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| How should philosophical and religious questions be handled in the classroom? What care should journalist take in dealing with the issues? Does intelligent design theory require the God of the Bible? Is intelligent design based on religion? Is cutting edge science too much for high school students to understand? Is TBSEF a "creationist" organization? Does TBSEF advocate teaching evidence for a young earth in public schools?
According to our Bylaws, TBSEFs objectives include: (a) Education - TBSEF will seek to educate students, parents, teachers, administrators, legislators, and the general public about scientific weaknesses of the biologic "theory of evolution" or Darwinism. TBSEF will seek to encourage and enable all to recognize and reject outdated, false or misdirecting information and to recognize and pursue correct and up to date information that represents the whole of scientific evidence and knowledge. (b) Awareness- TBSEF will seek to increase the public's and educational community's awareness of new developments in science that are relevant to education, and to obstacles remaining. (c) Advice and Counsel- TBSEF will seek to provide counsel to other similar groups endeavoring to accomplish similar goals and objectives, whether in independent school districts, other states outside of Texas, or international groups. (d) Development- TBSEF will seek to develop other individuals and other organizations to help with these objectives. (e) Additional issues - TBSEF will consider educating the public and educational community on other relevant issues, particularly as relates to science education. (f) Testimony- TBSEF will, where appropriate, supply capable speakers to groups that may have such needs. (g) Fundraising- TBSEF will develop a fund raising program to allow the organization to operate from a position of financial strength.
How should philosophical and religious questions be handled in the classroom? The study of science should include the proposal and testing of hypotheses explaining evidence that can be physically observed or mathematically analyzed. These hypotheses will necessarily carry some implications for all forms of philosophy and religion. But the nonscientific aspects of these should not be discussed in a science classroom or textbook. Instead the student should be directed to appropriate places to explore any interest in the nonscientific implications of science. Appropriate places start with one’s family and his family traditions. Then the student might look to religious and philosophical organizations or special interest groups. Further, the student should look for courses on philosophy and religion in colleges and universities. Finally the student can search the internet although he should recognize that anyone can put something on the internet, well founded or otherwise. In all cases students should be encouraged to seek multiple sources of information and think critically in every case. Some areas of science might seem to straddle the borderlines of science and only the scientific aspects of these should be discussed. For example, information is a quantity that pervades much of the machinery and activity of life. Although information has been observed for a long time it was first measured, quantified and analyzed by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s. In fact information is now understood to obey a law similar to the entropy associated with the second law of thermodynamics. In fact the mathematical expression has the very same form. In contrast information does not have a conservation law similar to the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy. There is no apparent limit to the amount of information that can exist. There is an abundance of new information coming into existence all of the time. But the only observed sources of this new information are intelligent agents, only people so far. The SETI Project searches for information in the radio waves arriving from space on the principle that if there is any nonrandom sequence or information in these waves, that would be proof that intelligent beings are the source somewhere else in the universe. Likewise many scientists conclude that the vast amount of information stored in living systems is evidence of an intelligent source for that information. That much seems to them to be a fact regardless of what one might want to make of identity of the intelligent agent, the God of the Bible, a Hindu god, The Force of Luke Skywalker fame, the Great Spirit of Native Americans, or none of the above. Those implications are irrelevant to the facts about information content. Other scientists, on the other hand, conclude that somehow the processes of evolution must be able to generate information. But the vast majority of physical observations seem to counter that hypothesis. Students should be carefully taught to avoid any unsupported assumptions and to avoid jumping to any conclusion about the identity of the source of information. This is an important set of questions that science is beginning to face and they should not be hidden from students. After all, it may be one of these students that eventually provides the innovation that points the way for scientific progress.
