The U.S. Department of Education says that removing evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable fields of study for federal education grants was a “clerical mistake.” But it’s understandable why some people are suspicious, given all the effort in recent years by some religious conservatives to undermine the evolution theory. Said Steven Rissing, an evolutionary biologist as Ohio State University: “It’s just awfully coincidental.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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45 Comments
A “clerical mistake”? Since when is Department of Education run by clerics? Have they decided to hire Connie Morris recently?
I doubt it was a “clerical mistake”. It sounds like the Christian Taliban in action again.
What’s the odds of that happening ?
What’s the odds of that happening ? Those righties have demonstrated they’ll get what they want by hook or crook.
Well, if any field needed more study, it is evolutionary theory.
Why do you say that outlander? Has your church told you there is some “controversy” pertaining to evolution?
When are you going to get it, the “Establishment” clause in the Bill of Rights excludes teaching your Bible’s version of creationism in public schools.
Deal with it.
“Well, if any field needed more study, it is evolutionary theory.”
Are you serious? Evolution is one of the most robust theories in science. Outlander, if you think evolution needs more study you must not have taken very many science classes in college. The only thing that needs more study is why people are willing to disregard 150 years of emperical evidence on a religious whim.
Definately a conspiracy theory. Am I the only person that read the Wedge Document?
“The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a “wedge” that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the “thin edge of the wedge,” was Phillip ]ohnson’s critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”
Read on: http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
Courtney, you obviously haven’t been here for the evolution discussions here if you think that Darwinian evolutionary theory is an accepted fact. It is a demonstratedly flawed theory.
I am all for further study of evolutionary theory, as long as scientists are honest in their interpretations of what they find. That is where the problem lies. Evidence is routinely interpreted through the lense of Darwinism and evidence that does not support the theory is discarded or ignored.
So I say, study on. Be open-minded and the truth will eventually be known.
I would encourage anyone to read the “wedge” document. There is nothing unexpected or conspiratorial. As I have said before, you can’t win if you don’t have a plan.
Unfortunately, I can’t spend my Saturday discussing the issue. Things to do. Out.
Courtney, I’m familiar with the document.I’m always posting stuff from Red State Rabble.If you’re into this issue, you should check it out.
“Courtney, you obviously haven’t been here for the evolution discussions here if you think that Darwinian evolutionary theory is an accepted fact. It is a demonstratedly {is this the correct word?} flawed theory.”
Discussion on a blog really doesn’t make Evolution flawed outlander. Exactly what real scientists have stated that Evolution is a “demonstratedly flawed theory”?
I guess it’s the old right wing credo that if you tell a lie often enough…………….
You Christian Taliban are just nuts!
Outlander, do you have evidence of scientists cherry picking data? I would be curious to see it.
Science doesn’t use plans. It uses observation and experimentation. Unfortunately, science is NOT a conclusion first process. True, the wedge doc is nothing unexpected, but the Discovery folk try to say they are doing honest to goodness science (seperate from any religious motive), except it plainly says there motive isn’t to improve science it’s to promote “Christian and thiestic convictions”
Exactly what kind of “science” are the Discovery people doing?
FROM JURISDYNAMICS (JIM CHEN):
Thursday, August 24, 2006Teach it. Fund it. Learn it. Or die.
Given this forum’s interest in evolution and its reception by the public, it seems eminently appropriate to note the New York Times’ and Concurring Opinions’ coverage of the Department of Education’s apparent attempt to eliminate evolutionary biology from the list of fields suitable for study by recipients of a federal grant for low-income college students. The DoE calls the omission of category 26.1303 accidental.
Here’s how the crucial passage in the DoE’s list reports eligible subjects within the broader category, “26.13 Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population”:26.1301 Ecology26.1302 Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography
26.1304 Aquatic Biology/Limnology26.1305 Environmental Biology26.1306 Population Biology26.1307 Conservation Biology26.1308 Systematic Biology/Biological Systematics26.1309 Epidemiology26.1399 Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population Biology, Other
Yes, this fair and balanced presentation of the document in question shows a blank line where category 26.1303 should appear. We report. You decide.
As for me, I’ve decided. This administration has demonstrated no restraint in playing politics with science. It deserves no presumption of good faith on matters of this sort. Evolutionary biology has become a special whipping boy for one of this administration’s most rabid constituencies, so much so that pandering to antievolutionist sentiment has reached the highest judicial levels.
