Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@rosborne979,

Scientific American, which I posted is at the top of the Google hits:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=texas-vote-moves-evolution-to-the-t-2009-03-27

Despite some of the hyperbolic rhetoric from blogs, including the laughable submissions to the DI site, SA's seems to be the most concise and up-to-date assessment.

In Newsweek Christopher Hitchens says proposes a compromise: school debating societies should restage the famous debates between Thomas ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, as well as the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ in Dayton. Time should also be set aside for children to learn all creation stories, he says, “from the Hindu to the Muslim to the Australian Aboriginal”. In return, Texas churches should teach “the "strengths and weaknesses" of the religious world view”.

“This is America,” writes Hitchens. “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a thousand schools of thought contend. We may one day have cause to be grateful to the Texas Board of Education for lighting a candle that cannot be put out.

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The full Christopher Hitchens article in Newsweek:

http://ndn1.newsweek.com/media/65/darwin-texas-hitchens-CU02-wide-horizontal.jpg

Excerpt:

It's not just that the overwhelming majority of scientists are now convinced that evolution is inscribed in the fossil record and in the lineaments of molecular biology. It is more that evolutionists will say in advance which evidence, if found, would refute them and force them to reconsider. ("Rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian layer" was, I seem to remember, the response of Prof. J.B.S. Haldane.) Try asking an "intelligent design" advocate to stipulate upfront what would constitute refutation of his world view and you will easily see the difference between the scientific method and the pseudoscientific one.

Link:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/191400

1 Reply

@Lightwizard,

Quote:

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? --Carl Sagan

Quote:

It was irritating enough for the poet when the scientists explained the sunset. It is considerably more upsetting for all of us when they begin to explain us. There is a kind of duality between the man who believes or knows, chooses and values, and the mere phenomenom who is explained. In modern thought, there is a kind of pursuit of the former by the latter. Once, we were all self, not nature--indeed nature herself was self-like. Now it is the self-proper that shrinks and disappears.

Some consolation may perhaps be derived from the reflection that the self-proper, the self-as-it-is-to-itself , will never allow itself to be eliminated altogether. Any theory, however much it explains, must still be held by someone, and the assumptions and values implicit in its holding and choosing the theory in question cannot themselves be altogether explained in the theory itself.

Ernest Gellner. Thought and Change. 1969 edition.

If evolution has evolved a being who believes in evolution theory how are we to know if this adaptation is advantageous to the species. Such a being is certainly incapable of stylish literary expression and cannot solve the busy gynaecologist's duality problem at the lap-dancing show.

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Linda Sutton interview with Gore Vidal in the Atlantic Free Press (excerpt):

LS: Going back several years on textbooks, Diane Ravitch in her book, "The Language Police," denounced what she called the "regime of censorship" taking place in textbooks and testing materials saying that the pressure groups from both sides of the political spectrum have forced the watering down of the curricula to such an extent that it has seriously affected students' ability to read and think critically. Would you comment on that?

GV: All I know is what you just quoted. I am quite sure of it, knowing how the U.S. works and how the pressure groups work. I mean if anybody would allow into a room without roaring with laughter who denies evolution, if you deny that, you deny all modern science, all medicine, and all knowledge of the human race. And only someone extremely stupid, full of the laughing gas of very, very primitive fundamental religions which were told to stay to their humble place by Thomas Jefferson, and they still should be kept. When I used to campaign around the country, if I ever felt I wanted a big line of big applause for something, I would always come up with, "Also, I favor the taxing of all religions."

You get knocked over by the waves of applause whether they're Jews or Catholics or Protestants. It's ferocious. They all know all the religions are getting away with murder and are breaking the law. They are not taxed because religion is supposed to be a good thing. And, but, they must not go into politics. That's the quid pro quo. And, of course, they all immediately have political machines. They elect governors. And they smear people, and they go after minorities that they don't like. These are evil people! And my guiding word for today is Franklin's, these are corrupt people.

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@Lightwizard,

No wonder Battlin' Norm head-butted him in the gents.

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@spendius,

The Norman Mailer who blasted all the organized religions? Of course, he does believe in a he or she god, but as an artist, not a designer. According to Mailer, he/she (apparantly a bisexual or transvestite) brushed in the dinosaurs, saw what a bad mistake he/she had made, then allowed them to go extinct.

