Nelson Thompson
Senior Aerospace Software Engineer

I’m not the one using the “strengths and weaknessess” language. I believe you should teach the best science we know in science class. Or it should at the very least actually BE science. I was wondering why the people using that language never mention what the strengths are. In fact, they also avoid wherever possible mentioning the weaknessess too, since as we see, those amount to nothing more than the same tired untrue religiously motivated arguments we’ve seen for decades. It’s just another label. They only mention the word “strength” at all to sound ‘fair’.

You can’t “balance” science with nonsense.

So what you suggesting Austringer? Do you believe scientists are always right till proven wrong? Students do need critical thinking skills and students who do not believe in evolution shouldn’t be forced feed it either. That’s not to say, they can’t learn about it.

I’m suggesting that science taught as science is appropriate, and that teaching falsehoods to students, such as the religious antievolution literature is replete with, is well beyond inappropriate. There are open research questions in evolutionary science, but students whose time is wasted hearing the bogus “weaknesses” such as Mercer spouts above will never get a chance to learn about them. Students taught science responsibly will know that science delivers knowledge without certainty and that expecting “right or wrong” is the wrong outlook when evaluating science.

There should be no affirmation of belief on the part of students; it is sufficient that students learn that evolutionary science is well-supported by the evidence. Students thinking critically should be able to spot bogosity like that espoused by Mercer a long ways off. They should not be told that such bogosity represents a legitimate alternative scientific viewpoint.

I couldn’t parse the last paragraph. The only thing “strengths and weaknesses” does is undermine student appreciation of science and scientists, as the insistence on bringing up Piltdown Man fifty-five years after the last time anyone might have possibly used it as evidence against Darwin’s out-of-Africa hypothesis of human origins shows.

“Isn’t it funny how proponants of “strengths and weaknessess” only ever want to talk about the “weaknessess”.

Isn’t it also funny proponents of evolution only ever want to teach students is the “strengths of evolution?”

Now if you put both interests together, you get a balance of both strengths and weakness…

Austringer said “The only purpose of various of the religious antievolution “weaknesses” is to communicate to students that “scientists have been wrong in the past, maybe/definitely they are wrong now”.

“It is anti-science at its most basic.”

So what you suggesting Austringer? Do you believe scientists are always right till proven wrong? Students do need critical thinking skills and students who do not believe in evolution shouldn’t be forced feed it either. That’s not to say, they can’t learn about it.

“Strengths and weakness of evolution” undermines the dogma of the concept know as the majority of the scientific community which attacks or refutes a claim, then it’s not science. Rather, your putting the scientific community under the microscope.

It is anti-science at its most basic.

And how is Piltdown Man a weakness when it’s not part of the theory and hasn’t been for many decades? Same for Haeckel’s recapitulation ideas. These were explicitly rejected by the scientists themselves.

The argument against the “strengths and weaknesses” language is not dependent on how it originated nor how long it may have been on the Texas books, thus the “red herring” being served is from fisherman Ken Mercer.

Don’t forget, as Don McLeroy, the creationist Chairman of the SBOE, himself discussed, the fact that the “strengths and weaknesses” language hasn’t resulted in creationism and intelligent design being found in any current textbook adopted by the State of Texas wasn’t for lack of trying:

Back in November 2003, we finished about four or five months of adoption process for the high school biology textbooks in Texas. …

But I want to tell you all the arguments made by all the intelligent design group, all the creationist intelligent design people, I can guarantee the other side heard exactly nothing. They did not hear one single fact, they were not swayed by one argument. It was just amazing. I mean all the, my fellow board members who were really not even the scientists in the group, they were not impressed by any of this. They said, “Oh well, it’s just two opinions. And there were only the four really conservative, orthodox Christians on the board were the only ones who were willing to stand up to the textbooks and say that they don’t present the weaknesses of evolution.