Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

If you do not remove teachers with religious principles then there will be no vacancies for child molesters.

Somebody" s gotta do it.

Hearing into Mount Vernon teacher isn't over yet
(By Dean Narciso, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, June 9, 2010)

The administrative hearing to determine whether a Mount Vernon teacher should be fired will need an additional few hours to conclude.

Attorneys and the hearing referee had said Tuesday would be the last day of hearing testimony for John Freshwater, accused of promoting his religious beliefs in his 8th grade science classroom.

Referee R. Lee Shepherd has scheduled the morning of June 22 as the final day. Mount Vernon schools want to call Superintendent Steve Short as their final rebuttal witness.

Before Ohio teachers can be fired, they are entitled to a hearing before a referee, who then will make a recommendation to the school board. Freshwater has been suspended without pay since before the hearing started on Aug. 20, 2008.

After the hearing concludes, the attorneys plan to submit written closing arguments to referee R. Lee Shepherd. Depending on when he receives the closing arguments, he will file his recommendation to the school board within about two months after that point.

AAAS hosts June 16 discussion on 'Re-Envisioning the Science and Religion Dialogue'
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, Press Release, June 10, 2010)

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) will host a Wednesday, 16 June, panel discussion on "Re-Envisioning the Science and Religion Dialogue."

Speakers will include William Phillips, professor of physics at the University of Maryland and a 1997 Nobel laureate in physics; Howard Smith, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and author of "Let There be Light: Modern Cosmology and Kabbalah"; David Anderson, founder and lead pastor at the Bridgeway Community Church in Columbia, Maryland; and Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program for the Smithsonian Institution.

The event also will welcome astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman as the new director of the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER). The program, established in 1995, seeks to foster communication between scientific and religious communities. It builds on the association's long-standing commitment to relate scientific knowledge and technological development to the purposes and concerns of society at large.

Wiseman will moderate the panel discussion, which will be from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in the AAAS Auditorium, 12th and H Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. A reception will follow.

Wiseman currently heads the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She will retain a position at Goddard, where she is the incoming senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Jennifer Wiseman is an accomplished scientist who also understands the importance of religion in American life and how a deep knowledge of the natural world need not threaten religious belief," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of Science. "With continuing battles over the teaching of evolution in the schools and new fundamentalist attacks on the reliability of climate science, there is a need more than ever for a constructive conversation between scientists and religious groups. Dr. Wiseman is admirably prepared to help make that happen."

In her scientific work, Wiseman studies the formation of stars and planetary systems using radio, optical and infrared telescopes. She has a bachelor's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As an undergraduate research assistant, she discovered comet Wiseman-Skiff in 1987. She earned her doctorate in astronomy from Harvard University and continued her research as a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and a Hubble Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University. She also has an interest in national science policy and served as an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow on Capitol Hill.

Wiseman, who enjoys giving talks on science to schools, youth and church groups and civic organizations, said she has noticed recently "an exceptional amount of interest in the public on seeing how the excitement and the wonder of what we're discovering, especially in astronomy, can fit in with other concerns and interests," including religious belief. She began to see "how much of a thirst there was out there for a healthy dialogue, where members of religious groups would really like to hear about the excitement of science and try to think about how it informs their faith and inspires a sense of wonder."

Wiseman said she sees herself as an ambassador to "help people both appreciate what we are discovering in science and feel that they are a part of it." She said the DoSER program is interested in practical ways it can help foster mutual understanding. As an example, she said, leaders of seminaries have asked for help incorporating more science courses and information into their curricula for clergy in training.

the attorneys plan to submit written closing arguments to referee R. Lee Shepherd.

Wiseman will moderate the panel discussion, which will be from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.

In her scientific work, Wiseman studies the formation of stars and planetary systems using radio, optical and infrared telescopes.

From The Sunday Times
June 13, 2010
D’oh, we may never decode the universe
Sir Martin Rees

Understanding vast cosmic events such as galactic collisions is one of science's greatest challenges, says Lord Rees
Jonathan Leake

SOME of the greatest mysteries of the universe may never be resolved because they are beyond human comprehension, according to Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society.

