Kansas: Anti-Evolution Guidelines Repealed

ARTICLE: Kansas: Anti-Evolution Guidelines Repealed

SOURCE: Associated Press

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

First, the news item, followed by a few brief comments:

ASSOCIATED PRESS (Published: February 14, 2007): The State Board of Education repealed science guidelines questioning evolution, putting into effect new ones that reflect mainstream scientific views. The move was a political defeat for advocates of “intelligent design” who had helped write the standards being repealed. The intelligent design concept holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. The board removed language suggesting that basic evolutionary concepts were controversial and being challenged by new research. It also approved a new definition of science, limiting it to the search for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe. The state has had five sets of science standards in eight years, each affected by the seesawing fortunes of socially conservative Republicans and a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.

COMMENTARY:
This was inevitable, given the outcome of last year's state board of education elections, but it's still nice to know that the newly elected board of education candidates followed through on their campaign promises. An interesting sidelight to this story comes from an email I received late last week. The email came from Rob Crowther of the Discovery Institute, home church of the "intelligent design movement" (yes, I'm on their mailing list; it's always good to know what the other side is doing). In the email, Crowther railed against the new Kansas science standards, but the interesting thing is that he railed specifically against the removal of an item about the abuse of science (the rise and fall of eugenics in the 20th century and the Tuskegee syphilis study were the main examples). The email encouraged me to send an email to the board of education protesting the new standards because they included this change. Interestingly, there was no mention at all in the email of the fact that almost all of the proposed changes are to the parts of the old standards dealing with evolution and "intelligent design." Hmm...it appears that deliberate prevarication is part and parcel of the Discovery Institute's modus operandi. Crowther is a master propagandist, and his work in this case would have made Goebbels proud...

--Allen

Thank Goodness! for Daniel Dennett

SOURCE: The Edge.com

AUTHOR: Daniel Dennett

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

I thought readers of this blog might be interested in the fact that notorious atheist (and "Darwinist") Daniel Dennett very nearly died of a dissecting aortic aneurism last week. Did he "find God" like Anthony Flew and A. J. Ayer? Not quite…

THANK GOODNESS!
by Daniel C. Dennett

There are no atheists in foxholes, according to an old but dubious saying, and there is at least a little anecdotal evidence in favor of it in the notorious cases of famous atheists who have emerged from near-death experiences to announce to the world that they have changed their minds. The British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, is a fairly recent example. Here is another anecdote to ponder.

Two weeks ago, I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital where it was determined by c-t scan that I had a "dissection of the aorta"—the lining of the main output vessel carrying blood from my heart had been torn up, creating a two—channel pipe where there should only be one. Fortunately for me, the fact that I'd had a coronary artery bypass graft seven years ago probably saved my life, since the tangle of scar tissue that had grown like ivy around my heart in the intervening years reinforced the aorta, preventing catastrophic leakage from the tear in the aorta itself. After a nine-hour surgery, in which my heart was stopped entirely and my body and brain were chilled down to about 45 degrees to prevent brain damage from lack of oxygen until they could get the heart-lung machine pumping, I am now the proud possessor of a new aorta and aortic arch, made of strong Dacron fabric tubing sewn into shape on the spot by the surgeon, attached to my heart by a carbon-fiber valve that makes a reassuring little click every time my heart beats.

As I now enter a gentle period of recuperation, I have much to reflect on, about the harrowing experience itself and even more about the flood of supporting messages I've received since word got out about my latest adventure. Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. Had I had an epiphany? Was I going to follow in the footsteps of Ayer (who recovered his aplomb and insisted a few days later "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief"), or was my atheism still intact and unchanged?

Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.

Do I worship modern medicine? Is science my religion? Not at all; there is no aspect of modern medicine or science that I would exempt from the most rigorous scrutiny, and I can readily identify a host of serious problems that still need to be fixed. That's easy to do, of course, because the worlds of medicine and science are already engaged in the most obsessive, intensive, and humble self-assessments yet known to human institutions, and they regularly make public the results of their self-examinations. Moreover, this open-ended rational criticism, imperfect as it is, is the secret of the astounding success of these human enterprises. There are measurable improvements every day. Had I had my blasted aorta a decade ago, there would have been no prayer of saving me. It's hardly routine today, but the odds of my survival were actually not so bad (these days, roughly 33 percent of aortic dissection patients die in the first twenty-four hours after onset without treatment, and the odds get worse by the hour thereafter).

