Gnosius
The Dark Corners of Evolutionary Activism
by , 17th July 2012 at 10:02 PM (2700 Views)
By Paul Greene
Excerpt from “A Time of Change – On the Necessary Return to a Rational Understanding of the Nature of Man and the Universe.”
Chapter 12.… it is “not a good thing to be critical of evolutionism.”
– Eugenie Scott, Executive Director for the National Center for Science Education. (From an interview Scott once gave to a reporter partially shown in the Icons of Evolution , a documentary produced by ColdWater Media)
Her statement was in reference to the case of a teacher by the name of Roger DeHart from Burlington, a town in the state of Washington. DeHart ended up losing his job as a biology teacher when he insisted he should be allowed to present in front of his high school students some of the articles written by scientists with prestigious scientific organizations and peer reviewed exposing the flaws in the theory of evolution.
What happened to DeHart is reminiscent of the way dictatorial Eastern European regimes used to declare highly qualified professors unfit to teach in schools and universities when they refused to promote in front of their students the falsified version of the history of their country concocted by government propagandists.
The Eugenie Scotts of our education system are the same individuals who continue to put Haeckel’s embryo drawings or derivatives of his drawings in our students’ biology books despite the fact that they were exposed years ago for being highly deceptive. Known as the German Darwin, Ernst Haeckel was a good friend and a staunch supporter of Charles Darwin. Paradoxically, he too did not buy the idea that natural selection and gradual evolution were responsible for the species we see around us.
The reason why he was endorsing public the theory of evolution was because similar to Thomas Huxley he too was of the opinion that even if it lacked in credibility this theory was the best tool scientists had at their disposition to help them fight religious irrational. While this was certainly a noble cause, in order to justify as a scientist his support for evolution Haeckel resorted to falsifying evidence, and as history will have it he would not be the last one to do that.
His drawings suggest common ancestry based on a series of made-up, as in manipulated embryonic similarities. No other than evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, NCSE’s idol and Project Steve’s patron stated about the dishonorable use of Haeckel’s falsified evidence thatWe should... not be surprised that Haeckel’s drawings entered nineteenth-century textbooks. But we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks! (March 2000, Nature magazine)
The activist propagandistic attributions of something deceptively called National Center for Science Education are more than obvious. To give another significant example, we know that Professor Scott Minnich refused to be interviewed for the PBS documentary Intelligent Design on Trial. Contrary to what Paula Apsell, senior executive producer declared at the time, as Minnich explained to me during an e-mail exchange we had a couple of years ago the actual reason he did not appear in her film was because he feared retribution from the part of the academic organization he worked for.
After that exchange of e-mails with Minnich, I did some additional research and I was able to find out that, well, he was not kidding. A week before the Dover trial, the President of the University of Idaho, the school where Minnich was a course coordinator went on record stating that intelligent design could not be discussed in science class or on the campus.
The same week, apparently part of a concentrated effort to put Minnich on notice once he made known his decision to testify in Dover in support of intelligent design, the Biology Department at the UI sponsored a lecture against intelligent design given by no other than Eugenie Scott, the expert in spreading false information in our schools. Needless to say it, no one was encouraged to present a counter-argument to Scott’s biased views.
The Biology Department of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the school Professor Michael Behe is teaching at, has also chosen to make a public statement proclaiming its strong opposition to his anti-evolution scientific views. It is worth reproducing it here in its entirety since this is something extremely representative for the game of politics associated with the public debate over the validity of the theory of evolution played by our universities:When was the last time they performed a “rational hypothesis testing” of the theory of evolution, though? Never. And why on earth would anyone want to test intelligent design experimentally? Do we need to test the fact that cats have four legs? Is there really a need to test the fact that we have five fingers on each of our hands and five toes on each of our feet? What kind of test one would have to perform in order to prove the four figures of former American presidents on Mount Rushmore are the work of an intelligent being and not Mother Nature? And last but not the least why is Behe’s position not founded on “the utmost respect for the scientific method”?
Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design"
The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.
Apparently, those who wrote the above statement did not care to truthfully acknowledge what he actually wrote about. The undertone of their position was obviously political, nothing to do with science or with “integrity in the conduct of research.” After all, Behe was a biology professor they presumably hired because of his integrity and his respect for the scientific method. Those who read Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box know that contrary to what the Department of Biology at Lehigh University declares, and unlike the theory of evolution, intelligent design is a fact any of us can observe. One would also say intelligent design was tested experimentally since anyone interested in understanding what intelligent design actually stands for can look at what biology tells us about the molecular structures and functions of our organs, for example, and take notice of the reality of the fact that all biological systems are irreducibly complex. Intelligent design is not a theory. All it takes to acknowledge its reality is a simple act of observation, honesty, and your basic ability to process the information encoded into the facts observed.
That being said, while everything is intelligently designed we actually do not know who or what is behind that. The main controversial issue about ID is that some are unwilling to acknowledge its reality because of the terms under which religious people do. Creationists claim ID proves the existence of a creator, which nothing but an unproven assumption, sort of like the assumptions made by Darwin in his theory. The capital problem for evolutionists though is that the intelligent design aspect of the universe implies that everything in nature is assembled and then functions according to an existing idea, concept or plan. This leads to an inevitable inference that makes the evolutionists go bunkers: random mutations could not produce irreducibly complex systems. As a result, according to the very data produced by biologists gradual evolution has no bases in reality. As unsubstantiated the assumption that a supernatural human-like agent is behind the intelligent design aspect of the universe, we should not dismiss the amazing reality of design simply because for their own reasons creationists chose to make it into something it is not.
A declaration of support for academic freedom can only be taken serious if an university allows its faculty to encourage and the students to enter a debate where everyone is free to advance conflicting unorthodox opinions. The Biology Department, however, used its position of power to impose a new brand of orthodoxy.
Instead of creating the premises and an environment conducive of a healthy academic debate, on April 6, 2006, Lehigh University invited the same evolutionary activist Eugenie Scott to speak to its students as part of Foster Hewett Lectures Series, Department of Earth and Environmental Services, something described on their website as four days of “social events on the topic of biological evolution.” Undoubtedly, the university was dedicating actually its funds and efforts to promoting academic bias rather than academic freedom.
Read more excerpts from A Time of Change at:
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Updated 18th July 2012 at 12:33 PM by Gnosius
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