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Let There Be Open Debate Over Evolution
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Published: February 18, 2008
Florida presently stands on the brink of adopting science standards that call evolution "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology."
While it is good that students will learn about evolution, these standards will make for bad science education because they elevate Darwin's theory to a dogma that cannot be questioned.
Unless citizens advocate for change, Florida's standards will follow the dogmatism of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which recently published a booklet, Science, Evolution,and Creationism, similarly proclaiming that "there is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution" because "no new evidence is likely to alter" it.
Contrary to what the NAS asserts, there are fundamental questions among scientists about Darwinian evolution.
Darwin didn't know how the cell worked, but modern biochemists have discovered our cells contain a micro-world of molecular machines that function like a factory, or a miniature city.
Over 700 scientists have signed a statement agreeing that the integrated, organized complexity of life is not what we would expect from a random and unguided process like Darwinian evolution (see www.dissentfromdarwin.com).
As biochemist Franklin Harold observed in an Oxford University Press monograph, "there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations."
Leading scientists also disagree with the NAS's claim that evolution is "a cornerstone of modern science." In 2005, NAS member Philip Skell wrote in The Scientist that "Darwinian evolution ... does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists."
The NAS claims that evolution has yielded great benefits in biomedicine and agriculture, but again, other scientists disagree. University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne admitted in Nature, "improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like'."
Even when it comes to fighting antibiotic resistant superbugs, Coyne observed, "Evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say
Sadly, the academy is commonly intolerant of dissent from Darwinism. Consider the NAS's statement that "there is no scientific controversy" over evolution. Imagine you are a scientist with fundamental doubts about Darwinism and you see the top science organization in the USA asserting that your views don't exist.
This spring, a documentary will be released featuring Ben Stein entitled "Expelled" that recounts the stories of scientists who have experienced persecution of their academic freedom because they questioned evolution. No wonder Darwinists confidently declare there is no debate over evolution: They shut down such debate and prevent it from taking place.
Unfortunately, the proposed Florida science standards will stifle free inquiry because they too censor any scientific challenges to evolution. Change is necessary if Florida teachers are to be given the freedom to inform students about scientists who dissent from evolution.
Casey Luskin is an attorney with an M.S. in Earth Sciences and works for the Discovery Institute as program officer for public policy and legal affairs.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( gwbohn ) on February 18, 2008 at 10:37 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
It is unfortunate that Mr. Luskin is requesting the freedom of debate with an established and well evidenced science while working for a group who purposely restrict feedback to their internet musings. It makes Mr. Luskin look more than a little hypocritical. Not his fault I'm sure.
It is equally unfortunate that Mr. Luskin has decided to put to print claims that can so easily be found to be in error.
Whether Darwin knew of genetics and cellular construction is irrelevant, the science of Evolution has gone well beyond what Darwin knew. This increase in knowledge and complexity of understanding from simple beginnings is common among sciences.
Mr. Luskin claims that 700 scientists have signed a statement to the effect that "the integrated, organized complexity of life is not what we would expect from a random and unguided process like Darwinian evolution"
Yet gives a link to the following:
"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
That statement does not say what Mr. Luskin wants you to believe it does.
What statement says is that 'random' mutation and selection, by themselves, are not enough to explain biological complexity and science should continue to look for more answers. Not even a die hard evolutionary biologist would disagree with this, there are many processes in addition to random mutation that can produce selectable traits and other ways for a genotype to fix in a population aside from selection.
Since modern evolution goes far beyond random mutation and selection the characterization of it as strict Darwinism is nothing more than the creation of a straw man. That statement may question strict Darwinism, but strict Darwinism no longer exists.
It is also interesting that the majority of signers are not in a position to know enough about biology to make an informed decision. For those people signing this statement is no more than expressing an ill informed opinion.
Mr. Luskins comments are full of such errors and intentional misdirection, far too many to address fully here.
