National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine take swipes at creationism

[kurth]

Importance of Teaching Evolution Noted
By NANCY ZUCKERBROD

WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools. The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.

The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution theories. ``Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes,'' the report says.

Evolution is a continuing topic of debate in some states. Florida officials are considering revisions in state science standards that would add the word ``evolution'' to the standards. The state Board of Education plans to vote on the guidelines next month.

In Texas, the state's director of science curriculum, Chris Comer, maintains she was forced to resign recently due to evolution politics. Comer said she came under pressure after forwarding an e-mail that her superiors felt made the agency appear to be biased against the instruction of intelligent design, an alternative to evolution favored by some religious conservatives. Intelligent design holds that the universe's order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it. The Texas State Board of Education is expected to begin a review of the state science curriculum soon.

Josh Rosenau, a spokesman for the California-based National Center for Science Education, which supports the teaching of evolution, said the new report is important because the debate over evolution in school is not going away. Casey Luskin, program officer for the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that supports teaching students about the criticism of evolution, was critical of the document. ``Students should learn about the evidence for and against evolution,'' he said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7196305,00.html

[sjdnb]

1. One of my top issues - so much so

I have several very simply understood books on Evolution to lend to people who think 'Intelligent' design is a scientific theory.

[Nikki Stone1]

2. How is pointing out the lack of scientific evidence "taking a swipe"?

Nasty headline

[HughBeaumont]

6. For the same reason that any figure standing up to Corporate America is a "Radical"!

Like, how DARE you speak against our patriotic Corpmerica after all it does for you sand fleas!

Apparently, the "infallible word of GAWD", science be damned, carries weight with even our press-titutes.

Go figure.

[Nikki Stone1]

7. Why is the UK Guardian supporting ignorance by their word choice?

I thought the Guardian was a liberal paper.

[sakabatou]

3. Creationism

So much fail...

[Faygo Kid]

4. Get the pitchforks and torches! Next they will tell us the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Geez, there is no stopping these eeeevilutionists. Don't they know that the eminent scientist Ann Coulter has written against eeeevilution? Except for Rush Limbaugh's scientific brilliance on global warming, it doesn't get any more authoritative than that.

[PSPS]

5. "the universe's order and complexity"

Intelligent design holds that the universe's order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it.

They've got that backward. It's 'creationism' (aka 'intelligent design') than cannot explain it. Only evolution over eons could explain something so complex.

And this is coming from someone educated by Jesuits, whose devotion to knowledge, education, and critical thinking is unsurpassed. Even they would never promote the "6,000 years old -- dinosaur bones a devil trick" nonsense. In fact, they acknowledged that the two attitudes were somewhat in harmony -- "God" could have started the ball rolling with the "big bang." We just don't know how that happened.