One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are trying to do what (God says) is right, that is all anyone can ask. Not so in medicine! If you are wrong—especially if you should have known better—your good intentions count for almost nothing. And whereas taking a leap of faith and acting without further scrutiny of one's options is often celebrated by religions, it is considered a grave sin in medicine. A doctor whose devout faith in his personal revelations about how to treat aortic aneurysm led him to engage in untested trials with human patients would be severely reprimanded if not driven out of medicine altogether. There are exceptions, of course. A few swashbuckling, risk-taking pioneers are tolerated and (if they prove to be right) eventually honored, but they can exist only as rare exceptions to the ideal of the methodical investigator who scrupulously rules out alternative theories before putting his own into practice. Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.

In other words, whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does! And I'm not just talking about the standards 'at the top'—among the surgeons and doctors who make life or death decisions every day. I'm talking about the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking "What if I'm wrong?" Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. Imagine the reception a scientist would get if he tried to suggest that others couldn't replicate his results because they just didn't share the faith of the people in his lab! And, to return to my main point, it is the goodness of this tradition of reason and open inquiry that I thank for my being alive today.

What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends' remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: "I've been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK." The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.

But isn't this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn't work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn't conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying "But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?")

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.

Or you can thank God—but the very idea of repaying God is ludicrous. What could an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man Who has Everything?) do with any paltry repayments from you? (And besides, according to the Christian tradition God has already redeemed the debt for all time, by sacrificing his own son. Try to repay that loan!) Yes, I know, those themes are not to be understood literally; they are symbolic. I grant it, but then the idea that by thanking God you are actually doing some good has got to be understood to be just symbolic, too. I prefer real good to symbolic good.

Still, I excuse those who pray for me. I see them as like tenacious scientists who resist the evidence for theories they don't like long after a graceful concession would have been the appropriate response. I applaud you for your loyalty to your own position—but remember: loyalty to tradition is not enough. You've got to keep asking yourself: What if I'm wrong? In the long run, I think religious people can be asked to live up to the same moral standards as secular people in science and medicine.

DANIEL C. DENNETT is University Professor, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His most recent book is Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

See also: The Brights

COMMENTARY:

While I have sometimes found myself disagreeing rather vehemently with Daniel Dennett, in this case I think he is absolutely right on. I had a somewhat similar experience last month - I was rushed to the hospital with my right ureter blocked by a HUGE kidney stone. It was extraordinarily painful, and was causing my right kidney to swell, and would probably have eventually caused it to die, with me following not long after. But, with the help of the ER staffs in two hospitals, an ambulance crew who drove me from the little town of Howell, Michigan to the University of Michigan Hospital, and my urologist and the surgical staff at my home hospital here in Ithaca, I am now much better. Anyway, while I lay there in a drug-induced haze (dilaudid, a morphine analog), I too mused on the question of prayer and the efficacy of religious belief versus "belief" in the protocols and practices of modern medicine (which is, of course, entirely based on the empirical sciences), and concluded just what Daniel Dennett did: that I would much rather have an atheist medical doctor, well trained in medical science, operating on me than a deeply religious person without such training.

Don't get me wrong: I don't begrudge religious believers their beliefs. But, if I had to make a choice and my life (or the life of someone I loved) were on the line, I would choose science every time. In other words, if it were a choice between a deeply religious but poorly trained doctor without much "bedside manner" and an atheist but highly trained doctor with the bedside manner of a Marine drill sargeant, I would choose the latter every time.

And would I appreciate anyone praying for me? I would of course appreciate the sentiment, but would not expect it to have any effect whatsoever on the outcome. Unlike science, prayer has no observable effect on the course of events in the real, physical world...which is, as far as I know, the only world there is.

--Allen

Scientists Endorse Candidate Over Teaching of Evolution

AUTHOR: Cornelia Dean

SOURCE: New York Times

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

In an unusual foray into electoral politics, 75 science professors at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have signed a letter endorsing a candidate for the Ohio Board of Education.

The professors’ favored candidate is Tom Sawyer, a former congressman and onetime mayor of Akron. They hope Mr. Sawyer, a Democrat, will oust Deborah Owens Fink, a leading advocate of curriculum standards that encourage students to challenge the theory of evolution.

Elsewhere in Ohio, scientists have also been campaigning for candidates who support the teaching of evolution and have recruited at least one biologist from out of state to help.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve who organized the circulation of the letter, said almost 90 percent of the science faculty on campus this semester had signed it. The signers are anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, physicists and psychologists.

The letter says Dr. Owens Fink has “attempted to cast controversy on biological evolution in favor of an ill-defined notion called Intelligent Design that courts have ruled is religion, not science.”

