Posted 1:21 AM by Blah blah

The Battle for American Science
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The battle for American science (The Guardian):

Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US....

Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls.

As prescient observers of the events north of Atlanta last year realised, these aren't the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of Intelligent Design---using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists---grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn't necessarily created in seven days) in order to better attack it.

"It's not that I don't think Darwinian evolution can't explain anything," says Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the movement's foremost academic advocate, when asked how he accounts for the very visible evolution of, say, viruses. "It's just that I don't think it can explain everything. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example, is one of the things it can explain."

Similarly, the White House's strategy on global warming is not to scoff at the scientific establishment's warnings on climate change. Rather, it trumpets the importance of their research activities and calls for even more research - years more, in fact - before any action is taken. In the same fashion, one of the most popular arguments currently circulating on anti-condom websites claims not that they encourage promiscuity but that they can't protect against HIV. The reason, it argues, is because the virus is 0.1 microns in diameter, while there are tiny pores in latex measuring 10 microns. (There is no evidence for this.)
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After I fought that 5 Part Debate on Creationism vs. Evolution last year on Rice Bowl Journals, this article is very troubling. It's a sneaky way for Bush and conservatives to disguise moral judgements as scientific fact.

Just like some Iraqi leaders keep clinging to the fantasy that Iraq is still winning the war, people in the 21st Century still embrace the myth that evolution is wrong and "only an opinion." They feel like they are more "open-minded and tolerant" when they say every alternative view is possible, that you shouldn't "impose your beliefs on someone"...blah blah blah. No. You may say that with the question of chocolate ice cream vs. strawberry, or Paris vs. Rome, or Britney vs. Christina Aguilera---but not with science.

One more time: evolution is not just an opinion, but it's a colossal pillar of biology and of science in general! Evolution has been proven scientifically beyond all reasonable doubt, many many times over, with physical and biological evidence. Scientists worldwide, and biology teachers nationally, overwhelmingly agree that while you may call it "theory," Darwinian evolution is, for all practical purposes, a FACT. Now creationism is a whole other story. With zero scientific evidence to support its claims, the belief that God made the heavens and earth should not be taught in school as anything remotely equal to the theory of evolution. That idea should be strictly labeled as FAITH, speculation, legend, a deep wish of mankind---with no factual evidence, and NOT as a viable alternative to or replacement for evolution.

For teachers and school boards, under the new "divinely-inspired" Bush, to teach creationism in schools is a huge slap in the face to about 150 years of painstaking scientific work, to the famous 1925 Scopes Trial and everything it stood for in American history, and to the millions of lives medicine and biology has saved because of drugs and other treatments scientists have developed BECAUSE of using the Theory of Evolution as a starting point for research.

I believe you can be perfectly religious and accept the Theory of Evolution. Since creationism is FAITH, and evolution is FACT, you can always alter your faith to fit the facts. You may believe God caused the physical transformations that led to evolution, to man coming from apes, and all that. Faith is very accommodating. The facts are not. My point is: believe whatever you wish in terms of why we exist, or why the Big Bang was needed, or what started the laws of physics that led to evolution, but DON'T dispute the physical evidence. When all is said and done---that prevails. In other words, if you wish, believe that God caused the universe to change physically so that the earth started about 4.54 billion years ago, but don't argue that the earth is really only 10,000 years old because the Bible says so.

For more, read this: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense (Scientific American).

See the National Association of Biology Teachers' Statement on Teaching Evolution:

As stated in The American Biology Teacher by the eminent scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973), "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." This often-quoted assertion accurately illuminates the central, unifying role of evolution in nature, and therefore in biology. Teaching biology in an effective and scientifically-honest manner requires classroom discussions and laboratory experiences on evolution.

Modern biologists constantly study, ponder and deliberate the patterns, mechanisms and pace of evolution, but they do not debate evolution's occurrence. The fossil record and the diversity of extant organisms, combined with modern techniques of molecular biology, taxonomy and geology, provide exhaustive examples and powerful evidence for genetic variation, natural selection, speciation, extinction and other well-established components of current evolutionary theory. Scientific deliberations and modifications of these components clearly demonstrate the vitality and scientific integrity of evolution and the theory that explains it.

This same examination, pondering and possible revision have firmly established evolution as an important natural process explained by valid scientific principles, and clearly differentiate and separate science from various kinds of nonscientific ways of knowing, including those with a supernatural basis such as creationism. Whether called "creation science," "scientific creationism," "intelligent-design theory," "young-earth theory" or some other synonym, creation beliefs have no place in the science classroom. Explanations employing nonnaturalistic or supernatural events, whether or not explicit reference is made to a supernatural being, are outside the realm of science and not part of a valid science curriculum. Evolutionary theory, indeed all of science, is necessarily silent on religion and neither refutes nor supports the existence of a deity or deities.

As I said last year, science cannot prove or disprove religion. Religion is essentially emotional, like love or hope. Where the laws of science do not apply, science must be silent. But where they DO apply, religious people must listen!