Re: Kansas and ID

From: Stephen E. Jones (sejones@iinet.net.au)
Date: Wed Jul 26 2000 - 08:49:05 EDT

  • Next message: Chris Cogan: "Is Darwinism Self-Refuting? (was: An intelligent discussion with Intelligent Design's designer)"

    Reflectorites

    On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 19:19:35 -0500, Susan Brassfield wrote:

    [...]

    >>SJ>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!]

    SB>The University of Missouri disagrees with you. This website even has a
    >facsimile of the book he taught from:
    >http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm

    I was accepting the recent statement by historian Ed Larson (who won a
    Pulitzer Prize for his history of the Scopes Trial), in an interview on
    National Public Radio:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnps05fm.cfm?SegID=79785

    National Public Radio

    This segment is from the
    Friday, July 21,2000 Talk of the Nation

    [...]

    Scopes Trial Anniversary/ Teaching Evolution Guests: Edward J. Larson
    Author (Pulitzer Prize Winner), Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial
    and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, (Harvard
    University Press, 1997) Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute
    www.discovery.org Professor, History and Law University of Georgia
    Athens, Georgia Kenneth R. Miller Author, Finding Darwin's God: A
    Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, (Cliff
    Street Books/ HarperCollins, 1999) Professor, Biology Brown University
    Providence, Rhode Island Michael J. Behe Author, Darwin's Black Box:
    The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, (Free Press, 1996) Professor,
    Biochemistry Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pennsylvania In 1925, John
    Scopes was tried for teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee public
    school. Join Ira Flatow and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward Larson
    in this hour for a look back at the trial on its 75th anniversary, and at the
    ongoing battle over teaching evolution in the public schools. Plus, a talk
    with Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, about his theory of
    intelligent design.

    [...]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Here is what Larson says in an excerpt from the transcript of the above
    session which is not webbed but was posted on another List:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    SHOW: TALK OF THE NATION (3:00 PM ET) , July 21, 2000, Friday
    LENGTH: 7836 words

    HEADLINE: SCOPES TRIAL AND THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
    VS. CREATION

    IRA FLATOW, host:

    [...]

    Dr. LARSON: And the only way they could appeal the law on up to get it
    tested in the Tennessee Supreme Court and then maybe the United States
    Supreme Court was to get a conviction. So he asked them to convict
    Scopes. They never challenged whether or not Scopes had ever taught
    evolution. He actually hadn't. That's why he could never take the stand,
    because he hadn't taught it. But they sort of conceded that. They tried to
    concede it. And they had a couple of schoolchildren who went on the
    stand, and the only reason they could testify honestly that Scopes had
    taught them evolution was that they took the kids out in a car during the
    preparation for the trial, and had Scopes tell them about evolution in the
    car, so they could say, 'Yeah, he taught us about evolution.'

    [...]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    If Larson is right then the University of Missouri is wrong in claiming:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/hunt192.htm

    [...]

    What the students in John Scopes' class read about evolution:
    Excerpts from Hunter's Civic Biology (1914)
    Page 192

    [...]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Or maybe they are using a tricky form of words to mislead the unwary
    reader? It might be true that "the students in John Scopes' class" (i.e. his
    physical education class) "read about evolution" in "Hunter's Civic
    Biology" but it was in a Biology class which John Scopes did not teach.

    SB>John Scopes
    >John Scopes was the Rhea County science teacher and athletic coach who
    >willingly became a defendant in the trial. Scopes had accepted his first
    >teaching position in Dayton after graduating in 1924 from the University of
    >Kentucky, where he was taught evolution.

    Larson says in the above transcript that Scopes was "not a biology teacher"
    but "a football coach":

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [...]

    Dr. LARSON: To test the law. Originally, the town had PR in mind, and
    sort of summer fun. Scopes truly opposed the law, but he wasn't a biology
    teacher. He hadn't ever violated the law. He...

    FLATOW: He was not a biology teacher.

    Dr. LARSON: No, he was a football coach.

    [...]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    [...]

