Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

VIEWPOINT FROM AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT:
Scientific support for creationism strong

One important disclaimer: I am not a scientist. I don’t have a doctorate and I’m not a science major. However, there are qualified scientists who believe there are educational reasons to teach creationism.

Many problems exist with Darwin’s evolution. If we accept “evolution by chance,” we must also accept a scientific chance explanation for the first step in the evolutionary process, namely the hypothesis that life on earth arose from chemical reactions in inanimate matter. Darwin himself admitted the “problem with his theory of evolution was to produce life itself.”

The backing for this imperative hypothesis is a 1952 experiment called the Miller-Urey Experiment. Chemist Stanley Miller recreated what he thought was an early earth environment using water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in glass tubes and pumping a continuous current (simulated lightning) through them and saw small organic compounds arise.

This key experiment has been found questionable and faulty. Miller himself asserted in 1996, “we really don’t know what earth was like 3-4 billion years ago. There are all sorts of speculations.”

Dr. Philip Abelson, a geochemist and physicist, notes, “The hypothesis of an early methane-ammonia atmosphere is found to be without a solid foundation”, and that “UV light in the earth’s early atmosphere would destroy ammonia more quickly than it would form.”

Problems arose beyond the extremely speculative nature of the pivotal experiment. Dr. Robert Shapiro, an NYU evolutionist professor, expresses his concerns, saying, “There are over fifty organic compounds that are the building blocks (of life). Only two of these fifty occurred among the preferential Miller-Urey products.”

Duke biology professors argue that we have no reason to believe lightning in pre-biotic earth would be continuous as it was in Urey’s experiment.

The fossil record is also telling. If species evolved the way natural selection insists they did, we should see a plethora of “transitional fossils,” yet these fossils are incredibly lacking.

Dr. David Raup, a renowned University of Chicago paleontologist who has dedicated his life to finding these very fossils admits, “120 years after Darwin, the fossil record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and ironically we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we did in Darwin’s time.”

Even outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins admitted in his book “The Blind Watchmaker,” that “it is as though (Cambrian fossils) were just planted there without any evolutionary history.”

Cambridge botanist and winner of the Darwin Medal and International Prize for Botany, Dr. Edred Corner, famously admitted, “I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.”

Dr. Duane Gish, a famous biochemist at the University of California-Berkeley, has produced massive quantities of research that support a great flood, and UCLA geophysicist Dr. John Baumgartner has created a computer program to emulate these conditions.

Award-winning geophysicist and former president of the American Geophysical Union Dr. Allan Cox has produced research on magnetism that supports a younger earth.

The carbon-dating methods used to support old-earth conclusions have been attacked from many different angles. Recognized government botanist Dr. Alex Williams alone found and published seventeen flaws in carbon dating including concrete examples of misread dates and unfounded assumptions of static carbon decay rates.

There exist thousands of counterarguments as well as thousands of counterarguments to those, so 800 words aren’t nearly enough to do either side justice.

There are many scientists who support only evolution and whose lifelong research presents significant challenges to creationists. These scientists actually represent the majority. To dismiss the plethora of award winning scientists, however, who have come to opposite conclusions is both ignorant and dismissive.

These scientists have won numerous awards in their fields, have degrees from prestigious institutions, hold government positions, and head well-known scientific communities. They are not preachers who dabble in pseudoscience.

Though creation scientists (yes, they are scientists) may be working with a certain, even subconscious agenda, don’t evolutionary scientists do the same? Both parties feel pressure to conform to the “accepted” notions of their fields. It is understandable that evolutionary biologists would quiet their findings if they ran contrary to accepted beliefs in the same way pastors wouldn’t openly express a lack of faith.

When the former Chief Scientist and Minister of Israeli Education merely suggested, “If textbooks state explicitly that human beings’ origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions,” he was fired.

Dismissing creationism as an antiquated myth is unintelligent. Creationism has enough scientific backing and evolution has enough holes for the two to be academically juxtaposed.

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RESPONSE FROM UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PROFESSOR:
A course on evolution should be required for every UA student

The hallmark of an education is an appreciation for knowledge. In particular, a college education should be designed to give students a broad liberal arts background, producing graduates committed to critical thinking, ethical reasoning and social responsibility. Science is one part of this education, and evolution is perhaps the most important branch of science for the educated layperson.

