Group

It seems that the 1998 Darwin Day open letter, drafted by Dr. Massimo
Pigliucci, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville, protesting against the National Association of
Biology Teachers watering down of their original 1995 definition of
"evolution" as "an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural
process":

"The diversity of life on Earth is the outcome of evolution: an
*unsupervised*, *impersonal*, *unpredictable* and *natural*
process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is
affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies
and changing environments" [National Association of Biology
Teachers, "Statement on Teaching Biology," American Biology
Teacher, Vol. 58, 1996, p.61. Emphases in original]

by deleting the two words "unsupervised" and "impersonal", has been
quietly removed, as has Phil Johnson's reply to the open letter.

The following copies of the open letter and Phil Johnson's reply are from
Google's cache, except for the old URLs and the titles in square brackets,
which I have added. I am preserving these for posterity by posting them to
CED and then referencing the URL of the archived message on my "Articles
posted to CED" page (http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/cedartic.html).

The NCSE's account of the deletion of "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from
the NABT's statement is at:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/391_science_and_religion_methodol_5_1_\
1998.asp &
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/8954_nabt_statement_on_evolution_ev_5_\
21_1998.asp .

Steve

PS: See Phil Johnson tagline quote on "unsupervised" and "impersonal" being
still what the NABT (and NCSE) *really* mean by "evolution."

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[fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/Open%20letter/openletter.html

Darwin Day]

An Open Letter

Open letter to the National Association of Biology Teachers, to the
National Center for Science Education, and to the American Association
for the Advancement of the Sciences

Object: recent changes in the wording of the NABT's definition of the
word "evolution"

To whom it may concern,

It has recently come to our attention that the NABT, with the support of
the NCSE, has changed its statement defining what evolution is. This
change apparently was at least in part the result of pressures from the
Christian Fundamentalist movement. We strongly urge your organizations
to reconsider such a change, and to defend scientific and educational
principles in the face of public or partisan pressure of any kind.

Our feeling is that this was an unfortunate decision, which can potentially
mislead the American public and which yields undue authority to the
already overwhelming political and religious pressure over science that has
been mounting in this country in recent years. The NABT and the NCSE,
as well as the scientific community at large, have an inalienable right and a
peremptory duty to defend rationalism and open inquiry. The proposed
change of the statement simply betrays such high ideals at their core. The
significance of the change is far greater than just dropping two
controversial words, since it represents the first wedge of a movement
intended to surreptitiously introduce religious teachings into our public
schools.

The original NABT statement.

The original NABT definition of evolution was crafted in 1995 as a
"Statement on the Teaching of Evolution". The first item on the list of
"tenets of science, evolution and biology education" read:

The diversity of life on Earth is the outcome of evolution: an
*unsupervised*, *impersonal*, *unpredictable* and *natural* process of
temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by
natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing
environments

While the customary modern definition of evolution in graduate level
textbooks is more akin to "changes in allelic frequencies in a population"
(D. Hartl & A. Clark, 1989 - Principles of population genetics, Sinauer),
the above quoted statement very accurately portrays the broader meaning
that evolutionary biologists attach to the term. Furthermore, since the
NABT was looking for a definition that could be understood by the
general public and applied by biology teachers nationwide, references to
specific subject matters such as population genetics are ineffective.

The modification and how it came about.

The 1995 NABT statement apparently offended some religious
fundamentalists and other creationists, chiefly among them Berkeley
lawyer Phillip Johnson (author of "Darwin on Trial" and other misleading
literature on evolution). Apparently, Johnson and others have claimed that
the statement implies that evolutionary theory is an ideological statement,
since the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" automatically exclude
any divine intervention. This was explicitly suggested by a letter to the
NABT by Alvin Plantinga, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at
Notre Dame University, and Huston Smith, Thomas J. Watson Professor
of Religion at Syracuse University. Notice that neither of these is a
biologist.

