Could Florida’s Darwinian regulations be “evolving” from “fact” to free inquiry? In More on the vote on evolution and Florida’s new science standards Leslie Postal reports that teaching Evolution in schools is now mandated, but officially as the “scientific theory of” Evolution.
Will students now be able to seriously study evolution as “a scientific theory” – with all the testing, probing, and skepticism required by the scientific method? Or will they be Expelled for exercising their unalienable rights to free speech? – that founded the Declaration of Independence (which heads the US Codes Organic Laws) and are preserved by the First Amendment.
In a Special Report on the American Spectator Ben Stein writes::
—————————————-
Florida’s Darwinian Interlude
Published 2/20/2008 12:08:44 AM
Just a few tiny, insignificant little questions.
* How did the universe start?
* Where did matter come from?
* Where did energy come from?
* Where did the laws of motion, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, come from?
* Where did gravity come from?
* How did inorganic matter, that is, lifeless matter such as dirt and rocks, become living beings?
* Has anyone ever observed beyond doubt the evolution of a new mammalian or aviary species, as opposed to changes within a species?
These teeny weeny little questions are just some of the issues as to which Darwin and Darwinism have absolutely no verifiable answers.
Hypotheses. Yes. Guesses. Yes. Proof? None.
To my little pea brain, these are some pretty big issues about evolution, the origins of life, and genetics that Darwinism cannot answer. Now, to be fair, does anyone else have verifiable answers either? Not as far as I know.
But if there are no answers that can be reproduced in the laboratory, isn’t any theory about them a hypothesis or a guess? Isn’t any hypothesis worth thinking about? And aren’t these immense questions?
Yet the state of Florida, the glorious Sunshine State, was (I am told), until recently, considering legislation that would make it illegal to allow teachers or students in public schools to discuss any hypothesis about origins of life or the universe except that it all happened by accident without any prime mover or first cause or designer — allowing only, again, the hypothesis, which is considered Darwinian, that it all started by, well, by, something that Darwin never even mentioned.
That is, the state of Florida was considering mandating that only Darwinian-type suppositions can be allowed about scientific subjects that Darwin never studied. (This is not to mention that we know now that Darwin was wildly wrong about some subjects such as genetics, and, again, although he wrote about the evolution of species, never observed an entirely new species evolve.)
This was beyond Stalinism. Stalinism decreed that only Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin knew all the answers, but it did not say that subjects they never mentioned could only be studied if the student guessed at what they might have said. The proposed law in the state of Florida was an anti-knowledge, anti-freedom of inquiry law on a scale such as has rarely been encountered. Maybe in Pol Pot’s Kampuchea there were such laws, but they have been unknown in the USA until now. See the Full Article – Florida’s Darwinian Interlude”
———————————-
Bob Fliss reports: Science standards will call evolution scientific theory including:
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Tuesday’s speakers was that few fit the “faith versus science” stereotype perpetuated by “Inherit the Wind.”
Pro-amendment speakers frequently relied on scientific arguments, like the lack of fossil evidence for the “missing links” assumed by evolutionary theory. And the anti-amendment forces included clergymen who asserted that evolution and religious faith are compatible.
. . .
Today’s orthodox Darwinians “want to avoid debate by contending that the matter is already settled,” said Rich Akin, chief executive officer of Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity, a Clearwater-based association of nonsectarian evolution skeptics.
“The fossil record continually reflects abrupt appearances,” Akin added. “Darwinian evolution is in a state of collapse scientifically and the state of Florida should not protect it.”
. . .
Several Roman Catholic voices joined the anti-amendment speakers. “I may be the only person in this room who’s actually an evolutionary biologist,” said Dean Joseph Travis of the Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences. Travis recounted first learning about evolution in Catholic school, and that the church has never viewed faith and scientific theory as incompatible. “Can we explain everything in the living world by our understanding of evolution — no,” Travis said.