Friday, October 28, 2005
Last Friday, even as What's New was being written in Washington,
events were taking place elsewhere that must be commented on. In
New York, CBS News was releasing its most recent poll on public
attitudes toward the theory of evolution. A little further North
in Ithaca, Hunter Rawlings, the president of Cornell University,
was delivering a courageous State-of-the-University Address,
http://www.cornell.edu/president/announcement_2005_1021.cfm. The
CBS poll found that just over half (51%) of Americans believe God
created humans in their present form. Clearly, the scientific
community has work to do. In his speech, Rawlings went straight
to the point, committing Cornell to "venture outside the campus
to help the American public sort through the issues [raised by
intelligent design]." He described ID as a "political movement
seeking to inject religion into state policy and our schools."
The commitment is very much in the tradition of Cornell, whose
founders, A.D. White, the first president, and Ezra Cornell saw
sectarian strife as the greatest threat to the new university.
The question of "how we know" is being asked on the pages of the
daily news for the first time since the 1925 Scopes trial, thanks
to the Discovery Institute. With the world beset by religious
wars, this is an opportunity for people to see that no wars are
fought over science. Scientific disputes can be settled only by
better evidence. "It's too complex to see how it could happen
without magic" is not going to get you far. Meanwhile, Harvard
announced plans to study the hardest question of all, the origin
of life. And right at ground-zero, the University of Kansas
Natural History Museum will open an evolution exhibit on Nov 1.
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the National Academy
of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association had
reviewed the latest draft of the Kansas science education
standards. They objected that the draft failed to make it clear
that supernatural phenomena have no place in science. As a
result, Kansas will not be allowed to use copyrighted science
education materials developed by the two organizations. Gerald
Wheeler, a physicist and the executive director of the NSTA,
pointed out that, "science is not a jukebox."
Don't relax yet, there will be. This weeks choice came from Dave
Clary, who would ask:
"Does legislation aimed at protecting natural
resources contravene a Higher Law that says
these resources were put here for humans to
consume."
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