Here is an article from World Magazine about the Kansas issue, which
includes the ASA's position on the teaching of evolution, which is
substantially the ID movement's position too:
"Even some science educators may be willing to give some ground. The
Science Education Commission of the American Scientific Affiliation put
together a statement about the teaching of evolution that it advises
governing bodies to adopt. "The State Board of Education and the local
boards of education shall ensure that evolution is taught as science, not as
ideology," the statement reads. "The State Board of Education and the
local boards of education shall encourage teachers to make distinctions
between the multiple meaning of 'evolution,' to distinguish between
philosophical materialism and authentic science, and to include unanswered
questions and unresolved problems in their presentations.""
Interestingly, the NABT supports the ASA's position:
"WORLD faxed this statement to the National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT), asking if it could accept such language. "The NABT
supports the position of the ASA," said Wayne Carley, the group's
executive director. He told WORLD that science and religion are different
spheres: "Science shouldn't be taught as religion and religion shouldn't be
taught as science.""
Steve
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http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/09-11-99/cover_1.asp
WORLD Magazine
[...]
ARCHIVE FROM:
Sept. 11, 1999
Volume 14
Number 35
[...]
After the big bang
Kansas public school students are back in the classroom following last
month's brouhaha. The Kansas Board of Education did not ban the
teaching of Darwinism, nor did it mandate creationism. But by simply
leaving the matter up to local school districts, Kansas has sparked a
national dialogue on evolution education.
By Timothy Lamer
Heading west across State Line Road-the street that separates Johnson
County, Kan., from Kansas City, Mo.-an outsider to the area could be
forgiven for saying, "Toto, I don't think we're really in Kansas yet."
Instead of wheat fields and farmhouses, this part of the sunflower state
sports bustling shopping centers, prosperous suburban subdivisions, office
parks with thriving small businesses, and the national headquarters for
Sprint.
It might surprise that same outsider to learn that this part of Kansas-more
than the rural areas or small towns for which the state is famous-is now
ground zero for the battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools.
Rural forces were divided in the Kansas Board of Education's controversial
6-4 vote last month to exclude evolution from statewide tests. But both of
suburban Johnson County's board members, including board chairman
Linda Holloway, voted with the majority, as did the member representing
Wichita, the state's other large concentration of population.
But the suburban element isn't all that's counter-intuitive about the Kansas
vote. It's also surprising that what the Kansas board did became a national
controversy at all. The board did not outlaw nor even discourage the
teaching of evolution. It did not mandate nor even encourage the teaching
of creationism. The board simply left the matter up to local districts.
As part of a periodic revision of standards for statewide tests, a committee
of science educators appointed by the state commissioner of education
rewrote standards that had been in place since 1995, subject to the
approval of the 10-member state Board of Education. The proposed
standards significantly added to the evolution language of the previous
standards, emphasizing that macro-evolution by natural selection-the
theory that unguided gradual changes over billions of years led to the
creation of new species-is "a broad, unifying theoretical framework in
biology." The proposed standards left out any reference to evidence against
the theory.
That proposal was unacceptable to the board, as well as to many Kansas
communities that held public forums about the document. The board and
the science teachers attempted to negotiate a compromise and when that
failed, the board simply removed mentions of macro-evolution from the
standards. The board's action wasn't nearly as aggressive as Alabama's
decision a few years ago to include an anti-Darwinian insert in biology
textbooks. "I don't really think we did that much," John W. Bacon, a board
member from southern Johnson County, told WORLD. "I would be frankly
surprised if any district throws out evolution," says Mrs. Holloway.
But that didn't stop the national press from going berserk, with The New
York Times giving the story front-page status, and even European
newspapers trumpeting the news. "The reason they are in such a funk is
that they perceive a serious public protest against the established religion of
scientific naturalism," says Phillip Johnson, an outspoken critic of
Darwinism.
Much of the news coverage was simply inaccurate. Headline writers
seemed to have particular problems getting the story straight. "Charles
Darwin gets thrown out of school" screamed U.S. News & World Report,
while a New Orleans Times-Picayune headline read, "Kansas schools' ban
on evolution blasted." Syndicated columnist Lars-Erik Nelson scolded the
board for wanting "to foist its own religious beliefs on the secular
educational system of an entire state."
The notoriety was too much for the local Kansas City Star. "Kansas is a
national joke this week, and it's your fault, Johnson County," wrote the
Star's Mike Hendricks. He worried that now "the nation thinks Kansans
pick banjos with their bare feet." Another Star columnist, after describing
in detail how a citizen could file to run against Mrs. Holloway in 2000,
finished with a jab at the board: "You don't even need a high school degree
[to run]. Now there's a shock."
Even some opponents of Darwinism were critical of the Kansas board's
vote. "They identify the problem, but not the solution," says John Wiester
of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), a group of Christian scientists
based in Ipswich, Mass. "The solution is to teach more [about evolution],
like the unsolved problems and unanswered questions that are at variance
with the theory," he told WORLD.
Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University and prominent critic of
Darwinism, sounded a similar note in an op-ed for The New York Times:
"Teach Darwin's elegant theory. But also discuss where it has real
problems accounting for the data, where data are severely limited, where
scientists might be engaged in wishful thinking and where alternative-even
'heretical'-explanations are possible."
