March
2005 Newsletter
"I
wish I were younger. What inclines me now to
think you may be right in regarding
[evolution] as the central and radical lie in
the whole web of falsehood that now governs
our lives is not so much your arguments
against it as the fanatical and twisted
attitudes of its defenders."
- C. S. Lewis
TBSE:
Please
remember to encourage your local biology
teacher to teach both "strengths and
weaknesses" of evolution theories as
required by TEKS 3A and is the clear intent
of that section, the SBOE that adopted
it, the present SBOE, and the vast
majority of people in Texas. However,
to implement the intent of the requirement
teachers will have to bring in supplemental
material, which the US Supreme Court has
affirmed they may do, specifically relating
to origins, (see "legal" under
teacher resources on the website).
Some supplemental materials and suggestions
for others are on our website.
During
the upcoming weeks many schools will be
covering this material, so please take 5-10
minutes to politely discuss this with your
local teachers or to report errors.
Similarly, when articles appear in your
local newspapers on the subject, take the
time to respond to them, pro and con.
Even if the paper does not print your
letter, your efforts will help to educate
the media on the profound well-known
scientific flaws of evolution theories,
such as the seemingly unanswerable question
of how the vast store of information in the
DNA molecule originated.
Now
for some relevant news you may have
missed...
Public
Debate: The previously
mentioned Veritas Forum was
held before a crowd of 1500-2000 at
Texas A&M University in College Station.
Dr. Michael Behe of Lehigh and Dr. Vincent
Cassone of TAMU spoke on whether various
structures found in living organisms are
irreducibly complex. While the
partisans on both sides likely left the
meeting unchanged, the opinion of many
observers was that those who were undecided
on the issue or who were open minded about
the evidence gave Dr. Behe a decided
advantage, even though he debated not just
Dr. Cassone but at times other members of
the TAMU faculty. Dr. Ide Trotter
moderated the event. More
information is in the TAMU school paper at:
http://www.thebatt.com/news/2005/02/16/News/Profs.Debate.Design.Theory-865865.shtml .
Fraudulent
Carbon Dating: An
anthropologist in Germany who is described
as a leading world expert on Neanderthals,
has resigned his position after his
university "...finds that Prof. Protsch
has forged and manipulated scientific facts
over the past 30 years." Among
the carbon dating problems with Prof.
Protsch's work: The "Bischof-Speyer"
skeleton with unusually good teeth was dated
by Protsch von Zieten dated as being
21,300 years old was actually only 3,300
years old, and another skull that Protsch
dated at 27,300 years old was found to
belong to an elderly man who died in the
year 1750! More information is
at:
Future Event: On
April 4, 2005, Dr. William Dembski will
receive this year's prestigious
Trotter Prize and give a lecture
associated with that award. The
event will be at Texas A&M
University in College Station.
Previous winners have included Drs. Paul
Davies, Robert Shapiro, Alan
Guth, John Polkinghorne, and Nobel
laureates Francis Crick and Charles
Townes.
What Darwin Didn't Know: Japanese
researchers, led by Dr. Keiichi Namba, in
order to understand how to build nanoscale
machines, are studying the bacterial
flagellum for clues on how the problem has
already been solved. Prof.
Namba first saw an electron micrograph of
the bacterial flagellum and its motor when
he was a graduate student. He was
surprised to see such complex and
sophisticated structures
existing
in living
organisms. It impressed him deep enough to
switch his research from muscle to
flagella after a while. “Looking at the
shape of the flagellar basal body, it
is obviously designed to
rotate...Individual atoms are used as
functional parts, and
this is the essential feature that makes
biological macromolecules distinct from
artificial machines at present."
Dr. Namba's team produced a
stunning video based on their measurement
and observations (not just artists'
imagination), if you have time and
bandwidth to view it (about 35 minutes
worth) at: http://www.nanonet.go.jp/english/mailmag/2004/011a.html .
It starts a bit slow and gets better,
including showing how the flagellum is
constructed.
Censorship
1: Challenges to the dogmatic
teaching of evolution-as-fact or
evolution-only in public schools continues
to grow nationwide. The ACLU has gone
ballistic over the Cobb County (Georgia)
school district putting a small sticker
inside their biology books reminding
students that evolution is a theory.
The full text of the sticker is:
"This textbook contains material on
evolution. Evolution is a theory, not
a fact, regarding the origin of living
things. This material should be
approached with an open mind, studied
carefully, and critically considered."
Honestly, doesn't the ACLU have better
things to do? At last report, the
school district is appealing the first
judge's decision that this sticker is too
dangerous to school children's young minds.
Censorship
2: School district trustees
in Dover Pennsylvania have been sued, again
led by the ACLU, over their policy of
letting students know that there are
alternatives to Darwinian evolution.
Imagine that! At last report a
parents' group is countersuing.
Censorship
3: A California parent is
fighting back. He has filed suit over
his district NOT teaching evolution
non-dogmatically and objectively as
California law requires and discriminating
against his efforts to get them to do so.
It remains to be seen whether the ACLU will
help him. (Don't hold your breath
waiting).
[Note:
How strong can evolution theory be when even
its supporters generally avoid debate and
prefer to silence its critics by using the
machinery of government and other
gatekeepers? How ironic that the
theory of evolution itself only survives
because of artificial protection
by government and academia from competition with
other theories of origins!]
Open
Minds 1: Kansas is booming.
In spite of dire predictions by the
Darwinian thought police, Kansas did not
collapse into backwoods oblivion after
voting to have more open minds several years
ago. Now, two elections later, and
with an even more conservative State Board
of Education, they may enact further
improvements to their curriculum.
Open
Minds 2: A Fox News affiliate
in California recently devoted almost four
minutes - a TV-land decade - to a very
positive story on intelligent design.
If you have a broadband connection, view it
here: http://ideacenter.org/files/Fox6_ID_02-28-05.mpg
Open
Minds 3: The Center for
Science and Culture of the Discovery
Institute, a Seattle-based think tank with
fellows around the nation, has launched an
internet "blog" that provides fast
response to media stories on evolution.
View it at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/
Open(ed)
Minds 6: In case you missed
it, in December one of the world's leading
atheists changed his mind. In spite
of conversations with his friend and
long-time colleague and
arch-atheist/evolutionist Dr. Richard
Dawkins, Dr. Antony Flew now agrees that
the complexity we find in living organisms
is a powerful argument for an intelligent
designer. Dr. Flew has not endorsed
publicly any belief in who that designer
might be, but he is now convinced that
life did not arise by accident.
Sorry
for the length of this note...these are
just some of the higher profile items
recently. It seems that the
fight for freedom is spreading
all over the world and is now finding
its way into American classrooms!
Just as information flow helped topple the
former Soviet Union, information flow is
slowly but surely toppling the
monopolistic hold evolution has over
public schools.
Are
you helping?
Texans
for Better Science Education Foundation