Last year, Louisiana passed the Louisiana Science Education Act, a law that many scientists and educators said was a thinly veiled attempt to allow creationism and its variants into the science classroom. On Tuesday, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted a policy that sharpens those fears, giving teachers license to use materials outside of the regular curriculum to teach "controversial" scientific theories including evolution, origins of life, and global warming. Backers of the law, including the Louisiana Family Forum, say it is intended to foster critical thinking in students. Opponents insist its only purpose is to provide a loophole for creationists to attack the teaching of evolution.
"We fully expect to see the Discovery Institute's book, Explore Evolution, popping up in school districts across the state*," says Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, is a proponent of Intelligent Design. In a statement on the institute's Web site, its education analyst Casey Luskin hailed the new policy as a "victory for Louisiana students and teachers." The policy will now be printed in the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which public school officials use as a guide.
State education officials tasked with translating last year's law into policy drafted a document that explicitly prohibits teachers from teaching intelligent design, but on 2 December, board members deferred a scheduled vote. Forrest says the advocates of the law used the delay to pressure education officials to remove that language and a disclaimer saying that religion should not be taught under the guise of critical thinking. On 13 January, the 11-member board unanimously approved a policy that contains no such caveats.
Education officials have defended the revision, arguing that it already includes language barring the use of materials that promote any religious doctrine. But Patsye Peebles, a retired science teacher who served on a committee that helped the education department draft the original policy language, thinks otherwise. "The creationists got what they wanted. We will have to redouble our efforts to educate our teachers and get them to teach good science," Peebles says.
—Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
(*This item has been corrected. The original item quoted Forrest incorrectly.)
Go here for the Discovery Institute's take.
so...is louisanna accepting I.D in their class rooms or not.?
-SAMM
If we are not intelligently designed, please answer one question for me. How did your supposed "backwards" retina survive for all these millions of years (without being weeded out via natural selection) so it could be around for us to discuss today? Why didn't the "correctly wired" retina win out hands down, especially since it was already around for squids and octopi to enjoy, long before we supposedly came along?
Would you mind commenting on the differences in vision between an octopus (with a correctly wired retina) and, say, an eagle (with a "backwards" retina)? Of course, everyone knows that, when describing someone with particular acute vision, we say they're "squid-eyed", no?
To answer your original question, it's a rather technical topic, so I refer you to http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i1/retina.asp for the whole enchilada. In summary, it has to do with protecting the retina and the photoreceptor "machinery" from damage by light waves. Unlike or supposed water-bound cousins, we are subjecting to a much wider range of light sensitivity, and so the eye must be constructed with its most sensitive parts far away from direct light.
I don't know if you noticed, but down under (the water) it gets mighty dark pretty fast. Squid and octupi don't have nearly as much light to worry about.
In addition, for all their "correctness" in optical wiring, these sea-dwellers merely "approach" the vision capability of humans, and are believed to be color blind. So much for their supposed optical advantage.
Looks like the Creator knew what He was doing after all. Better than Dawkins, anyway...
Great job on your post! nice insights, with harsh comments.. anyway i will not be commenting about the issue, but on your talent on writing.. you did your post with simple but brief manner.. and i envy you for keeping it that way,,
Notice how these propagandists sneak in statements such as "...teach alternative scientific theories, such as intelligent design."
Do not be fooled; intelligent design is not science. It is simply creationism repackaged.
I think we should require a course in comparative religions in all schools. In a comparative religions class, students could critically analyze various religious beliefs, including creationism, and they could then decide for themselves which beliefs are true.
The real beauty of mathematics is that it gives you the power of abstract thinking. Information is what one creature passes to its offspring. If you need two or more to get new functionality – it doesn’t matter how it is being passed, but if it is generated in random way – P=P1 x P2 x ... Pn. Where Pi (i=1...n) is probability for creating information Ii. P(Ii)=Pi. What you say is that all changes were made the way – only one information would be changed in one pass to offspring. And this would move from one functionality (or no functionality) to another? Hmmm...