    SB>Scopes was only twenty-four at the time of the trial. He had boyish looks,
    >reddish hair, and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He was described as modest,
    >friendly, helpful and shy.
    >
    >Scopes never testified in the trial, as it was conceded that he had taught
    >the theory of evolution in his general science class. His only courtroom
    >statement was made at the time of sentencing.

    Scopes' defence lawyer Clarence Darrow might have "conceded" it but if
    what Larson says is true then it was a false claim. In which case it would
    seem to make Darrow a perjurer.

    SB>After the trial, Scopes was offered his teaching position back, but
    >declined. Instead he accepted a scholarship--offered as a gift from
    >scientists and newsmen--to attend the University of Chicago.

    Sounds suspiciously like a payment for services rendered arranged by Darrow
    who had links with powerful people in Chicago:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,29269+1+28805,00.html

    [...]

    Darrow attended law school for only one year before being admitted to the
    Ohio bar in 1878. He moved to Chicago in 1887 and immediately took part
    in attempts to free the anarchists charged with murder in the Haymarket
    Riot (May 4, 1886). Through his friendship with Judge John Peter Altgeld,
    afterward governor of Illinois, Darrow was appointed Chicago city
    corporation counsel in 1890, and then he became general attorney for the
    Chicago and North Western Railway.

    [...]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    SB>He began
    >studies in geology in September of 1925. After two years of study, Scopes
    >was hired by Gulf Oil and sent to Venezuela. A form of blood poisoning
    >forced him to return to the United States in 1929. While on a second tour
    >in South America he was baptized ...

    Sounds like Scopes became a committed Christian. The leading
    evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson acknowledges that 40 years alter
    Scopes later described his former prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan as "
    the greatest man produced in the United States since the days of Thomas
    Jefferson:

            "D-Days at Dayton is intended to provide judgement on the effects
            of the trial after 40 years. It contains the contemporaneous
            accounts of an iconoclastic reporter E. L. Mencken. and the
            contemporaneous affidavits of the three teachers of science, W. C.
            Curtis, K. F. Mather and F.-C. Cole ... There is also an essay by
            Scopes himself, and this is extraordinary. Scopes apparently had
            little interest in the trial at the time, has virtually none now, and is
            most nearly moved by his belief that Bryan, his rabble-rousing, anti-
            intellectual prosecutor, was "the greatest man produced in the
            United States since the days of Thomas Jefferson". (Simpson G.G.,
            "Good Enough for Moses?," review of "D-Days at Dayton:
            Reflections on the Scopes Trial." Edited by Jerry R. Tompkins,
            Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1965, in
            Nature, Vol 210, No. 5042, June 18, 1966, pp.1194-1195)

    Note the listing of "the three teachers of science" which does not include
    Scopes!

    But I doubt that this would be included in modern evolutionist accounts of
    the case. That would spoil the "Inherit the Wind" myth!

    [...]

    >>SJ>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.]

    SB>You may not, but the Young Earth Creationist bias of the Kansas school
    >board was revealed by the fact that they not only deleted Evolution, but
    >also deleted all references to cosmology and tectonic plates.

    First, Susan concedes my point! It is "*Young Earth*" "creationism", not
    "creationism" per se, which holds that God created humans whole..." I have
    posted before that some old-Earth creationists, like the great evangelical
    philosopher-theologian Carl F.H. Henry, were prepared to consider, in a
    major evangelical theological survey, that "the dust of man's origin may
    have been animated":

            "Perhaps we are not to rule out dogmatically the possibility that the
            dust of man's origin may have been animated, since the animals
            before man appear to have been fashioned from the earth (Gen.
            1:24). The Bible does not explicate man's physical origin in detail.
            The fact that, after Genesis 1:1 the narrator deals with a mediate
            creation, which involves the actualizing of potentialities latent in the
            original creation, should caution us against the one-sided invocation
            of divine transcendence. The new levels of being arise with quite
            obvious dependence on the lower in the creation account." (Henry
            C.F.H., "Science and Religion," in Henry C.F.H., ed.,
            "Contemporary Evangelical Thought: A Survey," [1957] Baker:
            Grand Rapids MI, 1968, reprint, p.282).

