Getting Evolution In Science Textbooks For Texas Schools 710
First time accepted submitter windwalker13th writes "Recently the New York Times ran an article highlighting the pull that a State Board in Texas holds over that state and rest of the Nation. Because of the unique way in which Texas picks school textbooks (purchasing large volumes of textbooks at once to be used for the next decade) publishers pander to this board to get their books approved. The board currently holds several members (6 of 28 who are known to reject evolution) who hold creationist views and actively work to ensure that the science textbooks do not use as strong language or must include "critical thinking" about possible alternate explanations for evolution."
Re:ya know... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they were married - the first couple, wed by God. In fact, the passage in Genesis refers to the "man" (Adam) and his "wife" (Eve) for a long time before ever mentioning her name as being Eve!
'Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.'
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202:23-25&version=ESV [biblegateway.com]
Re:Science isn't critical thinking... (Score:4, Informative)
There is no difference between macroevolution and microevolution. It is a false dichotomy invented by creationists, i.e. all evolution that has been observed in recorded history (and there is a lot) and all evolution that can be tested in a lab (which has been done) is called microevolution, and therefore macroevolution is by its very definition not verifiable. But the definition is bullshit.
Re:ya know... (Score:5, Informative)
The hebrew for wife and woman are the same word (isha).
Re:ya know... (Score:2, Informative)
It isn't a 'many thousand year old text', it is likely to have first been written down around 800 BCE (some say 600 BCE, but it may have been as early as 1000 BCE) and then around 200 BCE the various versions were rationalised into a single official version with most variations being destroyed.
Prior to 800 (or 1000) BCE the stories were oral. For several hundred years the stories were passed from one generation to another and embelished.
Re:ya know... (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, I'd consider that a change of word use more than anything else.
50 years ago, "gay" meant "happy" far more than it meant "homosexual".
Words have changed a lot over time, so using 21st century definitions to words that were written thousands of years ago is a bit insane.
That all being true, putting it aside, my primary problem with the Bible is a lack of citations. It is a nice bedtime story, but there is nothing to cite to show any of it really happened. The only other texts that could be used as sources are largely provided by the Church itself, thus are unreliably biased.
Note: This does not in any way make the Bible "wrong", it doesn't disprove anything. It is simply a point of fact, no more or less.
Re:Won't this problem vanish with micropublishing? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is this still a problem. Why can't the publisher's do a special run of their text books for Texas that includes whatever rubbish Texas wants, and then provide decent text books for everyone else?
Because its cheaper to just create a book that includes all the rubbish Texas wants and force everyone else to buy it, too.
Re:Creationism = religion, not science. At all. (Score:4, Informative)
A poster above also posits the "10 minutes ago theory," which is likewise non-testable (what is there to prevent an all powerful being from planting memories in every brain; old photos in every album, and ancient dinosaur bones in the rocks?)
Science is about testable theories; in fact I would argue the word "theory" implies testability, so we'll call the non-testable ones "explanations". I'm not sure where to classify the non-testable explanations, philosophy is a reasonable guess. Perhaps the main point to be made with non-testable explanations is that they are so easy to invent.
In any case, the science classroom is the place for discussing methods for testing testable theories, with perhaps a quick glance at several non-testable explanations to see how non-testability operates.
Re:Double standards... (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. I mean, first, many textbooks DO talk about alternative explanations over the years - be they Lamarck's theories or creationism or whatever, and I've never heard of biologists making any kind of fuss.
But, more directly, if Creationism were introduced in these texts as "the old theory that evolution replaces", it's not the biologists that would be screaming. If they're complaining, it's because the accepted theory is being presented as being on par with the old ones.
Or maybe your other science textbooks do that too? Maybe your science textbook said "we don't know whether the Sun orbits the Earth or the Earth orbits the sun, but here's some reckoning people have done over the years on both sides". Is that what your science textbook says? Or does it say "here's how it is, and here's what people used to think?" And you really, legitimately think it's biologists that would be crying foul if that's how biology textbooks presented creationism vs. evolution?
Re:ya know... (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is, we have enough of the old texts that it has been shown that the actual edits in the bible are minor. They do exist, but the core of it is there.
I know you probably know what you mean when you say that but it has the potential to be very misleading. Some naive christian will read that and think you mean that what we have are basically the "very words of God", which of course is not what you said.
You may be referring to the similarities between the dead sea scrolls (dated to something like 300BCE - 50 CE) and the MT (masoretic text, earliest manuscripts around 9th century CE).
Here's what wikipedia has to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Biblical_significance [wikipedia.org]
"The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100"
(emphasis mine).
So we know there were changes. Sometimes "dramatic" changes.
So that's just the OT. What about the NT?
Supposedly written within the latter half of the first century CE. The earliest fragment we have at present is from ~125CE and is the size of a credit card. The earliest complete manuscript is in the 4th century CE. The earliest gospels are I think late 2nd century.
It's worth mentioning that there were no copy machines in those days. Everything was copied by hand. We don't have the original documents, because they have most likely not survived. We don't have the copies, nor the copies of the copies. What we do have is probably well down the line of copies and although we'd like to think we have something close to what was originally written, we have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO FIND OUT.
Not only that, but we do have very solid evidence of tampering of other writings by christians, and also a lot of interpolation of writings by competing sects in the early 2nd century.
How reliable is our English Bible today? Here's the real truth, NO ONE KNOWS. We can speculate that it's "fairly accurate" and "well preserved" but there is absolutely no way to be sure. So next time someone talks to you about needing faith, just remember that they first need faith that they're actually reading the right words...
Re:Why do you guys care what Texas does? (Score:4, Informative)
Because Texas, unlike other states, purchases books for the entire state. Because Texas is the 2nd most populous state in the union. Because this means that publishers will frequently write their books for the Texas market and hope they are adopted elsewhere. Because that means that the textbook your local school uses is heavily influenced by Texas. Oh, and there's that trivial matter of not wanting Texas schoolkids to have a third rate education just because of where they live.
Because this is not news - I knew this at least 15 years ago.