Rees suggests that the inherent intellectual limitations of humanity mean we may never resolve questions such as the existence of parallel universes, the cause of the big bang, or the nature of our own consciousness.

He even compares humanity to fish, which swim through the oceans without any idea of the properties of the water in which they spend their lives.

“A ‘true’ fundamental theory of the universe may exist but could be just be too hard for human brains to grasp,” said Rees, who is also the astronomer royal.

* The day I had my brain switched off

* Brain training games don’t work, study shows

“Just as a fish may be barely aware of the medium in which it lives and swims, so the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human brains.”

Rees’s thesis could prove highly provocative to other scientists, especially those who have devoted their careers to understanding such mysteries.

He is well placed to understand the potential limitations of science. Besides heading Britain’s premier scientific organisation, he is also professor of cosmology at Cambridge University, where he is one of Britain’s most respected astrophysicists. He is currently delivering the annual BBC Reith lectures.

Rees’s warning, in a Sunday Times interview, is partly prompted by the failure of scientists working on the greatest problem of modern physics — to reconcile the forces that govern the behaviour of the cosmos, including planets and stars, with those that rule the so-called microworld of atoms and particles.

Rees points out how Albert Einstein was able to use mathematical theories developed in the early 19th century to build his 1915 theory of general relativity, describing how gravity controlled stars and planets.

Similarly, early 20th-century physicists such as Paul Dirac used “off-the-shelf” mathematical systems when devising quantum theory, which describes how nature works at a sub-atomic level.

The problem faced by their successors is that the two theories are deeply contradictory — and no one can find the mathematical tools needed to bring them together into a “unified theory”.

Rees points out that thousands of scientists have been working on this problem for several decades and are still nowhere near an answer.

“There are powerful reasons to suspect that space has a grainy structure but on a scale a trillion trillion times smaller than atoms. Solving how this might work is crucial for 21st-century science,” he said.

Rees believes the most promising idea is “string theory” which suggests that the particles that make up atoms are “woven from space itself”.

Such particles, he suggests, could exist in 10 or 11 dimensions. Humans, by contrast, can experience only the three spatial dimensions plus time.

He adds that there could even be other 3-D universes “embedded alongside ours”.

“In theory, there could be another entire universe less than a millimetre away from us, but we are oblivious to it because that millimetre is measured in a fourth spatial dimension and we are imprisoned in just three,” he said.

Such ideas sound extraordinary but Rees wonders if they can ever be proved. He suggests humanity may have reached the limits of comprehension.

“Some aspects of reality — a unified theory of physics or a full understanding of consciousness — might elude us simply because they’re beyond human brains, just as surely as Einstein’s ideas would baffle a chimpanzee,” he said.

Other scientists are more optimistic. Brian Cox, the BBC science presenter and physics professor who was awarded an OBE yesterday, said: “The idea that certain things are beyond us is quite a bleak one and history does show that we can eventually overcome the most difficult of problems.”

The mind boggles

The scientific mysteries that may be beyond us include

* Multiple dimensions — string theory suggests space has up to 11 dimensions, but mathematicians have struggled to prove this

* Consciousness — scientists suggest consciousness derives from chemical reactions in the brain but cannot explain how this might generate a sense of self

* Are we real? — Rees and other physicists have suggested the universe and humanity are part of a giant computer simulation as seen in the Matrix films.

Ideology vs. education
(By Massimo Pigliucci, The Wahington Post, Opinion Essay, June 14, 2010)

After years of attempting to dilute the teaching of science, the Texas Board of Education has at least temporarily succeeded in rewriting history itself to its liking. According to the newly approved standards in social studies, the United States of America is not a democracy anymore, it’s a constitutional republic (it is actually both), and the somewhat tarnished term “capitalism” (see recent Wall Street shenanigans) has been replaced by the more optimistic and certainly more patriotic sounding “free enterprise system.”

Other changes that Texas students will be exposed to include less emphasis on the civil rights movement and more on the Confederacy, and of course the “truth” that the United Nations is a questionable institution whose main effect is to undermine American sovereignty.

None of this, naturally, originates from recent scholarship in history, economics or political science, just like no serious criticism of evolution or boost for creationism -- another workhorse of past efforts by the Texas Board of Education -- has ever originated from scientific scholarship.

