Re: Kansas and ID

From: Stephen E. Jones (sejones@iinet.net.au)
Date: Mon Jul 24 2000 - 10:50:06 EDT

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    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

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    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. ....

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    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!]
    =====================================================================

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    "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
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