Dear x y,
You have no idea what you are talking about. The nervous system evolved long before bones did, and can be found in pretty much all animals (exceptions: Phylum Porifera (sponges), Phylum Placozoa). The same is true for muscles. The modern bony skeleton of vertebrates evolved through a variety of steps, from a simple notochord, to a cartilaginous skeleton without limbs, to a cartilaginous skeleton with limbs, including the lobe-finned fish from which tetrapods evolved, lobe fin developed gradually into leg and foot (digits were actually lost in the process to get to the current five), and said limb has gone through countless variations forming everything from the bird wing, to the bat wing, to the human hand. Just because you haven't studied how various structures evolved in steps doesn't mean they can't occur in steps.
Not to mention that certain mutations CAN cause large changes all at once.
Also please note that evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time, nothing more, nothing less, and that is certainly happening. Mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift are just agents by which a change in allele frequencies occur.
Sincerely,
Sara
You're going the wrong way. You should be asking about the past 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000 years; not the past day or hour. Time is the key factor here. It takes a LONG time to observe something that is very improbable. Longer than most of us are used to thinking about.
EASports : “The events P1, P2, ..., PN are not independent “ – I’m not talking about events that happened one after another (in few generations). I am talking about events that MUST happen simultaneously. Without bone – muscles, nerves, joints are useless, so – you must have all of them together – at once – all mutation on one seed cell in one particular moment in time, to pass this information on offspring. Bones must be located on exact position (this is another information), have exact shape or it would be not functional. Etc, etc... Each of this information build up in seed is independent event. And each one is lowering down the probability of this complex event by the order of magnitude on its own. P1x P2x ... x PN is very, very, very small number. I gave number 300 years just to show my logic... it could be one day. Or one hour...
OK. I will answer your question about mutations the same way god supposedly answers prayers: yes, no, and wait.
YES! There HAVE been human mutations in the last 300 (1000) years. Even in the last 100. How about the wolf boys who grow hair over their entire face? Double jointed people who are insanely flexible? Sixth fingers? Savants who can recite pi to thousands of decimal places? Eight foot tall basket ball players? Chileans with increased heart size?
NO! In a sense, we have protected ourselves from the driving force behind evolution: natural selection. When we live in a society that provides for all of our needs, there is no longer a survivalist advantage to many of these mutations. Often it works against the individual in terms of potential reproduction...
WAIT! Asking about mutations in the last 1000 years is silly. It's like placing a jug of milk on the counter, waiting 30 minutes, then concluding that milk will not go bad if left unrefrigerated. Your time scales are waaaaay off.
Back to the probability question. The events P1, P2, ..., PN are not independent. Future mutations DEPEND on past ones. It is MUCH MUCH more likely for a human to be born with a sixth finger than it is for a paramecium to do the same. So there is a flaw in your assumptions.
Speaking of the probability, I'll admit that I just pulled the number 10^-10 out of my ass, but I suspect you did the same in refuting it...
Now, we CAN observe evolution in other species. Ever wonder why you need a new flu shot every year? Because the flu virus (and other diseases) mutate in such a way as to become resistant to our medication. Hmmm, a mutation that improves the chances of survival, catches on and spreads through the entire species. What does that sound like to you?
Evolution is a byproduct of natural selection. However, it can also be caused by artificial selection. Take dogs. It is quite clear that humans can guide changes in dogs by selective breeding. Not just cross breeding, but breeding for particular traits and behaviors. Greyhounds are fast, pit bulls are tough, and blood hounds can smell like crazy. These things didn't happen by accident, of course; we guided these changes. But if we can accomplish this, simply by selective breeding (no funny business), what's to say that, given hundreds of millions of years, similar changes couldn't occur by natural selection?
EASports - We are talking about mutation that brings us some new functionality (not cancer)... and the probability is being calculated based on statistics. How many such mutations you can see on humans (billions of humans) in last 300 years (1000?). None. So we can say – 300 years is minimal for one mutation for billions of people. But... don’t forget P=P1 X P2 x P3...... x Pn where Pn is probability for each mutation needed to form new complex functionality – e.g. hand. Just try for yourself to count all information needed for hand creation – bones, muscles... And then for bone – exact position, length ... n is not that small number, but P is much smaller than 10^-10. And we dont have only hands. So - total P for probability of human existance is very, very close to zero, and time and number of creatures are limited.For how long Earth exists? I think something here doesn’t fit. What is your precious opinion?
x y, you are right. The probability of a mutation is very very small. Close to zero, sure, but NOT ZERO. So if the probability of a mutation is very very small, say 10^-10 (that's one in ten billion), that is small, right? Then there would have to be literally billions of organisms reproducing to observe mutations, right? Oh, wait...
