Faith and Science
Teach
Science—Not Evolutionary Theory
Abstract
Scientific literacy is an essential
goal of general education. Before science is taught educators must understand
what science is, so that theory,
ideology and metascience, posing as scientific facts,
are not taught as science. Yet
teaching metaphysics is promoted with the argument that “Evolution should be a
recurrent theme throughout biology courses.” Only scientific facts prepare
students to think carefully, critically, and for themselves. Without facts students
have nothing but common sense to evaluate science’s theoretical concepts.
Darwinism and Synthetic Theory are not facts. They must not be taught as
scientific facts in pre-college school curricula. The greatest threat to
evolutionary ideologies is change by inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Scientific facts now show that biological life can insure survival by adapting
to its environment with newly-acquired characteristics. Acquired
characteristics are imbedded in germline
Introduction
Achievements in
science and technology have improved human existence over the last few
centuries. Their results have increased life expectancy, reduced human
suffering from disease and conditions of poverty, and continue to improve
peoples’ quality of life. Science and technology promise much more for the future.
Many different ideologies and their promises for peoples’ improvement have come
and gone since human history began. Few have delivered on their promises and
most have left the human condition worse. Evolutionary theory appeared over the
last two centuries and has made claims for being science, a fact, a certainty,
and truth. This theory is given importance of a science with the promise to
improve the human existence (Figure 1). But is evolutionary theory able to
improve the human condition in any
way? If this is not possible, can it be justified to teach evolutionary theory
as science and to devote the time that should be used for preparing citizens to
understand how science and technology benefit their existence?
Goals
of Education
For practical reasons education is essential and in most places mandatory. A society is hardly able to survive and thrive without its people being at least minimally educated.
Access
to timely, accurate, and diverse sources of knowledge is a major foundation of
human development. Education in primary schools, vocational training, or
community institutions is essential to stimulate economic growth, slow
population growth, build strong communities, and encourage democracy. A
society’s level of technical knowledge and informational technology determines,
in part, its ability to prosper in an increasingly complex and interconnected
world.1
Research supports these benefits of education.2 Greater educational opportunities enable individuals to improve their economic circumstances. Individual incomes increase, income inequality diminishes, and overall poverty decreases. These benefits cannot be achieved where illiteracy is an important problem. Illiteracy also contributes to poor health because individuals are unable to make informed health choices with which they can maximize the potential for a long life, reduce infant and child mortality, and choose optimal nutrition and life style for a healthy life.
Primary education
Primary education’s goal up to
grades 5 or 6 is to teach literacy and numeracy. This
goal is world-wide; the United Nations literacy’s goal is the ability to read
and write simple statements in one or more languages.3 However, this
minimum requirement does little to make an individual literate. In the
Primary-Secondary education
The goal of education beyond grades 5 or 6 through grade 12 is to prepare students for continuing education in a college or university and to continue teaching life skills for those who choose no further academic education.
Post-Secondary
education
College and university curricula must be based on the intellectual method which prepares students to think carefully and critically. The intellectual method prepares individuals for gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information in order to attain useful knowledge in the broad areas of civilization and culture, contemporary societies, and nature and the environment. Expectations for performance include abilities to examine assumptions, make rational judgments, construct arguments, and test theories. The social, political, economic, scientific, and cultural complexities of modern life require such preparations to enable effective citizenship.
Science Education
Effective citizens must understand fundamental principles of the natural sciences and have knowledge of contemporary scientific and technical concerns. “It is impossible to function as an informed citizen in modern society without an understanding of nature and the environment. Scientific literacy is thus an essential component of general education.”5
Fundamental principles of nature and environment are taught in junior and senior high schools. This scientific knowledge is essential for understanding maintenance of one’s personal biological development and health. Scientific literacy also prepares one to understand needs for such things as energy, clean air, earth’s resources, food, life-sustaining environmental conditions, and medical care. Scientific facts and information are essential for anyone to critically evaluate these needs. Scientific literacy must be the foundation for making any theoretical interpretations or ideological conclusions. Scientifically illiterate individuals have to rely on others for making these conclusions and interpretations.
Preparation for
Critical Thinking
Students need basic and essential information or facts in order to think for themselves, to “think carefully and critically.” Without basic factual information students are not prepared to think for themselves and are likely to believe any theories, concepts or ideology they are taught to be true. They are not equipped to think “outside the box”; they are likely to remain faithful to the sacred concepts of their educational leaders. Many students are not eager to learn scientific facts. They are satisfied with no more “information” than a teacher’s interpretations where little of their own thinking is encouraged. When students do not critically examine concepts, they are not burdened with any thinking of their own.
Science and Science Theory
What is Science?
Before science is taught educators must know what science is, because science’s theories, ideologies and metaphysics are confused with science.
Science
is both a process of gaining knowledge, and the organized body of knowledge
gained by this process. The scientific process is the systemic acquisition of
new knowledge about a system. This systematic acquisition is generally the
scientific method, and the system is generally nature. Science is also the
scientific knowledge that has been systematically acquired by this scientific
process.6
Despite
popular impressions of science, it is not the goal of science to answer all
questions, only those that pertain to physical reality (measurable empirical
experience)….Science does not and can not produce absolute and unquestionable
truth.6
Drawing a clear distinction between science and philosophical reflections on science is difficult.
