Over 800 scientists in Texas have signed a statement to âencourage valid critical thinking and scientific reasoning by leaving out all references to âstrengths and weaknessesââ of evolution â references, they say, that politicians âhave used to introduce supernatural explanations into science courses.â
"Texas public schools should be preparing our kids to succeed in the 21st century, not promoting political and ideological agendas that are hostile to a sound science education," said David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, according to The Associated Press.
Hills is one of the stateâs more than 400 science faculty members who have signed the âScientists for a Responsible Curriculum in Texas Public Schoolsâ statement, which also includes more than 430 signatures from other Texas scientists.
âWe simply believe that students deserve the best science education in their Texas classrooms,â explains the 21st Century Science Coalition, which is spearheading the signature campaign.
At the heart of the matter are the current standards for the state's science curriculum, under which students are expected to "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information."
Some of the Texas Board of Educationâs committee members have asked the board to remove the "strengths and weaknesses" phrase as the board looked to update state science standards this summer.
Among those requesting the board to drop the phrase is Kevin Fisher, a committee member who told the NY Times that questions left unanswered by evolution should not be regarded as its weaknesses.
Other critics include Texas Freedom Network, a group that has opposed state proposals for Bible classes and Bible textbooks in the past and is currently spearheading the âStand Up for Scienceâ campaign.
âItâs time for state board members to listen to classroom teachers and true experts instead of promoting their own personal agendas,â expressed TFN president Kathy Miller in a statement. âOur students canât succeed with a 19th-century science education in their 21st-century classrooms. We applaud the science work groups for recognizing that fact.â
While there has been strong opposition against the standardsâ current language, several board members have appeared to favor it, saying it maintains a balanced debate on evolution.
"Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven," Board Vice Chairman David Bradley told The Houston Chronicle earlier this summer. "Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions."
Bradley also dismissed concerns by critics over the board's intention to sneak religion into the classroom.
"The only thing that this board is going to do is ask for accuracy."
Barbara Cargill, the vice chair of the board's Committee on Instruction, said giving students the freedom to discuss both sides of evolution will ensure them a "well-rounded education."
"It prompts them to be critical thinkers, and it also helps them to respect the opinions of other students even if they disagree," she told the Chronicle.
Meanwhile, Discovery Institute, an intelligent design think tank, has rejected allegations that the group is using the "strength and weaknesses" rhetoric as a new strategy in pushing intelligent design in schools following the 2005 Dover case â when intelligent design was barred from being taught in Pennsylvania's Middle District public school science classrooms. Continue >>
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ozarkprof wrote "Intelligent design is not a weakness of the evolutionary theory of origins, it is a competitor to that theory."
Invoking intelligent design equals invoking magic. Are you sure you want to say that magic is a valid alternative to science? Do you really think there are any competent scientists in the world who actually take intelligent design magic seriously?
Magic is for children and even children know it isn't real.
New thread of comments on this topic here: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20081008/scientist-coalition-accused-of-suppressing-evidence-against-darwinism.htm
igh, "agentorangex, there is no evidence for evolution. You believe it to be so."
Once again the communication breaks down....I earlier mentioned that if you're going to refute the theory you should at least make an attempt to refute the evidence. Do you even bother to do this? Nope. You instead carry on with the same illogical claim of it not having any evidence. Typical creationist tosh, pathetic. Name that sound Igh, 'Ppfffffffftttt', yes, that's you're argument deflating, again.
The common claim that evolution "violates" the Second Law of Thermodynamics (sometimes phrased that "information in X cannot increase" or "information cannot be added") relies on a misunderstanding. The 2nd Law's restriction of nonincreasing order only applies to a single, isolated closed system. If you have two or more sub-systems connected by mass-energy flows (such as a glass of water and a bucket of frozen CO2), it is possible for one system to increase in order (EG: the water, crystalizing to ice) as long as the order decreases at least as much in the connected sub-system (EG: the CO2 sublimating), resulting in a combined system with nondecreasing entropy.
Furthermore, it has been shown that once you use the form of the equations to address such mass energy flows, the Second Law of Thermodynamics mathematically implies the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection will result. For full details, see "Natural selection for least action", By Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, doi:10.1098/rspa.2008.0178)
Science refers to the process of gathering evidence, forming conjectures about the evidence, developing a formal hypothesis which indicates how the current evidence may be described under the conjecture, competitive testing of all candidate hypotheses under a formal criterion for probable correctness, plus the body of hypotheses testing best thereby and which thereafter are referred to as "Theories".
