Darwin's Origin of Species gets too much attention as it is, I don't think three lessons would be productive. It would make more sense to me to point out tangable examples of descent with modification, all of which lead to the Cambrian, which Darwin and others were starting to realize. Basic Biology isn't going to require much more then an indepth understanding of various cell forms and functions, anatomy, reproduction, DNA and ecosysystems...etc. Spending a lot of time on natural history doesn't give a student a whole lot of real world knowledge to work with.



I'm not saying rake it over the coals but neodarwinism consists of proven facts and postulated principles. Given the etymology of the word science and how it has been used to distinguish between theory and practical application I think descent with modification is more of a theory while genetics is far more observable, repeatable and falsifiable. When there is a genetic basis for a transition like bird beaks and plant hybrids I don't see any problem with it. However, when you get into more elaborate biochemical transformations it gets more speculative especially with regards to ultimate origins.

Just one more thing, if mutations are what drives evolutionary change, as many biology textbooks will tell you, then the limits on how much change is possible should be emphasised as well. I still like M. Behes irreducable complexity and think it could be a comprehensive lesson on the economy of nature. Probably, bringing up Intelligent Design would not really be necessary since thinking people make up thier own minds anyway. I don't see what something like Paley's watch and stone analogy would hurt but only as a footnote or one of those little boxes they insert off to the side.

I would direct interested people to take a look at the successes of the program Avida in dealing with some of the perceived weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. In an article in Discover magazine some of the successes of Avida were laid out in plain language.

I think that, in an advanced high school biology class, a discussion of these weaknesses would definately have merit. However, the Avida project, unlike ID, uses a measurable, changeable, testable, verifiable and repeatable system to test the theory. It is rather interesting and, ultimately seems to verify much of Darwinian evolution.

Intelligent Design does nothing more than Descartes did so long ago. Through cogniton only he attempted to reduce his understanding of the world only to proveable facts. Finally realizing that he could only verify one thing: that he was a thinking being trying to understand the world, he then set out to trace his origin back to a creator. ID would make an excellent companion to Descartes "Cogitot Ergo Sum" in a philosophical debate. It does not make good science.

Arguing a different definition of science is an intellectual cop-out imo. Inductive logic hasn't substantially changed since it was identified by Aristotle 2,300 years ago. The Kansas BOE's attempt to rethink this concept is as disgraceful as it is an obvious ploy. They are setting the groundwork for later legal actions.

We have on the one hand an actual theory, supported by a vast body of fossil evidence and evidence from direct observation of the biosphere, explaining (or with the obvious potential to explain) essentially all variation in life on earth. It is not, precisely, a theory of life's origin, but it does imply that the humblest conceivable origin could have given rise to everything now living, in its vast complexity. It is NOT the case that there are separate "micro" and "macro" evolutionary theories; what is asserted is that over geologic time, random genetic variation plus natural selection (micro-changes, if you like) explain essentially all of life's variation (macro-changes, if you like).

We have on the other hand the bald assertion that this could not have happened without supervening intelligence. No mechanism is specified (apparently, a miracle occurs every time a new species emerges); no evidence for these supposed miracles is pointed to; the entire "evidence" consists of criticism of explanatory power of the standard account. But even if the standard account somehow failed utterly, the conclusion would not be that intelligent design were true; the conclusion would be that no satisfactory account existed.

Considering that the fossil record contains ample evidence of the emergence of new species, typically with some evidence of their phylogenous connections to their predecessors, it is patently false that the standard account fails to explain the emergence of "novel forms." That precisely (e.g. the emergence of novel avian forms on the Galapagos) is what it does explain. It does not, in itself, account for or attempt to account for why some periods of earth history have been characterized by more or less emergence of new species. Those are further questions concerning which theories are being enunciated and evidence is being sought.

The critical question that I would direct to the proponents of "intelligent design" is, what evidence could possibly be brought that would cause you to agree that life did NOT originate by intelligent design? You do not have a theory if you do not have potential disconfirmation. And if you do not have a theory, you do not have something worth bringing into the classroom.