It seems an important thing missing here is the actual value of Evolutionary Theory, not shared by Intelligent Design(ism), or any other version of Creationism; it is a set of tools used to explore and better understand the world. It is not an 'ism,' or a belief system.
Just as mathematics is a set of tools used for understanding the world, so are the tools of evolutionary theory. If you want to disagree with them, you must do it on their merits, their value as exploratory tools. You can no better discredit the tools of natural selection than addition and subtraction.
To know whether or not it is 'true,' you simply need to try it out. It is. I can demonstrate natural selection to anyone's satisfaction in a matter of a couple of weeks using the tools provided by the theory of evolution.
That it has become a political 'controversy' that goes so far as to include whether DNA has an earthly, spiritual, or extraterrestrial source, is only a measure of how poorly we have taught science in this country all along.
More importantly, creating such a 'controvesy' in schools gives students an opportunity to scorn (which they happily capitalize on) what they are taught, and this further distorts their ability to appreciate the value of scientific thinking.
Whether or not it challenges your personal religous or political views, it is a very valuable and exciting way for people to understand the world (even if they define that to represent their God's Glory - or Intelligent Designer's design). We would not know enough about eyeballs to be able to make a claim to Intelligent Design without the dogmas of scientific exploration.
If your concern is for an educated populace and the benefit of children and students, you will figure out how to get your emotional reflexes out of scientific thought and recognize it for what it is - no more no less - tools.
Mark
Mr. Priest,
Not only are your claims fraudulent, unrepresentative of fact and illogical, but your list is nothing more than an open testament to idiocy.
More than two-thirds of that list are academic professionals whose backgrounds are not directly, or just as often remotely, related to evolutionary study or the science discipline.
Further, you, yourself, have shown no scientific methodology, data collection or experimentation towards verifying your position; which can be directly correlated to the listed professionals dismissing your "challenge" out of hand.
Mathematics cannot be used to dismiss the verifiability of a process, only an instance contained within a process. Your credentials are suspect, to say the least.
Math: two events with probability P1 and P2 are independent... P=P1 x P2. To get from creature without hand to creature with one you must have gene mutation. Each mutation withholds information. Number of information needed for moving from one creature to another is more than one. Why? Because you need bones, muscles, nerves, joints and some kind of intelligence to move this hand. You can’t have just one of them because... it can’t work, and if it can’t work – it is obsolete. Mutation must be done on seed cell – somatic cells don’t pass information to offspring. And – this multiple mutation must be done on one creature that will pass it on its offspring (how?). So you have P=P1 x P2 x ... PN where all Pn are very, very small numbers. The probability for this is very close to zero – and this is the probability that evolution theory is correct. And you think I’m wrong because...? Ah... yeah – multiverse theory doesn’t help because – probability theory wouldn’t (in our universe) work if the first one does.
God bless you, Karl. Thanks for speaking your mind. As to the rest of you dorks, your fear is palpable. You know deep down that you’re guilty for rejecting the truth. And instead of turning to the light, you just reinforce your death-grip on the ignorance of darkness. Once you turn from the light you walk into your own lengthening shadow (Tenny). The sad unfortunate reality for you is that creationism isn’t going away because, as much as you hate, Hate, HATE it, it happens to be the truth. Oh, and by the way, it takes much more blind faith to believe in the absurd farce of “evolution” than is does to believe in creationism. And where you evolutionists reveal your true nature as ignorant, truth-suppressing, hate-mongers, is that you don’t want any dissenting views at all to challenge your beloved dogma. If you had any love for the truth you would want both sides to be presented and let the chips fall where they may. But you’re trapped in an entrenched cycle of self-deceit far worse than most religious cults. And you’ve maybe already drunk the coolaide and now you’re too dead to see the obvious truth that’s all around you.
In the past, teachers of creation were wrong in not allowing other theories. Today the tables are turned and the teachers of evolution are those who suppress truth. No need to do name-calling.
'Right. Except it's not "someone else". It's a magical and invisible being invented 5000 (years) ago.'
When you put it that way it does sound silly. Particularly if sediment layers tell a different story.
