-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 16:03:09 -0600 From: Science-Week <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ScienceWeek BULLETIN 8 March 2000 SW BULLETIN - March 8, 2000 --------------------------------------------- This Week's Report: KANSAS, EVOLUTION, AND IGNORANCE IN AMERICA Concerning the recent decision by the Kansas (US) State Board of Education to purge evolution and cosmology from the science curricula of all Kansas public schools, R.B. Hanson and F.E. Bloom (_Science_) present an editorial, with the authors making the following points: 1) The authors suggest that two aspects of "this intellectual cleansing atrocity" are most troubling: a) No political leaders from either party have as yet elected to step forward and challenge the lunacy of removing from the educational opportunities of the future voters of Kansas two of the best established theories of our era. "Such reluctance emphasizes a growing public ignorance of the methods by which scientific observations are formulated into testable hypotheses and, when sufficiently strongly supported, are elevated into... theories." b) Second, and more troubling, is the shrewdness of the strategy used by the creationists in achieving their ends. No longer are they attempting to overturn the series of court decisions that have banned the teaching of creationism as a science. The new strategy, representing a far more threatening menace to future generations, is not only not to teach evolution and cosmology, but to undermine the solidity of their scientific acceptance. 2) The authors point out that evolution is the unifying concept of biology and the basis for all modern biological research, including much research that affects our daily lives and national welfare. It is as fundamental in vaccine and health research as it is in agriculture. "Incomprehensibly, Kansas has now decided to stop teaching about the basis of its current and future economy..." The attack on evolution is unequivocally an attack on all of scientific knowledge. 3) The authors suggest that in the past, US political leaders understood the connection between scientific research, education, and economic competitiveness. Funding of biological, agricultural, and space research, and of energy exploration -- wholly reliant on evolution and cosmology -- has fostered the US economy. The authors ask: Where are these leaders now? 4) The authors conclude: "The Kansas decision is not an isolated action but the tip of an iceberg of ignorance that is growing, not melting. Unless these new strategies are directly defied, the United States will not for long remain a leader in science and technology." ----------- R.B. Hanson and F.E. Bloom: Fending off furtive strategists. (Science 17 Sep 99 285:1847) QY: R.B. Hanson [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] ------------------- Summary by SCIENCE-WEEK [http://scienceweek.com] 29Oct99 ------------------- Related Background: MORE REACTION TO KANSAS DECISION ON EVOLUTION TEACHING What is sometimes not emphasized enough in discussions of the conflict between science and creationism is that the logical foundations of these two ways of viewing the world are quite different. Now, in an unsigned editorial, one of the leading science journals (_Nature_) discusses the difference between science and dogma, suggesting that scientists and science teachers can draw useful lessons from the efforts in Kansas to expel Charles Darwin from the state's schools. The editorial states: "In removing the teaching of evolution, as well as aspects of cosmology, from its curriculum guidance for school students, the Kansas Board of Education has done no favors to the schoolchildren of Kansas or to the national and international reputation of their state." Further: "If more children were taught science as a means of interrogating nature, rather than as a toolbox of rules, the 'debate' between creationism and Darwinism would come to be seen in a clearer light. Darwin's theory will continue to be attacked and will develop on the strength of new information established by geneticists, paleontologists and others. The idea of divine creation is unlikely to benefit from such further investigation because it is not scientific theory, but a dogma." (NAT) (Science-Week Bulletin 25 Aug 99) ------------------- Related Background: EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND THE WIZARD OF KANSAS What is most disturbing about the news out of Kansas this week is that Kansas is the US heartland, the place from where Judy Garland was blown by a tornado into the Land of Oz. Now, apparently, the Wizard of Oz is behind the curtain controlling the state: the Kansas Board of Education this week effectively removed the teaching of evolution from the curriculum of every Kansas public school, with one prominent board member stating: "It is not good science to teach evolution as fact." Apparently, the reality that evolution has broad acceptance in the science community does not matter; what matters are mental comforts promoted by Biblical conceptions, including the lunatic idea that life on Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Many scientists feel a great sadness about this development in Kansas; it is always a sad thing when children with the potential for achievement are denied that achievement by their elders. For that, undoubtedly, will be the outcome: with a continuing and increasing effect, Kansas will be shunned by thinking people as a backward place, heartland or no heartland, a place unsuited for the education of children with potential, and a place whose children will find it more and more difficult to attend the top-rank out-of-state universities. And the two major universities in Kansas, the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, will themselves suffer by the attrition of productive science faculty and the reluctance of new science faculty to bring their children to such a place. Kansas has, in effect, voted itself into intellectual and economic decline. And the issue is evidently not a local one: Tom DeLay, a prominent controlling member of the US Congress, recently excoriated the teaching of evolution, stating: "Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud." The Board of Education of Kansas apparently agrees. (Science-Week Bulletin 13 Aug 99) ------------------- Related Background: SCIENCE, EVOLUTION, AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICA Despite a flurry of media bugle blowing during the past several years, a flurry purporting to demonstrate that religion and science in the US are "merging", the reality is perhaps that any such merging is a myth. A large and politically influential group of Americans continues to refuse acceptance of the facts of biological evolution on Earth provided by science, even if they do accept, implicitly at least, the medical care, communication systems, transportation systems, defense systems, etc. of the technology produced by that same science. It is apparently not yet understood that if biological and human evolution is denied, all of science must be denied and the human species returns to darkness -- to ignorance, hardship, and the decimation of infants and children by disease. Stephen Jay Gould, paleobiologist and current President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, confronts the issue in a recent editorial in the journal _Science_, the author making the following points: 1) The author poses the question: "What strange set of historical circumstances, what odd disconnect between science and society, can explain the paradox that organic evolution -- the central operating concept of an entire discipline and one of the firmest facts ever validated by science -- remains such a focus of controversy, even of widespread disbelief, in contemporary America?" 2) Concerning the conflict, the author states: "Denigration and disrespect will never win the minds (not to mention the hearts) of these people. But the right combination of education and humility might extend a hand of fellowship and eventually end the embarrassing paradox of a technological nation entering a new millennium with nearly half its people actively denying the greatest biological discovery ever made." 3) The author suggests three principles "to guide our pastoral efforts": a) Evolution is true, and the truth can only make us free. b) Evolution liberates the human spirit. c) For sheer excitement, evolution, as an empirical reality, "beats any myth of human origins by light-years. A genealogical nexus stretching back nearly 4 billion years and now ranging from bacteria in rocks several miles under the Earth's surface to the tip of the highest redwood tree, to human footprints on the Moon. Can any tale of Zeus or Wotan top this?" 4) The author concludes: "Let us praise this evolutionary nexus -- a far more stately mansion for the human soul than any pretty or parochial comfort ever conjured by our swollen neurology to obscure the source of our physical being, or to deny the natural substrate for our separate and complementary spiritual quest." ----------- Stephen Jay Gould: Darwin's more stately mansion. (Science 25 Jun 99 284:2087) QY: Stephen Jay Gould, Dept. of Zoology, Harvard University 617- 495-1000. ------------------- Summary by SCIENCE-WEEK [http://scienceweek.com] 9Jul99 [SW Bulletin 8 Mar 00] Copyright Copyright (c) 2000 ScienceWeek All Rights Reserved -----end file ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! 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