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Posted by ( QED ) on February 19, 2008 at 2:32 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Mr. Luskins works for the Discovery Institute, a political/fundamentalist rumor mill with objectives set forth in their "Wedge Document", a sinister long-range plan to convert the US to a strict fundamentalist theocracy in a series of pre-planned stages. Credibility is out the window here - so many points refuted a thousand times, so much quote mining so typical of DI propagandists.
Darwin's theory is questioned every day, by real scientists doing real research. What is not allowed to be questioned is the fundy dogma which underlies all DI hype.
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Posted by ( Desertphile ) on February 19, 2008 at 1:04 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Rev Luskin, who works for the Discovery Institute Church, would have his readers believe teaching science equals "teaching dogma." There is nothing sacred in science, and that includes biology. Rev Luskin refused to defend Creationism during the Dover, PA, trial; his church refused to do so as well.
Evolution is an observed fact; evolutionary theory correctly defines, describes, and makes predictions about the fact of evolution. To not teach students this fact is to keep them ignorant and unprepared to live in the real world.
Rev Luskin and his cult also claims to believe public schools are the correct place to debate about science: that is not merely false, but also insulting and stupid. Scientists already debate about how evolution worked and works: to do that in the public schools makes zero sense.
Cultists like Rev Luskin, and cults like the Discovery Institute Church, should be watched and not heard.
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Posted by ( Desertphile ) on February 19, 2008 at 1:38 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
It is not "Darwin's theory." He doesn't retain copyright, it isn't limited to his original ideas (some of which have been abandoned, and others modified or added to), and nothing in evolutionary theory is assumed to be correct merely because Darwin said it (or is thought by some to have said it). And if it's good that students learn about evolution, presumably it's also good that they learn correct things about it, and not encouraged to "question" some strawman version of "Darwinism" (which does not exist and never has) or regard "god of the gaps" and "arguments from bad consequences" as arguments against evolution.
So, obviously, scientific progress can be made by abandoning speculation and research and just telling students that magic (the gods) explains everything.
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Posted by ( ID_Guy ) on February 19, 2008 at 7:19 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
These are really weak replies from all you Darwinist guys who oppose this article! As an ID guy, I can't help but observe that these comments have a lot of personal attacks, namecalling, and empty accusations ("Cultists" "quote mining" "theocracy" etc.), but you haven't even come close to saying anything that actually refutes anything in the article. How predictable. How revealing.
As for the guy who says, "sinister long-range plan to convert the US to a strict fundamentalist theocracy..." you couldn't produce better caricatures of yourselves! How about some substance to the rebuttals rather than personal attacks and complaining about the "wedge document"? And if you're so worked up about silly fears about "theocracy," why don't you read the Discovery Institute's rebuttal at:
http://www.discovery.org/a/2101
Let's talk science, not scare-tactics.
After all, a great number of the scientists on the list cited have written books and articles where they are clearly critical of neo-Darwinian theory. (read the list:
href="http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
I see a lot of names I recognize who are serious scientists that reject modern neo-Darwinian theory).
The sky isn't falling, no one is advocating theocracy, and there are serious scientific criticisms of evolution. Too bad you guys don't want to engage the science head on.
These responses highlight what's wrong with the teaching of evolution these days. People will say anything (whether valid or not) to avoid confronting the scientific problems with neo-Darwinian theory.
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Posted by ( ID_Guy ) on February 19, 2008 at 8:23 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
I also don't get why people are attacking the description of evolution in the list that was cited. After all, 39 nobel laureates wrote to support evolution, saying "evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection"
(from http://media.ljworld.com/pdf/2005/09/15/nobel_letter.pdf)
...it sounds like a good description of evolution to me. It's just not a good description of how species have arisen on earth.
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Posted by ( gwbohn ) on February 19, 2008 at 8:32 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
@ID_Guy
Ok, what science did Luskin present in this article? From what I can see he did nothing but express his poorly researched opinion as a polemic.
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Posted by ( gwbohn ) on February 19, 2008 at 8:42 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
@ID_Guy
So, the modern understanding of evolution is restricted to random mutation and natural selection? I wonder why you would place such an artificial limit on it.