But there is a lot of mystery in the universe. I'm not advocating teaching anything that we know is false. But I do think it is a huge assumption to say that the first DNA life form occurred on earth. We don't know that. Science teachers should not be pretending it is fact.
DNA life first occuring on earth is plausible. But so are a lot of other things that we don't currently tell our children they must claim to believe on exams or not be allowed to pass to the next grade.
Karl,
How does one prove evolution is nonsense with mathematics? That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Creationism = Fascism
Are these creationist trying to demonstrate how evil Christianity is?
Johnrap, you say: "...intellectuals can not intellectualize that someone else thought of intelligent design before them."
Right. Except it's not "someone else". It's a magical and invisible being invented 5000 ago.
Harry the Skeptic
Genetic engineering is accepted. Synthetic biology is accepted. Artificial intelligence and information theory are accepted. Terraforming is accepted. Nanotechnology is accepted. Even contemporary design of micro organisms is accepted. And we got all of this done in only 13,000 years of recorded history.
Yet...in a universe that is minimum 11 billion years old intellectuals can not intellectualize that someone else thought of intelligent design before them.
You tell me who is ignoring the evidence.
It would be much easier to dismiss these crackpots if they weren't damaging their students. We can't simply dismiss entire states or schools because we've allowed incompetent teachers to flourish. Neither can we fail to to provide standards that protect the competent teachers from religiously motivated interest groups who want to distort science teaching.
It's a shame that Louisiana caved in to the Discovery Institute and it will be a shame if Texas does too. It will also be a shame if the scientific and educational community does not continue to fight to remove misguided religious influence from science education.
read the selfish gene.
Guess I'll have to cancel those plans I had to travel to Louisiana and spend lots of money. Oh wait, I had no such plans...
Karl,
Take your proof to peer review journals and report back to me when you get the Noble Prize.
Another crackpot, the world is full of them.
Karl is a prime example of the FACT that American students are at a huge disadvantage in the realm of science as compared to the rest of the world. What a shame. It is ironic that a school can be the catalyst for misinformation and miseducation. Shame on you Karl for allowing dogma to cloud your judgment as an educator. Your legacy will be one of embarrassment and contempt.
Louisiana has now officially become the laughing stock of the USA.
Here's the fundamentalists "proof"
http://www.s8int.com/page8.html
On 13 January, the 11-member board unanimously approved a policy that contains no such caveats.
That's because there was no need for it, as the Superintendent of Education noted:
I’m satisfied that you cannot teach creationism or intelligent design with other language in the rules, said Superintendent of Education, Paul Pastorek.
That’s exactly correct, and it would also be a violation of the constitution, (as if the fundies don't know this), which only proves that the Barbara Forrest and company are motivated by their liberal agenda and the culture war, rather than the integrity of science.
That makes them worse, by far, than the fundies, because they commonly try to mislead the public into believing that they are the ones who are defending the integrity of science.
The worst kind of liar is (s)he who hides their politics behind the name of science. http://api.recaptcha.net/image?c=02MI0shNhHdcZj58CKGrbb83nROHVPG3jPiN0z4CkQr9SSFRwo9z9w1lkPQlXfwkCq4j5MqXJJ6JNhM-mSXXhDp1d-WOAnwQoc5_ZHdKy8fHmzHbquVR69bu6x8jYJfCfLie2Ae2pHd9HVnzCW-JfIws0oD7YGrTL6Dh-kSn3G45edOujL5K1RFMG2od1Khvk4qaW_0i2dvbnugC9BfsOTu-Cwwubt2MTm1FJtc2V3TzOFmN6iAwMD
Karl,
I've got a list of hundreds of current and former NBA players who refuse to accept my challenge to play me one on one. What am I to make of that? Are they afraid to play me? Why? Because they know their inferior basketball skills will be revealed for all the world to see. Cowards.
Paul
Karl, read this carefully. Famous scientists refusing to legitimize the crackpot rantings of a kook are not evidence of those rantings' veracity. Only evidence counts as evidence. If "evolutionism" (whatever it is) can be demonstrated to be nonsense, why hasn't someone like you done so, and received the Nobel prize? Overturning a scientific monolith as storied as evolution would be a major coup.
