Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

A 2008 Gallup Poll found only 14 percent of Americans would agree with Darwin that "man evolved over millions of years."

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I saw an interview with Stephen Jay Gould that was filmed about a year before he died. Gould was asked if he still battles creationists. He replied, "Nah. It's a waste of time."

....he and his ilk have done nothing but run away from discussing the social consequences of doing away with irrational delusions and leaving everybody at the mercy of science and its determined severities when under the control of the scientific establishment.

Intelligent design to be topic at Vatican meeting
(By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press, February 10, 2009)

The Vatican will include discussion of intelligent design in a conference marking the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," officials said Tuesday.

The announcement reverses a decision to exclude such discussion but officials said intelligent design would be treated only as a cultural phenomenon " not as science or theology.

Organizers of the March 3-7 conference did not explain at a news conference Tuesday why they had decided to include discussion of the view that life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone, and that a higher power has had a hand in changes among species over time.

"The committee agreed to consider ID as a phenomenon of an ideological and cultural nature, thus worthy of a historic examination, but certainly not to be discussed on scientific, philosophical or theological grounds," said Saverio Forestiero, a conference organizer and professor of zoology at the University of Rome.

The Vatican under Benedict has been trying to stress its belief that there is no incompatibility between faith and reason, and the evolution conference is supposed to be a key demonstration of that.

Church teaching holds that Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds. But the Vatican's position became somewhat confused in recent years, in part because of a 2005 New York Times op-ed piece penned by a close collaborator of Pope Benedict XVI, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

In the piece, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis." Schoenborn said the late pope's statement was "rather vague and unimportant."

Vatican officials later made clear they didn't believe intelligent design was science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only created confusion.

The conference is being hosted by Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, along with the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture and the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. state of Indiana.

Obviously. That is why the social consequences argument is all that really matters. So it is very surprising that ros such spout this generality when he and his ilk have done nothing but run away from discussing the social consequences of doing away with irrational delusions and leaving everybody at the mercy of science and its determined severities when under the control of the scientific establishment.

VATICAN UPDATE

Quote:

Intelligent design to be topic at Vatican meeting
(By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press, February 10, 2009)

The announcement reverses a decision to exclude such discussion but officials said intelligent design would be treated only as a cultural phenomenon " not as science or theology.

Run away from it? I remember asking you to make a coherent, cogent argument on that subject and you failing dismally, going off on tangents and confusing assertion for argument.

Re: wandeljw (Post 3395079)
wande wrote-

Quote:

There are some people who want to discuss sociological issues with you on the ID thread.



It is very difficult to imagine anybody quite so stupid as to think what is taught in schools is not a sociological issue. It isn't anything else.

It is the very reason you lot are scared of introducing into schools the brave martyrs who pioneered at great risk the very positions you now take in your nice armchairs. I mean, of course, the Marquis de Sade, Julien Offroy de La Mettrie and Wilhelm Reich whose works went way beyond the infantile claptrap you lot put out.

Explain to me wande why your push to bring pure scientific thinking into schools does not begin with these men. You are even scared of Germaine Greer. Without them, and others of lesser importance, you would be hauled off to the magistrates.

You ought to have framed pictures of them on your walls.

Please try not to indulge in trying to determine the education of 50 million kids without having done even your basic homework.

I really want to know what the big deal is? I was raised believing in creationism and switched to believing the world evolved. So, yes, I understand both points of view very, very well.

But who really cares? So the kids aren't believing in evolution. Give them their space. Maybe they want to believe in God, or maybe a perpetual universe, or that humans are a civilization seeded by aliens. It's their right and possibly it's even a need. We believe what gives us comfort. Seriously, give them space.

Creationism Left Out of Science Education for Valid Reasons
(By Richard B. Katskee, U. S. News and World Report, February 10, 2009)

Should we teach creationism in public-school science classes? Of course we should"if we want to violate the Constitution, dumb down our students, and make our nation an international laughingstock.

