God can't be measured. Science does not say he exists or not. Science is based on measurable reality. Hot, Cold, Light, Dark, Hard, Soft, Acid, Akaline. God is none of these things.
The only reason science (and evolution) bothers you is that when we get around to measuring things, the hard, cold facts contradict a few chapters of your religious books. And you are willing to lie to try and protect those chapters. You are willing to pass laws that pi is 3.0 instead of 3.1415 because of a biblical verse. You are willing to kill people because of a biblical verse. You are willing to behave extremely immorally in order to protect your religious verses. To me that says more about your faith in your version of god (who should not be threatened by facts).
A final fact... there are something like 1,000 religions-- at least 10 have over 100 million followers. Most of these religions are incompatible with each other. Yet each religion has many followers with strong faith (strong enough to die for, to lie for, to forgo sex for) and how the hell can any of us choose which of those faiths might be the right one?
Let's keep schools for *facts*. And the theory of evolution is just as much a fact these days as the theory of gravity is.
Re:Contradict a Theory? (Score:4, Informative)
The origin of the first life (or the first self-duplicating organism) is a separate matter not covered by evolution.
Evolution is anything but religion.
The word Evolution really refers to an "algorithm":
Duplicate the organism accurately, but not completely accurately.
Apply some sort of non-random selection on the result of the duplication.
Optionally mix features from multiple organisms to share evolutionary results and speed up evolution greatly.
This algorithm works, which means that whenever you have something that duplicates almost accurately, and selection applies, you will inevitably get incremental changes towards the selected traits.
Since life on Earth obviously has these features, evolution is inevitable.
As for the question of whether evolution (The "Theory of Evolution") explains the past and the origins of species we can see now, my take is that given that it is obvious that evolution is inevitable, and that it can explain the formation of species and the features we see around us, its quite obviously the response fitting of occam's razor.
On top of that, we have huge amounts of evidence piled up. In my opinion, the obviousness of the inevitablity of evolution (given the duplication and selection that exist) is already enough to make evolution a default answer.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Informative)
Once you RTFA, it's obvious that the intent of the bill writer, a pro-ID think tank called the Discovery Institute, is to allow for the teaching of non-evolution 'theories'.
*You should do this with every law
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't -- ID isn't disprovable, precisely because it isn't scientific. ID says "God did it". That's not of much use in a science class, because there's nothing scientific you can learn from that statement.
No, evolution says nothing about dinosaurs and humans being unable to live at the same time. We're from two completely different evolutionary trees -- reptiles and mammals. Geologists and paleontologists would be pretty shocked if such a thing were to be found, but evolution wouldn't be affected in any significant way.
There are, indeed, numerous things that COULD be found or occur that would disprove evolution, yet none of those things ever has. The fact that such things are able to be spelled out ahead of time, and then tested, is precisely what makes evolution science, and ID not science.
Evolution has nothing to say about the reasons we are here or how things began. It is not a religion, and requires no faith. You can be a staunch creationist opposed to evolution and you will get the exact same experimental results with DNA manipulation, genome sequencing, carbon dating, and fruit fly reproduction, as a fervent believer in evolution. Predictable, repeatable results independent of the experimenter are the hallmark of real science -- evolution has many, and ID has none.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, the voices of religious people (reaching out into many faiths, beyond even Christianity) that agree with the scientific community that evolution happens, and has become an established theory, are lost in the din of assenters, including atheists, agnostics, etc. Then when the only people of religious persuasion that are heard are those who dissent, the rest of us get lumped in with them because we share a single common denominator. It's just as bad as calling Germans Nazis, Muslims terrorists, Americans fat, and the French sissy.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
No, you cannot.
Velocity is relative, but acceleration is NOT relative. An orbiting body is in constant acceleration, so A orbiting B is not the same as B orbiting A.
(nitpickers will point out that they actually orbit their shared center-of-mass, but you know what I mean.)
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:2, Informative)
In fact most civilizations prior to Dark Ages and the associated intellectual collapse viewed the world not as flat but as actually spherical.
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:3, Informative)
Theories ARE the highest truth in science. I wouldn't be so short with you, but you must be trying to be ignorant about basic science.
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Under Who's Watch? (Score:1, Informative)
Just to clarify, if you were to do some homework on the Bible, you could tell that with so many authors
and written over 1400 years, yet it all comes together, and every prophecy has come true.... well if you
would actually want to seriously learn more ill go into detail, but if you just want something to shot down
without the knowledge behind it there really is no need.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
While granted I'm in the NE US and not in the bible-belt, I still teach science at a public high school. With the passing of NCLB, there is an increased focus on standards, and teaching to those standards. States are required, due to this law, to assess whether or not their schools are effectively teaching the state-mandated standards. Teachers, therefore, are judged based on whether or not their students are successful on the state-designed tests.