He is has always had some quaint opinions and deserved the verbal bashing Gore laid on him.

Vidal characterized the “The Prisoner of Sex” to “three days of menstrual flow” and Mailer to Charles Manson.

Mailer was speechless and head-butted him in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, then telling him, on-air, that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him. Six years later, he threw a drink at Vidal, and punched him at a Lally Weymouth soirée.

Still on the floor, Vidal said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.” Days later, Vidal went on Cavett’s show to assert that Mailer had literally stabbed his second wife in the back. The two reconciled in 1985.

What fun, but not nearly as fun as trying to trod through Ancient Evenings where every other page seemed to include one of the characters staring at his own feces.

Norman criticized Capote for "In Cold Blood," then proceeded to copy the concept.

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@Lightwizard,

The "concept" was well tried and tested long before either arrived on the scene. But Mailer made a most excellent contribution to the genre.

I read AE as an exercise for my patience.

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@spendius,

By whom and what novel titles? Capote has always been credited with pioneering the factual journal novel, or the true crime case novel. Although fiction has sometimes been based on some factual event or real people, it was never used with real names, places, and events as a day-by-day narrative. Of course, Vidal with Burr and the other United States novels, real people and events were mixed in with fictional characters and events.

AE is self-indulgent crap, supposedly Mailer's answer to Vidal's historical novels -- no wonder feces played such an important part in the narrative.

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This was an interesting case because it wasn't about public schools. It's unusual to see a challenge to evolution that isn't being fought over public school science classes.

Quote:

Understanding Evolution lawsuit over

* March 23rd, 2009
* California
* anti-evolution
* 2009

On March 23, 2009, the Supreme Court denied certiorari without comment to Caldwell v. Caldwell, which challenged the constitutionality of the Understanding Evolution website " a joint project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education. The San Francisco Chronicle (March 23, 2009) reports, "One page on Cal's 840-page 'Understanding Evolution' web site says Darwinism can be compatible with religion. The four-year-old suit by Jeanne Caldwell said the government-funded web site contradicts her religious belief about the incompatibility of religion and Darwinism and amounts to a state position on religious doctrine that violates the Constitutional separation of church and state."

Caldwell filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in 2005. But her suit was dismissed in 2006 because she failed to allege that she had federal taxpayer standing, failed to sufficiently allege state taxpayer standing, and failed to establish that she suffered a concrete "injury in fact." When she appealed the decision, the appellate court's decision concluded, "Accordingly, we believe there is too slight a connection between Caldwell’s generalized grievance, and the government conduct about which she complains, to sustain her standing to proceed." Reacting to the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case, a lawyer for the University of California told the Chronicle, "We believe the lower court rulings were correct, and we're glad this ends the matter."

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@Lightwizard,

It's a grey area LW.

But I wouldn't be busy getting Mr Vidal onto my side of an argument and Mr Mailer on the other. And I certainly wouldn't be caught saying that AE was self-indulgent crap.

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I doubt Mailer knows where I live, let alone drag his bourbon-soaked body over here, but he is dangerous:

November 22, 1960
Norman Mailer Arrested in Stabbing of Wife at a Party

Norman Mailer, the writer, was arrested last night and accused of stabbing his wife, Adele. Mrs. Mailer, 37 years old, was in critical condition last night at University Hospital, Second Avenue and Twentieth Street.

She was taken to the hospital at 8 o'clock Sunday morning with stab wounds in the abdomen and back. She apparently rode there in a private car.

According to the police of the West 100th Street station, where the 37-year-old writer was being held, Mrs. Mailer told physicians at the hospital that she had fallen on glass in her apartment at 250 West 94th Street. The physicians were suspicious and notified the police.

Mr. Mailer was also arrested a week ago on a disorderly conduct charge after an argument over a $7.60 bill at the Birdland nightclub.

Wound Near Heart

When detectives went to question his wife Sunday at the hospital, they were told she was too ill to be questioned. One would was said to be near her heart.

Last night, the hospital permitted the police to question her. They said she admitted with reluctance that her husband had stabbed her.

She said the stabbing occurred about 5 A.M. Sunday at a party at their apartment.

