quote:
Originally posted by RedVento:
CNN.com - Ga. school board OKs alternatives to evolution - Sep. 26, 2002 <--- The bible belt must put the stupid in people real early for this to have happened.
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I guess you have to include Ohio to now....
In Brief
Ohio to teach evolution debate
15 October 2002
The Ohio Board of Education yesterday recommended that science classes in the state emphasize both evolution and the debate over its validity, reports the New York Times. The months-long debate began when an independent report in 2000 found Ohio to be one of 12 states that fail to teach evolution. In its decision, the committee left it up to individual school districts to decide whether "intelligent design" will be included in the curriculum.
Deja-vu for Darwinism in Ohio
5 February 2002
by Apoorva Mandavilli, BioMedNet News
The timeless debate about whether and how to teach evolution is raging again, this time in Ohio. But in this round, the opponents of evolution tout the creation theory without naming the creator - and that may make a difference.
You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, but it may still feel like it. Emulating the infamous evolution episode in Kansas, the citizens of Ohio are embroiled in a bitter battle between evolutionists and proponents of intelligent design - the theory that the world was created or designed by an intelligent higher being. Ohio's state Board of Education will next month host a panel debate to determine whether or not intelligent design (ID) will find a place in the state's science classrooms.
But convinced that ID is a new name for an old enemy - creationsim - defenders of evolution are preparing for a long fight. "It's a political strategy, a political issue," said Lynn Elfner, who directs the Ohio Academy of Science. "The political forces are very strong in Ohio for intelligent design."
An independent report in 2000 found Ohio to be one of 12 states that "fail so thoroughly to teach evolution as to render their standards totally useless." The curriculum as it now stands does not mention the word evolution at all, explains Elfner. Instead, it makes references to "change over time," which is "nonsense," Elfner told BioMedNet News. "The wallpaper on the wall changes over time. My shoes change over time," he said. "Change over time says nothing about evolution."
Urged by the report's "F" rating and under orders from the Ohio legislature, a 45-member panel of volunteers, including scientists, educators, parents and other community members, began revising the standards. Based on the recommendations of the Board's science advisory committee, of which Elfner is a member, and sample curricula from other states, the 45-member volunteer panel completed an early draft of the revised curriculum.
Jeffrey McKee, a paleoanthropologist at Ohio State University was on a focus group that reviewed the new standards and was "quite pleased with what they'd said about evolution," he said. But the same draft provoked some members of the Board to question the rewriting process they themselves had approved.
Michael Cochran, and 5 other representatives of the 19-member Board, now propose that the curriculum be revised to include intelligent design. At the Board's meeting last month, John Calvert, co-founder of the Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network, made an "unfettered, exclusive" 30-minute speech urging members to include ID as a viable theory for the origin of life.
"There is no working model to show how natural selection can produce irreducibly complex living systems," Calvert told the Board then. "The only known cause for such complexity is intelligence - the workings of a mind."
All the evidence for ID is based on "scientific investigation, scientific observation, and scientific analysis per the scientific method," Calvert said, and its study involves biochemists, geologists, paleontologists, mathematicians, statisticians, biologists, cosmologists, physicists and chemists.
The week after the meeting, Republican state representative Linda Reidelbach introduced a bill requiring that "origins science" be "taught objectively and without religious, naturalistic, or philosophic bias or assumption." The day after that, she introduced another bill requiring the state's science standards to be approved by both houses of the General Assembly.
This is not the first time Ohio has tried to introduce ID into its classrooms, says Elfner. Two years ago, Board member Deborah Owens-Fink tried and failed to include intelligent design into the state 12th grade competencies.
Ohio is not alone in grappling with the evolution debate. Across the Ohio river, in Kentucky, work has begun on a $14 million, 50,000-square-foot creationism museum. A new anti-evolution bill was also introduced in the Washington State Senate on January 18, suggesting that teaching evolution is "repugnant" to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, unconstitutional, and unlawful. The bill asks that evolution be removed from all public schools and replaced with "the self-evident truth of creation."
Proponents of intelligent design are careful to distinguish themselves from creationism, however. "Creationism is the Biblical account of genesis; we don't limit it to that," said Cochran. "We just think that there is some type of intelligence behind creation. There's too much orderliness, too much design to indicate evolution."
Cochran says he has no objection to keeping evolution in the curriculum. But while evolution offers evidence of change, he says, it offers "nothing conclusive" about the origin of life. "I don't believe that the whole debate has received enough debate, enough different opinions and ideas," he said. "As long as no one can prove how it began, why not have multiple theories expressed?"
But critics of ID look at such statements askance. "What they're trying to do is get [creationism] in through the backdoor of a science curriculum," McKee told BioMedNet News. "They came up with a new name and say silly things like 'Well we don't know who the designer is.' But it's just a thinly veiled attempt to get creationism taught in a science classroom."
The distinction between ID and creationism is critical: US federal courts have ruled that creationism is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion in schools and cannot be introduced into curricula. Introducing ID, although it doesn't align itself with a particular creator, is still a constitutional issue, says Ohio state Senator Robert Gardner, chairman of the state Senate's Education Committee.
If ID is taught in classrooms, so should theories proposed by Buddhists and Native Americans, Gardner says. "There's probably a place for [discussing] higher intelligence," he said. "But that's probably a history of religion class as opposed to a science curriculum, which is based on fact."
To resolve the debate, the Board has invited two scientists from each camp for a panel discussion at its March meeting. Representing ID will be Jonathan Wells, who holds a PhD in molecular and cell biology from the University of California-Berkeley.
"We feel [ID] should be included because Darwinism has problems with it," said Mark Edwards, spokesperson for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where Jonathan Wells is a fellow. "At the basic level, what's being taught is simply not accurate so we just feel like students should be able to know this. That's fundamental to getting an education."
Asked why scientists like Wells have never published evidence for ID in peer-reviewed scientific journals, Edwards says such scientists have been "excluded" from the journals. "There is a degree to which things about and by intelligent-design people get snubbed," he said. "There's a self-selection at work there."
ID has never been published in peer-reviewed journals because it is simply not good science, counter its opponents. "All of us know the scientific process," said McKee. "What the ID people are trying to hide is that they have no testable hypothesis about the diversity of life. That is where they fail."
The seemingly endless point-counterpoint promises to continue well into the year. The State Board of Education is scheduled to vote on adoption of the new standards in December 2002. In recent weeks, rivaling groups calling themselves Science Excellence for all Ohioans (ID supporters) and Ohio Citizens for Science (evolution supporters) have sprung up to support their endeavors.
The evolutionists have modeled themselves after the group Kansas Citizens for Science, which fought against education standards in Kansas. Two years after it voted to drop evolution, the Kansas Board of Education last year reinstated evolution in its curriculum.
"I think we'll win this one mainly because we have the truth on our side," McKee told BioMedNet News. "We saw what happened in Kansas," he said. "Even if we have a one-year hump where it gets in, we'll get it out eventually."
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