In the most formal sense, the criterion used for this is a more exacting expression of Occam's Razor, which has been proven in the absolute mathematical sense in the paper "Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism and Kolmogorov Complexity" (Vitanyi & Li). This shows that the most "concise" hypothesis is the one most likely to correctly describe the character of future data. Science thus becomes dependent (due to this paper) on the philosophical assumptions that propositional logic is valid for formal inference, that the Zermelo-Fraenkel Axioms of set theory (which serve as the modern foundation for all mathematics) are self-consistent (though they need not be complete), and that Reality links to Evidence.
Note that the root of the word "prove" is from the Latin probare, "to test". Thus, hypotheses that become theories may be said to have been Proven in the sense that Science uses the word. This is distinct from the mathematical sense, in that the usual use of "proof" in mathematics indicates a rigorous derivation from axioms; however, the sense that science uses is similar to the sense that a person might seek to "prove" that their brain is not a piece of cauliflower.
It follows, therefore, that "strengths and weaknesses" or reference to particular arguments being strong and weak can only be made in terms of how one hypothesis compares relative to another. The default reference comparison is the "null hypothesis", which mathematically corresponds to simply noting there are data, and making no attempt to relate them. In the case of evolutionary biology, there are a number of competing variations which have evolved from Darwin's original concept. However, neither "creationism" nor "intelligent design" provide more than marginal improvement over the null, and are no-where near the conciseness of the Modern Evolutionary Genetic Synthesis. Similarly, discussion of "holes" and "missing transitional forms" are also misleading, since science is inherently a process for making inference from a bounded set of data to the characteristics of data we yet lack. Determining what is most probably in a hole in Evidence is fundamentally what Science is for.
Creationism and Intelligent Design advocates are thus, at best, supporters of a conjecture with roots established in religion, who do not test under the Minimum Description Length Induction criterion, and who do not gather evidence directly from reality. As such, whatever it may be that they are doing, it is not science, and does not belong in high school Science classrooms.
agentorangex, there is no evidence for evolution. You believe it to be so.
All there is was made by God in the six days of Creation. All your science and evidence is corrupted. Corrupted by mans hatred for God.
Psalm 37:16 "A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
Psa 37:17 For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.
Psa 37:18 The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever."
agento,
Thanx much for your feed back on the book, I look forward to reading it .........
Igh, you're classic, you can't even begin to respond to any of the evidence I laid out earlier, the only thing you can offer is 'evolution has no evidence' as if such a decry by fiat was ever logical. Pffffttttttttt, you hear that? That's you're argument deflating in face of evidence.
"agentorangex there is no evidence for evolution"
Riiiiiight. Seriously, what would suffice as evidence for you that evolution is well supported? What should we find if evolutionary theory is true?
agentorangex there is no evidence for evolution. You believe it to be so.
All there is was made by God in the six days of Creation. All you science and evidence is corrupted. Corrupted by mans hatred for God.
"Have you read it? "
Yes, it's a decent read, I would advise it for anyone interested or new to evolution as it's not overly technical yet still delivers with examples of how evolution works and it can be understood by reviewing the fossil record and living animals. But for one who is more familiar with evolution, it doesn't offer as many examples of direct and indirect evidence, and this is why I specified Prothero's book as it outlines many lines of evidence specifically from the fossil record and does such a thorough explanation in many respects that I challenge any doubter to read it and consider that evolution has no evidence. I am currently reading 'The making of the Fittest' by Sean Carrol, who is a very well respected researcher at HHMI and works directly with embryonic development (evo-devo) and genetics and uses his works and others for genetic evidence. It's not too shabby too.
thanx agent for your very thorough and interesting response on Tiktallik. I have been wanting to learn more about the science of evolution but just havent had the time. My only biology training was freshman biology long ago in HS and biochemistry in college, so its hard for me to understand it beyond general concepts. Thanks for recommending Donald Prothero's book, I will look into it. I like succinct, not enough time for much else. A book I have ordered is "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body " by Neil Shubin from the Universtiy of Chicago, the discoverer of Tiltaalik. Have you read it?
believer, the petition is based on â
agent, I'm not insisting that the strengths and weaknesses be taught, but that if a student has a legitmate question with regards to either the strengths or weaknesses of evolution they should be allowed to ask their question and if I am interpreting this resolution correctly they will not be allowed to. I believe my view is more of a philosophical view as opposed to an academic view, but that's where I'm coming from on this issue.
believer, seriously think about what you're asking for here, if they are REALLY going to teach the strengths of evolutionary theory they had better discuss such evidence like the hominid fossils, ERV's, Human Chromosome 2 fusion, and all other related genetic and fossil evidence for hominid evolution. And this would just be on hominid evolution.....do you really want the kids learning this?