Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Crucial Texas Evolution/Creation Debate Impacted by 'Sowing Atheism' Book


ANNAPOLIS, Md., March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Solving Light Books announced today that Don McLeroy, controversial Chair of the Texas State Board of Education, has recommended "Sowing Atheism" (ISBN: 978-0-9705438-5-1) by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., to other board members and to the general public. McLeroy's timely recommendation could influence the board's final decision on the science curriculum scheduled for March 27. The Texas decision will determine what is printed in science textbooks nationwide.

McLeroy extols Johnson's succinct demonstration that natural selection, the vaunted lynchpin of evolutionist reasoning, is not a scientific principle at all, but rather a mere figure of speech that adds nothing to our understanding of nature. McLeroy has said he plans to raise this issue in the March 26-27 meetings.

Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, wrote "Sowing Atheism" in response to the propagandistic book, "Science, Evolution, and Creationism" published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2008. According to Johnson, McLeroy expects that "Sowing Atheism" will focus the Texas board's attention on the "theft of true science" by the atheist-dominated NAS hierarchy.

"I'm delighted with Mr. McLeroy's endorsement of 'Sowing Atheism,' and hope all the board members read it thoughtfully before they vote. Our nation cannot progress morally, spiritually, or politically so long as we permit the NAS to teach our children that they are descended by chance from worms," Mr. Johnson said.

In his book, Johnson shows that the NAS cannot pick any one of the two million or so living species and identify the species from which it allegedly evolved, nor can the NAS produce any evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes. Further, Johnson points out, the NAS admits it lacks a "plausible hypothesis" for the origin of life.

How, then, does the NAS sustain its "evolution is a fact" charade? Johnson answers: "The NAS resorts to intimidation and outright seductions which include repetitive false affirmations, disguised tautologies, authoritative obfuscations, and slapping 'sciency' lipstick on their no-evidence pig."

"Sowing Atheism" is available on Amazon and at www.solvinglight.com where it is also available as a free pdf download.

That should be an interesting book, because atheism doesn't teach anything close to beliefs in gods based on myths, and morals is not based on religion. If that were so, history shows us how religious conflicts were responsible for most of human turmoil.

That's the worst avenue for the religious to pursue in attacking atheism. They're going to have to create all kinds of imagined threats from atheism that doesn't exist.

spendi, That's not true to the extent we all follow some rules of "niceness" in all social intercourse whether with family or close friends.

As for georgeob's remarks to me, I accept it as any friend would. I have been reprimanded by many on a2k about my aggressive behavior, but there are some things we older guys will not tolerate; bullshit is still BS no matter who expresses them, and I will challenge all of them. When I make a mistake, I apologize. I think that's fair and open as a matter of discourse on a2k.

Well-why don't you cut out the bullshit yourself?



Is bullshit. And I have explained why. You don't accept the explanation because you don't want to. What you want is to go on trotting out bullshit like that and explanations are irrelevant to you. And that's bullshit too.



We know that. But the atheist can only follow those rules for selfish pragmatic reasons. It's an "I'll be nice to you if you'll be nice to me" strategy. Evolved behaviour. Like monkeys deflecking each other. Mutual ego stroking. Serious subjects avoided.

There's something about rules coming down from on high that rules coming from your fellow man can't match.

I feel sure that the financial wizards are within the rules formulated by their fellow man. The seven deadly sins don't figure in those. Nor the Ten Commandment. Nor the Sermon on the Mount.

I consider myself an "older guy" and if my tolerance threshold for bullshit wasn't 10 miles long I would have to buy a cave in the hills and call it The Hermitage. You must spend all your life in a low-level seething rage, occasionally erupting, if your's is as short as you make it seem.

One of the great values of a Christian education is toleration for bullshit.

The book is hilarious to scan -- it's free, after all. To think they decided to brand it as snake oil with cover art is laughable.

What a neat description of the anti-IDer's contributions to these threads.

And history also shows that the human turmoil, economic mainly, was confined to fields and dusty plains well away from population centres and was settled by a few young men using pointed sticks and leather shields for a few minutes before they all sat down together to eat their rations.