I would like also to ask if the ontogenous affiliations of many life forms, e.g. that the fetus of a pig or a dog is essentially indistinguishable from that of a human being during the first weeks of gestation, evidence a twisted sense of humor in the intelligent entity hypothetically responsible for the separate creations of these species. Oh, and what about vestigial leg-bones in whales? A practical joke, or evidence of unintelligent design?

There is also the fact that the idea evolution by natural selection explains and predicts lot of biologicical phenomena. How does ID explain such things? If kids want to know why birds' bones are hollow or or why humans have toenails or why sharks and dolphins have similar morphologies, is ID's only answer "Because that's what the designer thought best"?

Indeed, but its worse than that. If the design was 'Intelligent', then why are there so many terrible design flaws with the human body? Is the 'designer' a moron?

It is fascinating to watch proponents of intelligent design wiggle on that question. There is always one of two answers. Either they simply deny there are any design flaws with the human body (they apparently disagree with 100% of the medical comunity on this one) or they simply answer 'we cannot know the will of God'.

And that is the inherent problem with bringing any religious tripe into a scientific debate, the unwillingness of those who seek to impose their religion on existing science to accept any possible failing in their theories.

Scientists, if disproven, will move on and attempt to develop a new hypothesis. It has happened a million times before, it happens every day in labs acros the world. But the religious folk are unwilling to be disproven, they take any attack on their theory as being absurd, and justify the worst problems away with the universal catch all; 'We may not understand, but God does'.

That is why you CANNOT bring ID or any similar religious drivel into the classroom, because its very nature is the antithisis of science. As opposed to being built on a foundation of evidence, it is built on a foundation of refusing evidence, and is presented as a massive tautology.

"This is so because God did it"
"But X, Y and Z make no sense!"
"God did it, so it does not have to make sense to us"

School is there to teach facts to children, but far more than that it is there to teach children to think for themselves, not swallow whatever the local priest, mullah, shaman or witch doctor says, regardless of evidence, in defiance of reason.



In the end, the best argument in this entire thread was made near the beginning: Let Kansas teach their children whatever they want in High School. When no kansas Children are being accepted to any respectable Universities around the world, then perhaps they will understand the error of their ways.

I am entirely sympathetic to your views. But of course, there are no "design flaws" in nature, because nature is, in general, not the result of design. Talk is very loose on this subject in popular science, where people say, "The strategy of this organism is..." or "The purpose of this anatomical feature is...", where they should say, "This organism is well adapted for..." and "This adaptation has been selected because...". The popular scientific vocabulary is, perversely and stupidly, all about design; many people therefore misunderstand.

The "design flaws" in humans are mostly due, of course, to selected ("successful") adaptations in humanity's phylogenous ancestors.

Personally, the reason I like ID is because it emphasises something that has puzzled scientists for decades. I call it, 'The energetic costs of evolution'. I found the phrase in this paper and it clarified a lot of things I was puzzled about:

"The different patterns of mutation rates among taxa indicate clearly that the rate of mutation is subject to evolutionary change. Because the fidelity of DNA replication depends on elaborate enzymatic machinery, mutational inactivation of any component of which can greatly elevate the mutation rate, selection acts primarily to reduce the standard mutation rate, although allowing higher rates in specific circumstances...This led him to ask why the mutation rate does not fall to zero." (Genetics, Vol. 148, 1667-1686, April 1998)

Some 30 years later they someone described this as the physiological costs but since the entropy is basic science I like to call it energetic costs. Consider this, suppose tommorow some school board decided that they would introduce a lesson plan for ID. Of course, they have to be religiously neutral or the Supreme Court will be mad at them. The biology teacher could describe the molecular mechanism for the bacteria flaggelum in its component parts and simply ask the question: How could this have been developed peicemeal over time? The lesson would not have to mention ID except to say that this is the conclusion of a small group of scientists that attribute it to an intelligence that produced it deliberatly. Give kids some credit folks, they are going to think about this sooner or later anyway.