The creationists won't admit it, but the debate is over, and they lost. Every time creationism has been brought into public schools, the courts have found it unconstitutional. It doesn't matter what label is used""creation science," "intelligent design" (ID), or "the theory of abrupt appearance""all are cut from the same unconstitutional cloth.

Ironically, creationists keep evolving. First they tried to ban the teaching of evolution outright. The Supreme Court struck down those attempts in 1968. Then creationists tried to mandate the teaching of "creation science" alongside evolution, in what were called "balanced treatment" laws. The Supreme Court rejected that ploy in 1987.

More recently, creationists tried to teach "intelligent design" in the public schools of Dover, Pa. I was one of the attorneys who represented the parent-plaintiffs in that case. We were gratified when U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III sent intelligent-design creationism packing in 2005.

"We have been presented," wrote Jones, "with a wealth of evidence which reveals that the District's purpose was to advance creationism, an inherently religious view, both by introducing it directly under the label ID and by disparaging the scientific theory of evolution, so that creationism would gain credence by default as the only apparent alternative to evolution...."

No matter how they try or what they call their ideas, creationists can't get over this hurdle: They want the Bible to be treated like a science book. Creationist efforts fail in court because creationism begins with a series of set-in-stone conclusions anchored in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and then cherry picks "facts" to back up that religious view. Anything that doesn't fit the scenario is tossed. Call that what you will; but it isn't science.

Real science begins with a question and looks for the answer wherever it may be found. It isn't about dogma; it's about open inquiry. Unlike creationists, real scientists aren't afraid to change their hypothesis if the facts don't support it.

Unable to win in the law courts, creationists these days tend to pitch their case to the court of public opinion. One of their chief arguments is that evolution is anti-God and offensive to religion.

That argument is persuasive only to those who don't know about all the faith communities and religious leaders who long ago made their peace with Charles Darwin. Voices for Evolution, a publication of the National Center for Science Education, contains an entire list. Among them are the late Pope John Paul II and current Pope Benedict XVI, both of whom have endorsed evolution heartily; and they are hardly anti-faith fanatics.

Another argument that creationists employ is a misguided appeal to fairness. Why can't we teach both evolution and creationism, they ask, and let the students decide?

One reason we can't do that is because creationism is religion, not science. Introducing it into the public schools under any guise is a violation of the separation of church and state. Tempering it with some instruction about evolution does not change that simple fact.

But there is also a larger concern: We do our young people no favors when we pretend that there are controversies in science, when in fact there aren't. Evolution is accepted by the overwhelming majority of biologists in this nation. In other developed countries, creationism is considered a bad joke that scientists don't take seriously.

Major advances in medicine, biology, and the study of human origins hinge on evolution. Understanding evolution is thus becoming more important than ever as we look to biotech industries and medical breakthroughs to combat disease and improve our quality of life. Failure to teach evolution properly leaves our children ill-equipped to contribute to this bright future; it is a form of educational malpractice.

Public colleges don't teach creationism; they teach evolution. Exposing our children to discredited, pseudo-scientific ideas in the name of "fairness" is nonsensical. There's a reason why every time a creationism bill is proposed in a state, college professors line up to oppose it: They don't want to have to spend time, money, and effort on remedial education for their students in Biology I.

"Equal time" does not apply when the scales are so uneven. When we teach about the Holocaust, we don't give the deniers equal time. When the germ theory of disease is taught, those who believe that sickness is punishment from God aren't given a platform.

The fact is, creationists have had many decades to put forth scientific evidence for their claims and to publish it in peer-reviewed journals. They have been unable to do so. The reason that their ideas have been expelled from the classroom is not a vast conspiracy or rampant hostility toward religion; it's that those ideas lack scientific value.

What's especially sad about this debate is that it is unnecessary. Lots of devoutly religious people accept evolution, seeing it as part of God's plan. We have learned through bitter experience (think Galileo) that when science and religion are forced to fight, neither side wins. That's because these two concepts aren't enemies and weren't meant to fight. Indeed, we all do better when religion and science work as partners to help us understand, interpret, and appreciate our world and humanity's place in it.