Section A · Page 4
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, July 19, 2000
Panelists divided, argue evolution-creation issue
By Jim O'Malley editor@kansan.com Kansan co-editor
The panelists in the discussion that followed Wednesday's premiere of *Origins* couldn't agree on much — not even on whether the play was mistitled.
"All that biological evolution says is that living things have common ancestors," said Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education. "The origin of life is not evolution. Neither is the Big Bang theory."
Leonard Kristhalka, director of KU's Natural History Museum, said that evolution concerned only biological origins—the origin of species—but that the ultimate origins of the universe and of life were not part of the study of evolution.
But Tom Willis, president of the Creation Research Society for Mid-America, said science applied evolution to everything. His organization's Web site says evolution is responsible for much of the evil in the modern world.
Ed Asner speaks about the Kansas evolution controversy. He performed at the Lied Center July 12. Photo by Jim O'Malley/KANSAN
The goal of Willis' organization is to "show that Biblical Creation, because it is true, is the only 'scientific' explanation of origins, and therefore is the only account of origins that can possibly be useful to science," according to the group's Web site, www.csama.org.
John Calvert, corporate attorney and director of the Intelligent Design Network, argued that science's inability to explain the origin of life undermined the principle of biological continuity that underlies evolutionary theory.
Calvert is an advocate of intelligent design, the idea that living things are not the product of natural processes, but are designed by a creator. The modern intelligent design movement was founded by Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson in the early 1990s. The movement's leaders have academic credentials in a variety of fields, such as law and philosophy, but the movement has little support among biologists.
Calvert said there were two answers to the question of origins. One is naturalistic, based entirely on chance and necessity. The other answer, he said, was that life's origin and diversity are the result of design.
He said there was evidence supporting intelligent design, but that modern scientific naturalism excluded design. This was bad logic, bad science, bad culture, and bad law, he said.
Calvert said that the Scopes trial represented censorship of evolutionary theory. But now, he said, science is censoring scientific evidence of design.
"If modern science would allow design to be tested in a fair and open manner, I wouldn't have to be here," he said. Tom Willis agreed.
Tom Willis agreed.
"Genie argues it is an establishment of religion to teach anything contrary to evolution," he said. "But they have excluded everything but evolution. That is biotomy."
Scott said science was not engaged in censorship. Science examined young earth creationism in the 1980s and found it wanting. And the newer intelligent design movement, she said, has not established itself in research at the university
"It is not being used to guide research," she said. "You don't establish a scientific field by affirmation. You establish it by hard work."
level.
Scott said after the debate that science was not what philosophers, lawyers or political activists say it is or should be. The real definition of science is what scientists do.
"Scientists generally don't have a definition." Scott said. "They just go out and do it."
104. So-called "they just go out and do it"
Ideas that are not supported by scientific research should not be taught in public school science courses, she said.
Intelligent design advocates want to change science so it lets in a designer, Scott said. That would introduce the supernatural into science.
"Science lacks the tools to evaluate the supernatural." she said.
Kristalka agreed. He said creationism and intelligent design were not scientific because they were based on the supernatural—which can't be examined scientifically. Intelligent design was no different from Biblical creationism in that respect, he said.
"Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo," he said.
Kristalka said that through the ages, new knowledge has made people uncomfortable. The persecution of Galileo was one example. Knowledge that the earth was not the center of the universe shook people because it meant we lost our centrality. he said.
"The church took out its discomfort on Galileo," he said.
Darwin's discoveries did the same thing, Krishtalka said. Darwin showed that humans were not specially created but are related to other animals. This was humbling for humans.
Lots of knowledge is uncomfortable, Kristishka said — the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, for example. But it is no less true, he said.
Edited by Ben Embry
By Jim O'Malley
editor@kansan.com
Kansan co-editor
Actors Ed Asner and Shirley McKnight are Kansans and proud of it.
Origins recounts historic trial, sparks dispute
But they aren't proud of the Kansas State Board of Education's controversial decision last August to remove Darwinian evolution from the state's science education standards.
Which is why they and other actors were at the Lied Center last Wednesday to perform in a new play, Origins, based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tenn.
"So much science supports evolution." Asner said. "Kansas has put itself in a more bumbling position than Tennessee was in 75 years ago, and this saddens me because it's my state. This state is too good to let it continue."
The play and a panel discussion on evolution after the performance were sponsored by the People for the American Way Foundation, a liberal advocacy group based in Washington. D.C.
Ralph Neas, foundation president, said that the evolution-creation debate was national, but that "Kansas is today's ground-zero in the battle over evolution."
Neas said public school students should be taught about creationism, but not in science courses.
"Religion should not be removed from the public arena," he said. "But that's a far cry from teaching creationism as science."