Smith's and Platinga's concern was that the NABT wording "...gives aid
and comfort to extremists in the religious right for whom it provides a
legitimate target. And, because of its logical vulnerability, it lowers
Americans' respect for scientists and their place in our culture. If the
words ‘impersonal' and ‘unsupervised' were dropped from your opening
sentence it would help defuse tensions which, as things stand, are causing
unnecessary problems in our collective life."

As a consequence of this upheaval, the NABT agreed to reconsider the
wording of the controversial statement, and did so at its 1997 meeting. The
Board voted to retain the original statement, on the sound reasoning that
Smith's and Platinga's assertion that the wording "contradicts the beliefs
of the majority of the American people" is irrelevant. Scientific
definitions, according to the Board, are independent of public opinion. But
things did not end there.

In the face of mounting pressure, the Board was reconvened at the end of
the meeting, a few days later. The outcome of the new discussion was that:

1) The extant wording which included "unsupervised" and
"impersonal" apparently was miscommunicating both the nature of
science and NABT's intent;

2) The deletion of those two words would not affect the statement's
accurate characterization of evolution, and affirmation of
evolution's importance in science education.

Eugenie Scott's comment on the NCSE web page
(http://www.natcenscied.org/) was that the new NABT statement
(http://www.NABT.org/positions.html) was the result of "a statesmanlike
decision that better fulfilled [the NABT] goal by reducing a potential
source of conflict in the classroom."

Why it was a bad move.

Apparently, the feeling at the NABT meeting was that the organization and
the American public (mostly, the Christian Right) had a
miscommunication problem. The NABT did not want its statements to
include theological positions - rightly so. This politically correct attitude,
however, does not serve science very well. We do not disagree that
science, and evolutionary biology in particular, cannot prove or disprove
the existence of *some* kind of god. On the other hand, the reason the
American public perceives a direct conflict is because indeed evolution
denies many attributes of various forms of Christian god. In this,
fundamentalists and the American public at large are smarter than most
scientists give them credit for. It is time for the scientific community and
for educators to simply face this fact and move on, regardless of the
consequences and predictable social outcry.

In fact, Scott's statement that the NABT move was an example of
"statesmanlike decision" is particularly illuminating of the fear of
scientists and educators to face political and religious pressures. It is the
same "statesmanship" that prompted the National Science Foundation to
actively delete any appearance of the word evolution in the layman
abstracts of research proposals in evolutionary biology funded by the
Federal Government. Furthermore, the NABT change promptly backfired,
culminating in a New York Times article declaring that creationists had
won intellectual recognition. This was, and still is, followed by creationist
propaganda using the change in the statement as a powerful weapon for
their religious agenda.

As for the two points raised at the final NABT Board meeting, let us
analyze them in some more detail. The words "unsupervised" and
"impersonal" were taken as miscommunicating the nature of science. Not
really. Science is based on a fundamental assumption: that the world can
be explained by referring only to natural, mechanistic forces. Johnson is
quite right in affirming that this is a philosophical position. He is wrong
when he suggests that it is an unreasonable and unproven one. In fact,
every single experiment conducted by any laboratory in any place on Earth
represents a daily test of that assumption. The day in which scientists will
be unable to explain natural phenomena without referring to divine
intervention or other supernatural forces, we will have a major paradigm
shift - of cataclysmic proportions.

The second point of the Board's deliberation is that dropping the
contentious words does not affect the accuracy of the portrayal of
evolution to the American public. Really? The NABT leaves open the
possibility that evolution is in fact supervised in a personal manner. This is
a prospect that every evolutionary biologist should vigorously *and
positively* deny. All we know so far about the evolutionary process tells us
that there is no supervision except for the action of natural selection.
Furthermore, a personal involvement would imply some "person" who
would take care of directing the evolutionary process one way or the other.
The fossil record, as well as the importance of random events such as
catastrophes, mass extinctions, and genetic drift, assure us that such a
personal involvement has not happened. Unless, of course, the person in
question is supervising evolution in a way to perfectly mimic an
unsupervised, impersonal process. A possibility, the latter, which is
outside science, but that has been repeatedly invalidated on philosophical
grounds ever since David Hume and well before Darwin...

