Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution 1306
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.
It's time for Catholicism to step up (Score:5, Informative)
The Catholic church is in agreement with the theory of evolution, so it's time for it to make it clear to its followers they need to support the teaching of evolution over creationism.
real science (Score:3, Informative)
never considers itself complete, always acknowledges there are holes, and looks at all anomalies as potential realignments of contemporary dogma
yes, there are plenty of closed minded scientists who scoff at challenges to established dogma. but these are human frailties, not aspects of what real science is. in the early 1980s there was an australian scientist who said stomach ulcers were caused by an infectious agent. he was laughed at. now, he has the nobel prize, and we have isolated that bacterium. in other words, science is not captive to entrenched unyielding dogma. it is flexible, it can change
now contrast that with creationism. creationism starts with an untestable hypothesis and adheres to it as unassailable truth. theres nothing to debate. theres nothing to argue about. there is an idea put forth that no one can probe with their minds or find fault with. you either accept creationism, or you reject it. but it is entirely rigid and opaque
this is not science. it has no place in science. it is alternative idea for why we and other living creatures are here. but it is not science, and it never will be science. it cannot be taught along with evolutionary theory. it simply doesn't belong. talk about it in church, pleas,e be my guest. but it has zero validity in any scientific context, including a classroom whose purpose is to teac children science
in other words, you have it backwards when you point out that there are holes in evolutionary theory and this is a weakness. on the contrary: the holes in evolutionary theory are aspects of its strength, adaptability to new discoveries, and intellectual honesty
creationism puts forth an idea. the idea cannot be tested. end of story
Re:It's time for Catholicism to step up (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the Catholics who are the problem, it's certain fundamentalist Protestants.
Please don't conflate the two.
The big problem with fundamentalist protestants is that they believe the bible to be literally true and inviolate. So if you invalidate one little part of the bible, you invalidate their entire faith.
This means that they'll defend the most ridiculous things as a defense of their faith, and supporting teaching of evolution is viewed as a direct attack on their faith.
Re:What do you expect (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't realize they had these problems in Connecticut.
Re:How about this, wise-guy (Score:5, Informative)
While Dover wasn't a precedent-setting case per se, Judge Jones final decision, in particular the elements of it demonstrating how evolution had been picked out of all the sciences for "special treatment" will be applicable if this reaches Federal court. Simply put, as much as the Fundies dishonest and fundamentally immoral argument that they're just trying to teach the flaws, they are in fact simply trying to get Creationism through the backdoor.
Let's be clear here. Creationism is dead Edwards v. Aguillard [talkorigins.org]), Intelligent Design is dead (Kitzmiller v. Dover [slashdot.org]), and now all these incredibly dishonest scam artists and their ignorant followers (most of which probably aren't even aware they're being scammed) have got left is Teach the Controversy.
Here's the news, THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY OVER BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. The number of real scientists (and no, engineers and mathematicians are not scientists) who disagree with evolutionary is so exceedingly small to be utterly irrelevant. Even one of ID's biggest formulators, Michael Behe, doesn't disagree with evolution or Common Descent.
What I'm wondering, when this is handed back to them by the courts, where will they go next? What's left after "Teach the Controversy"?
Re:Funny how Texas came to be part of the Union. (Score:3, Informative)
Bush comes from Connecticut, but pretends to be some Texas cowboy.
Re:It's time for Catholicism to step up (Score:3, Informative)
it has. it's the fundie protestants that are making all the noise.
On "Theory" ... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who says, "Evolution's just a theory" should read up on what the word "theory" means within the scientific community:
Natural selection meets these criteria, as does evolution as a whole. Saying "evolution is a theory" is like saying gravity is just a theory. If you want to test gravity (and natural selection, for that matter), jump off a tall building and see if you can fly.
Re:More than two sides (Score:5, Informative)
I am a Christian who believes the Bible. I therefore believe that "God created the heavens and the earth."
I believe this is called begging the question. It's a type of logical fallacy and is not admissible in any intellectually honest debate. Please take a moment to review "begging the question." Google is your friend.