Perhaps it is apt, therefore, to remind this audience as well as this scientifically benighted administration and the public at large: Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.
I offer one final footnote. Deven Desai’s otherwise excellent post at Concurring Opinions fell into the usual pattern of illustrating public disputes over evolution with a depiction of nonhuman primates. Let’s try something different here. The graphic accompanying this post provides a hint on why it might be worth teaching, financing, and learning evolutionary biology. Never mind human origins. How about emphasizing human survival as a tactically astute change of pace?
(if you want a link, just ask)
From what i’ve heard in debates, they have only the expectation that things will become more complicated.
Strange, thats exactly what evolution predicts. Except ID doesn’t show any mechanims by which it acts (evo. as Natural selection) or any evidence that it indeed has gotten more complex(evo. has fossils, genetics…)
Courtney, for evolutionary biology also check out Thoughts From Kansas.
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/
That is terribly suspicious. That isn’t a clerical mistake. That was an attempt by somebody to remove it from grants and hoping nobody catches on.
Not good! That’s a Democrat stategy if I ever seen one. If that is from the anti-evolution people, they need to stop.
Joe you’re right about everything except the party affiliation.Check out the book: The Republican War On Science by Chris Mooney.
I see intelligence in evolution, but to try to make that leap to the Bible is impossible.
I’ve told about the observations I’ve made watching the hummingbirds use my feeder. They are a marvel of engineering, but again, to try to the vagueness of the Bible directly connect to that engineering doesn’t make sense.
You’re right Tracy. The Anti-evolution crowd is part of the religious right Republican base. I was just mentioning the strategy. Democrats tend to use keniving and deceitful tatics to push their agenda through. But it looks like the Religious Right has adopted the same stategy that Democrats have been using. Probably because it works most of the time.
I see intelligence in evolution, but to try to make that leap to the Bible is impossible.
Reworded:
I’ve told about the observations I’ve made watching the hummingbirds use my feeder. They are a marvel of engineering, but again, to try to connect the vagueness of the Bible directly to that engineering doesn’t make sense.
Hi again Courney. Remember when you ran into this very subject with Nathan the other day and how quickly you realized that attempting to reason with him was futile?
Outlander:”Courtney, you obviously haven’t been here for the evolution discussions here if you think that Darwinian evolutionary theory is an accepted fact. It is a demonstratedly flawed theory.”
Well Courtney meet Mr. Outlander. He, Nathan, maybe three other posters and a fence post I know will be glad to endlessly and undemonstrably argue with you. They get their talking points from a higher power!
I’d tend to agree that this last is a covert and deliberate attempt to undermine the teaching of the scientific theory of evolution.
Outlander, you reject the theory of natural selection so does that mean you accept Lamarkian evolution? That theory was debunked a long time ago. So what’s your evidence that Lamarkian evolution is right and the entire field of genetics is wrong?
You’re not actually waiting are you Doug?
Get your pup tent set up.You’re going to be here a while.
“That’s a Democrat stategy if I ever seen one”
Sorry Joe – that is from YOUR people, not the Democrats.
It isn’t my people Ben. I’m not a conservative or a religious right person.
I critize them as must as I do leftist Democrats.
Democrat strategy?
President Bush himself said that he liked ID. I myself disbelieve both political parties, even though im a registered democrat; only to seperate myself from the “value voters” that try to undermine our society. “Clerical mistake”… yea right. How stupid are these people, they should know by now that there is always someone behind you checking your numbers. That also applies to ID, which is why that was weeded out as fraud immediately.
Isn’t it interesting that the only people who find fault with evolution are the religious fundies?
If they didn’t see evolution as contradicting the Bible (which it doesn’t), they probably would believe it, just as they have no problem with how a carburator works or an airplane flies.
If it were really a flawed theory, the scientists themselves would be arguing it . . .
Intelligent Design is nothing new. Any student of St. Thomas Aquinas philosophy is familiar with his 5 Ways of Proving the Existence of God.In his work Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas argues (with himself) that the universe is such an intricately intelligent place that it must have been created by an intelligence. This intelligence St. Thomas says is God. Because there is Order in the Universe between living and nonliving things he argued that Intelligence must have created these things since Order never comes from Chaos. It would be like a man walking alone in the woods who by chance discovers a watch lying in the grass. In that incident the man knows distinctly that the watch was created by an intelligence because the watch is such an intricate instrument that it must be a finished work of an intelligent being.Proof through Order in the Universe was one of St. Thomas Aquinas Five Ways of Proving the Existence of God. You evangelicals just plagiarized his philosophy and bastardized it into your Intelligent Design theory pushing it off as a kind of empirical science!However St. Thomas uses a priori RATIONAL proofs, not a posteriori EMPIRICAL proofs for proving God’s existence!Therefore, what they call intelligent design isn’t an empirical science, it belongs in Philosophy / Theology classes of philosophy / theology majors, not in high school science classes!