Creationist board chair profiled

As the final vote on the proposed revision of the Texas state science standards approaches, the Austin American-Statesman (March 8, 2009) offers a profile of the chair of the Texas state board of education, avowed creationist Don McLeroy. Describing his conversion to fundamentalism as a dental student, the profile explained, "He is now a young earth creationist, meaning that he believes God created Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago," quoting him as saying, "When I became a Christian, it was whole-hearted ... I was totally convinced the biblical principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate scientifically." Particularly important to McLeroy is the biblical tenet that humans were created in the image of God " although Sid Hall, a Methodist pastor in Austin, told the newspaper, "I would never want to discount those works, but to take [the passage that humans were made in the image of God] to mean something about how the universe is created is a stretch to me ... That's code to me for 'I'm going to take my particular myth of creationism and make it part of the science curriculum.' That's scary to me."

At the board's January 21-23, 2009, meeting, McLeroy successfully proposed a revision to section 7 of the draft of the high school biology standards to require that students "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record." As NCSE explains in its call to Texas scientists, the requirement is not only unworkable and confusing, but also evidently intended to promote the idea that living things were specially created in their current forms. Moreover, a detailed analysis by the Stand Up for Real Science blog strongly suggests that the documentation that McLeroy provided in support of his revision at the January meeting was in fact taken wholesale from creationist sources. Undaunted, McLeroy told the American-Statesman that at the board's March 25-27, 2009, meeting, he plans to "pitch another idea that he says should be taught in public schools: the insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of cells" " apparently a reference to the "intelligent design" notion of "irreducible complexity" due to Michael Behe.

David Hillis of the University of Texas, Austin, told the newspaper, "McLeroy's amendments are not even intelligible. I wonder if perhaps he wants the standards to be confusing so that he can open the door to attacking mainstream biology textbooks and arguing for the addition of creationist and other religious literature into the science classroom." He added, "If Chairman McLeroy is successful in adding his amendments, it will be a huge embarrassment to Texas, a setback for science education and a terrible precedent for the state boards overriding academic experts in order to further their personal religious or political agendas. The victims will be the schoolchildren of Texas, who represent the future of our state." Hillis is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the 21st Century Science Coalition, which has recruited over 1400 Texas scientists to endorse its call for the Texas state board of education to adopt state science standards that "acknowledge that instruction on evolution is vital to understanding all the biological sciences" and omit "all references to 'strengths and weaknesses,' which politicians have used to introduce supernatural explanations into science courses."

Preparing for the March 25-27 board meeting at which the final vote on the standards is expected, McLeroy is arming himself with "a large binder that is adorned on the front with a picture of Albert Einstein" and contains "numerous passages from books " such as [Kenneth R.] Miller's and others on evolutionary theory " and articles that he plans to use as ammunition in the fight this month over what should be in the state's science standards." One page from his binder, the American-Statesman reports, shows a diagram of the fossil record from a book by Miller, with McLeroy's gloss, "What do we see?" 'Sudden appearance' of species." Miller " a professor of biology at Brown University and a Supporter of NCSE, who recently received the Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of "his sustained efforts and excellence in communicating evolutionary science" " told the newspaper, "That diagram shows evolution. If he thinks it says evolution does not occur, he is dead wrong. It's really quite the opposite."

A diagram shows evolution does it? How very convenient.

TEXAS UPDATE

We could just let the market take care of this and we would have a whole herd of spendis out there, un able to function in a profession, unless of course they all become barristas.(Or is it barristis)

Exactly, farmerman. It is unbelievable how committed politicians are to prevent teaching evolution. They must think that these crusades will win them loyal voters.

The "market" has been taking care of it all along you silly moo.

A herd of spendis is the last thing I want. The stock markets would crash. Meltdowns are more gradual than crashes.

And I'll have you know that I am a qualified and certificated lecturer in two scientific subjects and, I was told, hold the county record for the number of Grade 1 passes in one class. The dignatory who clasped me round the shoulder to congratulate me on bringing his empire such glory could only speak for the county. And he was drunk. I don't know about the national level. And it was when the marking wasn't done to ensure nobody was a failure.

And for 12 years previous to that little interlude I had been a scientific civil servant in which capacity I met and socialised with a large number of scientists an indecent percentage of which displayed personal habits I felt left a lot to be desired.

I gave it all up for financial reasons reinforced by a degree of disgust and have been going downhill ever since. If it hadn't been for women, betting and boozing I daresay I might be an eminent scientist by now.

One who I know, now retired, reads books on the calculus for entertainment.

spendi, You couldn't/wouldn't be a scientist; as a die-hard IDer, it's an impossible goal.