In conclusion, we reiterate that evolution indeed *is*, to the best of our
knowledge, an impersonal and unsupervised process. Scientists are always
open to revise their positions if new compelling evidence surfaces, so that
creationists can be reassured that the incriminated words will be dropped if
demonstrated to be inconsistent with reality. Until then, please leave the
job to scientists and educators, not to lawyers, theologians, and politicians.

Signed,
view a list of signatures

Would you like to add your name to this Open Letter? Send Dr. Massimo
Pigliucci an email.

The views presented here do not necessarily reflect those of the Tennessee
Darwin Coalition.
Darwin Day Homepage

This page is maintained by Rachel Goodman.
Last updated January 10, 2001.
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[fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/Open%20letter/replyletter.html
Darwin Day

An Open Letter]

Professor Phillip Johnson's Reply

In December 1997 I participated in a televised debate on creation and
evolution, on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line." Throughout the debate,
the members of the Evolution team insisted that "evolution" in no way
denies that God is our creator. The team leader, Barry Lynn, went so far as
to quote John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word" in order to suggest that
the Word may well have been "EVOLVE!" Other members of the
evolutionist team [Eugenie Scott, Kenneth Miller, and Michael Ruse]
either furthered the impression that divine supervision is an acceptable
concept in evolutionary science, or did nothing to dispel it.

This tactic made it difficult for our opposing team to clarify the issues, and
so may have been successful in the short run. I knew that it would
eventually backfire, however, because all the leading Darwinists (Gould,
Dawkins, Maynard Smith, Lewontin, Futuyma, Ayala, Provine -- the
whole bunch) insist that evolution is an undirected, purposeless process.
As the Open Letter puts it, the only God consistent with neo-Darwinism is
one who perfectly mimics an unsupervised, impersonal process. When the
textbooks say that "evolution is a fact," that is what they mean.

The New York Times story on the Firing Line debate started the backfire
by reporting that the NABT had removed the words "unsupervised" and
"impersonal" from its definition of evolution, describing the deletion as
a"startling about-face" which was "clearly designed to allow for the
possibility that a Master Hand was at the helm." The bulk of the story
concerned a group of "new creationists" specifically Firing Line debaters
Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and David Berlinski who were portrayed
as making headway in moving the debate over creation and evolution into
the intellectual mainstream. The Times cited the NABT reversal as
tangible proof of their success: "This surprising change in creed for the
nation's biology teachers is only one of many signs that the proponents of
creationism, long stereotyped as anti-intellectual Bible-thumpers, have
new allies and the hope of new credibility." [Laurie Goodstein, "Christians
and Scientists; New Light for Creationism," The New York Times,
December 21, 1997, Week in Review Section, p. 1.]

Eugenie Scott had reassured the readers of her NCSE Web page that the
revision of the NABT Statement had changed nothing of substance,
because "Evolution is still described as a 'natural process' (the only
phenomena science can study), and a later [sentence] states that natural
selection has no specific direction or goal, including survival of a
species.'"

The Times story gave a very different impression. According to the
Denver Post, NABT President Dick Storey and Joseph McInerney,
Executive Director of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, protested
to the Times that it had given "the impression that the NABT had
capitulated to creationists." The Times editor responded sternly to these
complaints by email, saying that "The revision of your platform, whatever
discussions you may have had about it, clearly allows for the possibility
that evolution was guided by some omniscient power. And that, not the
Times article, is what may give creationists comfort, wrong headed though
that may seem to you." Storey gamely insisted that "there was no backing
down," but admitted that "We knew hard-core creationists would regard
this as a victory, and they have." [Cate Terwilliger, "Changes in Biology
Teachers' Platform Rekindles Creationism Fire", Denver Post, January 29,
1998, P. E1, http://www.denverpost.com/life/con0129.htm.]