Science
is a reasoned and wholly dispassionate attempt to figure out the truth about ourselves and the world,
entirely independent of ideology, or moral convictions, or religious or
theological commitments.…. Science done properly necessarily involves
“methodological naturalism,”… because it establishes which sort of study
qualifies as scientific. Science is supposed to be non-evaluative, non-normative,
non-prescriptive; it is supposed to give us facts, not values….science is
objective, public, sharable, publicly verifiable, and equally available to
anyone, whatever their religious or metaphysical proclivities….the findings of
science hold equally for all of us….proper science …is restricted to the
deliverances of reason and sense (perception) which are the same for all
people.7
Values are imposed with scientific theories because such theories are not religiously or metaphysically neutral. Scientific theories become metanarratives that claim some form of transcendental and universal truth, especially for evolutionary tales of human existence. Common sense leads people to be skeptical of “universal truths” such as scientific theories whose proponents use to promote ideologies.
Teaching Science
The National Research Council (1996) establishes National Science Education Standards for “teaching science as inquiry which must be the basic underlying principle of science education as well as the ultimate organizing concept for the selection for the selection of student activities.”8 “These activities should include: 1) asking appropriate questions, 2) planning and conducting investigations, 3) appropriate tools and techniques to gather data, 4) thinking critically and logically about the relationships between evidence and explanations, and 5) communicating scientific arguments.” Unfortunately, many science educators are intent on teaching ideology rather than science. By giving students a sound background in facts and information on science, they realize it will be more difficult for students to believe in their scientific ideologies.
Critical Thinking for
Establishing Scientific Truth
Critical thinking on questions in science requires facts and information before any concept or theory can be developed or evaluated. A degree of autonomy, independence, and self-determination are essential for one to think critically.9 Teaching scientific ideologies without scientific facts and information does not prepare students to think critically; someone else is thinking for them. Science courses in primary-secondary curricula should be limited to teaching students basic facts and information, and thereby prepare them to think critically. The introduction of scientific ideology can begin in post-secondary educational programs where science courses in general education programs have the goal to teach students ideologies to an individual teacher’s liking.10 Students who have been prepared with scientific facts and information can critically evaluate these ideologies. Without this preparation students are most likely to uncritically accept a teacher’s ideologies. That is not an intellectual dilemma for students who are conditioned to simply receive answers without critically evaluating for better responses.
Teaching Ideology
All scientific sentences describing nature and environment must document observables. All scientific concepts must be definable in terms of observables. Deductions of the world’s principles from science’s observations of nature and environment are metaphysical endeavors. Teaching metaphysics or philosophical conclusions is not teaching science; it is teaching ideology. Ideology begins with using information on what exists or on that is and the most objective information it can use that has been discovered through science. Beliefs and metaphysical visions on what is good and what is possible use that objective information to formulate subjective conclusions—ideologies. Ideologies usually depend on unsubstantiated information for strengthening their arguments and positions.
Arguments stemming from theories which have yet to be substantiated are almost certainly false. Destructive arguments develop from the passing of metaphysics as science, i.e. the interpretation of facts as though they were the facts themselves. Interpretations that pose as scientific facts, and are as much metaphysical as scientific, include theories in the physical sciences such as relativity, the Big Bang, and Quantum Theory and others in the biological sciences such as Darwinian Evolution or its more modern form, Synthetic Theory.
A National
Center for Science Education report describes how educators should teach
students evolutionary biology.11 The goal of this report is to show
that educators will have to deal with the misconception
that the Darwinian evolution concept of variation and selection is only a
theory (Figure 2), and to show that the Lamarkian
concept is no more than a scientifically
flawed theory. Science educators must: “help our students discover the
scientific flaws in this theory and replace it with a more powerful and
accurate explanation for the diversity of life.”11 But all
explanations are theories. The goal of this report is: “how best to make Lamark’s view the unsatisfactory concept, while showing
The report begins by stating: “Constructivist learning theory tells us that changing this misconception will only take place if our students’ minds have an active cognitive involvement in the processes that allow for the accommodation of new ‘replacement’ knowledge.”11 How are they to be actively cognitively involved? The report recommends a class plan (on class design see reference 9, p. 86) to “engage” students by showing biological traits 1) of an animal’s speed that is necessary for survival, 2) of the absence of a special sense such as sight where it is not needed, and 3) of morphological and behavioral adaptations necessary for a species’ survival. Following this engagement students are divided into small groups to “explore” their engagement experience and perceptions. In all three examples the students are asked: “How would an evolutionary biologist explain” how these unique characteristics evolved from ancestors which did not have them. Then students are to “explain” by presenting “their explanations to the class as a whole to foster comments, critiques, and criticisms of their hypotheses.”11 The report states that dissent, argument, and disagreement are all integral components of the scientific process, all being positive attributes of science. But “More than likely, many of the groups will present Lamarkian ideas…therefore the important points need to be discussed by the teacher.”11 They include: 1) Evolution proceeds by the process of variation, a genetically random process, and selection, an environmentally driven non-random process. 2) Organisms do not get what they “need” through “inner wants” or through “use and disuse.” Individual intentions do not play a role. 3) Acquired characteristics are not passed on to offspring. 4) Mutations are not directed for the benefit of the individual. 5) Evolution is neither random nor teleological. It is, in fact, driven by both historical contingencies and the non-random, yet non-directed, process of selection.