Biologists describe evolution as both a theory and a fact. In common parlance, the term “theory” means simply “a guess.” But to scientists, “a theory” is not a “guess,” but the best-supported statement explaining the operation of the natural world. Major “theories” in science include evolution, atoms, the “germ theory” of disease, gravity, relativity, quantum electrodynamics and plate tectonics. The theory of evolution is also a fact because it’s supported by evidence from multiple fields of study including genetics, geology, biogeography, paleontology and molecular biology. There’s simply no doubt that life evolved over billions of years and continues to do so today.

Arguing that creationism should be taught as a valid alternative to evolution—presumably in biology classes—simply because many American citizens hold a biblical view of the creation of the world, is not only unconstitutional but dishonest. Judge John E. Jones in the infamous Dover Trial of 2005 ruled that intelligent design was “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” and he barred the teaching of intelligent design in biology classrooms. However, to teach creationism in the context of the history of scientific thought is legitimate, for it provides students with an understanding of the process of science and demonstrates that through debate, reason and evidence, good ideas win (evolution) and bad ones lose (creationism). Moreover, since creationism has been disproven, it’s simply dishonest to teach it as a valid theory of biology. If you want to do that, then you must also teach alchemy alongside chemistry, astrology alongside astronomy, and Christian Science in medical schools.

Unfortunately, University of Alabama students who attended high school in our state are at a disadvantage, relative to students from states where K-12 science standards are significantly higher. These standards were ranked by the National Center for Science Education in 2009, and Alabama received an F- and a ranking of 50 out of 50 – the worst state in the nation in the quality of its science standards. Sadly, Alabama is the only state in the country with an evolution disclaimer in all high-school biology textbooks. Imagine having a disclaimer in our physics or chemistry textbooks, warning the students that the existence of atoms is “only a theory.”

If you’re interested in really understanding evolution, and you should be, there are many courses at the University of Alabama that incorporate evolutionary theory. A new Evolutionary Studies minor has been approved and will be housed in the Department of Anthropology, directed by Dr. Christopher Lynn (Anthropology) and Dr. Leslie Rissler (Biological Sciences). Other courses include Introduction to Evolutionary Studies (ANT 150) offered next spring, Principles of Biological Evolution (BSC 220) offered for the first time in 2010-2011, Evolution (BSC 483) offered every spring, and Advanced Evolution and the Big Questions (a newly proposed course).

In the current issue of the University of Alabama's student newspaper there is a debate about teaching creationism alongside evolution. Below are excerpts.

Quote:

VIEWPOINT FROM AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT:
Scientific support for creationism strong

One important disclaimer: I am not a scientist. I don’t have a doctorate and I’m not a science major...

Can there be any other subject as boring as geology?Certainly most civil engineers find it mind-numbingly dull. It is a subject to get a tick in abox, that's all.

PS, Your calcs are probably short, because the MED basin, due to the rotation of Iberia and the Smashing of Apullia into Switzerland resulted in the original shallow basin, deepening as the Med plate, which rose up, began to sink about 30MYa.Ya gotta remember the MEd basin occupies the zone where there was a collision of several landmasses. It involved the collision and rebound of Africa and Europe, and the APulian plate scxhmeared that part of Tethys which kept AFrica and Europe apart. The Med plate was THRUST UP and over surrounding continental landmasses, (witness by several sediment blocks from Pontidean terrains (Turkey),Ionia(or as I like to call "Anea") And Apullian terrains slamming into the Alps (These rocks were all from the Med slab)

The dimensions of the Med were always in a state of transition between desert and submerged terrains. SO, even in fairly recent times 5-30 myA, the dimensions changed by tectonics.
Its not a simple problem of laminar flow. Its hydraulics writ large. AS the basin was infilled, it sank further, and all the landmasses around the margins began to slough as they became supoersaturated.SO we have these huge slides of flysch rock and margina land slides .
...........

The hole he was digging for himself only got deeper with every sentence after that.

It is understandable that evolutionary biologists would quiet their findings if they ran contrary to accepted beliefs in the same way pastors wouldn’t openly express a lack of faith.

If facts are all important monogamy is counter-evolution as any eugenicist will tell you.

How can the Senate have political clout when each state, regardless of population, has two senators each? The idea is ridiculous. More than 50% of the US population has 18 votes in the senate and less than 50% have 82 votes.

The electorate "drubbed" your whole position.

Always carry it in thy mind, and act
upon it, as a sure maxim, Toby ----

``That women are timid :'' And 'tis
well they are -- else there would be no
dealing with them.

Some of the "scientists" on this thread have previously advocated taking away the vote from religious people....

Some of the "scientists" on this thread have previously advocated taking away the vote from religious people....

I took my son to the California Academy of Science museum in San Francisco yesterday.