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June 2013 Beacon The BEACON News from The Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education Volume XVII, No. 1 Queries? email M. Kim Johnson (next page) Copyright © June 2013 In this issue: Editor’s Message – Kim Johnson. – Darwin and Wallace, What did they really think of religion? Dr. Paul Braterman – School Testing – Lisa Durkin. Cartoon, Dave Thomas – Meeting Announcement at the NM Mu- seum of Natural History – Announcing the CESE 2013 Annual Meeting with a special guest, Zack Kopplin EDITOR’s MESSAGE There Is More Going on Out there than You May Realize Our President is in Europe—Having Fun, I’ll Bet! much look forward to his talk, and we hope that there are many in attendance to hear this young man. Per- CESE President, Ken Whiton, has been having a good haps some of his zeal will be added to ours and inspire time in Europe on vacation while the rest of us are slaving to keep the world from falling apart. So, his understanding of science that we have been working on punishment is that he must read an introduction to this since our founding in 1997. We hope to see you there. issue of the Beacon from me, Kim Johnson. Actually, I am glad that he is having some fun after many years of What About All These Mandatory Tests? hard work to reach his retirement – and even more hard work as an excellent CESE president. On another topic, we have been hearing much about the effects of the “high stakes” testing in schools. But CESE Annual Meeting Announcement With a Spe- - cial Guest Speaker sues when standardized testing causes student time in We are having our annual meeting on Saturday, June rather dubious testing to begin with. This does not 29th at 1:00 PM. It will be held at UNM’s Northrop mean that testing is bad or should be done away with, Lecture Hall (see map, page 7). As shown on the map, but perhaps, just perhaps it should be revisited with parking is available just to the west of Northrop Hall. respect to how it is administered and how much class time it consumes, and how it is formulated. Our own We are especially lucky to have a very special guest Lisa Durkin, Past President of CESE writes about this speaker this year, Zack Kopplin. Who is Zack? I’m topic, and we present it in this issue. glad you asked. He is a 19 year old Rice University student from Louisiana. He has decided to take on the The Religious Beliefs of Darwin and Wallace - the pro pseudo-science politicians in Louisiana who passed Real Story, not the Creationists’ Version the absurd law several years ago that allows for the teaching of creationism (non-extant evidence against evolution). Nineteen years old! What were you doing mis-characterized by essentially all creationists, young when you were 19 that could help the world to be a earth, old earth, intelligent design people, and whoever better place? I was having fun and going to school. else gets involved with creationist beliefs. Even many Zack has been on a campaign of pro-science and has real scientists do not understand Darwin’s and Wal- made national television to push his agenda. We very lace’s positions on religion. Our own Paul Braterman * Note: The CESE website has changed to http://CESE.org Page 2 The Beacon, Vol XVII, No.1 June 2013 addresses what Darwin and Wallace actually did believe personally The Beacon is published by the Coalition for in terms of religion. If you do not recall, Alfred Russel Wallace, a Excellence in Science and Math Education near contemporary of Darwin, independently came up with selec- incorporated in the State of New Mexico. Visit our web site at http://www.cese.org. WEBMASTER: Dave Thomas until it became clear that Wallace was going to beat him to the press. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Both were geniuses. Both are generally very much misunderstood relative to their religious beliefs. Paul will clarify this. He gets it PRESIDENT Ken Whiton right, as usual. [email protected] VICE PRESIDENT/PRES. ELECT Terry Dunbar Darwin, Wallace, Evolution, and Atheism [email protected] SECRETARY © Dr. Paul Braterman, permission to distribute freely for non- Marilyn Savitt-Kring [email protected] commercial purposes TREASURER Steve Brugge Peter Hitchens, younger brother of the late Christopher, says in the [email protected] notorious London Daily Mail1 that the implication of evolution “is PAST PRESIDENT plainly atheistical, and if its truth could be proved, then the truth of Terry Dunbar atheism could be proved. I believe that is its purpose, and that it is [email protected] silly to pretend otherwise.” Pat Robertson claims that “the evolu- MEMBERS AT LARGE tionists worship atheism.”2 Richard Dawkins tells us that he lost Dr. Marshall Berman [email protected] his faith in God when he learned about evolution. The claim that