Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Sigh.

La Sierra University debate over creationism continues
(By DAVID OLSON, The Press Enterprise, November 17, 2009)

Supporters of an effort to require Riverside's La Sierra University to teach Biblical creationism alongside evolution in biology classes say the university's vow to promote creationist beliefs does not go far enough in addressing their concerns.

More than 6,300 people from across the country have signed an online petition expressing concern that evolution is presented as fact at La Sierra and other Seventh-day Adventist universities.

La Sierra's board of trustees last week unanimously voted to endorse Adventist beliefs that the world was created in six 24-hour days and said the teaching of evolution must be "within the context of the Adventist belief regarding creation."

The board also proposed that all 15 North American Adventist universities develop a curriculum that includes a "scientifically rigorous affirmation" of Adventist creation beliefs.

"It is calling for a church-wide conversation on this subject," said La Sierra President Randal Wisbey, who is a university trustee.

The board asked the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities to create a committee that includes the president and two science faculty members of the 15 universities, as well as representatives from the Adventist church's education office.

The presidents of the universities plan to discuss the proposal when they meet in February, said Fred Kinsey, spokesman for the North American division of the Adventist Church.

Shane Hilde, the Beaumont man spearheading the petition drive, said he will be satisfied only when Adventist creation beliefs are presented as the preferred world view in classes in which evolution is discussed.

"To me, this is a positive statement, but that's what it is, just a statement," Hilde said of the board resolutions. "They didn't do anything about how to hold employees accountable for representing the church's position."

Other petition signatories wrote posts on Hilde's Web site accusing the board of a "ploy" to avoid making changes to La Sierra biology classes.

The 1,900-student university has long had a senior-level biology class that discusses the intersection of religion and science and includes a presentation on Adventist creation beliefs, said university spokesman Larry Becker. In response to the complaints about the teaching of evolution, La Sierra this semester added a similar freshman-level seminar that is required of all biology students.

Hilde and others say Adventist beliefs must be integrated into all classes in which evolution is discussed. He said faculty statements that God created everything in the world are insufficient, because they don't specifically endorse Adventist beliefs.

The Catholic Church and other Christian denominations teach that evolution -- which has been the overwhelming scientific consensus for decades -- is not incompatible with Biblical teachings.

The Seventh-day Adventist church is among the denominations that specifically state that creation occurred in six literal days, and that the world was created several thousand years ago, not billions of years ago.

The chairman of the La Sierra biology department, professor James Wilson, declined to comment, referring questions on the matter to Wisbey. The three biology professors at the center of the controversy have also declined to comment.

Wisbey said the role of the board is to provide general oversight of La Sierra, not to determine how each professor teaches each class.

"The board is going to be very reluctant to go to that level of oversight," Wisbey said.

Ricardo Graham, chairman of the board and president of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which includes California, agreed. He said the board did not want to act rashly.

"We want to be very careful, deliberative and cautious in how we go about this," said Graham, who expressed full support for how Wisbey has handled the controversy.

Christians distribute Darwin books at MSU
(Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader, November 19, 2009)

As she waited for a shuttle in front of Plaster Student Union at Missouri State University, student Robyn Williams almost turned down the offer of a free book.

Williams said she'd accepted so many Bibles from curbside evangelists working in front of the student union that she didn't need another.

But the book offered to her Wednesday was different.

When Williams discovered the book was Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," she accepted it.

"He said it was a very good introduction, and it helped explain it," Williams said of the man who gave her the book.

The text of the book --still seen by some 150 years after it was first published as an attack on the Biblical explanation of creationism --is unchanged from the original, the people distributing the book say.

But the edition from Bridge Logos includes a 50-page introduction by Christian author Ray Comfort, who takes a creationist and Christian stance to question the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Williams had no qualms about accepting the book.

"I believe they can coexist, that one isn't necessarily more right than the other, that they can work together," she said of evolutionary theory outlined in "Origin of Species" and creationist advocates who argue a higher power created life.

Comfort notes in an afterward that atheists are so upset about his introduction that they advocate ripping it from the book.

On his Living Waters ministry Web site, Comfort announced the reaction from atheists prompted him to stop giving interviews.

There seemed to be little controversy or debate about the giveaway of 1,000 copies at MSU during the lunch hour on a cloudy, cold day.

Greg Marlin coordinated the Springfield distribution that was part of what has been described as a nationwide distribution of 170,000 copies of Darwin's book at universities across the country.

Affiliated with Springfield-based Born Of Him Ministries, Marlin helped organize the give-away in cooperation with groups as varied as the Chinese Christian Student Association and the Monett Ministerial Alliance. Thirty volunteers helped hand out the books.

For his part, Marlin said he couldn't recall ever holding a copy of Origin of Species before the book distribution.

Several students taking copies said they'd done little more than read short sections or excerpts of Darwin's book.

"I'm not sure it's something I'd read cover-to-cover," MSU student Andrew Sherman told Marlein.

"It's something you should have on your bookshelf as a reference."

Giveaway volunteer Charlie McCord of Purdy said he'd be pleased if just a few students read Comfort's introduction.

"If one person's life has been changed because of all this, that's one person's life that has been affected," he said.

MSU biology professor John Heywood said he has a concern about what he considers a creationist strategy to use Darwin's words to criticize evolutionary theory.

"If they want to hand out creationist literature, they should be upfront, rather than camouflage it," he said.

