Evolution Battle Brews In Texas

oxide7 writes "In Texas, a battle is brewing over the teaching of evolutionary theory as the Board of Education considers a new set of instructional materials to be used in science classrooms. [Two sections of the new material] deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the 'null hypothesis' is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case."

The earth is round, p .05

[Palmsie]

Really? It sounds like someone from the board of education had a sit down with a statistician and thought it would sound cool to throw in the null because, for some reason, ID is the default explanation for the origin of species. I mean, this isn't a bad thing considering the vast amount of evidence in support of natural selection, ultimately suggesting that we can confidently reject the null.

They also may want to take a look at Jacob Cohen's classic paper, 'the world is round, p .05' for more information about the current Fisherian statistical paradigm we currently exist in and what it means to establish a null (and ultimately reject or fail to reject it).

Reminder

[Legion303]

Evolutionary theory has fuck-all to do with abiogenisis.

It must be falsifiable

[Kjellander]

A null hypothesis must be falsifiable, and therefor "it must be a wizard that did it" cannot be the null hypothesis.

Q.E.D.

How is this a problem?

[Mick R]

If Evolutionists can't provide sufficient evidence to disprove the null hypothesis then why should should Evolutionism itself not be considered just as much a matter of faith as Intelligent Design? Arguing that the existence of a process proves the non-existence of the process engineer is no better than saying we were all created as we are in an instant. Neither argument carries any logical validity and can only be considered as statements of "faith".

Re:Reminder

[im_thatoneguy]

In short - once you get back to the amoeba most of the religious objections to evolution are there regardless. So a God which created an amoeba is as unChristian as a God which doesn't exist.

They aren't wrong on this point. Once you eliminate the Adam and Eve story you no longer can place the blame for our fall on humanity. And when humanity isn't at fault for our suffering then the only person who can be blamed is God.

Once God is responsible our imperfection and exact design (through evolution) then he's evil since he designed us to evidently suffer.

If you assume that he evolved (through death and suffering) the human body but it was then (unlike the rest of the species on this planet) perfect and then corrupted by a Satan figure then again it's Satan's fault and not our own and once again we're not responsible for our defects.

You need literalism to maintain the viewpoint that we're responsible for our own suffering and God really really would like to help us but can't since it's our own fault--not his.

Essentially Christianity says that Humanity voided its warranty when it ate the apple. If you say that God started Abiogenesis then he's still responsible and we're all still under warranty. That doesn't fit within the saved/condemned view of the Christian church.

Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact!

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution is not a theory, it's a fact.

Re:I'm no Richard Dawkins, so...

[Black Parrot]

Can't fucking demonstrate evolution in the lab my ass.

Okay, so you've got speciation. How do you get from there to evolution?

When two populations no longer interbreed, the mutations within each population become uncorrelated, build up separately, and ultimately result in two unlike phenotypes.

Or maybe you should explain what you mean by "evolution".

Re:sad isn't it ?

[jhoegl]

Actually Vouchers can not be used at religious schools.

Re:sad isn't it ?

[KDR_11k]

My father loves to complain how the US has no standard for what it takes to be a priest. The Lutheran and Catholic church both have schools that one has to have gone through to be qualified for priesthood so the preachers actually know what the religion is about and how to present it properly, the TV preachers in the US are free to make up any nonsense they want without being stripped of their title.

Ignorance is breeding in the U.S., literally...

[poly_pusher]

Every time I read one of these stories I think of my little cousins... They are a full generation younger than I but still my cousins. They have been raised by two wonderful and caring people; An evangelical minister and his wife. Somehow, despite their caring and the love for GOD they have passed on, these three children are for all purposes, ILLITERATE!!!! The eldest, age 12, somehow made it to grade 6 without being capable of reading. They were sent to an evangelical school where the teachings of the Bible trumped basic skills.

Fortunately, they are now in public school. The 12 year old has been brought back 2 grades and the two little ones brought back 1 grade. "This was a concession as the school felt that all three children should be brought back further" They will have to suffer the the stigma of being the "stupid" kids in their classes. They will have to work their butts off just to reach the same level of understanding as their peers.

This anti-evolution movement is part of a much bigger, much scarier problem in The United States. It is actually an anti-intellectualism movement and it scares the crap out of me. Last year in Texas there was a school board trying to remove references of Thomas Jefferson from History texts because of his deist beliefs. They were also trying to refer to the Slave Trade as the "Atlantic Triangular Trade."

Ignorance is alive and well in this country. And it's literally breeding...

Re:sad isn't it ?

[bunratty]

A survey has shown that atheists and agnostics know the most about religion [latimes.com]. Atheists also tend to be more intelligent and obey the golden rule [washingtonpost.com]. This flies in the face of the idea behind the wedge strategy [wikipedia.org], that materialism leads to a decline in society.

Re:sad isn't it ?

[moonbender]

WTF, please don't bring up the religion classes in Germany as a good example. They're not. It's all kinds of messed up. The public is paying the teachers' salaries, while the churches get to pick them and pretty much tell them what to teach. A catholic teacher recently got fired because he is gay -- from a public school!

If anything, schools should teach comparative religious studies embedded in a class on ethics and philosophy and maybe even logic. No reason to segregate kids if you're doing that. If you want your kids to have a religious education and go to Sunday school, that's your business, but don't do it in school time and do it with your own money. And if your kid doesn't want to go to Sunday school, well, I guess they've made their choice?!

What the "null" hypothesis actually is

[tgibbs]

One often hears cranks of one sort or another insisting that their view should be the "null" hypothesis.
This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of what the "null hypothesis" actually is.
Cranks imagine that the null hypothesis is somehow a privileged hypothesis that doesn't require evidence--it is just assumed be true until proven false--which is why they want their own particular notion to be considered "null."

In reality, the "null hypothesis" has a very specialized meaning, which is not general to science, but rather limited to statistics.
Basically, when you are asking if two things are different, or if something has changed, one does this by exclusion--by showing that the evidence does not support the assumption that there is no difference. That's what the "null" means--"no difference." This does not mean that one starts by assuming that "no change" is correct, or even that the null hypothesis is more likely to be true.

Of course, a creation myth, like the theory of evolution, is an account of change, so it cannot possibly be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis of the history of life--that nothing has changed--is not going to be very appealing to those who look to nature to justify their religious beliefs, because a universe that has always existed, unchanging, does not have much need for Gods. Scientists are more open to the notion; at one time, a steady-state theory of cosmology was popular. It's just that the evidence, both cosmological and earthly, does not support the null hypothesis of an unchanging universe.

Re:Each theory?

[antifoidulus]

There is sort of a chicken and egg thing going on, but they do tend to feed into each other. The huge religious revival in the United States occurred just as the factories were starting to close en masse. This is not a coincidence, people lives literally turned from a certainty of relative comfort and ease in exchange for a bit of hard work into a massive pile of uncertainty. To counteract the uncertainty they turned to those who promised certainty, ie the church. The rich noticed this trend and immediately set out to use it to their own advantage. To make sure the people they were fucking over didn't rise up against them, they cajoled the Republican party into adopting a lot of the hard core religious beliefs(the ones who are "certain" about everything) and combine them with pro-rich policies. That way you could actually convince people to vote against their own economic interests.