Unfortunately
in this process students themselves 1) ask no
appropriate questions (they are asked by the teacher), 2) have no role in planning and conducting
investigations, 3) are given no tools
and techniques to gather data—any data is given by the teacher, 4) do no critical thinking—all thoughts and
concepts are declared as truth by the
teacher, 5) may make arguments but they are corrected
by the teacher. Then the teacher presents another example and expects the students
to use the evolutionary biology explanation for reinforcing belief in
evolutionary theory. The educator acknowledges that this is a difficult task to
instill belief in
This report points out that “the acceptance of Lamarckian beliefs, for all intents and purposes, totally blocks the learning of Darwinian principles. Obviously this must be changed.” Do teachers of science wish to teach science or to teach an ideology?
Other national groups of biology teachers produce official statements for teachers to follow in teaching science, evolution, and biology. They describe the nature and methods of science, essential concepts of biological evolution, and evolution in the classroom. They state that “Evolution should be a recurrent theme throughout biology courses.”12
Education—Invoking Critical Thinking
Common Sense Permits
Thinking Outside the Box
Students possess common sense with which to evaluate challenges of newly-presented theories that represent shifts in their believed-in paradigms.13 But we are told that common sense can no longer be trusted and should be disregarded, that science offers “higher wisdom.” Students lacking common sense have little capacity to evaluate any theory, even ones that seem plausible because the theory’s ideas are argued to be consistent with empirical facts and free of internal contradictions. Teaching students to think critically must be free of duress to believe any theory or dogma.
Common sense is often the only guardian protecting what students believe regarding meaning and existence for their lives. Common sense is challenged by a science today that “persistently exceeds its mandate in pronouncing on questions of meaning and value which are nowhere in its purview.”13 Scientists, however, may believe that common sense is merely a deposit of prejudices and must be corrected by “scientifically-derived wisdom.” Common sense tells us that great scientific theories are often counter-intuitive, however; but scientific theorists find this unacceptable and under duress the student must return to thinking “in the box.” Such assaults on common sense drive students to distrust scientists who are seen to view possibilities and turn them into probabilities, from which they soon become certainties. The scientific dogma becomes “nothing explained by scientific theory is based on ignorance; it all has become certain knowledge.”14
Students question if there is more
evidence on our origins from the metaphysical theory of evolution than from
intuition or common sense. Common sense tells many that human existence and
reality are meaningful (47%-49% of Americans do not believe that they evolved
from earlier forms of animal life).15 Evolutionary theory as a
philosophy, not science, with its foundation of chance determining all, tells
us something different. But chance cannot give anything meaning. People’s
common sense revolts at the idea that life began spontaneously from a “primordial
soup” of elements, evolving strictly by chance. Thereby, humans are the result
of a purposeless and natural process that did not have them in mind.15
Common sense recognizes that evolutionary claims have been inadequate, which
has prompted revisions, the present one called synthetic theory.16
Evolutionists trivialize common
sense’s rejection of their theories as being ignorant and irrational responses
to “scientific truths.” They also dismiss claims that “evolution is only a theory” as an epistemological
misconception.11 Darwinists discredit Lamarckian evolutionary ideas,
however, by being theories with
scientific flaws. Common sense and scientific findings show Lamarck’s
theory to be more believable than any form of
Common sense agrees with ecologists’ belief that all life cooperates to insure its continuing survival.17 But evolutionary biologists detest this idea of cooperation because that gives purpose to adaptation. Cooperation is inconsistent with survival of the fittest. With the fittest surviving, altruism, if it exists and is genetically transmitted, would have the purpose of insuring survival for all. Altruism depends on fullest cooperation. Lamarckian evolution believes in adaptation to the environment, in purposeful changes. Hence, this challenges the basic tenets of Darwinian beliefs that are maintained down through the Synthetic Theory.
Constructing and Teaching Ideology
Facts, Information, Theories
and Ideology
Educators are encouraged to teach “evolution is a fact,” “all biologists and scientists wholeheartedly accept the theory of evolution,” and why call into question the scientific theory of evolution.
Evolution—accurately presented—needs to be in
pre-college as well as college education….on teaching it better….Most of them
have little to do with the actual scientific content of the subject, but rather
with improving the perception of evolution by the public.18
For leading biological evolutionists, evolution is no mere theory but established fact, not a virtual certainty but a real certainty and they encourage evolution being taught by proclaiming: “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane.”19 If evolution is a fact, however, a real certainty, why is any further research needed? Evolution is a theory, however, and theories are useful not in establishing facts but in providing a guide for further research; research is active in “learning more” about evolutionary biology.
Philosophers (critical theorists) examine the way that cultural institutions (mostly academic) “are used to shape identities, dictating what is accepted as true, normal, or acceptable within a culture, offering privilege to some, and marginalizing or denying others.”20 Shaping identities creates ideologies.
An
Ideology, as seen by Critical Theory, is a system of seemingly rational ideas,
practices and paradigms that serve to justify or legitimate the values, vested
interests, and beliefs of a particular group of people….In either case, the
group seeks to advance its socially created realities and interests against
those of other groups. In sum, an ideology advances a group’s interests as
being in the best interests of everyone else…..21
Teaching Truths
Educational goals are difficult to achieve, especially for acceptable literacy and numeracy standards. Educational efforts encounter numerous obstacles that interfere with teaching.
Public
schooling is beset by multiple and competing political, economic, social and
intellectual ideologies that function as external pressures and impediments to
teaching praxis...Thus such unsuspecting teachers invariably encounter or
create for themselves an often bewildering array of ideology-based obstacles to
successful praxis.