He has absolutely no theological education,

In essence, Freud dismissed the idea of God as an illusion, created by humanity to comfort them in the face of their helplessness when they have outgrown their parents. Original sin and a sense of guilt, he said, were in fact related to the primitive and inherited shame, going back to the original act of murder described in Totem and Taboo, when the sons of the tribe rebelled against the father-leader, killing him to gain possession of the women. Freud was no longer disposed to argue whether this was likely, or acceptable. Upon this thesis he based the dual contention that religion was in fact an illusion, and ought to be abandoned, while at the same time concluding, frankly and reluctantly, that mankind was not yet ready for the challenge implied by this liberation from superstition. Indeed, he commented sadly, the worship of God and belief in an absolute system of values belonging to Him was perhaps a necessary fiction to preserve some semblance of law and order until the human race had advanced sufficiently in wisdom to do without any of the illusions to which it had hitherto clung.

If the smart bar fly wants to fact check any of this, let him or shut the **** up.

speaking in tongues

Emory Reacts to Anti-Evolution Books
(By Alice Chen, Emory Wheel, 11/20/2009)

Nearly 200,000 copies of author Ray Comfort’s edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species were distributed at the top 100 schools around the nation on Wednesday, including Emory.

The book, advertised as a new edition of Darwin’s Origin in honor of the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s original publication, features a controversial introduction by Comfort, a Christian minister and evangelist.

In a post during an online debate at the U.S. News & World Report website with National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Executive Director Eugenie Scott, Comfort wrote that his introduction to Origin was not an attack against science but rather, against “psuedoscience.”

“Is this book going to be a backward step for science, as some have maintained?” Comfort wrote in his U.S. News post. “Of course not. Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted. It will, however, be a backward step for the pseudoscience of Darwinian evolution, of which there is no empirical proof.”

Darwin’s theory of evolution states that all organisms are related and come from a common ancestor, evolving gradually from ancestor to modern organism over time by way of natural selection, or the idea of “survival of the fittest,” and genetic mutations. Although the theory of evolution is still missing links, it is backed by research in molecular genetics, the fossil record, biochemical similarities between organisms and such.

Those who believe in creationism criticize evolution largely based on these missing links.

“Even 150 years later, scientists have yet to supply adequate answers to what critics claim " and Darwin himself admitted " are weaknesses of the theory,” Comfort wrote in his introduction and stated later, “Not only are these missing links still missing, but the fossil record reveals that man arrived on the scene abruptly.”

Supporters of intelligent design believe the creator of life to be the God of the Christian faith.

Comfort’s introduction publishes a number of scientists and other researchers whose quotes denounce Darwin, but according to Assistant Professor of Biology Jacobus de Roode, many quotations and much of the information Comfort cites is taken out of context.

“But how do you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if evolution must proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each favored by natural selection? You can’t fly with 2 percent of a wing [...]” paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and self-proclaimed Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould is quoted as saying in the introduction.

The quote comes from Gould’s Not Necessarily a Wing and is his explanation of British zoologist George Mivart’s stance against evolution. Later in the work, Gould presents “a plausible story about thermoregulation as the original function of organs later evolved into wings,” backed up by “hard evidence to support a shift from thermoregulation to flight as a scenario for the evolution of wings,” by evolutionary biologists Joel G. Kingsolver and M.A.R. Koehl.

De Roode said that the mass distribution of Comfort’s edition of the text makes him angry.

“They made this version of the book to pass out to unknowing people who are thinking that they’re getting a copy of The Origin of Species when they’re really just advancing the creationist agenda,” de Roode said of the book, whose back cover boasts the new edition as a “higher-education edition ... for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions.”

The introduction, de Roode said, is not only inaccurate, but also “highly offensive” to both evolutionary biologists and also to those belonging to all religions, including Christianity. He noted that Comfort ridicules Islam’s acknowledgement of the reality of sin and Hell and the possibility of escaping God’s justice.

In addition to belittling Islam and Christianity, Comfort condemns Hinduism for its belief in reincarnation and Buddhism for its denial of God’s existence.

College freshman June Lee called the book “false advertisement,” because it prefaces Origin with a creationism-based introduction that urges readers to “have faith in God,” “read the Bible daily and obey what you read” and “pass [the book] on to someone you care about.”

“I think Darwin’s rolling over in his grave right now,” Lee said.

De Roode contrasted Comfort’s introduction to Darwin’s work. While Origin is what de Roode calls “an amazing work of science,” he said that the introduction to the 150th anniversary edition miscites material and offers inaccurate information.

“It’s very bad, and it makes me really angry,” he said.

According to de Roode, supporters of the creationist theory often blame scientists for trying to “avoid the dialogue” concerning the evolution versus intelligent design debate. However, he said, Comfort and his colleagues avoided the conversation when they advertised their distribution date to be Nov. 19, but instead arrived on college campuses all over the country on Nov. 18, not giving supporters of evolution a chance to respond.

Despite the change in date, de Roode and others distributed information about evolution to students at the Dobbs University Center (DUC), such as fliers and bookmarks from the NCSE’s “Don’t Diss Darwin” campaign.

“If you have to trick people in order to get the word out, that says something about the message you’re trying to convey,” Lee said.

De Roode said that it is important for students to know the truth.

“What we’re trying to do is make students aware,” he said.

Students have been responding well, de Roode said. He said that on a college campus like Emory’s, most students are able to read Comfort’s introduction and realize its faults. Many students who visited the DUC wanted copies of the book as a souvenir because it is so “ridiculous,” de Roode said.

Whether or not he and his colleagues were going to respond to the book distribution was called into question in the beginning, according to de Roode.

“As scientists, we ask, should we respond to it or should we ignore it?” he explained, adding that they question if responding gives the intelligent design theory credit.

It was even more important to respond and show people the inaccuracy of the introduction, however, de Roode, added that the distribution of information was not just a response to the book.

“What we want to do is not only respond to the creationists, but also to celebrate the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species,” de Roode said. “We think that Darwin deserves a much better celebration than the distribution of these misleading books.”