Rather, this is the latest disturbing result of a long and sustained effort by right wing fundamentalists to undermine public education. Of course, part of the problem is the very existence of school boards themselves, organs made up of people who often have no background in education -- let alone in science or history -- and who nonetheless end up dictating what millions of children will learn over the next several years (the Texas decision will likely affect the entire textbook industry in the United States, given how many books are sold in the Lone Star state).

Take for instance Texas School Board member Cynthia Dunbar, who is on record as saying that sending children to public schooling is like “throwing them in to the enemy's flames.” Accordingly, she home schooled her own children, but then one wanders what business does she have in ruining the education of millions of other children nationwide.

The answer comes from an article in the Guardian, where she provides a lucid, if frightful, explanation: “In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections.” One can hardly ask for a more forthright admission of bias.

But it is the broader context of decisions like the Texas Board of Education’s that needs to be examined and understood. This is just the latest in a long history of culture wars between supporters of liberal arts education and conservative Christians whose positions are rooted in the sort of anti-intellectualism that has always pervaded American life and that has been so well characterized by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter.

The irony of this rear-guard action by conservatives is that they have learned the right sort of politically correct language, talking about uprooting the allegedly left-imposed “ideological bias” of public education, or about “teaching the controversy” (concerning creation-evolution) so that students can “freely” make up their minds about the supposed inconsistencies of evolutionary theory.

They even appropriated the phrase “critical thinking,” which could not possibly sound more oxymoronic when used to dismiss all modern scientific knowledge in favor of a 3,000-year old mythology invented by people who thought the earth was flat and the center of the universe.

Why do so many Americans fall for this sort of thinly veiled attack on science and reason? Part of the answer lies in the really bad job done by both scholars and the media at educating the public. Most academics will simply not take the time to write for the general public or talk to the media -- it won’t help them publish the technical papers and get the grants that will secure their tenure. And the media seem obsessed with controversy for its own sake.

Other than the always fashionable creation-evolution wars, recent examples include the ostensible connection between vaccines and autism (there is none), and of course the denial of planetary climate change. These are all issues about which there is a strong consensus within the relevant community of experts (biologists, medical researchers, and climate scientists, respectively), but you wouldn’t know it from the way the issues are presented by the media, or from the polls indicating between 40 percent to 50 percent of Americans reject the best findings of science.

Science itself, of course, is far from infallible. Even the best currently accepted theories, such as quantum mechanics and general relativity, may turn out to be at least partially wrong. This is inherent in the very nature of scientific research: the findings are always tentative, always open to revision because of new empirical data or new theoretical insights. It’s what makes science so fascinating and effective at what it does, discover better and better truths about how the world works.

But it is also what is difficult to convey to the public, especially when we consider the corrosive cocktail produced by mixing distrust of intellectual activities, appetite for controversy, and ideological certitude that the experts must be wrong because what they say undermines the American way of life, whatever that may mean.

Science education in the United States was at a peak during the Cold War, when the National Science Foundation designed a national science curriculum to insure that American students would no longer fall behind in science, engineering and math when compared to the rest of the world -- particularly the countries of the communist block. That effort was so successful that NSF’s curriculum was adopted in many other nations in the world, and helped science literacy on a planetary scale.

Today there is no cold war, but the fundamental reason for having an educated public remains the same: the very existence of democracy depends on it. I suggest that we need not just a national science and math curriculum, but a national curriculum of the humanities, which must include the study of philosophy, ethics, logic, and critical thinking (the latter three are really branches of the former).

As Noam Chomsky aptly put it: “citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course in intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for a more meaningful democracy.” The actions of the Texas Board of Education go into the diametrically opposite direction, and need to be reversed immediately.

Science itself, of course, is far from infallible. Even the best currently accepted theories, such as quantum mechanics and general relativity, may turn out to be at least partially wrong. This is inherent in the very nature of scientific research: the findings are always tentative, always open to revision because of new empirical data or new theoretical insights.

As Noam Chomsky aptly put it: “citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course in intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for a more meaningful democracy.”

You are making yourself look ridiculous.