Re:More than two sides (Score:3, Informative)
While it's true that science cannot prove evolution, or anything else for that matter, absolutely, let's be blunt, the amount of confirmation of evolutionary theory is sufficiently huge that there long ago ceased to be any scientific debate about whether evolution happened or not. That's no different than the germ theory of disease or the red-shift of distant galaxies. Both are still theories, but have such a high level of confirmation that I doubt there are any theorists out there that worry that these theories will be overthrown by demon-caused disease or the lack of existence of galaxy clusters and other large scale structures.
Beyond that, when is the last time you actually heard of a scientific theory being disproven? The last things I can really recall were some of the competing theories as to the structure and origin of the Universe (steady state theory) and some of the pre-continental drift theories of continent formation. Other than that, the most I know of is that certain interpretations of theories have largely been rejected (ie. cold fusion), not an entire theory.
Plenty of religious folk don't (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there are a lot of religious folk who don't have a problem with evolution: e.g., Catholics, pretty much any mainstream Protestant church, lots of Jews...
And in fact, many of them have taken just that tack of "evolution as process, God as architect." It's nothing new, either - Darwin's book prompted controversy in religious circles when it was first published, but plenty of religious figures accepted it then, and plenty do now.
If you're interested in reading historical religious perspectives on it, check out The Post-Darwinian Controversies [google.com], which looks at a bunch of different religious reactions to Darwin.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:More than two sides (Score:4, Informative)
it's not about being right or wrong, it's about the churches losing more and more people who are realizing that this religion stuff is nothing more than control.
so the churches fight back by trying to introduce this stuff into schools.
read about the "wedge document" and see what i mean. it is not now, nor was it ever about scientific anything -- it is religious psyops designed to confuse and mislead the public about science in order to win sheep back to the fold.
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html [antievolution.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cue the following: (Score:4, Informative)
But he didn't blindly accept a literal interpretation of the bible for a vague explanation of how life works. He got off his ass, collected empirical data, and formed hypotheses. And he was a lifelong naturalist.
See this [wikipedia.org]. Scientific American also have a series of great articles [sciam.com] for Darwin's 200th birthday, you may want to check 'em out.
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
We've got 10-20k years of some semblance of history, but anatomically modern humans have been around for 200,000 years or so. Unless you're referring to the Earth being 5,000 or so years old (astronomical, biological, geological, etc evidence to the contrary be dammed).
Re:Cue the following: (Score:5, Informative)
The lack of explanation for the beginning of life is not a limitation of the theory of evolution, but rather, is not part of the theory at all. It is a common mistake, but these are completely separate concepts. Evolution does not even try to explain how life began, just how it changes since it has been here.
Re:How about this, wise-guy (Score:3, Informative)
Mr InsaneProcessor, you're living up to your name.
1. The roundness of the Earth was known by scientific minds no later than 270 B.C. By the time of Christopher Columbus and the like it was well-accepted fact that the Earth was spherical.
2. Evolution isn't considered the origin of life. It's considered the process by which the first few living cells produced all life as we know it.
3. There is experimental evidence that it was possible at least for life on Earth to originate without any divine intervention. For instance, the Miller Experiment [wikipedia.org].
4. Where's your proof that evolution isn't the origin of life? I'm really interested to know.
Re:How about this, wise-guy (Score:3, Informative)
Also false.
Humans have known the earth was round since about the time they started organizing themselves.
Around 240 BC the Greeks could even tell you how big it was (with an error of a couple of percent).
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
And I have yet to see proof that the Theory of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation explains how gravity works. What's your point?
Nobody is saying they're closed minded - we're saying they're ignorant bafoons.
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
OK, educate me: what is the difference between "fundamentalist" and "protestant." I was under the impression that protestants were "protesting" the changes that the Catholic Church had made, and were therefore returning to the "fundamentals" of Christianity or something wacky like that.
This being one of the reasons why protestants refuse to accept evolution: the Catholic Church does accept it. AFAIK, only protestants refuse to accept evolution as truth.
Ok, we're veering a bit off topic here, but I'll try and clarify this quickly.
There's 2 main branches of Christianity (and a few other small ones) Orthodox and Catholic. From the Catholic branch, the Protestants broke off for a variety of reasons. If you boil it all down, it's basically that Protestants wanted to focus the religion more on the Bible than the collection of Catholic Dogma. (Anglicans are in-between, being part Protestant part Catholic)
Within Protestantism there are many different branches, all with slightly different interpretations of the bible and different meanings of it. They also have very different liberal/conservative viewpoints buried inside those interpretations.