In an interview, Dr. Krauss said, “This is not some group of fringe scientists or however they are being portrayed by the creationist community,” adding, “This is the entire scientific community, and I don’t know of any other precedent for almost the entire faculty at an institution” making such a statement.

But Dr. Owens Fink, a professor of marketing at the University of Akron, said the curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. Rather, she said, they urge students to subject evolution to critical analysis, something she said scientists should endorse. She said the idea that there was a scientific consensus on evolution was “laughable.”

Although researchers may argue about its details, the theory of evolution is the foundation for modern biology, and there is no credible scientific challenge to it as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth. In recent years, with creationist challenges to the teaching of evolution erupting in school districts around the country, groups like the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent scientific organization, have repeatedly made this point.

But the academy’s opinion does not matter to Dr. Owens Fink, who said the letter was probably right to say she had dismissed it as “a group of so-called scientists.”

“I may have said that, yeah,” she said.

She would not describe her views of Darwin and his theory, saying, “This isn’t about my beliefs.”

School board elections in Ohio are nonpartisan, but Dr. Owens Fink said she was a registered Republican. Her opponent, Mr. Sawyer, was urged to run for the Seventh District Board of Education seat by a new organization, Help Ohio Public Education, founded by Dr. Krauss and his colleague Patricia Princehouse, a biologist and historian of science, and Steve Rissing, a biologist at Ohio State University.

At the group’s invitation, Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, will be in Ohio today through the weekend campaigning for other school board candidates who support the teaching of evolution. Dr. Miller, an author of a widely used biology textbook, was a crucial witness in the recent lawsuit in Dover, Pa., over intelligent design. The judge in that case ruled that it was a religious doctrine that had no place in a public school curriculum.

After that decision, Dr. Owens Fink said, the Ohio board abandoned curriculum standards that mandated a critical look at evolution, a decision she said she regretted. “Some people would rather just fold,” she said.

But Dr. Miller said it was a good call, adding, “We have to make sure these good choices get ratified at the ballot box.”

COMMENTARY:

Once again Ohio is the battleground in the ongoing culture wars. A similar change in the composition of a state board of education happened in Kansas earlier this year. It will be interesting to see what happens in Ohio, especially in the context of what many are beginning to perceive as a "glacial shift" in Ohio politics, away from religious conservatism and the Republican party and toward a more tolerant and pluralistic libertarianism, as exemplified by Tom Sawyer (even his name resonates in American cultural history). Whether the Democrats can finally become vertebrates and take a principled position on this and related issues remains to be seen...

--Allen

Evolution Measure Splits State Legislators In Utah

AUTHOR: Kirk Johnson

SOURCE: New York Times

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill (following the article)

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 3 ˜ Faith's domain is evident everywhere at the Utah Legislature, where about 90 percent of the elected officials are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayers are commonplace, and lawmakers speak of their relationship with God in ordinary conversation.

So it might be tempting to assume that legislation relating to the divisive national debate about the teaching of evolution in public schools would have a predictable outcome here.

Senate Bill 96 is proving that assumption wrong. The bill, which would require science teachers to offer a disclaimer when introducing lessons on evolution ˜ namely, that not all scientists agree on the origins of life ˜ has deeply divided lawmakers. Some leaders in both parties have announced their opposition to the bill, and most lawmakers say that with less than a month left in the legislative session, its fate remains a tossup.

One of the reasons why is State Representative Stephen H. Urquhart, a Republican from southern Utah whose job as majority whip is to line up votes in his party. Mr. Urquhart announced last week that he would vote against the bill.

"I don't think God has an argument with science," said Mr. Urquhart, who was a biology major in college and now practices law.

Mr. Urquhart says he objects to the bill in part because it raises questions about the validity of evolution, and in part because the measure threatens traditional religious belief by blurring the lines between faith and science.

Supporters of the bill, which passed the Senate on a 16-to-12 vote one day before Mr. Urquhart's announcement, still predict that it will pass in the House. They say the bill is not about religion, but science. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican and former Mormon missionary, has not said what he will do if the bill reaches his desk.

"I don't have to talk about religion ˜ it's of no meaning and it's not part of this discussion," said State Representative James A. Ferrin, a Republican and the sponsor of the bill in the House. "It's not about belief, it's about not overstepping what we know."

Opponents of the bill, including State Senator Peter C. Knudson, the Republican majority leader, openly laugh at talk like that.

"Of course it's about religion," Mr. Knudson said.

He and other lawmakers say that part of the debate here is in fact over what kind of religion would be buttressed by the legislation. Although the Origins of Life bill, as it is formally known, does not mention an alternative theory to evolution, some legislators say they think that voting yes could be tantamount to supporting intelligent design, which posits an undefined intelligence lurking behind the miracles of life and which differs greatly from the Mormon creation story.