DISCOVER Magazine. Science, Technology and The Future

Houston, the Bullies Have Landed

Adam Frank over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has been doing a good job tracking the latest act in the depressingly long disaster flick known as Creationism. While many of the postings I have done here at Reality Base focus on broader views of what humans do in science and what they think of as spiritual endeavor, the ritual burning of science education going on in Texas demands as much illumination as possible.

The details of the situation have been covered in a number of places, but here is the quick overview: The Texas State Board of Education is in the midst of deciding its science education standards. These are the specifications for what should be taught and what students are expected to know in the state of Texas. The board, which has far too many creationists on it, recently included reviews from representatives of the Discovery Institute, a front for the Intelligent Design “movement.” This will ensure another sad attempt to get evolution labeled “just a theory” and present the creationists’ non-science as an “alternative view.”

We have seen all of this before, of course. This case is particularly dangerous because in this review cycle, guidelines and textbook selections are reviewed together. The sad spectacle of a state’s public science education bureaucracy being hijacked by a religious viewpoint is bad enough, but it’s the textbooks that are the real problem. Texas is a big market for textbook publishers. The less scrupulous among them are willing to bend to market forces and downplay those aspects of biology that are considered troublesome (i.e. the foundational theory of evolution).

I have written before about the schizophrenia of the creationists. They are willing to accept the fruits of science that ensure their quality of life and health, but feel free to reject those parts that conflict with their particular interpretation of their particular religion. Perhaps we should demand some consistency and ask that they hand in their cell phones and relinquish the use of antibiotics. The self-imposed blindness is maddening.

These creationists are practicing religious intolerance in a nation founded on the opposite principle. The part of the story that does not get enough press, however, is the damage this does to the scientific and, hence, economic enterprise of our country. Students in countries we are bound to compete against are not being subjected to this pruning of the scientific tree. A 12-year-old interested in biology in India, China, or Germany is not being given half the story because some bullies in the community made it onto a school board.

Worse, by striking at the roots of science education, they threaten the scientific enterprise of the nation"our greatest resource and the engine of our strength. These school board charades are a threat that must be confronted.
In 1955 the federal government stepped into the long battle for racial equality in education, and the desegregation of schools began. That was a good idea. Maybe it’s time for mandatory national standards of science education (which include evolution) to be determined by scientists, and not bullies.

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester who studies star formation and stellar death using supercomputers. His new book, “The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate,” has just been published. He will be joining Reality Base to post an ongoing discussion of science and religion"you can read his previous posts here, and find more of his thoughts on science and the human prospect at the Constant Fire blog.

From the article quoted by Lightwizard:


There is an indirect way the federal government can accomplish this (without taking education away from state and local control). Federal aid to states can include a requirement that state education standards meet a national standard.

The IDers are, like the GOP(in other arenas) , theyre very good at carrying the message and staying on the message. Herein, Ive been insisting that we insist that our schoolboards and state ed committees adhere to strict standards that require tht all curricula in science follow the scientific method, use strict rules of "evidence" and provide proofs of concept by quantitative means. (SOmethings that Creationism or its bastard child ID, can never provide us).

Ive challenged several of the banner carriers about these (and to show us where the methods of ID and Creationism have given us ANY scientific dicoveries) and I have always been met with silence and, in some cases, changing of the subject.

You would have tried the patience of Job ci.

I've never said, nor implied, that I am an IDer. I have been very careful about that.

I support the consequences of belief systems wherever they are found on the basis that the cultural history of the society has selected them in over extended periods of time. And I oppose a belief system such as atheism because the consequences are a discouraged, disillusioned, despondent and depressed population of moping zombies who only respond to carrots and sticks.

The only good thing I see in atheism is that it forces the other side to get their act together.

It's not an impossible goal to support belief systems for that reason. Especially Christianity. I'm just saying that you should let them alone because they have delivered the goods even if they are up a gum tree.

Easy to say when you avoid defining the standard and at your computer console there is no opposition from the states having federal standards foisted on them. I would be surprised if it's constitutional.

Without a definition wande you statement is pure, fancy sounding mush. In the ear in a pub it is white noise.

You must have played with toy soldiers longer than you really ought to have done.

I never try to resemble any character in the comic book called the bible; that would be a "sin" of unimaginable proportions!