The NABT/Firing Line fiasco warns science educators that, if they say
they are open to God-guided evolution, people may take them seriously.
Honesty really is the best policy. Hence I salute the Open Letter's candid
statement that the American public correctly perceives a direct conflict
between neo-Darwinian evolution and the Judeo-Christian concept of a
personal God who is our creator. The Open Letter is also correct that
"fundamentalists as well as the American public at large are smarter than
most scientists give them credit for," and they are learning more all the
time. A strategy based on evasion and double-talk just won't work any
more.

So I find much to praise in the Open Letter. Unfortunately, the Letter
contains a logical flaw that is common among scientific materialists: the
writers do not understand the difference between what they "assume" and
what they "test". They say that

Science is based on a fundamental assumption: that the world can
be explained by recurring only to natural, mechanistic forces.
[Phillip] Johnson is right that this is a philosophical position. He
is wrong when he suggests that it is an unreasonable and unproven
one. In fact, every single experiment conducted by any laboratory
in any place on earth represents a daily test of that assumption.

It is contradictory to say both that (1) materialism (or naturalism) is a
fundamental assumption on which all science is based; and that (2)
scientists daily subject that same assumption to experimental testing.
No, scientific materialists don't test materialism. They treat it as an
unfalsifiable premise, and promote as "scientific knowledge" whatever
materialistic theory of evolution is least implausible. That is why they are
so easily convinced that the Darwinian blind watchmaker mechanism can
design highly complex organisms, when the evidence (e.g. peppered moth
and finch-beak variation) seems so unconvincing to the rest of us. That is
also why they dismiss out of hand as "religion" any suggestion that
unintelligent material forces were *not* adequate to do the work of
biological creation. Richard Lewontin gets this point right:

We take the side of science *in spite* of the patent absurdity of some
of its constructs, ... *in spite* of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a
prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the
methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a
material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary,
that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to
create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that
produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no
matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that
materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the
door. [Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons," The New
York Review of Books, Jan. 9, 1997.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?1997010928R.]

See my article, "The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism", First Things,
November, 1997, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9711/johnson.html.

William Provine has said that biologists should welcome a public
discussion of the great questions of evolutionary biology, with everyone
invited to participate. When such a discussion occurs, biologists will not
be persuasive if they insist that philosophical materialism is a dogma
which no one may question, or if they misrepresent materialism as a "fact"
which has been discovered by impartial investigation.

The views presented here do not necessarily reflect those of the Tennessee
Darwin Coalition.

Darwin Day Homepage

This page is maintained by Rachel Goodman.
Last updated January 10, 2001.
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"Theistic evolutionists ... have a credibility problem that stems from their
apparent willingness to find support for their compatibilism in the most
unlikely places. For example, Denis Lamoureux ... misinterprets a tactical
shift by the National Association of Biology Teachers as if it were a
genuine change in their position. Make no mistake about it; the NABT
remains dedicated to presenting evolution as an `unsupervised, impersonal,
unpredictable, and natural process' that was not guided by God or
programmed to reach a particular goal. The NABT removed the first two
terms from their official statement because they were too explicit in
revealing the philosophical agenda. The purposeless and unguided nature
of evolution is still implied throughout the statement, and the more
politically astute evolutionary naturalists have always considered it safer to
pursue their agenda by persistent insinuation rather than by direct
statements (which invite refutation)." (Johnson P.E., "Response to Denis
O. Lamoureux," in Johnson P.E. & Lamoureux D.O., "Darwinism
Defeated? The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins," Regent
College Publishing: Vancouver, Canada, 1999, pp.54-54)
Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol) http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
& http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProblemsOfEvolution/ Book: "Problems
of Evolution" http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/PoE/PoE00ToC.html
& http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe00cont.html
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