"There are people who say, 'That's not my religion,' or that it will only confuse our children," said State Representative Brad King, a Democrat and the minority whip in the House, who also plans to vote against the bill. "For me, it's sort of that way," added Mr. King, whose father, a Mormon bishop, taught evolution at the College of Eastern Utah.

Others say that Mormonism, with its emphasis that all beings can progress toward higher planes of existence, before and after death, has an almost built-in receptivity toward evolutionary thought that other religions might lack. Still others oppose the state's inserting itself in matters of curriculum, which are mostly under the control of local school districts.

Advocacy groups who follow the battle over the teaching of evolution nationally say that what happens here could be important far beyond state borders.

"It's being watched very closely because of the very conservative nature of the state," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, based in Washington. "If the legislation is rejected in Utah, it would be a very strong signal that the issue should be avoided elsewhere."

Missouri's legislature is considering a bill requiring "critical analysis" in teaching evolution. An Indiana lawmaker has called evolution a type of religion and proposed a bill banning textbooks that contain "fraudulent information."

Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, a Republican, pointed out in his State of the State address earlier this month that alternative explanations for the origins of species can already be taught in Kentucky schools. A spokesman for Mr. Fletcher said he was not advocating alternatives to evolution, but merely pointing out the options.

The Utah bill's main sponsor, State Senator D. Chris Buttars, a Republican from the Salt Lake City suburbs, said he was not surprised by the debate it had inspired. He said ordinary voters were deeply concerned about the teaching of evolution.

"I got tired of people calling me and saying, 'Why is my kid coming home from high school and saying his biology teacher told him he evolved from a chimpanzee?' " Mr. Buttars said.

Evolutionary theory does not say that humans evolved from chimpanzees or from any existing species, but rather that common ancestors gave rise to multiple species and that natural selection ˜ in which the creatures best adapted to an environment pass their genes to the next generation ˜ was the means by which divergence occurred over time. All modern biology is based on the theory, and within the scientific community, at least, there is no controversy about it.

Even so, one important supporter of the bill, State Representative Margaret Dayton, a Republican and chairwoman of the House Education Committee, said her convictions had been underlined in recent days. "A number of scientists have been in touch with me, and I can verify that not all scientists agree," Ms. Dayton said.

Utah's predominant faith has also made its stance less predictable on other issues touching on religion in school ˜ notably school prayer. Enthusiasm for the idea has been muted or ambivalent, said Kirk Jowers, a professor of political science and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. Professor Jowers pointed to the awareness among Mormons of their religion's minority status in the nation and world.

"It was kind of a realization that if you push to have prayer in school, then outside of Utah, the prayer would not typically be a Mormon's prayer, so is that road you want go down?" Professor Jowers said.

**********************************************************************************
COMMENTARY:

The Utah case is very special, in the same way that Utah is very special: if any state in the US could be considered a “theocracy,” it's Utah. Mormons control the state government and legislature and virtually all other governmental and social institutions. Despite this, they have generally resisted the temptation to intrude religion into politics. Voters in the state are generally quite conservative (voter registration is overwhelmingly Republican), but it would be difficult to pigeonhole them as the kind of conservative that toes the fundamentalist/creationist party line. True, one of their state senators, D. Chris Buttars (Republican) is clearly a creationist, but the Mormon mainstream is definitely not on the side of either creationism or “intelligent design.”

There is also a very deep tradition of self-reliance among Utah folk, which goes along with their conservatism. They don't like outsiders (like the guys in fancy suits from either the Discovery Institute or the National Center for Science Education) telling them what to think. There is also a burgeoning high technology industry in Utah, and much of the younger generation there would probably classify themselves as “sci-tech geeks” (at least the ones I know would). University educated, most of them would prefer that their state and its schools not be classified as favoring “supernaturalism” over science.

Furthermore, as is pointed out in the article, Mormon theology deviates quite substantially from fundamentalist Christianity. As might be expected from the largest and most successful religion founded in 19th century America (in upstate New York, just a short drive from here, no less), Mormonism is both forward-looking and open to “new revelation.” Unlike the fundamentalist creationist Christians, therefore, most Mormons don't necessarily view the Bible (nor the Book of Mormon) as literal truth, nor do they have the innate fear of science and technology shared by most fundamentalists.

And so, Senator Buttars notwithstanding, Utah could go either way in the “evolution wars.” It depends a lot on whether the “know nothing” contingent in the state legislature (led by Buttars) can sway enough of the public to force public opinion over to their side. Given the recent events in Pennsylvania and Ohio (both Christian and Republican strongholds, and both throwing out “intelligent design”), the outcome in Utah is far from a foregone conclusion.

