Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

OK, so the first point is settled.

But if they start deciding also for others

@farmerman,

Quote:
What principles are you talking about?

If pleading stupidity is to be your main argument you might be better after nap time.

You havent answered any question.

Teach the other side too
(Darrell D. White, Opinion, Houma Today, November 23, 2010)

BESE officials will soon consider whether to burden Louisiana students for the next seven years with a subpar group of biology textbooks that fail to satisfy our state’s published science benchmark standards such as “recognizing and analyzing alternative models.”

Ironically, Darwin himself acknowledged the need for balance and critical thinking in the introduction to his book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

Darwin wrote “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” And three of the 15 chapters of Darwin’s book address criticisms of his own macroevolutionary ideas.

As a lawyer and retired trial judge, I find that evidence of scientific criticisms of Darwin’s views would clearly be admissible in a court of law. “Relevant evidence” under Louisiana Code of Evidence, Article 401 “means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”

In fact, a licensed attorney who failed to disclose to a judge evidence directly contrary to legal authority he cited could be guilty of unethical conduct. (Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct 3.03 – “Candor Toward the Tribunal”)

How can important science textbooks justify withholding such facts from students?

Ben Franklin observed, “when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” Franklin’s contemporary, Thomas Holcroft put it more bluntly, writing “to prevent inquiry is among the worst of evils.”

In the Louisiana Family Forum’s 2003 Statewide Voter’s Guide, the following question was asked of gubernatorial candidates:

“Do you support or oppose the teaching in public schools of the scientific weaknesses of evolution, including the full range of evidence regarding biological evolutionary data?”

Candidates Bobby Jindal, Kathleen Blanco and others responded “support,” which is the position polling data shows is held by more than half of Americans for many years now.

Bobby Jindal has already been criticized by some Darwin-only media outlets for signing the 2008 Science Education Act. Will Gov. Jindal speak out on the biology textbook issue due to be considered by BESE at its December meetings? Only time will tell.

But to remain mute during this educational crisis would seem to invoke the admonishment my mother, poet Jerry White, wrote about in her award-winning verse titled, DIMINISHED: “A truth endorsed but not embraced is whittled to a platitude.”

************************************************

‘Science’ with no evidence?
(Barbara Forrest, Opinion, Houma Today, November 26, 2010)

Darrell White’s recent letter, “Teach the other side, too,” criticizing evolution in biology textbooks that were approved by two state committees contains a false premise.

He argues that “scientific criticisms” of evolution should be included in the textbooks, but his argument works only if genuinely scientific criticisms exist. White’s argument fails because all evidence since publication of On the Origin of Species confirms Darwin’s theory of evolution. There is no evidence undermining evolution. The science has withstood every attempt to discredit it for 151 years. Creationists such as White have no evidence.

Contending that “scientific criticisms of Darwin’s views would clearly be admissible in a court of law,” White asserts that an attorney withholding such evidence would be “guilty of unethical conduct.” How, he wonders, can “such facts” be withheld from textbooks? White knows better than this. He knows about the Pennsylvania “Dover trial,” Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005), in which the Discovery Institute (DI) had six weeks to present “scientific criticisms” of evolution. DI is the creationist think tank with which the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) joined in 2008 to promote the sham Louisiana Science Education Act. Why didn’t White mention this case?

I was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in that trial, in which DI also had two “expert” witnesses. They were supposed to have five, but three of them bailed out before they were deposed rather than take advantage of this golden opportunity to present their “scientific criticisms” of evolution in federal court. Judge John E. Jones III gave the remaining witnesses all the time they needed to present evidence. DI’s witnesses were exposed under cross-examination as the creationists they are, having produced no evidence against evolution. Nor have they produced evidence for intelligent-design creationism, which two other critics wrote in their public comment forms should be included in the textbooks. Yet White and the LFF worked with the DI to write and promote the LSEA, which Gov. Jindal signed in 2008.

White calls for Jindal to “speak out on the biology textbook issue due to be considered by BESE at its December meetings.” I wholeheartedly agree. The governor should explain why — with his Ivy League biology degree from Brown University — he signed a creationist law that he knew would threaten the science education of his constituents’ children. Will he explain? Time will tell.

White calls for Jindal to “speak out on the biology textbook issue due to be considered by BESE at its December meetings.” I wholeheartedly agree. The governor should explain why — with his Ivy League biology degree from Brown University — he signed a creationist law that he knew would threaten the science education of his constituents’ children. Will he explain? Time will tell.

HOWEVER, having said all that, Meyers does provide a good read about his revisit of the concepts by which guys like Michael Ruse have argued Against ID as being "non scientific" . These arguments Meyers takes on one by one with some interesting twists. SPecifically he revisits

1It invokes an unobservable entity
2Its not testable
3Its not explainable by natural law (whereas evolution can be explained by both nat law and "Creationist thinking"
4It has no predictions possible
5Its not falsifiable
6No mechanisms cited
7Its not tentative

If you read pages 423 to 450 , youll get wht, to me, was the best arguments he could muster up. That part of the book was worth reading IMHO.

1.We start with an argument that everything was created by "design" and from design we can go back and sort out how it happened (Anybody see any problem with this?)

There are lots of scientific principles that werent observable.