Monday's debate, One
Person's View and Recollections
By James R Williams
Several have asked
for a brief outline of the State board of Education debate on Monday. This is
from my notes and not exact, but covers allot of it.
The Columbus Veteran
Memorial hall seats 4000, it was about 40% full. Panelists were:
The state will soon
be updating science requirements for standardized testing and curriculum. The
debate was not religious. The State currently avoids teaching Darwinism as
origin of man to some extent. This will probably change no matter what, but the
real debate is whether "Intelligent Design" will be allowed in the
scope of curriculum along with Evolution as an alternate theory and whether
teachers will be allowed to teach about the flaws in
Each panelist got 15
minutes to present their side.
Dr. Wells gave a
good background on errors in text books and errors in materials used to support
Dr. Krauss came on
too strong, was over agitated and unable to speak without sputtering somewhat. He
stated that the whole process (the debate) was diluting science rather than
serving it. He said that the two from the Institute represented a special
interest fringe group. He attacked with a not so great quote from Hugh Ross
(thanks Hugh). He also stated that ID (Intelligent design) is an assault on
science itself. He stated that there is no controversy in the Scientific community over the FACT of evolution. He claimed
that ID was only in books. Anyone can publish a book, but these ideas had never
been sub
Dr. Meyer brought
things back a rational sounding argument sighting various books such as Demski, Behe, etc. which are some
of the best books recently published against
Dr. Miller somehow
sounded smarter and nicer than everyone else, even though his first move was to
call Dr. wells a fraud for exaggerating, misquoting,
omitting facts etc. in his books and his opening statements. He put up rebuttal
that seemed to show that no doctoring of photos was done and stated that the
Heckle embryo errors were fixed years ago and books he publishes today contain
no such errors. He said that if Behe was such a good
book, it would have caught on in the scientific community and in two years it
has not. He continued with an argument that if there's a good designer, why so
many species died off and why so many changes and where are all the new species
coming from? He had a slide showing an idea box, then below it, a review box,
and then a rebuttal box then a proving box down to a final box where the state
puts it into the curriculum. His next slide showed how ID advocates wanted to
skip all the middle steps and go from the idea straight to the state to put it
in the books. It was clever and well presented. He finalized by inviting the
State of Ohio to log onto it's own Ohio Academy of science website and get the
facts on what Ohio thinks.
The second hour was
Q&A from school board members.
Q How could we
define science so as not to limited it to what we can measure
? A Dr. Wells said Science is the search for truth Dr. Krauss said it's
the search for what's not true and by the way HR 1 wording had no mention of
Darwin etc. Dr. Meyer said oh yes it does Dr. Miller said you can do it
(without measure) and then hooked up his lap top and put the text of HR-1 on a computer
search program (on the screen) and showed that there was no occurrence of the
word
Q What should be do to excite the students? A Darwinists didn't actually
answer the actual question, but Dr. Meyers and Dr. Wells said "Let them
see the controversy"
Q What's the
difference between Marco & Micro Evolution A All
handled this straight forward
Q Compare ID &
Evolution with respect to the Cambrian explosion. A Dr. Krauss said hard bodies
weren't around yet Bla bla bla. A hand drawn slide (by miller) was put on overhead, each used the same slide to say the opposite thing
Q Are there gaps in our information? What do they mean? A
All agreed that there are gaps. Krauss says, yeah but you can't
Q How do advances in
genetics effect this debate A Dr. Wells gave a long speech including his
experience with frog embryos. he said if you fiddle with genes with can't make
anything but a dead embryo or a crippled frog Dr. Krauss scolded him by saying
that those who were being healed of disease by fiddling with genes would disagree
(ouch)
Q What does
Evolution say about origins of life A Dr. Miller admitted that we still don't
know and read from his H.S. text book which says it doesn't answer Dr. Meyer
pointed out that the origin of DNA and RNA is like a computer program except
more complex than any yet written. He then pointed out that when Bill Gates
wants a program he doesn't hire wind, rain and erosion to write the software...
he hires designers!
respectfully submitted,
James R Williams
P.S. It is important
for citizens to provide feedback to three different state leaders who need to
be encouraged to exercise their leadership. The timing on this is very critical
as this will go into state law in the months ahead.
Senate Bill 1 passed
last spring under VERY INTENSE pressure from Republican leadership and the
Governor gave the State Board of Education a deadline to write the new science
standards.
We NEED oversight
from the General Assembly to protect
Perhaps you would
call:
Ohio House Education
Committee Chairman Jamie Callender [R-70]
614-466-7251,
Speaker of the
Governor Taft 614-466-3555
To request that HB
481 and HB 484 be permitted to have immediate hearings. Speaker Householder and
Governor Taft need to support Chairman Callender's scheduling
of the bills for a hearing or they won't be scheduled. This is the reality if
the legislative issue is a controversial one.
Some people are more
comfortable sending emails, but sometimes it is more effective for phones to
ring throughout the day. If you send email, PLEASE consider a follow-up phone
call - if only to make sure your email was received and will be passed along.
Chairman Callender: rep70@ohr.state.oh.us
Speaker Householder rep78@ohr.state.oh.us
Gov Taft Governor.Taft@das.state.oh.us