--Allen

P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, even though I'm related to Brigham Young, I'm not a Mormon. When he was a boy, his family lived only a couple of miles from where my mother's family has lived for generations (my great-great grandmother was a Young).

**********************************************************************************
ORIGINAL PUBLICATION REFERENCE:

Location Online:
New York Times
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05evolution.html

Original posting/publication date timestamp:
Published: February 5, 2006

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

Ohio School Board Votes Down Lesson Plan Criticizing Evolution

AUTHOR: Allen MacNeill

SOURCE: Associated Press

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill...and you!

It's been a tough couple of months for the promoters and supporters of "intelligent design (ID)." Last December, ID supporters in Dover, Pennsylvania were handed a resounding defeat when Judge John E. Jones ( a conservative Republican Bush appointee) handed down a legal decision blocking the reading of statements supporting ID in Dover high school biology classes.

Next, a school in El Tejon, California that had allowed a course in "creation science" to be taught in a philosophy class decided to end the course prematurely and to agree not to offer it again, as part of an out-of-court settlement to a lawsuit brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Now late this afternoon, the Ohio state school board voted 11 to 4 to eliminate eliminate a lesson plan and science standards that supporters of evolutionary theory said opened the door to teaching intelligent design. Specifically, the board voted to delete material in the lesson plan that encouraged students to seek evidence for and against certain aspects of evolutionary biology.

This vote reversed a close 9-8 decision in January to keep the lesson plan. Three of the board members who voted to keep the lesson plan in January were absent from today's deliberations, and have vowed to reinstate the material critical of evolution at an upcoming meeting. However, given the margin of victory today, it is unlikely that they will succeed. The Panda's Thumb has a compendium of information and links spanning this entire controversy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the governor of Ohio has recently criticized the lesson plan, saying that he should have exercised more control over the appointment of ID supporters to the state school board, with the clear implication that in the future he would do what he could to prevent ID supporters from influencing state educational policy.

Ohio Citizens for Science has issued a press release applauding the decision, while at the same time calling on supporters of evolution to continue to oppose efforts to insert ID theory into state lesson plans.

You might think that with all of these defeats, the ID movement would re-think its strategy. However, this seems unlikely as all of the recent legal maneuvering has come as the result of the ID movement having already changed their strategy. In 1998, the Discovery Institute, home and principle sponsor of the ID movement, promulgated what has now become known as the "wedge document," in which they laid out a five-year strategy to "defeat scientific materialism" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." In it, they stated clearly that their first priority was research, writing and publication: that is, to develop a program of basic science in which ID theory would be tested and presented to the scientific community in such a way as to convince a critical mass of scientists that the theory had merit. As the author(s) of the wedge document stated, "Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade."

Only once ID theory had been established in the scientific community would its supporters attempt to influence educational and public policy:


"Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula. The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready. With an added emphasis to the social sciences and humanities, we will begin to address the specific social consequences of materialism and the Darwinist theory that supports it in the sciences."


The history of the intervening eight years shows just the opposite: only four articles relating to ID theory have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. None of these four articles contains the results of actual empirical (i.e. field or laboratory) tests of predictions formulated using ID theory. A grand total of only 34 articles and books (i.e. approximately four per year) have been produced during that entire time, as compared with thousands of articles and books in the mainstream scientific community on the various aspects of evolutionary theory.

Instead, the ID movement, and especially the Discovery Institute, has moved directly into the public arena, spending nearly all of their energy and financial resources on interventions in school board decisions, political elections, and press releases. Clearly, having lost the battle in the scientific community, they are attempting to appeal directly to the general public, hoping that slick publicity will succeed where scientific research (or rather, the lack thereof) has failed.

If I were a scientist who supported ID theory, or even a scientist who supported the idea of free and unfettered research, I would view the people at the Discovery Institute and their supporters in the various governments and school boards as traitors. The fact that Michael Behe and William Dembski don't see them that way says a lot about their confusion about the difference between science and politics.

--Allen

Ohio Expected To Rein In Class Linked To Intelligent Design

AUTHOR: Jodi Rudoren

SOURCE: New York Times

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

The legal precedent set by Judge John E. Jones' decision in the Dover case, in which "intelligent design theory" was found to be a religious theory masquerading as science, has now reached to the state of Ohio. Here's today's story in the New York Times (commentary follows):

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 13 — A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for "critical analysis" in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.

