Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Presentation
Review: ..., it is an excellent, balanced presentation of evolution and how it should be taught in public schools. It presents clearly what most people, ..., fail to understand. That is the nature of scientific inquiry and what makes an idea qualify as a scientific theory... either imply or overtly state that there is much contradictory evidence left out in this book that would refute evolutionary theory and support what they call "creation science" No biologist would deny that there are problems with evolution and that there are many things that cannot be explained yet. This is the nature of science!!!!! As more evidence is collected, ideas and theories change. The overwhelming evidence supports evolution and that's why it's one of the fundamental ideas in science. Anyway, this is a great book for teachers, and every teacher who cares about scientific truth should read it.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Presentation
Review: Teaching About Evolution is well written and easy to read. I would give it 5 stars for the quality of presentation. It is the content that needs help.
First, the NAS remove any doubt about their purpose. A statistic given in the introduction to explain the reason for the book is the fact that most Americans still believe in a Creator. The conclusion of the NAS is that, if this is the case, students must not be getting enough evolution teaching and something must be done about it. The book is part of their response to this 'problem.'
There are many issues with the content that I could address, but I will only mention one. Being an engineer and a certified math and physics teacher, I was particularly intrigued when the authors redefined fact and theory in such a way as to place those who don't believe in evolution in the same category as those who don't believe in gravity. The approach is far more subtle than the open ridicule presented by Gould or Dawkins, and probably more effective. They fail to mention that by the 'theory' of gravity they are actually referring to Einstein's complex Theory of General Relativity which attempts to explain the nature of gravity, not the typical reader's understanding of the existence of gravitational force. Apparantly, this is an important distinction only for authors who are not interested in misleading the readers.
I highly recommend reading this book along with its critique by Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Evolution. Together they provide a balanced view that will allow an intelligent reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: Well written indoctrination manual
Review: Teaching About Evolution is well written and easy to read. I would give it 5 stars for the quality of presentation. It is the content that needs help.
First, the NAS remove any doubt about their purpose. A statistic given in the introduction to explain the reason for the book is the fact that most Americans still believe in a Creator. The conclusion of the NAS is that, if this is the case, students must not be getting enough evolution teaching and something must be done about it. The book is part of their response to this 'problem.'
There are many issues with the content that I could address, but I will only mention one. Being an engineer and a certified math and physics teacher, I was particularly intrigued when the authors redefined fact and theory in such a way as to place those who don't believe in evolution in the same category as those who don't believe in gravity. The approach is far more subtle than the open ridicule presented by Gould or Dawkins, and probably more effective. They fail to mention that by the 'theory' of gravity they are actually referring to Einstein's complex Theory of General Relativity which attempts to explain the nature of gravity, not the typical reader's understanding of the existence of gravitational force. Apparantly, this is an important distinction only for authors who are not interested in misleading the readers.
I highly recommend reading this book along with its critique by Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Evolution. Together they provide a balanced view that will allow an intelligent reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: Rationalism Masquerading as Science
Review: This book follows the usual "evolution is absolute fact" mantra, and denigrates those who disagree. But, like it or not, there are thousands of qualified scientists the world over who question or reject molecules-to-man evolution. Dogmatic evolutionists, such as the authors of this book, would do well to finally face this (unpleasant to them) reality. To teach unsuspecting children that all scientists accept evolution, and that evolution is fact, is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty.

Rating:
Summary: Rationalism Masquerading as Science
Review: This book follows the usual "evolution is absolute fact" mantra, and denigrates those who disagree. But, like it or not, there are thousands of qualified scientists the world over who question or reject molecules-to-man evolution. Dogmatic evolutionists, such as the authors of this book, would do well to finally face this (unpleasant to them) reality. To teach unsuspecting children that all scientists accept evolution, and that evolution is fact, is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty.

Rating:
Summary: Atheistic indoctrination of our young disguised as ?science?
Review: This book is specifically aimed at showing schoolteachers how to indoctrinate their students in particles-to-people evolution.