They
are unwilling, then, to undertake the kind of personal and professional
ideology critique that can identify dysfunctional paradigms, taken for granted
assumptions, biases and unwarranted personal theories, and other such
impediments to bringing about praxial results for
typical students. Instead, too many become complacent followers of the status
quo, or of every fad or bandwagon.18
Teachers must be challenged to determine and teach what is most important. They must critique personal ideologies by identifying, analyzing and assessing their personal ideological suppositions, paradigms and taken-for-granted assumptions. Teachers must evaluate and choose ideologies and metaphysical beliefs that can enrich and benefit students’ lives. Critiques of ideologies and theories are essential to reveal inherent contradictions and inconsistencies “which make the benefits that are only abstractly claimed in theory progressively more difficult to justify, rationalize or legitimize as being ‘good’…”18 Proponents of evolutionary biology find little to justify a good for the dogma; much of their declarations are to identify their enemies, Christian beliefs and theories of Lamarckian evolution.
Evolutionary Ideology
Popper claims that Darwinism is “not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme.”22 Should this ideology be taught in schools? Some prestigious evolutionists have said: “...it ought not to be taught in high school.”22 Why not?
…the
scientific theories that we have about the origin/evolution of the universe and
of life do not differ from the so-called religious myths: they are
unobservable, and there is something of naturalistic omnipotence….philosophic
naturalism reigns disguised as Science….it suggests to be
more metaphysics rather than Science properly?
…education, how to critically think, and not the
actual fossilized situation by the neo-Darwinists mythological dogma—ideology,
in what must be thought—only what the Scientific Nomenklatura
pontificates.22
If evolutionary biology must be taught, teachers must distinguish
where science leaves off and philosophy or ideology begins. Evolutionary theory
cannot be taught as science because it is not
a scientific fact. Evolutionists are not scientific scholars because they argue
ideology over empirical facts. Darwinian evolutionists place ideology over
empirical facts when they deny empirical scientific facts that support Larmarckian evolutionary theory. This denial is necessary
because the latter is the threat, even greater than Christianity to
Evolutionary theory is also a threat to society, because it is at the foundation of communism, fascism, Freudianism, social Darwinism, behaviorism, Kinseyism, materialism, atheism, and in the religious world, modernism and neo-orthodoxy.23 Threats develop because there is a mismatch between ideological claims and results that show the ideologies do not make the world a better place.
When
a system operates according to ideologies and practices that undermine its own
raison d’etre, it experiences a state of perpetual
crisis brought on by tensions resulting from the mismatch of values claimed for
the system and values produced by the system….they arise from the intractable
problems and unintended negative results brought on by inherent contradictions
and inconsistencies within the dominant ideology guiding the system and its
‘standards’. These internal contradictions and conflicts make the benefits that
are only abstractly claimed in theory progressively more difficult to justify,
rationalize or legitimize as being “good.”…These crises bring about the need to
legitimate the rationality and values of the system.21
Claims of an ideology are evaluated by results of its practice. Evolutionists began making claims for their ideology that were designed to destroy the claims of Christian beliefs. Teachers must look at the results of non-Christian ideologies on society and critically evaluate these results before they teach.
…students
should be both exposed to and learn to deal cooperatively and collaboratively
with a wide variety of different views and opinions. Thus the essentially
philosophical undertaking of developing a warranted point of view based on
evidence, competence with basic philosophical knowledge and processes, and
clear thinking and writing, should begin in a context of diverse and plural
opinions and beliefs not dissimilar from what will be experienced on the job.
…to
judge the success of a teaching technique…curricular results in teaching
science or evolution need to be stated in terms of regulative or action ideals.
All professions are guided by such ideals—for example in the case to medicine,
to restore health, to minimize or alleviate pain and, above all, to do no
harm…..thus regulative or action ideals are optimum states towards which people
naturally strive or by which they judge the relative success of their actions.21
The goals of educators at all levels must be guided by regulative actions of ideals that measure the success of their actions. This success begins with becoming literate and competent in numeracy; that can be measured. Competency is expanded through the 12th grade by acquiring empirical information for making explanations that “work.” In no cases is any theory or ideology taught that can not be shown to work.
The time for teaching the basics of science is inadequate in primary and secondary education. Without an adequate understanding of these basics, students are unprepared to evaluate any theory or ideology of science; they are unprepared to “trust” science. Some of the most important claims science makes are those for medical care, and today many discover that they have been deceived concerning medical and surgical treatments. Evaluation of medical care is difficult for individuals lacking a basic of understanding of science. Knowledge of scientific theories and ideologies, such as evolution, does not help them with their health problems. An importance for learning theories and ideologies can minimize the importance for learning empirically-based information and teaching of scientific facts will not be done, leaving the learner scientifically illiterate.
The Enemy of Evolutionary Theory
Darwinism in its most modern form, synthetic theory, believes that Christian beliefs pose little challenge to its ideology. Lamarck’s theory of evolution is the threat to all forms of Darwinism. “Lamarckism is the premise of heritable characteristics acquired by the organism in response to the environment—characteristics which are then transmitted to descendents….belief in amounts to philosophical suicide, being a loser, being open to becoming an object of abuse and ridicule.”24 But Darwinian evolutionary theory protects its dogma against Lamarckism that denies chance determining random mutation and natural selection.
