more on book burnings are next- an affirmative response to pro-creationist "science teaching"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Lin, Herb" <HLin () nas edu>
Date: November 16, 2004 11:25:04 AM EST
To: dave () farber net, Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on book burnings are next- an affirmative 
response to pro-creationist "science teaching"

Dave - for IP if you like.  It may be an affirmative way to fight 
creationism in the schools.

 

Herb

==

 

An affirmative response to creationist/intelligent design

mandates in the curriculum

 

 

Various state decisions to eliminate evolution from science curricula 
and to promote creationism and "intelligent design" demands an 
effective response from the scientific community.  In the past, 
scientists have been quite vocal in their condemnation of such efforts, 
but more is needed.

 

One approach that would make a most powerful statement against the 
state-sponsored lunacy is for collective action by the nation's 
colleges and universities.  Nearly all of these institutions of higher 
learning require at least a year of high school science for admission, 
and that year of high school science is usually biology.  Biology 
without evolution hardly counts as science, and thus does not logically 
fulfill any university's admission requirement for science. 

  

The colleges and universities of the nation could make an enormously 
powerful statement about the illegitimacy of biology without evolution 
by refusing to count as an academic subject any high school biology 
course taught in states that have mandated the teaching of creationism 
or intelligent design in biology courses.  Exceptions could be granted 
if students demonstrated adequate exposure to biology's fundamental 
principles, including evolution, perhaps through an acceptable score on 
a national biology achievement test.  Alternatively, and perhaps more 
subversively, exceptions could also be granted if transcripts were 
accompanied by written statements from the high schools of origin that 
evolution was indeed the central focus of the biology courses appearing 
on the transcript.

 

In the past, statements and publications about evolution and 
creationism/intelligent design from mainstream scientists have amounted 
to not much more than hand-wringing.  Today, the univerisites and 
colleges of the nation have a golden opportunity to strike a blow for 
reason and sanity.

 

 

Herbert Lin

Views are mine alone, not those of any institution with which I may be 
affiliated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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