The reason is the same as that for the creationists' constant court battles and legislation. They can't win any acceptance for their codswallop through legitimate scientific standards, so they have to hijack the machinery of the state. This emperor has no clothes at all.
@ Karl
Lol that has got to be the worst example of creationist propaganda I have ever seen
"Evolutionists are bluffing when they say their beliefs are scientific. Be sure to look at the list of evolutionists who refuse the debate challenge from Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo. See the list at http://www.lifescienceprize.org/."
Pretty much a list of the world most respected scientists. I couldn't have made a better list myself to show just how pathetic and delusional creationist are. To suggest that there is some kind of global conspiracy involving 100s of pretty much the most intelligent scientists on the planet is hilarious. That list does nothing more then show everyone exactly just how lame, unscientific and unworthy of debate creationism is.
One could bark up exactly the same tree and make a page of scientist's who would not waste there time debating that the earth is round and not flat. The wasted time debating Creationist/ID Idiots is well past, the only thing left is now ridicule and mockery.
Karl
It is seriously time that Christians like yourself stop blindly perpetuating the absolute nonsense of ID & Creationism. The only reason that it still exists is the fact that you are all terrified that it to concede evolution PROVES the bible is fallible. If you got lied to from the 1st page then how can you trust the rest?
Either the Bible is just an ordinary book, written by mortals, or it isn't. Either Christ was divine, or he was not. If the Bible is an ordinary book, and Christ an ordinary man, the basic doctrine of Christianity is false. If the Bible is an ordinary book, and Christ an ordinary man........
The history of Christian theology is entirely build on a collective delusion.
That is the reality that you must now face.
Karl is right! We should all know that Brahma is the creator Comon sheeple!
So Karl, all you have proved so far is that you have a list of over 363,000 people that are too busy doing real science to indulge your own vanity and debate faery tales with a nutjob. What a wanker.
Mr. Preist,
If we are intelligently designed, please answer one question for me. Why does our optic nerve originate on the inside of our retina, forming a blind spot, when squid and octopus have a much more optimal system in which the optic nerve connects to the back of the retina, so that they don't have a blind spot? Surely, if an intelligent designer could come up with an optimal design like this, it would have endowed vertebrates, and not only cephalopods, with it? (or perhaps cephalopods are actually the favored beings?)
Also, how do you define Intelligent Design as science? Science, by definition, must be based on falsifiable hypotheses. The central hypothesis of ID is that if evolution occurred, it was guided by some higher intelligence. How, exactly, could that be disproved?
There is nothing scientific about intelligent design..
Please explain the math that convinces you there is a god, or am i just suppose to have faith with no evidence?
I am interested in your math that can so easily disprove evolution but is unable to provide math or any other criteria besides faith.
Just because I think something, doesn't make it true. Unless you are going to say that your belief in god is what makes him real.. in which case.. PLEASE ENTER THE WORLD OF REALITY. I can believe milk and cookies will magically appear in front of me. But there is no scientific reason to think so.
Karl, never mind. I just read the article on your page about insects on Noah's ark. There is nothing else that anyone needs to hear from you.
Karl, I would love to see exactly how "mathematics proves beyond the shadow of doubt that evolutionism is nonsense." I feel sorry for the students that you misled for those five years.
The folks teaching creationism in schools really need to be taken out of the gene pool before they contribute their defects. Otherwise, we're going to end up with some very skewed evolution . . .
Lousiana is free to tech their students anti-science, and the rest of the country is free to discount their education and now presume that none of the students from here are fit for science graduate degrees, medical school or any other institution where real science, including the Scientific Theory of Evolution is being used.
Lousiana apparently likes their students ignorant. To each their own.
I am a recently retired public school teacher.
For the last five years of my full-time career, with the full knowledge (and dismay) of state and county school officials as well as the ACLU I demonstrated to my students that mathematics proves beyond the shadow of doubt that evolutionism is nonsense. The students saw that the evidence clearly shows that every item associated with humans, animals and plants are Intelligent Designs and Intelligent Design is science. I always let the students figure it out for themselves and allowed them to believe what they chose, but at least they were exposed to the scientific facts that extremists want to censor from the minds of public school students.
Evolutionists are bluffing when they say their beliefs are scientific. Be sure to look at the list of evolutionists who refuse the debate challenge from Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo. See the list at http://www.lifescienceprize.org/.