Reflectorites
In advance of the release of Jonathan Well's Icons of Evolution:
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895262762/qid%3D968719268/102-4959383-2271354
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?
by Jonathan Wells
[...[
List Price: $27.95
Our Price: $22.36
You Save: $5.59 (20%)
This item will be published on October 1, 2000. ...
Hardcover - 362 pages 1 edition (October 1, 2000)
Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 0895262762
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 60,799
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the Discovery Institute has just published online his evaluation and
gradingof ten popular biology textbooks. You can get these at:
The whole report is available there as a PDF file (342k) and there
is also a press release (see below)
Steve
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http://www.crsc.org/biology/pressRelease.html
An Evaluation of Ten Recent Biology Textbooks
A report for the Center for the Renewal of
Science and Culture
by: Senior Fellow Dr. Jonathan Wells
Attn. Editors & Reporters: Important back to school issue
Scientist's study exposes inadequate coverage of evolution by most
leading biology textbooks
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Seattle, WA - In a critique on biological pseudo science, a Discovery
Institute scientist issued failing grades to popular biology textbooks after
he found that they inadequately cover the evidence for Darwinian
evolution.
The report, "An Evaluation of Ten Recent Biology Textbooks," which will
be published in September by Discovery Institute's Center for the
Renewal of Science and Culture, examines ten of the most popular high
school and college level textbooks and issues grades based on their
presentations of the theory of evolution.
For example, textbooks present students with drawings of similarities
between fish and human embryos, and claim that these similarities are
evidence that fish and humans share a common ancestor. And,
photographs of light and dark colored moths on tree trunks are used to
teach students how natural selection altered the proportions of the two
forms when trees were darkened by pollution during the industrial
revolution.
"But scientists have known for over a century that the embryo drawings
were faked," said biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells, author of the report and a
senior fellow of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. "The embryos
actually look very different. And all of the peppered-moth pictures were
staged .Scientists have known since the 1980s that the moths do not
normally rest on tree trunks. And yet textbooks have failed to change with
the times."
"Science is the search for truth," explained Wells. "Most biology
textbooks are simply lying to students about the evidence for evolution."
Wells also analyzed five other misleading icons of evolution used in
biology textbooks.
"We're not trying to ban the teaching of evolution, we're trying to improve
it," explained Wells. "We want students to learn more about evolution
than promoters of Darwin's theory want them to know. And we want to
give them the resources to think critically about what they learn."
Darwin's theory of evolution is the officially approved scientific account
of the origin and history of life and is presented to millions of people
every year in biology classes, magazine articles and television nature
documentaries. Such presentations typically rely on vivid images that
embody key elements of the story. Yet many of the images, which Wells
has dubbed "icons of evolution," misrepresent the truth and amount to
nothing more than junk science.
"The pattern of misrepresentation in biology textbooks betrays a dogmatic
approach to teaching evolution that ignores or distorts the evidence, to the
detriment of both students and teachers," noted Wells.
"What Wells might have added," points out Jon Buell, President of
Foundation for Thought and Ethics in Dallas, Texas, "is that teachers don't
know the mythological dimension of these icons. I had Dr. Wells address
an audience of high school biology teachers, and it was obvious his
information, though well documented, was new to them."
"Dogmatic Darwinists claim that nothing in biology makes sense except in
the light of evolution, and textbooks misrepresent the evidence to promote
that view," said Wells. "The truth is, nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evidence, and our children deserve to know what the
evidence really is."
The complete report of Dr. Wells' textbook study is available online at
Discovery Institute's website at http://www.crsc.org/biology/. For more
information, to schedule interviews, or to receive a copy by fax or mail,
call (206) 292-0401 ext. 107.
Jonathan Wells is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for the
Renewal of Science and Culture and has a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell
Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of
Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism (Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), and
the forthcoming book Icons of Evolution (Regnery Publishing, October
2000).
#30#
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"A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of
evolution's smoking gun. As long as there have been theories of evolution
(and certainly before Darwin), critics have complained that "the hypothesis
remains destitute of satisfactory evidence" (Rev. William Paley 1802;
quoted in Thomson 1997). ... Perhaps the most obvious challenge is to
demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some 2 to 10
million species on earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive
somewhere between 3 and 5 million years. In that case, we ought to be
seeing small but significant numbers of originations and extinctions every
decade. .... The problem of the smoking gun of causality applied severely
to Charles Darwin as he articulated his theory of evolution by natural
selection. He had identified a powerful mechanism of change in living
systems. He had summarized incontrovertible evidence that evolution had
taken place in the fundamental sense of change in life over time (species,
genera, whole phyla). He had demonstrated the equally fundamental
weakness of "multiple creations" as a cause of the different faunas and
floras existing in similar climatic regimes (Europe versus North America,
for example). His problem was the demonstration of a direct and causal
linkage between the evidence of change and the postulated mechanism."
(Thomson K.S., "Natural Selection and Evolution's Smoking Gun",
American Scientist, Vol. 85, No. 6, November-December 1997, p.516)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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