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Conclusion: the Kansas Standards and Beyond. Although only 35% of Americans believe in evolution, they have censored debate about the issue. Until the internet, that is. Now everyone can look at the flaws and illogic in evolution theory and decide for themselves. Everyone can look at evidence for human evolution too, if there were any. While sites displaying the flaws and frauds behind evolution are sprouting everywhere, there is a dearth of sites presenting direct evidence for human evolution, because there isn't any to present. Yet the political advantages of evolution to liberals remain enormous. When states like Kansas reform their science standards to allow dissent about evolution, liberals and the media go ballistic to preserve the myth. In Kansas, it was a return to the media distortions of the Scopes trial. The Kansas Controversy. In Kansas, a veterinarian named Steve Abrams on the state school board led an effort to reform its liberal science standards. Few, if any, are better suited for scrutinizing evolutionary claims than a veterinarian, who must complete a highly competitive and rigorous training in biology and nature. The reform effort did not attempt to exclude evolution. Instead, it made two key changes: (1) it allowed dissent and discussion and (2) it introduced the important concept of falsifiability. The reformed standards included the following:
Well put, and any student would benefit from this. But evolutionists dogmatically oppose dissent on the issue, lest its many flaws be realized. There's far much to hide in the theory of evolution for its promoters to allow challenge. The evolutionists insisted on removing the above section, and with the help of a massive media campaign were successful. They even deleted this definition:
Evolutionists felt compelled to censor this definition of "fact"! The reformed standards contained the wise statement that:
The evolutionists removed that statement, and instead implicitly encouraged teachers to declare challenges to evolution as "outside the domain of science." One portion of the reformed standards contained an innocuous reference to historical floods. No credible scientist denies that massive, and likely global, floods covered the Earth in the past. But due to the Biblical reference to Noah's Flood, evolutionists generally exclude evidence of historic floods from school standards. Specifically, the reformed standards merely suggested that students "Discuss major river floods and resultant sedimentary rock deposition." The evolutionists removed that from the standards, leaving them without a single reference to historical flooding. Similarly, the liberal California science standards omit any reference to floods, even though they contain numerous references to volcanoes, earthquakes, and other geological phenomena. Falsifiability. The evolutionists' most egregious change to the Kansas standards, however, was their censorship of an entire section explaining falsifiability. This is a powerful 20th century doctrine that postdates Darwinism by over 50 years. "To be falsifiable a theory must be testable, by others, in such a way that, if it is false, the tests can show that it is false," the reformed Kansas standards explained. For example, the hypothesis that the sun rises in the East can be tested in a way that, if it were false, the test would show it to be false. Observing the sun rising once in the West would show it to be false, and thus the hypothesis is falsifiable and is scientific. The Supreme Court has expressly established falsifiability as a key criterion in determine whether a claim is scientific or not. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993) ("Scientific methodology today is based on generating hypotheses and testing them to see if they can be falsified; indeed, this methodology is what distinguishes science from other fields of human inquiry.") (quotations omitted). http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/509/579.html . If there is no possible test that could ever show a theory to be false, then that theory is not scientific. People could still claim that the theory is true thousands of years from now, and there would still be no way to show otherwise. Falsifiability is to scientists what judicial restraint is to judges: an essential way to restrain the inevitable attempts to seek influence and power. Falsifiability places limits on the expansive claims that some scientists make, whether for reasons of politics or publicity. But just as law school professors did not teach judicial restraint to future judges, science departments do not teach falsifiability to future scientists. It requires effort from outside the field to limit the unjustified, expansive claims of those in the field. Most, perhaps all, of the key claims of the theory of evolution are not falsifiable. There are no tests that can be devised that could possibly disprove "evolution as change" claims, for example, and thus those claims are not science. Accordingly, the evolutionists removed the lengthy and educational sections on falsifiability from the Kansas standards. Note that while evolution theory is largely non-falsifiable, many statements associated with religion are falsifiable and thus more scientific than evolution. For example, the statement that "Jesus rose from the dead" is falsifiable, because if it were untrue then His deceased body might be found. That the body could be found if the statement were false, and yet has not been found, reinforces the validity of the statement. Many religious claims are more scientific than the theory of evolution is. Some cling to the view that there must be some truth in evolution because some believe in it, including many scientists. But a quick look at what scientists also believe in should dispel any persuasion to that argument. Scientists believe in extraterrestrial life also. In 1977, the Journal of Scientific Exploration published a poll of American astronomers that showed 53% thought further investigation of UFOs "probably" or "certainly" deserved further study. An additional 27% thought that UFOs "possibly" deserved further study. http://www.jse.com/haisch/ufo.html . As to physicists, 58% believe in a "many-worlds" theory whereby the act of observing an atomic particle supposedly generates many separate worlds, one new world for each possible result of the observation. http://neon.airtime.co.uk/users/station/m-worlds.htm . Prominent physicists like Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg have believed in this far-fetched theory. These high percentages of belief by scientists and non-scientists in dubious theories do not mean the theories are true. Nor does it mean that there must be some truth to the theories. Similarly, belief by many in evolution does not mean that there must be some truth to the theory. UFOs, for example, cannot be partially true. Nor can evolution. There's no middle ground on these theories. If artistic beauty exists in the world, and it does, then there is an artist responsible. Art is not utilitarian, and it doesn't evolve from one artwork to another. Schools and the media have made "evolution" synonymous with Darwin, but actually the term "evolution" predates Darwin by over 200 years. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists the origin of the term as 1622, and it was frequently used for a different purpose by scholars like Adam Smith long before Darwin. http://www.m-w.com The first dictionary definition has nothing to do with Darwinism: "one of a set of prescribed movements." Note that it must be "prescribed" - i.e., the product of an intelligent designer. The term "evolution" historically applied to utilitarian systems like the free market, as the product of intelligent decisionmaking. Nothing unintelligent can become more complex on its own; evolution requires intelligence as an active ingredient, whether it be the development of a machine or a market. Evolution has no genuine application outside of intelligent agents driving the change. Literally, the term means "unrolling" - which implies that it is the utilitarian result of an intelligent designer. One of the great misnomers is the term "social Darwinism," which many have used to criticize applying competitive theories to economic or political situations. That is backwards. Laissez-faire principles predate Darwin, and hence Darwin's theory should be called "biological laissez-faire" rather than the other way around. See Phillip E. Johnson, Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture 35 (InterVarsity Press, 1998) (suggesting that Darwinism be called "social Spencerism," named after the theorist who applied laissez-faire economic principles to social issues). Evolution, like design, requires an intelligent designer. It is a misuse of language to apply the term "evolution" to a context that supposedly lacks design, as Darwinists do. Conclusion. Science shapes how people view the world and themselves. There are, however, powerful political and financial incentives to distort science education. Vigilance is necessary to guard against this, and reverse distortions already propagated. Once a student believes the state-mandated theory of evolution, that person is statistically likely to become a liberal voter and an agnostic or atheist. It's no mystery why some seek to require the teaching of evolution. What is a mystery is why we allow it. * * * * * * Questions for further thought and discussion: 1. What other theories, claimed to be scientific, are not falsifiable? 2. Which is more influential to persons' political and religious beliefs: science or history? 3. What other terms, besides "evolution", are misused by Darwinists?
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