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Posted by ( QED ) on February 19, 2008 at 9:56 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
"Too bad you guys don't want to engage the science head on."
There is a reason for that, and that is there is no science in creationism. If there was, creationists would, I think by now, at least have a definition and theory of intelligent design that does not rely on supernatural means. At best, ID might have a rather weak hypothesis, but it still leads to the same place - a supernatural designer. This isn't science. It may be religion, or mysticism, or FSM theory, but it isn't science. Where are the experiments, the peer-reviewed papers in legitimate peer-reviewed scientific journals? The "papers" I've seen are mostly "thought experiments" published by ID-proponents, definitely not testable or falsifiable.
What remains is merely an attempt to poke holes in current science, not an independent idea that can stand on its own. And why would anyone do this? Why would a true scientist with an idea that is rational in the realm of science not participate in science peer-review? Why not rocket to fame and fortune, have your idea become part of the foundation of biological science? The answer again is that intelligent design is religion, not science. As much as you want it to be, as much as you need it to be to strengthen your faith, it simply isn't.
You can hand-wave and spin forever, but the proof of your claims is in the data, the evidence, the willingness to do real science, if you want to be taken seriously.
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Posted by ( DavidK ) on February 19, 2008 at 9:59 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
The good Reverend Luskin and the DI staff in Seattle are always looking for a fall guy. They lost in PA, but FL took the bait.
It's interesting that Newton's Law of Gravity, taught from an absolutist perspective, only holds in certain cases, but must be corrected by Einstein's "Theory" of Relativity (another theory that creationists want to do away with).
But it's understandable why emphasizing the "Theory" for Darwin's "Theory" of Evolution is necessary, for the other competitive theories that Luskin champions (the theory of creationism (a.k.a. the theory of intelligent design, a.k.a the theory of god) couldn't compete with a real scientific theory (you can only say so much about a mouse trap).
His creationism is also vying in the marketplace with the theory of the FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster), for which proponents have shown just as much evidence for the FSM's legitimacy as have the Luskinites and their mouse trap.
Then again, perhaps Floridians have more on the ball than we give them credit for, for if they know for a fact that people who lived 2000-3000 years ago knew more about science than all the research, experiments, and evidence uncovered since that time, then let's close down the Cape, sit on the sidelines, and watch the world pass us by.
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Posted by ( ID_Guy ) on February 19, 2008 at 10 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
The article was about evolution and education. So I think that gwbohn's question is proper, and the answer is: there wasn't much science to discuss! The article quotes 2 leading neo-Darwinian biologists admitting that there aren't detailed explanations for how biochemical features evolved, and that evolution doesn't much help us advance industrial or medical goals. The Skell quote also supports that view that evolution isn't the bedrock of modern science. The article's point is that students shouldn't be told that evolution is the panacea for all biological questions when leading scientists feel otherwise. It seems like a fair point. It's too bad that fair point was lost on the people who wrote Florida's science standards.
About the "artificial limit"--that's not one I imposed. Take an evolutionary biology class and you'll learn that sure, there are lots of factors involved with evolution, but the dominant view is that only real forces that are supposedly adaptive and supposedly build biological complexity are random mutation and natural selection. Do you want to evolve a new gene? Nobody's gonna invoke random drift or neutral evolution. At its fundamental core, that's what neo-Darwinian theory says. Or at least a bunch of nobel prize winners seem to agree with me that this is what evolution says.
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Posted by ( ID_Guy ) on February 20, 2008 at 2:58 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
All of the comments about FSM or ID seem pretty irrelevant. That's not what we're talking about here. This article was about evolution and the fact that it has weaknesses that no one wants to explain.
Your desires to talk about silly jokes like FSM or to talk about ID only show that you don't want to discuss the important issue--the science (or lack thereof) behind evolution! Sounds like a familiar tune!
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Posted by ( DavidK ) on February 20, 2008 at 1:03 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Luskin’s article points out:
“…these standards will make for bad science education…” No, watering down science with vacuous creationist arguments makes for bad science.