But Mrs. Holloway and Mr. Bacon don't disagree. "Evolution is an
important theory and I don't want any kids to be ignorant of it," Mrs.
Holloway told WORLD. "I think it's important and that students need to
know it, but everything about it, not just evidence for it," says Mr. Bacon.
The question in Kansas as in the rest of the country, then, isn't whether
evolution should be taught, but how it should be taught, and who decides.
Darwinism's critics insist that unresolved problems with the theory should
make their way into the classroom. One such problem is what Mr. Behe
calls "irreducible complexity." Examining life at the molecular level, Mr.
Behe notes that all of the parts of a cell have to be in place before it can
function properly, a phenomenon at odds with the Darwinian concept of
gradual evolution.
He compares the working of a cell to that of a mousetrap. Take away any
one of the parts-the wooden platform, the metal hammer, the spring, the
catch, or the bar that holds the hammer back-and the trap becomes useless.
Such interdependence suggests that the trap couldn't have evolved blindly,
because a part of a mousetrap doesn't catch mice. Cells, Mr. Behe argues,
are the same. "Similarly, you can't start with a signal sequence and have a
protein go a little way towards a lysosome, add a signal receptor protein,
go a little further, and so forth. It's all or nothing at all," he writes in his
book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.
The "Cambrian explosion" presents another challenge to Darwinian
evolution, or at least to natural selection as its mechanism. According to
Darwin, all of the various species evolved slowly over very long periods of
time through slight mutations. The fossil record, however, shows complex
life suddenly appearing. Mathematicians also have long argued simply that
not enough time has passed to allow for all of the gradual mutations that
Darwinists say have taken place.
Darwinists may one day propose new answers to these problems, but the
fact that such objections exist at all would be news to many American high
school students. Very few textbooks mention them; instead Darwinism is
presented as a biological and historical fact. Examples of micro-evolution,
or variations that have developed within species, are presented as evidence
for macro-evolution, the more speculative idea that such mutations have
led to entire new species.
Critics of Darwinian education also object to textbooks making naturalistic
claims that are based more on atheistic ideology than science. For instance,
Prentice Hall's Biology tells students that "it is important to keep this
concept in mind: Evolution is random and undirected." (Bold in the
original.) According to Addison-Wesley's Biology Concepts and
Connections, "Chance has affected the evolutionary process in the
generation of genetic diversity through mutation. Chance has also played a
role at every major milestone in the history of life."
For the members of the Kansas board, an equally important matter was
who would decide what is taught. On an issue this controversial, board
members decided, parents and school districts should make the call. Mr.
Bacon didn't want parents concerned about Darwinian teaching to be told
by local school boards: "Sorry, we can't help you because our hands are
tied by the state." Mrs. Holloway objected to what she saw as the attitude
of the state science committee: "Give us your kids and get out of the way."
Only time will tell how well their insistence on local control will go over
with their suburban constituency. Johnson County has long been a bastion
of Republicanism, but lately has become a battleground between moderates
and conservatives. Moderate Republican Jan Meyers represented the
Johnson County-dominated Third Congressional District for 12 years, but a
growing evangelical population narrowly elected Christian conservative
Vince Snowbarger to the seat in 1996. Then a moderate backlash gave
former District Attorney Dennis Moore enough momentum to win a
squeaker against Mr. Snowbarger in 1998, the first time in 40 years this
district sent a Democrat to Capitol Hill. Johnson County conservatives are
regrouping and the national GOP plans to make Mr. Moore a prime target
in 2000. The board's decision will only add fuel to this raging fire.
But nationwide, the sound and fury generated by the Kansas decision may
be sparking movement toward compromise on the issue of evolution
education. Most of the major presidential candidates-including Al Gore-
said the decision about how to teach evolution should be made at the local
level, an implicit endorsement of the Kansas board's vote.
Even some science educators may be willing to give some ground. The
Science Education Commission of the American Scientific Affiliation put
together a statement about the teaching of evolution that it advises
governing bodies to adopt. "The State Board of Education and the local
boards of education shall ensure that evolution is taught as science, not as
ideology," the statement reads. "The State Board of Education and the
local boards of education shall encourage teachers to make distinctions
between the multiple meaning of 'evolution,' to distinguish between
philosophical materialism and authentic science, and to include unanswered
questions and unresolved problems in their presentations."
WORLD faxed this statement to the National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT), asking if it could accept such language. "The NABT
supports the position of the ASA," said Wayne Carley, the group's
executive director. He told WORLD that science and religion are different
spheres: "Science shouldn't be taught as religion and religion shouldn't be
taught as science."
Can't we all just get along? If NABT members this year will present the
holes in Darwinian theory as conscientiously as many overlooked them last
year, biology classes just might evolve. But change is unlikely to come
easily.
[...]
(c) 1996, 1997, 1998 WORLD Magazine. mailbag@worldmag.com
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"Today, our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a
simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly
unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the
weaknesses of the interpretations and extrapolations that theoreticians put
forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes
unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their
sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the
inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of
Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation",
Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p8)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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