Posted on 03/13/2005 2:44:25 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Court battle takes shape after alternatives to evolution are introduced in classrooms.
As John Russell held up a caiman, a very small species of alligator, he told his biology students at Pioneer High School to note the animal's same-size teeth and small brain case. In millions of years, he said, the caiman hasn't evolved much at all: "Its mud puddle hasn't changed, so it didn't need to."
Eighteen years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court said that what Russell and instructors like him teach - scientific evolution - is entirely appropriate. Religion-oriented theories of evolution don't belong in science classrooms, the court said. [Link below.]
That ruling guides curriculum in all public schools in Washtenaw and Livingston counties, which follow state and national mandates to teach evolution via plant and animal genetics. Some teachers make room for classroom discussion on alternatives, but those theories aren't included in course syllabi. In area parochial schools, the teachings generally are guided by both scientific and religious beliefs.
But nationwide, the wrangling over what to teach continues, fueled by conservative religious belief. And once again, the courts will have the last word, particularly in the case of a Dover, Pa., school board represented by an Ann Arbor law firm. When that board ordered its teachers to tell students of alternatives to Darwin, a group of parents aided by the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, arguing that those other theories, such as creation science and intelligent design, bring religion into the classroom.
The terms, the teaching
Scientists point to well-substantiated facts behind Darwin's theory of evolution: All organisms share common ancestry and evolve via natural selection.
Science also uses the word "theory" in a specific way: Evolutionary theory helps explain the fact of evolution, just as gravitational theory helps explain the fact of gravity.
"Evolution is as much a fact as the Earth's orbit around the sun," said David Mindell, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan.
But religious beliefs sometimes trump what's taught in schools.
"I believe what the Bible says - Genesis, Chapter One," said Adriya Pressley, a 10th-grader at Community High School in Ann Arbor. Standing nearby in a school hallway one recent morning, her friend Aliya Amin agreed.
They were expressing creationism, also known as creation science, which holds to a literal, six-day, Genesis-based creation of the universe.
"This is what we believe," said Gladys Pressley, Adriya's mother. Scientific evolution is what her daughter is taught in school, acknowledged Pressley, "but it's not necessarily what she learns."
Some private schools teach what fits religious belief. At St. Paul Lutheran School in northeast Ann Arbor, middle school science teacher Tom Draves said that although he carefully explains Darwinian evolution, students are expected to believe that God created the universe in six 24-hour days.
At the Michigan Islamic Academy on Plymouth Road, students are taught Darwinian evolution, but also that Muslims disagree on whether God specially created humankind or allowed evolution from lower animals.
Catholic schools teach that God set evolution in motion, and that at some point, he differentiated between animals and humans by infusing a soul in humans.
And all around the country, recent discussions of evolution often include the newer concept of intelligent design, touted by a group at a Seattle think tank, the Discovery Institute. The universe is so marvelously designed, say believers in intelligent design, that there must be an intelligent creator - but they stop short of naming God.
Mindell said the debate over teaching evolution is in the news again because of conservative politics.
"It's about politics, not science. There are some who would like to change the findings of science; however, scientific findings are not changed even if unpopular among some groups."
The courts, the arguments
In the 1987 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that creationism advances religious doctrine, and that it can't be taught in public schools because it violates separation of church and state laid out in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1999, a Louisiana court ruled intelligent design similar enough to creationism that it has no place in public school teaching.
And now, The Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor firm founded by conservative Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan, is representing the Dover, Pa., school board in an evolution case watched by school boards all over the country. [Link to that decision is below.]
That board decided in October that students will be told there are gaps and problems in Darwin's theory, that it's still being tested and there are other theories such as intelligent design. But in mid-December a group of parents, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit challenging the policy. The board answered that neither creationism nor intelligent design is actually taught. Instructors are merely directed to read a one-minute statement calling intelligent design an alternative to Darwin and that if students want to know more, the school library has copies of a book, "Of Pandas and People: the Central Question of Biological Origins" that explains the idea of intelligent design. The book, by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, was first published in 1989 by Haughton Publishing Co. in Dallas.
The case for intelligent design is gaining ground, and it belongs in classroom discussion, said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at Thomas More. Intelligent design has religious implications, he acknowledged, but so does Darwin's theory.
"What you have to look at is the content of the theory and not its religious implications," said Thompson, adding that including discussions of intelligent design can broaden students' understanding of evolution in general. And those discussions for important for learning, he said.
The teachers, the students
Peggy Liggit, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University, prepares students to be biology teachers. Neither creationism nor intelligent design belong in science classes, she said, because they are not based on scientific evidence and thus aren't part of the curriculum. If a school would like them taught, she said, they could be included in social studies or language arts classes where multiple views of creation are discussed.
Some teachers, including Manchester science instructor Brad Grebe, a first-year teacher, decline to talk about creationism or intelligent design with their students. "That's something that has to come from home-supplied values," Grebe said.
Others welcome the debate, including Ron Bender, who has taught science in the Whitmore Lake Public Schools for 33 years. Each spring in his class, students who believe scientific evolution debate those who believe creationism or intelligent design. Most years, Bender said, students divide about 50-50.
John Russell, who has taught science 36 years, all of them at Pioneer, teaches scientific evolution but mentions other ways of considering development, including creationism, intelligent design and Native American legends. Sometimes the discussion gets heated, fueled by students' beliefs about religion.
"You see how passionately some kids feel," Russell said.
Public school teachers must manage classroom discussions of evolution very carefully, Liggett said, because they are trained to teach scientific evolution only; they don't have the same degree of information about alternatives.