    And only the other day I was reading where the early design theorist and
    creationist R.E.D. Clark, was prepared to accept that:

    "Let us look at the problem again in the light of more recent thought. On
    the biblical side, it is now widely felt that the claim that man is descended
    from the apes, or a common ancestor of both apes and man, is not
    definitely denied in the Bible, in so far as man's body is concerned. It is
    possible to read the words, `Let us make man in our image ...' in the sense,
    `Let us make the already existing species man into a being with our image
    ...'"

    There is nothing in "Genesis" which actually says "God created humans
    whole". Here are the two places in Genesis where man's creation is
    described:

            Gn 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of
            God he created him; male and female he created them."

    and

            Gn 2:7 "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the
            ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man
            became a living being."

    The first says nothing about *how* God created man. The second is symbolic,
    otherwise one would have to maintain that God literally breathes!

    SB>Why remove
    >those things? Scientists have been measuring tectonic plate movement for
    >decades, it's not the least controversial. But those things prove that the
    >earth is billions of years old, not 10,000 or whatever is fashionable among
    >Creationists today. Therefore it was imperative to conceal them

    [...]
     Second, no one is denying that the KBoE creationists are YECs (or at
    least a majority of them are).

    Apart from that, I presume they felt they had to be consistent. If they were
    only requiring examination on what was testable, empirical science, then
    presumably they felt that the Big Bang and "tectonic plate" theory fell into
    the same historical science category as macroevolution? Indeed, for them
    to allow the other two but not macroevolution would have probably been
    open to legal challenge.

    But if that was the case, then personally I disagree. There is much better
    empirical evidence for the Big Bang and plate tectonics than there is for
    macroevolution. Indeed, I understand that there are some YECs who
    accept the Big Bang and plate tectonics but disagree only on the timing.

    However, to be fair to the KBoE, there are still some scientists who, like
    Lerner, claim that "The Big Bang Never Happened" (Times Books, 1991).
    And Gould has pointed out that it was not all that long ago that "tectonic
    plate" theory was regarded as absurd by mainstream geology.

    In any event, the ID movement disagreed with the KBoE in removing these
    things (including macroevolution) from the examinable curriculum. The ID
    movement's consistent position is that *more* (not less) about
    macroevolution should be taught, including its underlying philosophical
    assumptions and its problems:

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    http://www.svmagazine.com/2000/week03/features/Story02.html

    EDITION: 1.9.00

    [...]

    Johnson is a new breed of creationist, one who uses books and articles
    rather than a pulpit to argue his position, and one who grants that some of
    what evolutionary theory says is probably true. He says even more should
    be taught about evolution-including its contradictions.

    [...]
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

    BTW what does this mean:

    On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 11:43:52 -0500, Susan *Brassfield Cogan* wrote:

    Are congratulations in order?

    Steve

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the
    bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology
    is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We
    evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe
    exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually
    cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to
    tube B and noting the color of the mixture. The latest deadweight dragging
    us closer to phrenology is "evolutionary psychology," or the science
    formerly known as sociobiology, which studies the evolutionary roots of
    human behavior. There is nothing inherently wrong with this enterprise,
    and it has proposed some intriguing theories, particularly about the
    evolution of language. The problem is that evolutionary psychology suffers
    from the scientific equivalent of megalomania. Most of its adherents are
    convinced that virtually every human action or feeling, including
    depression, homosexuality, religion, and consciousness, was put directly
    into our brains by natural selection. In this view, evolution becomes the
    key--the only key--that can unlock our humanity." (Coyne J.A., "The fairy
    tales of evolutionary psychology." Review of "A Natural History of Rape:
    Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion," by Randy Thornhill & Craig T.
    Palmer, MIT Press, 2000. The New Republic, March 4, 2000.
    http://www.thenewrepublic.com/040300/coyne040300.html)
    Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------



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