A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge's ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

A small rural school district in California last month quickly scuttled plans for a philosophy elective on intelligent design after being challenged by lawyers involved in the Pennsylvania case. Also last month, an Indiana lawmaker who said in November that he would introduce legislation to mandate teaching of intelligent design instead offered a watered-down bill requiring only "accuracy in textbooks." And just last week, two Democrats in Wisconsin proposed a ban on schools' teaching intelligent design as science, the first such proposal in the country.

Here in Ohio, pressure has been mounting on board members in recent weeks to toss out the lesson plan and the standards underpinning it. Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, called this month for a legal review of the plan, while newly revealed documents of Ohio's Department of Education linking it to treatises of the intelligent design movement have renewed threats of a lawsuit by opponents of the movement.

At the same time, a national group of evolution defenders has bombarded 5 of the 19 board members considered crucial to a vote against the lesson plan with 30,000 e-mail messages over the past week, and just Monday, the president of the National Academy of Sciences urged the board to change the lesson and the underlying curriculum guidelines to "conform to established scientific standards."

"All of that adds up to a sense of urgency and a sense of now is the time to clean up our act," said Robin C. Hovis, a stockbroker from Millersburg who is one of two board members pushing an emergency motion on Tuesday to delete the "critical analysis" language and the lesson plan. "There is an atmosphere among the board, at least a growing atmosphere, that this is a misguided policy and we better get rid of it."

Though the lesson plan is optional and never uses the words "intelligent design," its explanation of concepts like homology, the fossil record and endosymbiosis parallel those in the texts "Icons of Evolution" and "Of Pandas and People," written by proponents of intelligent design.

"All of that adds up to a sense of urgency and a sense of now is the time to clean up our act," said Robin C. Hovis, a stockbroker from Millersburg who is one of two board members pushing an emergency motion on Tuesday to delete the "critical analysis" language and the lesson plan. "There is an atmosphere among the board, at least a growing atmosphere, that this is a misguided policy and we better get rid of it."

Though the lesson plan is optional and never uses the words "intelligent design," its explanation of concepts like homology, the fossil record and endosymbiosis parallel those in the texts "Icons of Evolution" and "Of Pandas and People," written by proponents of intelligent design.

The Discovery Institute, in Seattle, the intellectual home of the design movement, had distanced itself from the Dover case but has long heralded Ohio's "critical analysis" approach as a model for the nation, and is ardently defending the lesson plan.

On Monday, the institute released a Zogby International poll it had commissioned showing that 69 percent of Ohio voters believed that scientific evidence against evolution should be included in curriculums, and 76 percent agreed that "students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life." The institute has also proffered letters from two science professors supporting Ohio's standards and model lesson plan.

John G. West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the institute, said: "This just shows the extremism of the other side. They think Dover is their wedge to try to stop any even voluntary critical analysis of Darwin's theory in the classroom. They obviously don't think they can win in the court of public opinion on the issue, and that's why they're using scare tactics."

Local supporters of the standards echoed Mr. West's confidence that, unlike the Dover curriculum, the one in Ohio could pass constitutional muster. The Pennsylvania ruling is not binding elsewhere.

"If I had the money, I'd pay for the lawsuit," said David Zanotti, president of the conservative American Policy Roundtable in Strongsville, Ohio. "They should sue or shut up."

Debate over evolution here dates to 2000, when the board began developing statewide academic standards, which do not dictate curriculum to the 613 local districts but provide a blueprint for standardized tests.

A proposal to teach intelligent design alongside evolution was rejected. Instead, the board in December 2002 unanimously adopted standards requiring that 10th graders be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory," with a parenthetical note that "this benchmark does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design."

Since then, New Mexico, Minnesota and Kansas have adopted similar standards, and Pennsylvania lists evolution among half a dozen theories to be critically analyzed. But only Ohio has a model lesson plan, adopted by a divided board in 2004, that provides teachers a practical how-to guide. It is unclear how frequently it is used.

Besides the Dover decision, the disclosure in December of documents detailing internal discussions of the lesson plan helped revive debate here. Obtained by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group considering a suit on the plan, the documents show that department scientists and outside experts condemned the lesson as "a lie," "crackpot," "religious," "creationism" and "an insult to science."

Asked whether the lesson connects skills to the real world, an external reviewer wrote: "Not the real scientific world. The real religious world, yes, the real world based on faith, yes, the real world of fringe thinking, yes!"

Patricia Princehouse, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science who has led the charge against the lesson plan, said, "Basically critical analysis is intelligent design relabeled, just as intelligent design was creationism relabeled."

Governor Taft entered the fray in early February, telling newspaper reporters and editors that the board should ask the attorney general to review the lesson; that intelligent design should not be taught or tested; and that he should have questioned candidates more vigorously on the issue before filling the eight board seats he controls.

