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.

Additionally, please continue reporting large or small errors in textbooks your children are using at: http://www.strengthsandweaknesses.org/BookReport.htm .

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:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42940 .

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 Minds 4: The New York Times, not known recently for journalistic excellence or impartiality, is aghast and shocked that some teachers do not believe in evolution and are skipping it in their classes.
See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/opinion/4fri4.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

Open Minds 5: The same New York Times did print an opinion guest editorial (op/ed) by Dr. Michael Behe headlined "Design for Living". There is hope.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/07behe.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

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?

Mark

Mark Ramsey

Texans for Better Science Education Foundation

www.strengthsandweaknesses.org

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