No, we are not. We want more to be taught about evolution, not less. We advocate that existing Texas law be enforced that requires that weaknesses of theories, including evolution, be taught. But there are several aspects of this that are worth careful elaboration. First, what is meant when the word “evolution” is used? To some evolution simply indicates the change over time of something, anything in fact. Clearly this is a concept that is inherent to existence in time. To many evolution carries the assumption that mutations plus natural selection can explain all in the life sciences and the history of life. Some seem to think that this is so well established that it is unquestioned and unquestionable. This is certainly a reasonable hypothesis to test and evaluate but some scientists are not at all satisfied that this kind of hypothesis has been verified very well. There are two major subdivisions of evolution that need to be recognized and considered: micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution includes small subspecies level of change in organisms. These changes do not prevent interbreeding with the form of organism without the change so they are not clearly a new species but rather a new variety of the same species. There is a great variety of microevolution observed all around us. Microevolution is a fact. Macro-evolution involves structural changes in the anatomy or biochemical systems of life that would make interbreeding with the unchanged form impractical if not impossible. Macroevolution is where the controversy is because it is questionable if macro-evolution has been physically observed to occur. Organisms in the fossil record that have much in common but are quite different in some structural aspect might well be considered the product of macro-evolution. These structural differences form the famous gaps in the fossil record. Many scientists think that it is obvious that macro-evolution can be accounted for by a long sequence of micro-evolution. Each macro-evolutionary gap might simply require a long sequence of micro-evolutionary steps. But other scientists say that that if that were the case macro-evolution would be easy to physically observe and document and that has not been clearly done. Some point out that it is easy to imagine a sequence of change when one only looks at the outward bodily form but very difficult when one looks at the anatomical and chemical details. Some scholars such as biochemistry professor Michael Behe routinely challenges the scientific world to fill in the biochemical details involved in the proposed macro-evolutionary gaps of biochemical systems of life. There has been little response and none to our knowledge that stands up to scrutiny. Second, what do we mean when we use the word ‘teach’. Teaching can mean the required memorization of a list of facts established by definition and this is an important and necessary part of teaching. For example it is important for the student to recognize several meanings of the word evolution:
But essential to science
education is the process of formulation and
testing of hypotheses to determine which
hypothesis best explains the most observed
evidence. This is the core of scientific practice
that has made it so successful. But there is often
conflicting observations and new experimental
testing often produces surprising results that
challenge current hypotheses. Any student that
only has memorized “facts” will soon find his
knowledge as dated as an old encyclopedia. He
might well pass the required tests but he will not
be prepared to succeed in the sciences. Nor will
he be prepared to participate as an informed
citizen in the real world interactions between
science, technology, politics, ethics and
morality. We contend that a student who only
knows evolution as the the mantra that mutations plus
natural selection can explain everything has not
been educated but rather indoctrinated. Our
students deserve something better than
indoctrination. Further, in the state of (3)
Scientific
processes. The student uses critical thinking and
scientific problem solving to make informed
decisions. The student is expected to:
(A) analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information; In the final analysis TBSEF would have a more complete overview of evolution taught, not less. For this purpose the TBSEF is dedicated to encourage and enable all in the teaching community to learn more about the issues and questions related to all actively developing areas of science.
What
care should journalists take in dealing with the
issues:
Does intelligent design theory require the God of the Bible? Most people in America that
ask this question are thinking of the God of the
Bible because that is the most common assumption
in
Is
“intelligent design” based on religion? No, intelligent design is not based on the beliefs of any religion. Rather it is based on and motivated by the physically observable facts of science. Some of these strongly suggest the necessary involvement of an intelligence in the occurrence of life. A few examples are:
Is
cutting edge science too much for high school
students to understand? No! In general students need to have a good overview of the current ‘cutting edge’ issues in science. Without such an overview they will not be able to wise decisions about career choices in science. If science is presented as if all the important and exciting work has already been done few students will chose a career in science and America will continue fall behind other nations in the production of young scientists. The view of science as a static cut and dried body of knowledge is simply false and misleading. Even those who do not chose a science or technology career need to be aware of what the cutting edge issues are about because otherwise the will not be able to participate a good citizens in our nation’s development of legal, ethical, and moral choices of our modern society. When presented with a challenge students often rise to the task but without a challenge students commonly settle for mediocrity. Our students should not be undersold or repressed.
Is
TBSEF a "creationist" organization? No, the TBSEF is open to any
explanation of the world around us as long as it
is consistent with the laws of physics and a wide
breadth of physically observed evidence.
Unfortunately many of the established and often
repeated explanations are not consistent with some
more recent observations. It is perhaps the nature
of the establishment to be devoted to suppositions
of the past and to resist change as newer evidence
is observed. So it is the purpose of the TBSEF to
encourage the educational community to keep up to
date and respond to new developments. Those who
are interested in creationist explanations will as
a matter of course be interested in some of the
same issues. But the TBSEF will encourage the
proposal and testing of new hypotheses regardless
of whether they contain some facts relevant to
creationist or not.
Does TBSEF advocate teaching evidence for a young earth in public schools? No. TBSEF members include those adhering to a wide range of beliefs on the so-called 'age of the earth' question. Further, for most science, what is important is how some phenomenon is observed to work today, not how it got to be that way over a short or long period of time. Hence, TBSEF takes no position on 'age-of-the-earth' issues in the public schools.
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