Tuesday's expected showdown comes a month after the board voted 9 to 8 against an emergency motion to delete the lesson plan. Martha W. Wise, a board member who sponsored that motion, said that this time she would propose removing both the lesson plan and the critical analysis benchmark, while also restoring a fuller definition of science to note that its theories "while not 'believed in' through faith may be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence."

Ms. Wise said she was unsure whether she had secured 10 votes for the emergency motion, but expressed confidence that a majority would at least call for a reconsideration of the lesson plan by the board's lawyers and a committee.

But Deborah Owens Fink, the board member who originally supported the dual study of evolution and design and has been the leading defender of the standards, said, "The lesson has been in use for two years, and certainly a hole hasn't been cut in the ozone or anything."

**********************************************************************************
COMMENTARY:

It's clear to me that the governor of Ohio is concerned that his state is going to gain a reputation as "anti-science" unless their "teach the controversy" policy is rescinded. With the National Academy of Sciences weighing in on the issue, any politician not already deeply committed to the Discovery Institute's position will be scrambling to rescind it as well...unless they're up for election, in which case they will probably be paying more attention to the Zogby poll results. Which means, of course, that the outcome will be almost purely political (i.e. it will have little or nothing to do with science).

The irony of all of this is that evolutionary biologists are having to make statements about how solid their own science is, when anybody in the field (indeed, anybody in any scientific field) knows that controversy is the name of the game. To me, that's the real danger in all of this. Not that scientists will be hoodwinked in any way by the IDers, nor that there will be any lasting harm done to public school students – after all, when I went to elementary school, we were all forced to recite a daily prayer first thing in the morning. No, the real danger is that, in attempting to show a "unified front," scientists will be tempted to suppress their own disagreements with current orthodoxy. Any inhibition on the free expression of doubts and disagreements in the scientific community would be harmful to science, in a way that "intelligent design theory" generally is not.

--Allen

**********************************************************************************
ORIGINAL PUBLICATION REFERENCE:

Location Online:
New York Times
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/education/14evolution.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1139924263-e0hsLirTBn8dUuKRAs3wPw

Original posting/publication date timestamp:
Published: February 14, 2006

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

Princeton President Defends Evolution

AUTHOR: Jeffrey Shallit

SOURCE: The Panda's Thumb

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill (following the article)

Apparently 2005 was the year that presidents of Ivy League universities decided to give speeches defending evolutionary biology and attacking "intelligent design theory." The president of Cornell, Hunter Rawlings III, gave a speech to the Cornell board of trustees on 25 October 2005 in which he lambasted "intelligent design theory" (full text of Rawlings' speech). Rawlings comments made international headlines, and stirred the ire of the Discovery Institute, home of "intelligent design theory."

Now comes news that Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University, delivered the 2005 Romanes Lecture at Oxford University on December 1, 2005. Her lecture was entitled “Strange Bedfellows: Science, Politics and Religion”, and addressed both evolution and intelligent design. Jeffrey Shallit has posted some excerpts from Tilghman's speech at The Panda's Thumb. The full text of president Tilghman's speech can be found here.

Here are the excerpts posted at Panda's Thumb:

“If cosmologists are deciphering the origins of the universe and our solar system in unprecedented ways, biologists are making enormous strides, thanks to the technology that was developed during the Human Genome Project, toward unlocking the origins of life on Earth. Yet here, too, science and politics have found themselves at loggerheads. It is impossible to ignore the increasing assertiveness of elements within American society who have challenged the validity of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and have lobbied for an alternative explanation, which they term “intelligent design,” to be taught in public schools alongside the principles of evolution. This is deeply disturbing, for the theory of natural selection is one of the two pillars, along with Mendel’s laws of inheritance, on which all of modern biology is built. It is virtually impossible to conduct biological research and not be struck by the power of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to shed light on the problem at hand. Time and again in the course of my career, I have encountered a mysterious finding that was explained by viewing it through the lens of evolutionary biology. The power of the theory of natural selection to illuminate natural phenomena, as well as its remarkable resilience to experimental challenge over almost 150 years, has led to its overwhelming acceptance by the scientific community.”