On more than one front, this proposed law is completely pointless. The real test of what Florida wants teachers to teach is in what it assesses at the state-wide level. Without being able to see those assessments (being changed to align with the new state standards by 2012) there is no real way for me to tell what they are really looking for teachers to teach. Terminating teachers is usually pretty hard to do. By far the easiest way is if a teacher's students consistently fail state-wide exams.
And despite the flamebait headline, this also means that you can't get fired FOR TEACHING EVOLUTION. In Florida, that's not a given. The state standards that just passed had to be revised to tone down the endorsement of evolution just to get through. In that light, given that this text reads in part, "freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution", I'm somewhat tempted to say that this is PRO-Evolution, rather than anti-evolution. Although to be fair, it works both ways.
The upshot is that A) You're 100% right, and this is already covered in part by free speech. B) Teachers are judged and can be terminated based on how students do on state assessments, so this is pointless. C) While you now can't get fired for this, there are plenty of things buried in most contracts to get a teacher terminated for, if you really look hard enough. All in all, not a useful law in any meaningful way.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
I concede. I just looked up "secular state" and I see now that it doesn't mean "atheist state" or "anti-religious state".
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:2, Informative)
In general relativity gravitation is locally indistinguishable from acceleration, a principle called the "principle of equivalence". This does, in fact, allow you to place the Earth as stationary and have the sun go around it, as claimed above.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:1, Informative)
Forgetting religion for a moment, there are quite a number of assumptions that American school present as facts, or have presented in recent past:
Taking baby formula as an example, it was for long time considered as certain of a fact as evolution that there is no reason at all for mothers to breast feed. Would you forbid teachers of the time to challenge this theory because alternatives are not supported by scientific method and are against the "occam razor" principle? Why assume there are some mysterious substances in breast milk when there is no scientific evidence to support that?
We don't need all our children brainwashed by the government into one single way of thinking, be it religious, political or scientific. Give us a wide choice of schools with different philosophies and let government simply provide a scholarship for any legitimate education facility, including homeschooling with outside testing.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
But it is traveling at a straight line. In reality both Earth and Sun are simply following a straight path at constant speed through curved spacetime. Since they are following a straight path at constant speed, their velocity is not changing, and thus they are not experiencing acceleration. It just seems like they are being accelerated for us due to our limited perceptive ability.
Gravity in general relativity isn't a force; it is a change in the definition of "straight".
And if the elevator is orbiting the Earth or the Sun, you will experience no force (0G), and will thus conclude that you aren't experiencing acceleration.
Re:Burden of proof lies with Evolutionists (Score:4, Informative)
So why are they trying to hard to put it in science classrooms? It sounds like we're in agreement: Creationism and its derivatives are not science.
It has been observed thousands of times. Bacteria, fruit flies, and other rapidly reproducing species are regularly evolved in laboratory settings to study, for example, antibiotic resistance. Evolution (as a fact, i.e., observed data) has been well-documented, along with other facts (observed data) including the fossil record. Any theory competing with the theory of evolution must necessarily explain all of these things at least as well as evolution does.
(Please note that I am using "evolution" in two contexts: as an observed fact, and as a theory. If this confuses you, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact. [wikipedia.org])
Except this isn't evolution. The word "species" is a human invention. We define it arbitrarily to mean a population that does not breed with another population. There are many reasons this could happen, and given enough time, it's a statistical certainty that each population will develop changes to its genes to make it incompatible with the other. There is no "instant" where this happens. No big clap of thunder and a proclamation from above that some new baby animal is now a new species. The fact that you're even suggesting this is necessary suggests you have a woefully incomplete understanding of genetics.
Re:This happens everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
If stating competing facts and theories is already happening in other subjects (and I don't know if it is but it should be if not) then I don't see why a bill is required to allow the same thing to be done for this specific topic of evolution other than for those who have an agenda and push evolution no matter what the competing facts and theories state.
If Faith Healers wanted "balanced time" for their views in a health class, would you be in favor of that?
The reason this is different is because it's not "a valid alternative theory". It's trying to water down the separation of religion and school.
In a world of infinite time, you might be right -- it doesn't hurt to show every point of view, no matter how outlandish. But in our world, where classroom time is preciously limited, it's flat-out hurting the students to take away from teaching them real science and truth, to give them a sermon pushed by a very narrow subset of a particular religion.