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Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology
National Center for Science Education ^ | 18 April 2006 | Staff

Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.

To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.
In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."

The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.

A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: biology; creationuts; crevolist; evomania; religiousevos; science; scienceeducation; scientificliteracy
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To: Physicist
...The most zealous and pious design advocate must surely believe that there are some objects in the universe that owe their forms to the purely physical action of unconscious material...

Suppose you invent/design a new material with properties that have previously never been known. A whole "universe" of products and industries spring up based on this new material. Can you not claim credit for being the initiator of this universe?

Now, add to this the idea that you know ahead of time, when you invented/designed this material, everything that would precipitate from it...and you decide to do it and set it all in motion. That's how I picture God's rule over all created things.

501 posted on 04/20/2006 6:50:14 AM PDT by KMJames
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To: Gumlegs

Was he into geology too?


502 posted on 04/20/2006 6:55:07 AM PDT by js1138 (somewhere, some time ago, something happened, but whatever it was that happened wasn't evolution)
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To: KMJames

The royalties sound attractive.


503 posted on 04/20/2006 6:57:44 AM PDT by js1138 (somewhere, some time ago, something happened, but whatever it was that happened wasn't evolution)
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To: Senator Bedfellow; wintertime
Were you properly respectful towards these deferential equations, then?

As someone who has always been 'mathematically challenged' and would rather undergo root canal work than face a calculus exam, let me say I really like the idea of "deferential equations." With respect, Senator, surely you've got the wrong end here; a 'deferential' equation is not one requiring respect, but one which is kind, compliment, and otherwise deferential to would-be solvers who are, like myself, not terribly good at math.

504 posted on 04/20/2006 6:58:52 AM PDT by ToryHeartland
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To: b_sharp
I'm saying that the "facts" that Science know as "facts", points as much, or more, to Intelligent Design than Evolution. That Science chooses to proffer a convoluted, and silly looking when put on film, theory. Is the problem.
505 posted on 04/20/2006 7:03:59 AM PDT by MissAmericanPie
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To: ToryHeartland
kind, compliment, and otherwise deferential

Oops again: compliant.

Think my typing fingers and/or brain are due for 50,000 mile check-up

506 posted on 04/20/2006 7:04:47 AM PDT by ToryHeartland
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To: js1138

Well, this is the third Reich comment on this thread, but Godwin's laws ought not apply. The energy is either here or gone.


507 posted on 04/20/2006 7:07:03 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: ToryHeartland

Just a plug for Stochastic® Differential Equations.


508 posted on 04/20/2006 7:15:03 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: MissAmericanPie
I'm saying that the "facts" that Science know as "facts", points as much, or more, to Intelligent Design than Evolution.

Setting aside meaningless generalities, what specific "facts" are you talking about? A list of, say, ten such "facts" would be nice.

509 posted on 04/20/2006 7:24:45 AM PDT by atlaw
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To: Doctor Stochastic

No mons, no foul.


510 posted on 04/20/2006 7:32:25 AM PDT by js1138 (somewhere, some time ago, something happened, but whatever it was that happened wasn't evolution)
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To: ToryHeartland
a 'deferential' equation is not one requiring respect, but one which is kind ...

If I may be so bold, permit me to say:
a2 + b2 = c2
I remain, your humble and obedient servant, etc., etc.

511 posted on 04/20/2006 7:34:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Unresponsive to trolls, lunatics, fanatics, retards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: js1138
The royalties sound attractive.

Ha! Like the song says "He's got the whole world in His hands".

512 posted on 04/20/2006 7:37:09 AM PDT by KMJames
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To: RightWingNilla
Well that really blew up in their faces!

In more than one way..... but they asked for it.

513 posted on 04/20/2006 7:39:30 AM PDT by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: wintertime; puroresu
Although anecdotal, it appears to me that it is the secularists and evolutionists who are the biggest defenders of government schools.

The first Federal provision for public education in the US dates to 1785, when section 16 of each township was reserved for public school maintenance. So 'government schools', as you put it, predate even our constitution.

So I would say that defending public schools isn't secularist or evolutionist, it's conservative. And people who want to abolish such a basic and traditional part of American society are radicals.

514 posted on 04/20/2006 7:42:14 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: wintertime

They are huge defenders of government schools, and more significantly, of federal control of education as opposed to state and local control.

I really think the vast majority of parents would be satisfied on the evolution issue if the ACLU and the Politically Correct science community simply practiced what they preach regarding science's stance on religion. They repeat over and over that science is neutral on religion, and can say nothing one way or the other about God's existence.

Yet, what would happen if a few minutes were set aside at the start of every semester to discuss whether a deity created the universe, its laws, and life or whether those things just happen to exist and work the way they do by happenstance? We'd be told that such a discussion would be "unscientific", even though discussions of all kinds of wildly speculative things (alien visitations, parallel universes, etc.) would be considered okay.

Various politically active science organizations would declare the discussion to be a "war against science", they'd check the link list on their websites, phone the ACLU and People for the American Way, and call for a federal judge to ban the discussion.

To them, religious neutrality means operating on the assumption that God doesn't exist. To tell the kiddies that science is ignorant on this issue, and that God may exist or may not, is the same as telling them God exists in their minds.

I think most parents don't want any particular ID theory taught. They just want an acknowledgement that it isn't proven or even provable that we are the descendants of micro-organisms, and that science is as ignorant about the existence of God as Bill Clinton is about morality. But the hardcore evos won't allow such acknowledgements to be given in a public school science class.

In a sense, it doesn't make that much difference any more. More and more parents seem to be opting out of the public schools, and the internet provides ways around public school dogma on evolution. Freer flow of ideas are doing to evolution what talk radio & the internet have done to the liberal media monopoly.


515 posted on 04/20/2006 7:44:13 AM PDT by puroresu (Conservatism is an observation; Liberalism is an ideology)
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To: puroresu
Yet, what would happen if a few minutes were set aside at the start of every semester to discuss whether a deity created the universe, its laws, and life or whether those things just happen to exist and work the way they do by happenstance?

Why should it be one deity? Why are you favoring monotheism over polytheism on the one hand, and atheism on the other?

516 posted on 04/20/2006 7:53:03 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor

Next thing you know those atheistic pinkos will be supporting government run fire departments and a standing army.


517 posted on 04/20/2006 7:53:03 AM PDT by js1138 (somewhere, some time ago, something happened, but whatever it was that happened wasn't evolution)
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To: js1138
Next thing you know those atheistic pinkos will be supporting government run fire departments and a standing army.

It's a slippery slope, all right.

518 posted on 04/20/2006 7:53:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
It's a slippery slope, all right.

Someone, in time of national emergency, might even call for a conscript army!. There's no end of toboggan rides to be imagined!

519 posted on 04/20/2006 7:59:49 AM PDT by ToryHeartland
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To: MissAmericanPie
a convoluted, and silly looking when put on film, theory

Are you really sure that "silly-looking when put on film" is a particularly good yardstick? That rather sounds like the Michael Moore standard of judgement....

520 posted on 04/20/2006 8:02:35 AM PDT by ToryHeartland
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