evolution is intrinsically atheistical is used repeatedly by advocates Cindy Chapman [email protected] of creationism, and the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document3 de- scribes it as part of a malignant materialism that debunks traditional Lisa Durkin [email protected] views of both God and man. Patty Finley [email protected] Yet from the very outset there have been believers who actively welcomed evolution. Asa Gray, the botanist to whom Darwin dedi- Jack Jekowski [email protected] cated his own book, Forms of Flowers, saw evolution as the natural process through which God worked. Charles Kingsley, the Christian Jesse Johnson [email protected] social reformer and historian now best remembered for The Water Kim Johnson [email protected] Babies, wrote to Darwin that a Deity who created “primal forms capable Dr. Marvin Moss [email protected] of self development” was “a loftier thought” than one who had created Dr. Rebecca Reiss [email protected] each kind separately. In our own time, we have evolution theology Jerry Shelton [email protected] and Evolution Sunday. Ken Miller, a committed Catholic, is prominent as Dave Thomas [email protected] molecular biologist, textbook writer, CESE annual dues are $25 for individual, $35 for and legal witness on behalf of evo- family, and $10 for students. Please see last page lution, while Dennis Venema’s post- for membership form. Email Beacon submissions to Editor, M. Kim Johnson, [email protected]. ings on the website of BioLogos, http://www.cese.org June 2013 The Beacon, Vol XV1I, No 1 Page 3 an organization dedicated to the acceptance of science evolution avoids the theological problem of suffering, from a Christian perspective, are model expositions of since all organic beings must learn to avoid what harms evolutionary science. them, and the balance between the perceptions of plea- sure and pain is itself an evolved adaptation. Against this background, it may be helpful to look at the religious views of Charles Darwin himself, and also Darwin also made a clear distinction, which today’s those of Alfred Russel Wallace, the two independent “Intelligent Design” advocates systematically blur, originators of the concept of evolution as the inevitable between Paley’s argument from the design of particular outcome of natural selection. things, and the more powerful argument from what he Darwin’s private autobiographies include a short but conceiving this immense and wonderful universe… as revealing chapter on religious belief. Darwin initially a result of blind chance or necessity.” While discarding contemplated becoming a clergyman. He “did not then the former, he still found the latter convincing enough in the least doubt that strict and literal truth of every to say, at the very time that he was composing On the word in the Bible” and was much impressed by Paley’s Origin of Species, that “I deserve to be called a Theist.” argument from the perfection of individual organ- isms to the existence of an intelligent creator. He was Later, however, he writes “can the mind of man, which still quite orthodox while on the Beagle [which sailed has… been developed from a mind as low as that around the world allowing Darwin to collect numer- possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it ous samples ranging from fossils to live animals and draws such grand conclusions? ... The mystery of the plants ed.]. But in the two years after his return, he beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one reconsidered his position, and gradually came to reject must be content to remain an Agnostic.” This term, conventional religion on historical, logical, philosophi- “Agnostic”, had been newly coined by his friend and cal, and indeed moral grounds. Old Testament history prominent supporter, Thomas Huxley, and refers, not was manifestly false, and presented God as a vengeful to a wishy-washy uncertainty, but to the principled tyrant. Different revelations contradicted each other. conviction that there was no adequate way of deciding And, as he later wrote: the question. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to Alfred Russel Wallace is a much more complicated wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain case. He seems to us self-contradictory and changeable, language of the text seems to show that the men an opponent of the supernatural who nonetheless took who do not believe, and this would include my Spiritualism seriously. He was also much more wordy Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, than Darwin; his autobiography runs to two thick will be everlastingly punished. volumes. I have therefore relied mainly on secondary sources4, together with his review5 of Lyell’s writings And this is a damnable doctrine.
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