Mrs. Mailer told the police she could give no reason for the stabbing.

She said her husband suddenly walked up to her, looked at her, stabbed her with what she thought was a penknife or clasp knife, and left the apartment.

Mrs. Mailer said her husband later took her to the hospital.

The detectives learned that Mr. Mailer planned to visit his wife at the hospital last night. At 10:30 when he arrived, he was arrested.

Mr. Mailer has denied the accusation, according to Deputy Inspector John L. Kinsella.

The author came to public attention after World War II with "The Naked and the Dead," a novel of warfare in the South Pacific. It achieved critical acclaim and was a best-seller.

Last week, when the Citizens Emergency Committee met to draft a petition to Governor Rockefeller for an investigation of the city's Police Department, he was among the writers and editors who attended.

A week ago the writer was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct after he was refused credit for his bill at Birdland. He assertedly tried to pay his bill with a credit card, although the law prohibits the purchase of liquor on credit.

He was paroled for a hearing today in Magistrate's Court.

Last summer in Provincetown, Mass., he was involved in a dispute with two policemen and was jailed. The author represented himself at the trial and was acquitted.

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@rosborne979,

LOL I remember that case. What an idiot.

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@Lightwizard,

I never said he was a saint LW. If you were going on a mission behind enemy lines who would you prefer as your wingman, Mailer or Vidal?

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@spendius,

As a wingman? None of the two.

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I lost interest in Mailer's writing quite a few years back.

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One could argue that evolution teaching to unsorted juveniles can be challenged on certain grounds.

1-That it is one of the progress theories of life popular with Victorian gentlemen of means who liked to imagine themselves as the nearest thing yet to perfection and who saw life on earth as a tree on which they were the scented blossoms. Such theories, and they have a long history, are popular with those who harbour similar fantasies. Plato for example or, if one needs a more mundane example, Prof. Dawkins.

Progress theories are plausible in changing times but hardly in those societies which run on century after century in the same old way. Australian aboriginals for instance, or the Dark Ages in Europe from which shone forth many beautiful legends. Progress theories are not accepted by everybody in the academic world. They are seen as a conceit of transitional epochs in which time plays a significant role in people's lives. In terms of the biological existence of mankind they are a trifling matter. Our present biology is, to all intents and purposes, timeless.

2-That it explains nothing. Unless it can explain the biological mechanisms of the transformations it envisages it merely lists a small fraction of some of the successive conditions and thus gives students the impression that something magical has taken place in the gaps. The gaps are somewhat glaring. Without knowledge of the mechanisms of change it is a caricature of life on earth. It is both redundant and inadequate.

That these matters are not obvious to anti-IDers is due to obscurantism. They are obscured by guesses about the mechanisms of transformation and also the processes which led to some states of life being stable for very long periods of time. Like Marxism, by listing stages and calling in the concept of "class struggle" (a guess) . Just as this purports to explain both changes in society and unchanging stable societies as well, so evolution theory obscures the philosophical inadequacy of the progress or growth idea by entering "natural selection" as a doctrine. The illogicality of Marx's labelled stages, seen on their own, is obscured by the doctrine of the class struggle as also Darwin's illogical tree of life type notions, seen on their own, are obscured by the doctrine of natural selection. The sort of distraction magicians employ to shift attention from the nifties.

Such theories tempt people to believe that the same mechanisms exist for the progress in all its stages and they very soon find themselves accepting the progress theory without being aware of it. And that inhibits a scientific search for other possible mechanisms. In astrological events say. Or, dare I say, in the psychosomatic realm. Or trace elements.

While depictions of a proposed evelutionary tree of life may be good business for the visual aid industry and the accompanying assertions of it being a true representation of life being good business for the explicators of it we have to admit that it doesn't take us very far. It is more in the way of entertainment than science.

3- Evolution theory sets in stone a putative reconstruction of the past and thus inhibits freedom of judgment.

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Quote:

Evolutionary Semantics, Texas-Style
(The New York Times, Editorial, March 30, 2009)

The Texas Board of Education gave grudging support last week to teaching the mainstream theory of evolution without the most troubling encumbrances sought by religious and social conservatives. But the margins on crucial amendments were disturbingly close, typically a single vote on a 15-member board, and compromise language left ample room for the struggle to continue.