“Today, however, under the banner of “intelligent design,” Christian fundamentalists in the United States have launched a well-publicized assault on the theory of evolution, suggesting that the complexity and diversity of nature is not the product of random mutation and natural selection but rather of supernatural intent. Although exponents of intelligent design have been at pains to distance themselves from overtly religious interpretations of the universe, the intellectual roots of intelligent design can be traced to creationism, which holds that the natural world, including human beings in their present form, is the handiwork of a divine designer — namely, God. Biblical creationists contend that the world was created in accordance with the Book of Genesis — in six short days — while the followers of intelligent design eschew this literalism. They say that their goal is to detect empirically whether the “apparent design” in nature is genuine design, in other words, the product of an intelligent cause. They reject out of hand one of the central tenets of natural selection, namely, that biological change arises solely from selection upon random mutations over long periods of time. For those of you who are not conversant with the literature of intelligent design, the argument usually begins with Darwin himself, who said “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” From there, advocates such as Michael Behe, a professor of physical chemistry at Lehigh University, declare that “natural selection can only choose among systems that are already working, so the existence in nature of irreducibly complex biological systems poses a powerful challenge to Darwinian theory. We frequently observe such systems in cell organelles, in which the removal of one element would cause the whole system to cease functioning.”

“What is wrong with this view? To begin with, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Nature is the ultimate tinkerer, constantly co-opting one molecule or process for another purpose. This is spurred on by frequent duplications in the genome, which occur at random. Mutations can accumulate in the extra copy without disrupting the pre-existing function, and those that are beneficial have the potential to become fixed in the population. In other instances, entirely new functions evolve for existing proteins. My favorite example is lactate dehydrogenase, which functions as a metabolic enzyme in the liver and kidney in one context, and as one of the proteins that makes up the transparent lens of the eye in another. In the first cellular setting, the protein has a catalytic function; in the second, a structural one.”

“A common weapon that is used to advance the “theory” of intelligent design is to posit that evolutionary biology cannot explain everything — that there remains uncertainty in the fossil record and that there is as yet no consensus on the origin or nature of the first self-replicating organisms. This, too, reflects a basic misunderstanding about how science works, for, in fact, all scientific theories, even those that are approaching 150 years of age, are works in progress. Scientists live with uncertainty all the time and are not just reconciled to it but understand that it is an integral part of scientific progress. We know that for every question we answer, there is a new one to be posed. Indeed, the very word, “theory,” is misunderstood by many who take it to mean an “idea” that has no greater or lesser merit than any other idea. The fact that Darwin’s “ideas” on natural selection have stood the test of time through keen experimental challenge does not give his theory special status in their eyes. There are also those who exploit the fact that scientists often disagree over the interpretation of specific findings or the design of experiments to argue that nothing is settled and thus anything is possible. The fact of the matter is that fierce disagreement is the stuff of scientific inquiry, and the constant give-and-take is needed to test the mettle of our ideas and sharpen our thinking. It is not, as many would claim, prima facie evidence for deep fissures in the central tenets of natural selection.”

**********************************************************************************
COMMENTARY:

University presidents, like Rawlings and Tilghman, have a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of science, especially at the college and university level. Yes, I know, universities started out as religious institutions, but that is generally no longer true. It is especially not true of Cornell, which was the first major university in the world to be founded without a sectarian focus. This was due primarily to the fact that Ezra Cornell was a Quaker, and therefore there could be no divinity school at his university. For those who don't know, Quakers have neither formal creeds nor divinity schools or theology programs. Several colleges were founded by Quakers, especially in the United States – Earlham and Swarthmore come to mind – but even there, Quakerism was a background "culture" but was never officially taught as a subject in theology, nor did they ever award degrees in divinity.

Since its founding Cornell has therefore had a reputation as "that godless institution in Ithaca," a reputation that was enhanced early on when its first president, Andrew Dickson White, published a monumental two-volume work on The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. White's book was immensely influential at the time of its publication, and reinforced the ascendancy of Darwinian theory in the United States.

I hope that this trend continues, and that college and university presidents everywhere will speak out against politically motivated attempts by quasi-Fundamentalist organizations like the Discovery Institute to undermine research and teaching in science. After all, there are plenty of religious colleges and universities in the United States, where Fundamentalists and their supporters can promote their views.

If religiously motivated "scientists" want to try to change the minds of their colleagues, let them do it the old-fashioned way: get out in the field (or in the lab) and do some actual empirical research, analyze the results, and submit them for publication in genuine peer-reviewed journals. If there really is anything observable in nature to back up their hypotheses, this should be no problem. And believe me, the first "intelligent design theorist" who manages to do so will easily become as famous as Darwin or Einstein...after, but not before they make such a breakthrough.

--Allen

**********************************************************************************
ORIGINAL PUBLICATION REFERENCE:

Location Online:
The Panda's Thumb
URL: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/02/princeton_presi.html#more

Original posting/publication date timestamp:
February 11, 2006 08:27 AM

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