I’m still curious why the bible thumpers have left the other branches of science alone(recently). Geology shows the earth is 4 billion years old, and formed of eons. Astronomy has shown that we aren’t the center of the universe. Every branch of science is against Noah’s flood. Medicine has shown that sickness isn’t caused by satan. Yet they always get stuck on Evolution. I guess some people just have to believe we are special. But the same people are willing to throw away the very thing that makes us special, our reasoning, our logic, our science.
Courtney, this is because evolution “threatens” thier faith. The christian taliban think they have a special covenant with God. They must attack anyone and anything that threatens their interpretation of “god’s word”.
“It is a demonstratedly flawed theory.”
Mr. Outlander is once more preaching the nonsense of the Discovery Institute. They are the folks who claim the Darwin’s theory of evolution gave us the welfare state and so on. Now, these same “scholars/scientists” are saying that Darwin’s theory led to Hitler’s holocost:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2410
Keep spinning the Discovery Institutes lies as scientific evidence — people are finally waking up the “renaming strategy” that started with “Clear Sky Initiative” – keep trying I say, waste as much bandwidth as you can. No one, but psychiatricly impaired people like Connie Morris, are finding such crap as credible anymore.
DOUG?YOU STILL IN THAT TENT WAITING?
What else is the Discovery Institute supposed to do? They know they can’t defeat evolution on scientific grounds, they know that they have no scientific evidence for their ID nonsense. The only option they have left is to make up social crap that makes evolution look bad. If there is anyone who actually thinks that social darwinism was proposed by Charles Darwin or has anything to do with biological evolution, then you are an idiot. For that look at the monopoly business men of the early 20th century. If someone told you that gravity is the reason that planes crash would no longer accept gravity? Give me a break, those DI folks must be getting pretty desperate!
This link is allegedly an internal document of the Discovery Institute which outlines their goals and strategies to meet those goals:
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
It has been on the net a while I would guess and I don’t know for sure that it is authentic. It is interesting, none-the-less.
Its authentic. The Discovery Institute said it was, and in several debates I’ve heard the Wedge document was brought up and ID proponents only said that people were taking it out of context. But it’s intentions speak for them selves
Yes Tracy I’m still waiting. Those opposed to the fact of natural selection are usually quite vocal until they are asked to support their position. I still hear crickets chirping outside my tent.
Discovery Institute you say? Never heard of them, but the idea that racism borrows from eugenics is not lost on me. Yet racists today use any argument imagineable to portray those of “lesser value.”
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=118
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=119
http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/survivalOfTheFakest.pdf
Intriguing!
Awww, perhaps the evolutionists are angry because we do not submit to their dogmatic belief that human life originated from pond scum?
Will-Show me a better explaination and I will believe that. Awwww, no proof, just the Bible? All these people who hate Darwin, yet no one ever proposes any feasible alternatives. You know, theres a reason the worlds scientists are behind evolution.
Courtney,Excuse me, but I believe that natural sciences tend to rely on factual examples, and since evolutionists automatically refer to the Darwinian theory as scientific fact, the burden of proof lies upon them to put forth their tangible (not hypothetical)proof of the “Missing Link!”Furthermore your previous comment implies that I am a biased ignoramus who relies on the Bible to interpret reality. The fact that you have immediately classified me in the class of the typical knuckle-dragging neocon proves that you lump people of faith into stereotypical categories, and is telling of your anti-religious bigotry.
Thats funny, I’ve never heard of anyone who hates evolution that didn’t have some religious motive.
“Science does not deal in certainty, so ‘fact’ can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to withhold one’s provisional assent” -Stephen Jay Gould.
If you can’t understand that, then you are badly in need of some scientific reading.
Courtney,I have no problem with the Scientific Method, nor do I criticize scientists who have formulated hypotheses which woul later be found incorrect. I do however, criticize scientists who propose a hypothetical theory such as evolution as an empirical fact!You think I have “hatred” for scientists? My dear, you have misunderstood me.
“Science does not deal in certainty”
Ever hear of Mathematics?