"…there is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution" because "no new evidence is likely to alter" it.” Only creationists argue against evolution, not evolutionists (scientists). There is no controversy over the acceptance of evolution by science.
“Over 700 scientists…” so what! Out of the tens of thousands of scientists and other professionals there are always some whiners, and of Luskin’s 700 there are few biologists. They might have received degrees (even from strange places), that doesn’t mean they know anything about evolution.
The quote by Franklin Harold, another quote mining by Luskin taken out of context? What did Harold really say beyond the one-liner?
Leading scientists also disagree? Creationists are not “leading” scientists, they rarely if ever do any legitimate research.
“Even when it comes to fighting antibiotic resistant superbugs…” Then please, creationists, reject all antibiotics and vaccines offered to you and see how many of you survive.
A documentary … featuring Ben Stein entitled "Expelled" … is noting more than creationist propaganda. What about the Texas Education Committee firing of Chris Comer who was fired for her support of evolution?
“Unfortunately, the proposed Florida science standards will stifle free inquiry …” ID_Guy, that’s exactly what my note addressed! FSM, creationism, they’re all competing “theories”. You as a creationist failed to read it.
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Posted by ( QED ) on February 20, 2008 at 11:16 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
"These responses highlight what's wrong with the teaching of evolution these days. People will say anything (whether valid or not) to avoid confronting the scientific problems with neo-Darwinian theory."
This is an interesting statement. Let's look take a look at what people will say (and do) to avoid confronting problems with their "theory".
This introductory section of the Wedge Document states:
"Discovery Institute's center for the Renewal of Science and Culture [now named the Center for Science and Culture] seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics, and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism."
Here the Discovery Institute clearly states its intention of making a case for "...a broadly theistic understanding of nature". Theistic.
Theism: the belief in the existence of one or more divinities or deities.
In their "Wedge rebuttal", DI essentially says, "Yeah? So what? We meant every word. We were just misunderstood." Fine. Your beliefs, your plan, your wedge.
The problem came later, when creationism was given a thrashing in the courts for violating the Establishment Clause. Well, that won't do, will it? DI then went into stealth mode, re-creating "creationism" as "intelligent design". Surely that should go over well in Dover where a Bush-appointed judge was certain to be sympathetic ID's pleading. IDists obstinately maintained before and during the trial that "intelligent design" wasn't religion - it was science and should be taught in the classroom along with evolution. After all, the new textbook, Of Pandas and People (which mysteriously appeared in Dover classrooms the first day of class, despite being voted down by the board), was full of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters all touting a new alternative to evolution under the name of "intelligent design".
But something went terribly wrong in Dover. When past revisions of Of Pandas and People were subpoenaed, it seemed all instances of "creationists" were replaced with "intelligent design proponents", with little or no additional changes to the content. Most embarrassing was a string of edits where "creationists" was replaced with "cdesignproponentists", a sloppy cut-and-paste in the act of disguising a theistic basis as a scientific one. It seems people WILL say anything (whether valid or not) to avoid confronting the scientific problems with neo-Darwinian theory.
(continued)
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Posted by ( QED ) on February 20, 2008 at 11:21 p.m.
(This comment was removed by the site staff.)
Posted by ( abb3w ) on February 21, 2008 at 12:48 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
As for the "700 scientists", there are even more scientists ONLY NAMED STEVE who have signed onto a competing statement. Current count is 864; feel free to check the NCSEweb.org site for more info on "Project Steve".
As for why evolution should be taught in biology class: while biology is the branch of science where evolution is both most necessary for broad comprehension and where evolution is most diversely illustrated, biology is not the only field where an evolutionary process of repeated variation and competitive selection takes place. The process of competition for judging between theories, and subsequent variation to try to encompass new discoveries, means that Science itself is also an evolutionary process. By understanding evolution in Biology, it may be better understood elsewhere.
The process of engineering design is evolutionary in character as well. (A historian of my acquaintance recommended George Basalla's book "The Evolution of Technology" as a good introduction to this aspect.) However, most "Intelligent Design" proponents are either as ignorant of this as they are of biology.
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