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High school students who are taught creationism instead of evolutionary theory lack the critical thinking skills that are necessary for college, according to Stanford President Emeritus Donald Kennedy.That sounds like something sensible although I'm not sure the correlation is a cause and effect relationship. Perhaps the lack of critical thinking skills and the teaching of creationism have a deeper cause?
Kennedy is currently serving as an expert witness for the University of California Regents, who are being sued by a group of Christian schools, students and parents for refusing to allow high school courses taught with creationist textbooks to fulfill the laboratory science requirement for UC admission. After reading several creationist biology texts, Kennedy said he found "few instances in which students are being introduced to science as a process—that is, the way in which scientists work or carry out experiments, or the way in which they analyze and interpret the results of their investigations."I don't see why a college or university should be obliged to accept a creationist biology course as a legitimate science course.
Kennedy said that the textbooks use "ridicule and inappropriately drawn metaphors" concerning evolution to discourage students from formulating independent opinions. "Even with respect to the hypothesis that dominates them—namely, that biological complexity and organic diversity are the result of special creation—critical thinking is absent," he added.
Everything we publish is freely available online throughout the world, for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish. No permission required.If large corporations like John Wiley & Sons are going to threaten to sick lawyers on bloggers like Shelley then we'll just have to ignore everything that's published in their journals. That's what I'm going to do from now on.
Knoechel, T.R., Tucker, A.D., Robinson, C.M., Phillips, C., Taylor, W., Bungay, P.J., Kasten, S.A., Roche, T.E., and Brown, D.G. (2006) Regulatory roles of the N-terminal domain based on crystal structures of human pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 2 containing physiological and synthetic ligands. Biochemistry 45:402-15. [doi: 10.1021/bi051402s]
As Francis Collins, head of the project which mapped the human genome, has written of DNA sequence similarities, “This evidence alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor” because an intelligent cause can reuse successful design principles. We know this because we are intelligent agents ourselves, and we do this all the time. We take instructions we have written for one thing and use them for another. The similarity is not the result of a blind mechanism but rather the result of our intelligent activity.This is an old argument. It ignores the fact that sequence similarities match the phylogenies determined independently from comparative morphology and the fossil record. This is the "twin nested hierachies" evidence for evolution and it's powerful evidence indeed. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that the differences in sequences correspond closely to what we expect from evolution by random genetic drift.
Some design proponents think the evidence for common ancestry is good (e.g., Michael Behe), while others—citing the fossil record, especially The Cambrian Explosion—do not. But neither group thinks that sequence similarity alone proves either common ancestry or the Darwinian mechanism, as so many science writers of our day seem eager to assume.I congratulate Logan Gage for acknowledging that there are disagreements within the Intelligent Design Creationist camp. That's not something we see very often. However, I think he may be distorting Behe's position a little bit. Perhaps he means to place all the emphasis on "similarity alone" but that seems to be a quibble. Here's what Behe says in Darwin's Black Box on pages 175-177. Judge for yourself whether Behe thinks sequence analysis provides strong support for common descent.
When methods were developed in the 1950s to determine the sequences of proteins, it became possible to compare the sequence of one protein with another. A question that was immediately asked was whether analogous proteins in different species, like human hemoglobin and horse hemoglobin, had the same amino acid sequence. [The question was asked because it was a prediction of evolution-LAM]. The answer was intriguing: horse and human hemoglobins were very similar but not identical. Their amino acids were the same in 129 out of 146 positions in one of the protein chains of hemoglobin, but different in the remaining positions. When the sequences of the hemoglobins of monkey, chicken, frog, and others became available, their sequences could be compared with human hemoglobin and with each other. Monkey hemoglobin had 5 differences with that of humans; chickens had 26 differences; and frogs had 46 differences. These similarities were highly suggestive. Many researchers concluded that similar sequences strongly supported descent from a common ancestor.The reason for bringing this up is to show that Behe accepts common descent and sequence similarity is strong evidence of common descent. It would be nice if the Intelligent Design Creationists acknowledged this and discussed the sum total of the evidence and not just the sound bite version of sequence similarity.
For the most part it was shown that analogous proteins from species that were already thought to be closely related (like man and chimp, or duck and chicken) were pretty similar in sequence, and proteins from species thought to be distantly related (such as skunk and skunk cabbage) were not that similar. In fact, for some proteins one could correlate the amount of sequence similarity with the estimated time since various species were thought to have last shared a common ancestor and the correlation was quite good. Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling then proposed the molecular clock theory, which says that the correlation is caused by proteins accumulating mutations over time. The molecular clock has been vigorously debated since it was proposed, and many issues surrounding it are still contended. Overall, however, it remains a viable possibility....
The three general topics of papers published in JME [the Journal of Molecular Evolution]—the origin of life, mathematical models of evolution, and sequence analysis—have included many intricate, difficult, and erudite studies. Does such valuable and interesting work contradict this book's message? Not at all. To say that Darwinian evolution cannot explain everything in nature is not to say that evolution, random mutation, and natural selection do not occur, they have been observed (at least in cases of microevolution) many different times. Like the sequence analysts, I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form? No one has ever explained in detailed, scientific fashion how mutation and natural selection could build the complex, intricate structures discussed in this book.
First, my apologies to anyone who's responded to Larry's comment. I deleted it, because I don't want him dirtying up my blog.I've decided not to read Mixing Memory any more. I'm thinking that Chris has gone off the rails and I don't want to be the one that tips him over the edge.
Next, Matt, I have nothing but contempt or the nouveau atheists (I use that phrase to convey their tackiness, in case that wasn't apparent). I have been saying as much for about 6 months now, and will continue to do so. I won't apologize for it, either. They deserve nothing but contempt. And it should be noted that contempt for a relatively small, privileged group does not entail contempt for anyone else (I do have contempt for other groups, of course, but most people on the planet I'm OK with) or a broad sense of superiority. Do I feel superior to them? Anyone who's read a few books would. Do I feel superior to everyone else? Certainly not.
Mike, atheists should respond by pointing out how insane that kind of talk is. They should note that saying a group is not really American, or doesn't matter, sounds more and more like, say, Nazi antisemitic rhetoric when it's used by people in power (and that includes people in the media, who are, obviously, in positions of power). Of course, one doesn't have to call all religious people stupid, and advocate for the eradication of religion (which, I should add, also sounds a lot like Nazi rhetoric) to do so. I have nothing against being mean by itself. I have something against being mean, stupid, and totalitarian (little "t").
Richard, my point is that, by and large, they aren't even being "rude" in the same way. Instead, what they're trying to do is force their narrow world view on the entire rest of the world (go read Moran and others' talk of ridding the world of superstition, by which they mean all religious beliefs, on their blogs), through aggression and violence. Granted, it's rhetorical aggression and violence, but it's still aggression and violence. And perhaps worst of all, it is rhetoric with no obligation to facts or truth. Perhaps a better name for the nouveau atheists would be "evangelical" or "proselytizer" atheists.