…the organism becomes proactive player in its own
destiny…solving problems twice as hard and faster than possible through random
mutation…..Darwinian evolution presents a process having no means of feedback
for regulating an organism—something totally inconsistent with biological
processes. The scientific community rejects directed evolution.24
Lamarckism describes how biological life can change and adapt in order to survive in the ever-changing enironment.17, 24 Darwinians see design and purpose in biological abilities to adapt and therefore reject Lamarckism and the scientific support for its ideas. Likewise the proponents of directed evolution believe that their ideology will vanquish Christian beliefs on creation.
If
humankind is able to respond to the environment and direct its evolution, then
the questions concerning Natural Selection will be answered. The intervention
of a higher authority in the evolutionary process will become superfluous. The
last nail in the coffin of creationism will be hammered.17
More importantly, scientific support for purposeful biological adaptation will leave the dogma of Darwinism with no place to retreat.
Christianity
Christianity ruled Western thought
until the time of
Christianity is more than an ideology. God reveals Himself in His Salvation History, the Bible. The Bible is not meant to be a book of science where we are to look for scientific facts. Believers accept the truth of the Bible on their faith, a truth that is supported by many eyewitness accounts, such as the accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection documented by the Apostles John and Peter. Many do not believe such accounts attesting to Jesus’ experiences. Human beings deny even better-documented historical events, however. In the Twentieth Century, some people deny there was ever a Holocaust during World War II despite much documenting proof.
Educational programs designed to show cultures of different people worldwide have little reservation for teaching religious ideologies different from Christianity. Although their beliefs are largely based on myths with no eyewitness historical accounts, our governments do not restrict the ideological teachings of such religions. On the other hand, our governments prevent the teaching of Christian historical events in publicly funded schools.
Teaching Inheritable Biological
Adaptation
Numerous
disciplines of science have contributed to recent appreciations that biological
forms of life can adapt to the environment in purposeful ways and these changes
can be inherited. Students need to learn the basic fundamentals describing how
these changes are possible and how they contribute to improving our lives.
The Blueprint—Germline Genetic Code
Germline
Figure 4. Viral vector can carry
and genome
of somatic or germline cells
Recent
molecular biology studies show that the genome is more fluid and responsive to
the environment than most Darwinians are willing to accept.
Somatic
cells make up the rest of the body. Changes to their genes do not pass to the
next generation. Indeed, a central tenet of Mendelian
genetics, the Weissman boundary, asserts that nothing
that happens to the somatic cells or tissues of a mammal will have any effect whatsoever on the genetic information transmitted to
its offspring.
Somatic
gene therapy involves the manipulation of gene expression in cells that will be
corrective to the patient but not inherited to the next generation.25
This dogma Weissman proposed in 1885 is the heart of modern evolutionary theory. Evolutionists insist on teaching this ideology rather than facts that students might find useful for constructive independent thinking.
Although
modern evolutionary theory rejects inheritance of acquired characteristics,
From
the facts alluded to.. I think there can be no doubt
that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged certain parts,
and disuse diminished them, and that such modifications are inherited.24
Heredity—More Than
In addition
to inheriting genes and their
Epigenetic
changes leave the genome—genetic sequences—unchanged so the next generation
will show no
Figure 5. Biochemical methylation and demethylation of
Epigenetic changes matter more than
Protecting the Genetic
Heritage
- Endogenous
processed such as attack by reactive oxygen radicals produced from
normal metabolic byproducts (spontaneous mutation)
- Agents of environmental origin (induced
mutations), such as
- Ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun
- Other radiation frequencies, including x-rays and
gamma rays
- Certain plant toxins
- Human-made mutagenic chemicals, such as
hydrocarbons from cigarette smoke
- Cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy
Endogenous-damage processes affect the primary structure rather than the secondary structure of the double helix and can be subdivided into four classes:
-
Oxidation of bases [e.g. 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8-oxoG]
and generation of
-
Methylation of
bases, such as formation of 7-methylguanine
-
Hydrolysis of bases, such as depurination
and depyrimidination
-
Mismatch of bases, due to
Repair of damaged
Figure 6. Damage and repair of
Evolutionary
theory states that genetic mutation is the driving factor for change. As shown
here, mutation can be spontaneous or induced by many causes that can be
explained. The persistence of any mutation depends on the effectiveness of
repair mechanisms. Some
Controlled Mutations—Co-creating Ourselves
Until
recently, humans understood their healing processes to be slow and determined
entirely by our inherited “changeless” genome. Now science (as reflected by an
NIH committee) knows that healing processes can begin rapidly and under the
control of rapidly changing genetic influence. 34
Gene
changes can occur within minutes, through “immediate early gene expression,” in
response to psychosocial clues and significant life events.35 Signals received from stimuli outside the body—from the
environment—activate genes that code for formation of proteins which
participate in maintenance of health and facilitation of healing processes
(Figure 7). Proteins are the “informational and computational processor of life
at the molecular level,” and most importantly in healing.36 Immediate early genes integrate
mind and body to implement healing throughout the body. These genes are turned
on and off in response to our conscious efforts—thereby faith can heal when
they are on.37 Current research shows
that touch and verbal suggestion can initiate immediate-early-gene protein
cascades to facilitate healing.38
Psychosocial clues & significant life events
Cell membrane cAMP formation
Activation of protein kinase
CREB (cAMP-response-element-binding protein)
CREB phosphorylation (gene-transcription factor)
Binding to critical Ca2+ response element (CRE) within BDNF gene
activates
BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) gene transcription
Gene expression for neurogenesis--neural plasticity
Possible modified-gene insertion into germline
Figure 7. Activation of immediate early gene expression by
environment
Gene
expression is also determined by states of behavior and consciousness such as
waking, sleeping, dreaming, emotions, motivation, and stress.39 This state-related or
state-dependent gene expression is designed to be consciously modified at any
time; we have the ability to creatively adapt ourselves at the genomic-protein
level. Adaptation involves dynamics of energy, information and structure at the
molecular level.40
The ultimate effects of immediate early genes
are probably by “a series of immediate early genes, members of various families,
all interacting with one another and with other second and third messengers to
affect several transcriptural regulating sites and,
thus altering gene expression.”41
Some immediate early genes
probably dominate and control the outcome of multiple stimuli. This suggests a
co-creation that operates by modifying the genetic “instructional manual.”