ID has only looked at this one molecular machine and there are countless others. When I took Biology 101 Dr. Vejay (not his real name) said that it frustrated him that he was continually being asked why they needed this class. I thought about this long after I finished the class and I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, what if you have some medical condition that results from a defective enzyme and you have to decide which treatment you want to chose from. Cancer is actually one of the worst diseases known to man and virtually everyone will be effected by it in one way or the other. I actually have a point here so bear with me.

ID is an unfortunate expression of a problem with evolutionary biology that scientists like M. Behe didn't encounter untill he was allready working in the field. Arguably, there might not have been such a thing as Intelligent Design had he been shown the problems with the theory of evolution, particularly gradualism. Let people think for themselves and by the way, sometimes the answer in science is we don't really know. That is why the definition the Kansas State School Board was wrong, science is about an ongoing process, not a foregone conclusion.

No one suggested ID be taught, the minority report only suggested that scientific investigations are open ended. If this suggests intelligent design then so what?

Perhaps you would care to say how a proposition that has no possible disconfirmation could convey any "emphasis" (your term) of fact, or how any possible observations of nature could "suggest" (your term; it would be more precise to say "be explained by") such a proposition. It is not ID as a proposition, but its proponents who point to this or that problem in the standard account.

If ID could have some possible confrontation with the evidence, and thus with the standard theory proposed on evidence, then it would be possible to entertain it as science. Since only its proponents confront the standard theory, no conceivable degree of success of their criticisms could establish the truth of ID. It does, of course, lie somewhere in the outer realms of possibility that such criticisms (more precisely, the facts to which they point) will be sufficient to tumble the standard theory: that is because the standard theory, being science and thus unlike ID, is capable of disconfirmation.

I would have to say that disconformation (which I think you are calling falsifiablity) is the entire point of intelligent design. It's an old analogy but simply enough for the purpose of our little discussion. Paley suggested that a man walking along the beach finds a stone and a watch. Now while the stone can be accounted for with any number of explanations there is only one that makes sense for the watch, it was intelligently designed. The proposal of ID is not as convoluted as it might seem, through natural processes we know that the change of alleles occur. Not everything in nature escapes explanation by naturalistic random processes, in fact most things are explained. When we get into the origination of novel forms and major mophological change things are less clear.

In order to understand molecular mechanisms you would have to understand that there are limits beyond which species cannot evolve into an altogether different kind.

“Gärtner, by the results of these transformation experiments, was led to oppose the opinion of those naturalists who dispute the stability of plant species and believe in a continuous evolution of vegetation. He perceives in the complete transformation of one species into another an indubitable proof that species are fixed with limits beyond which they cannot change.” (Mendel)

The molecular machines that regulate the cell cycle, and thus, evolutionary change is guided by pure economics. If the change produces more benefit then it costs it has a selective advantage. The falsifiablity of ID is found in its proposal of how to identify Intelligent Design through irreduciable complexity. Keep in mind that guys like M. Behe are molecular biologists so they know what is testable and what is not. The whole point of the bacteria flagellum discussion is that it is irreducibly complex and therefore must have been fully formed by some process other then random changes. The benefit must outweigh the energy costs of producing it and it can't happen peicemeal.

Mark Twain said that man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired. Charles Darwin held out hope that man would evolve into a more perfect species, but feared that he was doomed to self-destruction before getting there. Twain, who was an astute observer of human nature, had some doubts about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and was of opinion that if man descended from the apes that the apes were the “higher animals.” Either way you want to present it in the schools, we don’t come out looking very good.

I have decided to devise my own form of "Creationism" which I recommend be approved for teaching in all public schools. Here is the shortened version:

Genesis Revised

In the beginning, God made the heaven and the earth; and He saw that it was good. Then God made man in His own image to rule over all living things; but He was drunk at the time, and made a botched job of it. Then, while He still had a hangover, God created woman, which just made things worse. As a consolation, God let Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. But not satisfied to live in a paradise, the damn fools lost it! And ever since then, almost everything has gone to the Devil.

By the bye, there will be a test on this on Friday.