In 1925, it was illegal in Tennessee to teach any theory that denied the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible, and to teach instead that man was descended from other animals. High school teacher John Scopes broke that law and was prosecuted in a highly publicized trial. Three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan headed the prosecution. Famed criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow defended Scones.
The primary elections for state board of education candidates are on Aug. 1. But Neas said the play and panel discussion were educational, not political. The date was chosen because last week was the 75th anniversary of the Scopes trial, he said.
Legally, the result of the trial was less than earth-shattering. After a week of legal wrangling, Scopes pleaded guilty and was fined $100. And the Tennessee
Supreme Court didn't consider any constitutional issues on appeal. It set aside the conviction because the judge lacked authority to impose fines over $50.
But the trial drew enormous attention from the press, including famed columnist H.L. Mencken. And the trial was broadcast over the radio.
Asner, who is best-known for playing crusty newsman Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, played Bryan. James Cromwell, whose roles include Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive in Star Trek: First Contact, played Darrow.
Karin Bowersock, the playwright, said Bryan and Darrow were brilliant speakers. She took all the dialogue from the transcripts of the trial and Mencken's columns.
Evolution was taught without controversy for 60 years after Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. Lawyer and historian Edward Larson, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Scopes trial, said that was unlikely to happen again because mandatory public high school education was a 20th-century phenomenon. Evolution wasn't taught in elementary school. It became an issue in the 1920s because Bryan picked it up, and he was a great speaker.
"It's not enhanced," she said. "They were really that good."
During the panel discussion after the play, Larson was asked to predict how the controversy would end. "I'm a historian, not a prophet," Larson said. "But the battle will continue."
Panelist Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said creationist claims were the same now as they were 75 years ago.
"I don't see that we made very much progress at all," she said.
Panelist Tom Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America, said that on that one point, he agreed with Scott, although from a different point of view.
The two other panelists were corporate attorney John Calvert, director of the Intelligent Design Network, which advocates the teaching of alternatives to evolution, and Leonard Kristalka, director of KU's Natural History Museum. Michael Davis, law professor and former dean of the law school, moderated the discussion.
Larson said after the debate that the
ARGUING OVER EVOLUTION
Bryan
"The world shall know that these gentlemen have no purpose but ridiculing every person who believes in the Bible."
"I think it is only fair that the country should know the religious attitude of the people who come down here to deprive the people of Tennessee of the right to run their own schools."
"They did not come here to try the case in hand. They came here to try revealed religion. I am here to defend it." Darrow
"I object to your statement. I am examining you on your good ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes."
"We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignorants from controlling the education of the United States."
"What we here find today is as brazen and bold an attempt to destroy learning as was ever made in the Middle Ages. The only difference is, we have not provided that they shall be burned at the stake. But there is time for that, your honor. We have to approach these things gradually."
"To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. The four Methodists on the jury are suspected of being against hanging Scopes, at least without a fair trial. The state tried to get rid of one of them, even after he had been passed; his neighbors had come in from the village with the news that he had a banjo concealed in his house and was known to read "The Literary Digest."
"There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes." "Davinci is, the Devil."
—Source: Origins by Karen Bowersox
people of Kansas may have reason to be disturbed when half the people on stage in a debate over a scientific theory were lawyers.
"Lawyers lawyerize every issue," he said. "They polarize issues because they are trained in an adversarial system. The world needs fewer adversaries and more conciliators. Conciliation is always possible, but I'm not going to suggest the terms of the conciliation because I'm not a scientist. I don't think that you're going to get there with lawyers."
—Edited by Ben Embry
Letter to the Editor
Despite Kansan's errors professor appreciates coverage
tions worthy of Monty Python that I feel need to be addressed.
Every year when I teach Geology 121, Prehistoric Life, at KU I try to emphasize the difference between my class and the similarly titled movie by Monty Python, The Meaning of Life. Sometimes, however, life imitates art.
Specifically, the most egregious are
Specifically, the most egregious are:
1) horses are not carnivorous, except on episodes of *Seinfeld*, and then with disastrous results;
Such an event happened in the pages of the University Daily Kansan on July 12, 2000. In an otherwise good article by L. Candy Ruff, "Fossils support Darwin" there are some factual inaccuracies, incorrect attributions, and misquota-
2) the age of a masosaur cannot be determined by Carbon dating; instead, we know the age of Kansas masosaurs through radiometric dating and geological correlation; and
3) one-towed horses are not slower than their less derived brethren, they are likely much faster; nor was their evolution tied to the proliferation of forests, but
instead was at least partly correlated with the spread of grasslands.
None of these inaccurate statements were made by me. In spite of these inaccurate statements, some mistakenly given in quotations, I do appreciate the Kansan's coverage of the tour that I led at the KU Natural History Museum, and also Ms. Ruff's positive take on the tour and its significance.
Bruce S. Lieberman assistant professor of geology