Teach weaknesses that Darwin saw in own theory
By KELLY J. COGHLAN Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 14, 2009, 12:25PM
To celebrate the bicentennial year of Charles Darwin’s birthday, atheist and other groups are aggressively moving to require that 50 million children in public schools be taught macro-evolution as fact — without teaching the scientific weaknesses. Texas, with its 4.7 million schoolchildren, was selected as an ideal target.
For decades the Texas requirement has been to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution and other scientific theories.
Recently, by a margin of one vote, the Texas State Board of Education changed the requirement to “analyze and evaluate.” With “weaknesses” out, textbooks and teachers can “analyze and evaluate” evolution without disclosing or teaching a single weakness.
When teachers were expressly required to teach “weaknesses,” they enjoyed legal protection and certainty when doing so.
Under the new language, teachers who continue to teach the weaknesses open themselves and schools to claims of teaching outside the new rule which explicitly removed “weaknesses” from the directive.
In practice, since it will no longer be expressly required, textbook publishers will not go out of their way to teach weaknesses; teachers will not go out of their way to teach outside the textbooks; and students will not go out of their way to conduct independent research to discover the weaknesses.
In practice, this will leave only the strengths of evolution to be “analyzed and evaluated” by our schoolchildren. Is this what we want? The State Board of Education’s decision is only tentative. The final vote is next month.
Darwin himself invited teaching evolution’s weaknesses, stating, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts on both sides.” Too bad Darwin isn’t on the State Board of Education to require continuing teaching “both sides.” Darwin recognized that science advances by constantly probing and questioning, not by censorship or indoctrination.
In describing evolution, there are two distinct categories: Micro-evolution and Macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is defined as small changes within the same species such as bacteria becoming resistant to drugs, birds’ beaks changing size and moths changing color. It makes perfect sense that a good designer would design each creature with built-in abilities to adapt to survive. I suspect we are all micro-evolutionists. The debate before the Board is not over micro-evolution.
Macro-evolution, on the other hand, is one species becoming an entirely different species such as a fly becoming a mosquito. Science has never observed macro-evolution; neither has science observed life arising from non-living matter. The debate before the Board is whether macro-evolution and life origin should be taught without “weaknesses.” The answer is no.
There are numerous weaknesses widely discussed in current scientific literature such as the abrupt appearance of new life forms in the Cambrian Explosion and other periods; fossil record gaps and conflicting data; intractable origin of life chemistry; the inexplicable origin of information contained in the DNA molecule; and irreducibly complex biological features. Note that none of these relies upon God or religion. Darwin himself devoted three chapters in On the Origin of Species to discussing some of these same weaknesses. Texas students should be exposed to all of the scientific information.
During debate, the one science teacher on the State Board of Education observed, “There are many gaps that don’t link species changing and evolving into another species, so we want our students to get all the science, and we want them to have great, open discussions.” She voted to retain “weaknesses,” as did the two other members with biology degrees, as did the one member with a doctorate in the health sciences.
Not surprising. Virtually all scientists acknowledge weaknesses, but atheists and others don’t want these weaknesses revealed — particularly not to our children. This is the Scopes Monkey Trial in reverse.