Acquired environmentally-induced problems such as depression can be a family problem,
affecting more than one member by initially activating immediate early genes.
Epidemiologic studies have led to the conclusion that “sensitization to
stressors and episode sensitization occur and become encoded at the level of
gene expression” 42 and maybe that
genetic alteration can be passed on to future generations and put them at risk
for depression. Drugs of abuse activate immediate early genes that lead to
molecular changes responsible for addiction, changes which include expression
of genes that can be lasting.41
Changes in our genome are not all due random
mutations; we have some control over that: “One might say, metaphorically, that
consciousness is the tutor who supervises the education of the living
substance, but leaves its pupil alone to deal with all those tasks for which it
is already sufficiently trained.”43 “Highly motivated states of
consciousness can turn on and focus gene expression, protein synthesis,
neurotransmitters, and neurogenesis in our daily
creative work of building a better brain.” 44 With the ability to educate
living substance “we can co-create ourselves in cooperation with nature.”45 Our
nature consists of human beings’ biological mechanisms which God designed. We
can “co-create” by employing what we can control—consciousness to freely
determine our will. We do not co-create ourselves without faith that we can
freely determine to choose. Non-human life does not have the consciousness to
co-create.
Science
is for Application
If evolutionary biologists wish to become “true” scientists and science has the role of explaining our nature so that humans can use its information to embellish their lives, evolution must graduate from a theoretical study to a practical application that shows people how to build a better world.
Current Darwinian theories deny the ability of life to inherit acquired characteristics. But “If directed evolution could be proven, then its knowledge and acceptance would greatly affect all mankind.”17 Learning scientific facts and not scientific ideology will best prepare one to recognize how science can benefit human lives; this also provides information so one is less likely to distrust science. Students must be equipped to evaluate the benefits of science. Practical science, not theoretical science, offers benefits for human beings.
Practical science is concerned with scientific and technical information to improve global health, welfare and nutrition for human beings, and the knowledge necessary to maintain a healthy biodiversity for the entire planet. This information is essential to reducing infant diseases and mortality, and to prolonging life expectancy and quality healthy lives for all human beings. Evolutionary theory is unable to provide any such useful information.
Literacy in practical science requires educational goals that clearly state why basic fundamentals of science must be learned and understood before a student can critically evaluate any practical application of science—scientific technology. Teaching fundamentals rather than indoctrinating students in a teacher’s theories or ideology leads to student’s thinking critically, becoming creative, and developing problem-solving skills.
Applying Information
on Genetic and Epigenetic Inheritance
Information
on biochemistry, genetics, and epigenetics is
essential for understanding the biochemical causes and principles of
inheritance. Scientific information is practical and trustworthy when it
reveals the causes and principles of
Biochemical modification of the immune system to rapidly develop permanent antibody solutions to diseases, with such changes being inherited, is a practical possibility for adaptation to the environment. With a deeply held belief that this kind of adaptation cannot be inherited, little research on its possibility can be expected.
Science
education should include information on retroviruses and their replication.
This keys an understanding on how genetic and epigenetic information controls evolutionary
changes. The HIV retrovirus changes about a million times faster than human
genes.26 Trying to develop a protective immune response to such an
organism is futile because a vaccine developed on last year’s virus is not
likely to be effective against the current and different version. Influenza viruses
also change often and present a similar problem. These RNA viruses multiply by
reverse transcription of their RNA to
Starvation (and maybe inadequate nutrition) of women before and during pregnancy results in small babies; this environmental change is inherited.28 Damage by drugs to organs like the pancreas causes diabetes and offspring of these individuals are more prone to the disease. Drug damage to the brain and inappropriate hormone administration that alters thyroid function are also passed on to the next generation. High-tech fertility treatments can produce similar inherited epigenetic changes. Some cloning methods produce similar results.
Bacteria can rapidly evolve so they acquire an ability to degrade such inorganic compounds as petroleum products and plastics. Heritable epigenetic modifications appear to help bacteria by enabling them to rapidly switch to entirely different food and energy sources.