The authors pretend that they are not hostile to `religion', realising that overt atheism would repulse most readers. But there are still subtle digs at Bible-believing Christians. Even more significant is the list of overtly atheistic books in the `recommended reading' section. For example, Dawkins' `The Blind Watchmaker', which explicitly states that Darwin made it possible to be `an intellectually fulfilled atheist' as he says he is; Dennett's `Darwin's Dangerous Idea', which praises the `universal acid' of Darwinism, eating away `just about every traditional concept', and says that religions should be caged like dangerous wild animals; many books by the humanist publisher Prometheus Books.

As astute commentators like Phillip Johnson have noted, the common strategy of the leading evolutionary propagandists is to dull people into compromise positions like `God might have used evolution', but then make sure people, once sucked in, find out what evolution really means. They must have a good laugh at the gullibility of compromising men of the cloth, just like Lenin with his `useful idiots' in the West.

A recent survey published in the leading science journal Nature conclusively showed that the National Academy of Science, the producers of `Teaching about Evolution ...', is heavily biased against God, rather than religiously unbiased. [E.J. Larson and L. Witham, The sole criterion for being classified as a `leading' or `greater' scientist was membership of the NAS.] A survey of all 517 NAS members in biological and physical sciences resulted in just over half responding. 72.2 % were overtly atheistic, 20.8 % agnostic, and only 7.0 % believed in a personal God. Belief in God and immortality was lowest among biologists. It is likely that those who didn't respond were unbelievers as well, so the study probably underestimates the level of anti-God belief in the NAS. The percentage of unbelief is far higher than the percentage among U.S. scientists in general, or in the whole U.S. population.

Commenting on the professed religious neutrality of `Teaching about Evolution ...', the many outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists." Our research suggests otherwise.'

The atheistic bias of NAS is reflected in the many scientifically inaccurate and even misleading comments in this book. It's not surprising, since Alberts himself has prominently cited Haeckel's forged work on embryonic drawings in his `Molecular Biology of the Cell', Garland, NY, 1994, pp. 32-33, although to be fair to him, this century-old fraud wasn't fully exposed till after that book was written.

Less excusable is the diagram of the alleged transitional forms between land mammals and whales. This displays all the animals at the same size, and neglects to inform its readers that the last animal is ten times longer than the first! There are also deceptive straw-man caricatures about what creationists really believe.

My own book, `Refuting Evolution', was written to counteract the misinformation in this book, in a number of areas, as well as giving a concise statement of the creationist view, which the atheistic élites want to censor. I discuss facts and bias, pointing out that facts never speak for themselves, but are always interpreted via a framework, and that atheists are just as biased as creationists. The examples of variation within a kind presented by Teaching about Evolution ... have *nothing to do* with particles-to-people evolution. `Teaching about Evolution ...' persistently misrepresents creationists of believing in fixity of species. But creationists don't deny change per se, merely changes which increase the genetic information content, as particles-to-people evolutionary dogma requires but real, empirical, information theory denies.

There are also chapters on birds and whales, going far deeper than the simplistic treatment in `Teaching about Evolution ...', showing that they are exquisitely designed. For example, evolutionists still have no explanation for how the unique bird's lung, with air sacs, parabronchi and a counter-current exchange system, could have evolved from the bellows-type reptilian lung.

The astronomy and age of the earth chapters tackle the erroneous big bang and billions-of-years arguments, pointing out key problems that the NAS doesn't want schoolchildren to know about.

A chapter on the fossil record documents that the links are still missing. `Teaching about Evolution' contains a gleeful article by the evolutionist (and atheist) E.O. Wilson, `Discovery of a Missing Link'. He claimed to have studied `nearly exact intermediates between solitary wasps and the highly social modern ants'. But another atheistic evolutionist, W.B. Provine, says that Wilson's `assertions are explicitly denied by the text.... Wilson's comments are misleading at best.'

The last chapter defends the design explanation as legitimate, in contrast to Teaching about Evolution ...' which rules it out a priori (i.e. as a dogma, before even examining the evidence).