At Community High recently, Adriya Pressley and Aliya Amin held to creationism while fellow student Nikki Unbehaun talked about Darwin: "No one really saw the origin of life, but I believe we did evolve from primates, monkeys."
Later on in a classroom, quiet, thoughtful ninth-grader Galaan Dafa simply wished for some certainty. "I'd like to think there's someone watching over us."
Here are links to the court decisions:
The Evolution Controversy. Scopes trial and some Supreme Court cases.
Selman v. Cobb County School District. The Georgia textbook sticker case.
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The problem with the "common ancestry" business arises when you find retrovirus genes in mammalian genomes, for example, or maybe even bacteria genes in there.
Just who or what is the "ancestor" of such creatures?
A recent story in Science News noted that the Great Apes, except for Humans and Orangatangs, had a series of retrovirus genes copied in the genome in a single chromosome 8 times! This coding was in a portion of the coding that controls testes (among other things).
One might ask "Well, did those genes affect evolution or not"?
Obviously the older understanding that "common ancestry" meant a "single ancestor in common" is quite erroneous! We have "ancestors", in the sense that they have donated genes to our genome, in and among animals, bacteria, viruses, and probably plants. Darwin, of course, didn't have this knowledge available in his time or he would have been quite confused about it.
Then, when we get to "natural selection" this business of a virus providing genetic input to the testes in Chimpanzees raises some good questions about what we mean. Used to be "natural selection" related to the reproductive success of any particular creature or plant. Obviously there's some retroviruses out there who have had remarkable success because now they are Chimpanzees and Gorillas! Of course they didn't get there the usual way.
At some point here the Darwinists are going to have to admit that the real process is more on the order of life being a very large, complex machine, that draws down new parts from a major warehouse, and uses them to update or improve performance in different elements.
Adriya, Aliya, Gladys. Is there something with Y in that town?
Well, y not? ;)
And evolution answers---if the insertion of the genes resulted in a mutation that had a beneficial effect on survival of the individual in its current environment, then YES. It isn't a question of where the specific genetic sequence in DNA came from, it is how it's expression in the adult organism improves (or "dis-" improves) survival.
A good, but moot, point.
"Common" does not necessarily mean "single, and, although contamination by virus and bacteria likely has occurred---an event not unlike a mutation---the species in question still maintain their integrity or "identity." I don't think this issue challenges the basic premises of evolution theory, but it does add an interesting concept to the various forms of selective pressures (e.g., retroviral infection of the genome) to which those who survive must adapt.
What is the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)?
My Name is LUCA --The Last Universal Common Ancestor
PS. It's worth noting that in recent years the evidence has been building toward establishing common ancestry and branching lineage for the virus genera themselves; whether this can eventually be unified with the cellular phyla remains an open question.
At the moment we have speculation about what constitutes specieation, but we don't understand the mechanism.
It's not yet been observed.
And don't tell me about dog breeding ~ they're ALL the same species as the wolf even after thousands of years of screwing around with them.
Observed Instances of Speciation. That's right ... observed!
Ring Species. We can observe two species and the intermediate forms connecting them.
Ensatina eschscholtzi: Speciation in Progress. A Classic Example of Darwinian Evolution.
Again, I believe it's Science News has a scientist pondering why we can't find any common ancestors between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes ~ there are no, as it were "intermediate forms", and yet the differences are incredibly profound.
Next time you see him ask him if women are a different species~! (ROTFLMAO).
Well...at first, yeah. The mechanism? I think it's close to being arbitrary, and now stands as the ability to reproduce with only conspecifics.
But the basic process of evolution remains the same: variation as a response of selective pressure. So I'm Dutch, German, English and host to heritage-changing parasites and mutations, still, as long as me and my kind (species) can reproduce, we're evolving.
I think your issue is very important to follow regarding learning more about all the various selective pressures and their long-term implications. But I don't think it will lead to a re-understanding of the basics of evolution.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but I can't think of any reason why we should expect to find an "intermediate form" between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. By all appearances, eukaryotes originated from two prokaryotes living in symbiosis and in time evolving into a single, discrete organism. If there is any "intermediate" circumstance to be found, it would be in the form of two prokaryotes living in symbiosis. We've observed those.
There's really no reason at all for mutations to provide genetic variation if it's easier for an organism to obtain new genes from these other common sources. After all, it's a really big ocean!
The only "selective" pressure I can see arising out of such acquisitions would occur if this resulted in a new species which could no longer breed with the parent species.
A couple of years ago a bacteria which can distort the sex organs on insects was identified as the probable "cause" for over 1/3 of all insect species.
Most of the various Darwinian scenarios regarding "selective pressure" involve eating, geographic proximity, and sexual attraction. I don't think any of the classical explanations ever came up with retroviral or bacterial infection.
You have good insight into evolution. But...you can't resist teleology. When you say, "...there's no reason at all for mutations to provide genetic variation..." you imply someone cares."
I wonder why this scientist doesn't think archaebacteria are the intermediate form. That's the general idea of the endosymbiosis theory.
It's noteworthy that the fellow who came up with techniques to advance the decoding of the human genome 2 years ahead of schedule has taken an ocean voyage where he has collected millions of bacterial and viral genes.
He suggested we come up with an "artifical life form", then plug them in under controlled conditions and see what they do.
I suspect life is at least as old as the Universe, and maybe even older than that, and it has resolved the issue of where it can reside.
I meant the universe is indifferent, not to be flippant.
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