Methylation of
Animals and
humans can be genetically engineered by recombinant
You failed to inform subjects (receiving gene transfers) that they should not donate blood or gametes, and you failed to inform subjects that gene transfer had potential to alter genetic composition of reproductive cells.25
People carry evidence for gene transfers within their genome that “contains fully 8% endogenous retroviral sequences, emphasizing the contribution of retroviruses to our genetic heritage.”25
Application of Practical Nutritional Science
Understanding of chemistry and physiology is necessary for learning and applying principles of practical nutrition that are essential for optimal health and lifespan. Many people do not have the scientific literacy needed for maintaining normal body weight, and they pay billions of dollars annually for quick and easy answers that have no scientific basis. Useful facts on nutrition are generally not taught in pre-college courses. If they are taught at any time they are often not required courses. Conditions of overweight and obesity are preventable; they are problems that most importantly contribute to medical problems and shortened life expectancy.
“Cooperation” not
“Competition” in Nature
Science’s ecological studies show that nature undisturbed by humans exists in a cooperative state that encourages existence for all life. Human existence depends on this ecological balance. Science education has the responsibility to insure that students understand the importance of ecology’s scientific basis. With a belief that life’s existence is a matter of competition and survival of the fittest, learning about the environment is of minor importance. Scientific literacy prepares us to cooperate for achieving the best life and prosperity for every living being.
Scientific
literacy enables agriculturists to improve world food production; scientific
theories lack such ability. Scientists genetically modify crops to improve
production and nutritional quality, resistance to disease and increased
consumer acceptance. This genetic engineering has caused great concern for transfer
of crops’ transgenic
Science education shows that conscious mental events are able to promote genetic activity that can enter a person’s germline. Human physiological responses (genetic) can be made to the environment through conscious action and habits. We are not in this case creatures determined by chance events, even our moral and ethical beliefs. “Ethical beliefs are after all, a social construct based on many factors. But what if our genetic make-up is in the final analysis also a ‘social construct’ arising from our consciousness?”45
Conclusions
Scientific
literacy provides the knowledge base for health and survival of our entire
global community. Faith, not science, sustains evolutionary theory. Faith does
not require scientific literacy. A historian of science affirms the requirement
of faith for belief in evolutionary theory by a conclusion on a prominent
evolution theorist. What was said of the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr is: “He’s the
Scientific literacy shows us that we
can live whereas theories and ideology try to show us how we should live. Human
conflict develops where people can’t
live. Ideologies believe that they can solve these problems. Science and
technology provide the critical solutions for the difficult survival problems,
however. We are aware of the ten pressing issues facing the earth today (Table 1).48
Scientific literacy must include preparation with information and
understanding of these issues in order to prepare for their prevention and
management. Ideologies such as evolutionary theory provide little means to deal
with these problems.
Table 1.
Knowledge Bases for the Global Community
Energy Management
Water Management
Food Production and Distribution
Environmental Management
Natural Resource Management
Food Science and Nutrition
Global Health
Management of Poverty
The scientific base of knowledge will always be hampered by those who suffer from believing in the "truths" they bear:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the highest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Tolstoy
References and Notes
1. The project on human
development.
http://humandevelopment.bu.edu/dev_indicators/start.cfm?header_id=14
2. World Development Report
2004: Making Services Work For Poor People. http://econ.worldbank.org/wdr/wdr2002
Knowledge
for Development.
http://www.cabi-bioscience.org/Html/K4DOrange.htm
3. Definition of:
literacy/illiteracy.
http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_dict_xrxx.asp?def_code=187
A person is literate who can
with understanding both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday
life. A person is illiterate who cannot with understanding both read and write
a short simple statement on his everyday life.
4. The Illiteracy Time Bomb. http://businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/feb2002/sb20020214_7072.htm
Illiteracy.
http://www.efmoody.com/miscellaneous/illiteracy.html
5. From General Education
principles at the
6. Science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
7. Alvin Plantinga.
Methodological Naturalism? http://.arn.org/docs/odesign/od181/methnat181.htm
8. Stephen K. Moroney. Neutrality and Advocacy in Teaching: A Case for
Context-Specific Pedagogy. Christian
Scholar’s Review. Fall 2004; 34, 1; Humanities Module p. 75-90.
9. Course descriptions of
biological science courses in non-Christians emphasize the teaching of origins.
10. National Science
Education Standards.
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/html/1.html#goals
11. Richard Firenze. Lamarck vs.
12. Nation American Biology
Teacher (NATB) Statement on Teaching Evolution:
NATB endorses the following
tenets of science, evolution, and biology education. Teachers should take these
tenets into account when teaching evolution.
The Nature and Methods of Science
- Scientists do science by asking questions,
proposing and testing hypotheses, and designing empirical models and
conceptual frameworks for research about natural events. Scientists use
both observations and inferences to gather evidence and draw conclusions
respectively, inferences are logical conclusions based on observations.
Conclusions generate additional hypothesis testing, which yields further
observations and inferences. Theories are ultimately proposed to explain
observations and inferences, predict consequences, and solve problems.
- In science, a theory is an extensive explanation
developed from well-documented, reproducible sets of
experimentally-derived data from repeated observations of natural
processes. Science does not base theories on untestable
dogmatic proposals or beliefs.
- Scientific theories can be—and often are—modified
and improved as new empirical evidence is uncovered. Science is a
constantly self-correcting endeavor to understand nature and natural
phenomena.
- The scientific study of evolution has both
contemporary and historical aspects. Scientists study contemporary
processes directly through observation and experiment. Scientists infer
past processes through the study of the historical record (for example,
fossils and rock strata) and contemporary results (for example, inferring
past evolution from the features of modern organisms.
- Evolutionary theory holds a unique prominence in
biology and science for its unifying properties and predictive features,
the clear empirical testability of its models, and the richness of new
scientific research it fosters.