"Fundamentalism" was a movement within Protestant religions started in the early 20th Century, mainly among Presbyterians and Baptists. It was started in response to perceived threats to Christianity and advocated a strict adherence to the "Five Fundamentals". They are:
1) The Bible is directly created with the aid of the Holy Spirit and is without error and free of contradiction.
2) Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus.
3) Jesus's death was for atonement of our sins.
4) The Resurrection
5) Jesus's miracles were a historical reality.
However, many (most?) protestants don't believe in these, especially number 1.
Re:Cue the following: (Score:4, Informative)
So SJG suggested we use the term scientific fact to keep the creotards from using a semantics argument to suggest that even scientists don't believe that evolution by natural selection occurs or explains life on our world. He proposed a definition of a scientific fact as: "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
And in that regard Evolution is a fact (and a Theory with a big T.)
Re:Remains unbelievable (Score:5, Informative)
What is unbelievable is that Americans criticize fundamentalism in Muslim countries but they do not see the bigotry in their own culture.
So much for pretending to have the moral high ground.
Please don't use the term "Americans". It refers to many of us that do realize the complete hypocrisy and idiocy of major portions of the population. And, yes, we hate it as much as you do.
So in the future, when referring to these people, please use "Rednecks" or "Hillbilly Yokels" or "Inbred Fucktards".
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
Evolution is a FACT.
You've just moved from the realm of science to the realm of dogma. Welcome to the same intellectual territory as the creationists.
No. Heliocentrism is a fact(*), gravity is a theory. Evolution, that is, the claim that species evolve into other species, and that all the species we know of have descended from a common ancestor, is fact. Natural selection is a theory. (Evolution is also a theory, in the scientific sense, but that term is so abused that it's useful to distinguish the specific facts, i.e. common descent, on which that theory is based.)
I can say heliocentrism is a fact and you will probably not claim I have entered the realm of dogma. Logically that is no different than saying the same about evolution, except that you seem to believe the evidence for that fact is not as well established. Which is true in a sense, just because heliocentrism is so very, very, very well established. But evolution is still a fact.
(*) For reasonable definitions of "fact" -- yes, the sun itself revolves around other things, and you can play semantic games where you reconstruct the laws of gravity in a rotating reference frame [xkcd.com] and there is nothing but Occam to say you're wrong in doing that. But in reality, the Earth still goes around the sun.
Re:Remains unbelievable (Score:2, Informative)
If the whole world believes that you can jump off a cliff without harm does that make it true?
Yes, if all evidence found and all experiments, theoretical and practical, points to - yes, you CAN jump off a cliff without harm.
The instant someone jumps off a cliff and dies, a thousand people will go back to their desks, do the math again and figure out where the calculations went wrong.
That's, in an abstract nutshell, how science works. Theory -> Counter-Evidence -> Revision -> Back to #1.
As opposed to religion, which is Theory.
Dynamic vs Rigid. Proven vs Unprovable. Debated vs No-ears-but-a-big-mouth.
The only Jesus to ever produce fish and bread was the one in South Park, and in the words of Stan: "That's lame".
Re:So help the new guy out (Score:3, Informative)
But I'm interested in a real evolutionist's answer to how critters like the bombardier beetle evolved/survived to live in their present state.
Basically, it's not that different from any other evolutionary process, like eyes, which we have all sorts of stages of in various animals. Bombardier beetles were used as an example by several creationist speakers and writers, but sadly they got a lot of their facts completely wrong in the process. Simple things like, that the three chemicals used aren't present or useful in other animals (they are and are common in many species other than the bombardier beetle). If you're actually curious a good explanation is available: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html [talkorigins.org]. For that matter, it's a good site if you have any questions about the evolution versus creation debate as they go through most of the creationist talking points and explain the errors and misconceptions.
Re:Evolution is flawed (Score:1, Informative)
The entire, huge fossil record is enough proof. With the fossil record alone and the amount of transitional fossils we have it is as close as certain as scientifically possible that we evolved from common ancestors.
This huge amount of conclusive evidence isn't even needed, though! Genetics alone have shown clear evidence of evolution and that all species are interrelated.