This was not a straightforward battle over whether to include creationism or its close cousin, intelligent design, in the science curriculum. That battle has been lost by Darwin’s opponents in the courts, the schools and most political arenas.

Rather, this was a struggle to insert into the state science standards various phrases and code words that may seem innocuous or meaningless at first glance but could open the door to doubts about evolution. In the most ballyhooed vote, those like us who support the teaching of sound science can claim a narrow victory.

Conservatives tried " but failed " to reinsert a phrase requiring students to study the “strengths and weaknesses” of all scientific theories, including evolution. That language had been in the standards for years, but it was eliminated by experts who prepared the new standards for board approval because it has become a banner for critics of Darwinian evolution who seek to exaggerate supposed weaknesses in the theory.

The conservatives also narrowly lost attempts to have students study the “sufficiency or insufficiency” of natural selection to explain the complexities of the cell, a major issue for proponents of intelligent design. The conservatives also failed to get the word “sufficiency” inserted by itself, presumably because that would imply insufficiency as well. They had to settle for language requiring students to “analyze, evaluate and critique” scientific explanations and examine “all sides” of the scientific evidence.

At the end of a tense, confusing three-day meeting, Darwin’s critics claimed that this and other compromise language amounted to a huge victory that would still allow their critiques into textbooks and classrooms. One can only hope that teachers in Texas will use common sense and teach evolution as scientists understand it.

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@wandeljw,

It's plain and simple -- the IDiots/Creationuts operate as conspiracy theorists, that science is trying to supplant religion, specifically Christianity, a paranoia not without precedent. Christianity disavows the other religion's stories of creation and the origin of man (of course, since it's in the Old Testament, it's ironically the Jewish religion's version and they are all unable to "get to Heaven"). They're in the league of the "we didn't really go to the moon crowd who claim all the trips to the moon were shot with special effects in a studio in Hollywood. They're still clinging to going back 200 years to Darwin's basic theory and attacking the suppositions he made, logical and reasonable or not, even though all of them have been proven in refined versions based on new technology. It's the old magicians trick of diverting attention, in this case so they can pull out of the hat a few pathetically weak examples of how everything was poofed into existence at one single time. Trouble is, they're writing and speaking in the conspiracy theory, religious mumbo jumbo and preying on the demographic's uneducated to get it into school science curriculum's.

The Tree of Life becomes for them, a stump.

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@wandeljw,

Quote:

One can only hope that teachers in Texas will use common sense and teach evolution as scientists understand it.

It would surely be necessary for a man of principle to further insist that all subjects should be taught as scientists understand them. It hardly bears thinking about that the NYT is unaware of such logic and it thus becomes obvious that it is singling out evolution for special treatment for some reason close to its interests which are, of course, dividends.

And it would help to give the proposition some meaning if it was explained exactly how scientists understand evolution. Otherwise we are arrived at the conclusion that scientists are good per se, which is to say in isolation and without reference to extraneous factors such as 300 million monkeys running around grabbing what they can outside the walls of the ivory towers.

wande- I have been reading some bits about Popper recently and I think your general position requires you to remove your stamp of authority from his name in your siggy despite your chosen reference being not only one of his many triter observations but it having been also one of the triter observations of recorded time going back a very long way.

The fact that you abjure it's message yourself is really neither here nor there. We can put that down mere posturing like effemm's bullshit about reason. Like those uplift brassieres some ladies feel the need to have recourse to.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Quote:
Evolutionary Semantics, Texas-Style
(The New York Times, Editorial, March 30, 2009)

The Texas Board of Education gave grudging support last week to teaching the mainstream theory of evolution without the most troubling encumbrances sought by religious and social conservatives. But the margins on crucial amendments were disturbingly close, typically a single vote on a 15-member board, and compromise language left ample room for the struggle to continue.

The fact that this type of amendment even needs to be debated by school boards and not just immediately thrown-out as an obvious precursor for voodoo-science should be embarrassing to the entire state of Texas.

The Dover trial made it clear that such incursions (including ID) are blatant and duplicitous attempts to wedge religion into public science education. And nobody needs to look any further than the person(s) pushing the agenda to see the truth behind it.

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