So do you just sit there with your fingers in your ears, enjoy spouting bullshit, or are you just a troll?
Sloppy, One-Sided Perception (Score:1, Informative)
The article, and the Slashdot summary, misrepresents the situation. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards have had for years the phrase: "The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information."
(I find it interesting that similar phraseology is used for Social Studies in the Texas standards - "The student is expected to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation." - http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/ssc/teks_and_taas/taas/review/articles/articles.htm .)
Now all of a sudden a change has been proposed to remove the "strengths and weaknesses" requirement.
Note that in the attempt to retain this language, there is no challenge to evolution. There is simply an insistence that the strengths and weaknesses of ALL scientific explanations (gravity, atomic theory, evolution, astronomy, physics, whatever) should be examined.
Why any scientist would refuse to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific notion is beyond me.
Methinks someone doth protest too much.
What's worse, is that 99.9% of Slashdotters are so religious in their hatred against Creationism that they blindly buy into the anti-Creationism propoganda that the sloppy reporters have spun the story into, when in reality Creationism/Evolution has NOTHING to do with it.
Sheep. Pfft.
Evolution vs. Speciation (Score:2, Informative)
Though the argument gets dumbed down to a debate between Evolution and Creationism, it's really about whether spontaneous speciation is probable or even possible. The useful definition of speciation is that from a single species, two or more species spontaneously generate, the new specie or species unable to mate and produce offspring with members of the foundation species. What hard core evolutionists tend to do is use thousands or millions (or in the case of Carl Sagan, Billions) of years as a time span, but in reality speciation has to happen spontaneously, in the fraction of a second during the first cell division of mytosis.
The problem with this requirement is that (single cell or monosex organisms aside), you have to have the spontaneous generation of a pair, or at least a single individual member that 1) cannot mate with other members of the [old] species, but can create more members of his/her [new] species, which, when you get to higher life forms, requires a spontaneously generated mate. and 2) the [new] species has to be robust enough to survive long enough to mate and reproduce, and 3) has to be more adept at survival to satisfy the theory of natural selection. I'm willing to set aside requisite #3 because it was just the theory of a madman, but chances of #1 and #2 occurring spontaneously are pretty slim.
There are arguments for parapatric and allopatric speciation, but they are just smoke screens because separation of population is immaterial with spontaneous speciation which occurs sympatrically. Another way to look at it is even with a slow "drift", there still has to be measurable movement. Even within a million year time scale, you still have to have a single moment in time where there are members of a NEW species that can no longer mate with the original species. The larger time frame becomes irrelevant when you consider that the two members (one old and one new) are no longer sexually compatible but co-exist. You don't need millions of years and you don't need geographic separation, because the subdivision of the population is simply the new species existing within the original species from which they originate. The scientific name for this phenomena is "punctuated equilibrium", but simply put, it eliminates the need for a long stretch of time, because it again comes down to the simultaneous "birth" of two inter-compatible members that are strangely incompatible with the balance of the population of the original species. No getting around it.
Ironically, every observable example of alleged speciation does not actually involve sexually incompatible species, or at best only alleges that the two separate species were at one time sexually compatible. Most of these are classified as "island genetics" and do not evidence speciation (there is no actual observation - Darwin didn't observe anything but a snapshot of the creature populations on Galapagos, no actual division of a species into separate species), just genetic drift resulting in modified traits, but not genetic incompatibilities.
But, alas, the creationists cling to their bibles and throw out evolution (genetic drifts) with the repulsive idea that man descended from the apes of the jungle, and the "evolutionists" attach speciation to their dogma in order to protect their priestcraft and justify an existence that denies a creator. Both are wrong, and the argument from both sides fall on deaf ears. It becomes a wedge issue dumbed down so that newspapers and magazines can print fantastical articles about educational curriculums giving fodder to the housewives and hippies who take up the extreme sides of the issue.
Re:Cue the following: (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm, I believe that would be 6,000 years ago, not 10,000. Get your numbers straight.
I took my number from the article. The article says: "Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago."
Admittedly, it does say "less than", so I suppose they may have been rounding up a bit (well, a lot). Whatever the case, I used the number in the article.
Don't blame me if the guy behind this whole thing is so stupid he can't even get Creationism right.