Essential Concepts of Biological Evolution
- The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of
biological evolution—an unpredictable and natural process of descent with
modification that is affected by natural selection, mutation, genetic
drift, migration and other natural biological and geological forces.
- Natural selection is the primary mechanism for
evolutionary changes and can be demonstrated both in the laboratory and in
the wild. A differential survival and reproduction of some genetic
variants within a population under an existing environmental state,
natural selection has no discernable direction or goal, including survival
of a species.
- Biological evolution refers to changes in
populations, not individuals. Changes must be successfully passed on to
the next generation. This means evolution results in heritable changes in
a population across many generations. In fact, evolution can be defined as
any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one
generation to the next.
Evolution in the Classroom
- Evolution should be a recurrent theme throughout
biology courses.
- Teaching the principles and mechanisms of
evolution across the biology curriculum—from molecular and cellular to organismal and ecological levels—promotes a rational
and coherent scientific account of biology.
- ….To contrast science with religion is not the
role of science or science education.
13. Common Sense.
http://ontodynamics.net/PDF_Files/COMSENSE.PDF
14. No theory can make this
declaration. A theory is a working premise that changes often when new
information appears. Therefore all theories are founded on the recognition that
there are gaps of information they do not know, they have an ignorance of.
15. Eugenie C. Scott. Creationism, Ideology, and Science.
16. Wolf-Ernst Reif, Thomas Junker, Uwe Hossfeld. The synthetic theory of evolution: general
problems and the German contribution to the synthesis. Theory
Biosci. (2000) 119: 41-91.
17. Lamarck
Revisited. The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics Gains
Attention. File://E\Lamarck.htm
By which
species changed their characteristics in response to environmental changes and
passed the characteristics to future populations.
·
·
·
Natural selection
makes humankind a pawn of random mutations that indirectly determine its fate.
Inheritance of acquired characteristics had humankind more directly involved in
its fate.
·
Natural Selection
is harsh, cruel and insensitive. Inheritance of acquired characteristics
promises practical applications that can benefit humankind.
·
Random mutations
can be lethal. Adaptive mutations are not lethal.
Epigenetic
inheritance systems, in which the phenotype (observed appearance of an
organism) that expresses cell information is modified by environmental stress,
have been noticed as modified phenotypes appearing in subsequent generations.
Epigenetic
changes, which are alterations in gene expression, can be passed from mother
cells to daughter cells…Evidence is accumulating that the epigenetic changes
are not erased.
Evolution must
graduate from a theoretical study to a practical philosophy that guides our
lives!
No! Science
must become the practical guide not a philosophy to guide our lives.
18. Eugenie C.
Scott. Creationism, Ideology, and Science.
19. Richard
Dawkins. Quoted in Stripping
20. Critical
Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
21. Critical
Theory and Music Education. http://maydaygroup.org/crittheory4.html
22. Stripping
23. Ted Peters,
24. E. J.
Steele. The Evidence for Lamarck. http://www.erim.org/qas2001/quadrant.html,Lamarckism.
http://www.sqwark.com/Lamarckism.htm
25. G. Korthof. The implications of Steele’s
soma-to-germline feedback for the safety of somatic
gene therapy in humans. http://home.planet.nl/~gkorto39a.htm
26. G. Korthof. Are retrogenes changing
27. Epigenetics. http://squark.com/Epigenetics.htm
28. Gail Vines.
Hidden Inheritance. http://ifgene.org/vines.htm
29. A
Simplified Description of
30. Epigenetics. http:www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/genome/thegenome/hg02b002.html
31. The latest
research on the process of
32.
33. What is
Mechanisms for
34.
Ernest
L. Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene Expression.
Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and
the Healing Arts,
(
35.
Ernest L. Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene Expression.
Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and
the Healing Arts,
(
36.
Dennis Bray, "Protein Molecules as Computational Elements in Living
Cells" Nature, 376, (
37. Ernest L. Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene
Expression. Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and the Healing Arts, (
38. Rossi, E., “In Search of a
Deep Psychobiology of Hypnosis: Visionary Hypotheses for a New Millennium,” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 42 3/42:4,
(2000): 178-207.
39.
Ernest L. Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene
Expression. Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and the Healing Arts, (
40. Rossi, E., “In Search of a Deep Psychobiology of
Hypnosis: Visionary Hypotheses for a New Millennium,” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 42 3/42:4, (2000): 178-207.
41.
Reinhard Grzanna, Roger
M. Brown, “Introduction,” in Activation
of Immediate Early Genes By Drugs of Abuse. eds. Reinhard Grzanna,
Roger M. Brown. NIDA Research Monograph
125, NIH Publication No. 93-3504, 1993: 58-59.
42.V.A. Vaidya, R.S. Duman,
“Depression—Emerging Insights from Neurobiology,”
43.
Ernest L. Rossi,
The Psychology Of Gene Expression.
Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and
the Healing Arts,
(
44. Ernest Ernest L. Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene Expression. Neuroscience and Neurogenesis
in Hypnosis and the Healing Arts, (
45. Ernest L.
Rossi, The Psychology Of Gene Expression.
Neuroscience and Neurogenesis in Hypnosis and
the Healing Arts,
(
46. Open Letter from World Scientists to All Governments.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/let2000-cn.htm
47. Thomas H. Maugh. Ernst
Mayr, 100; Biologist Explained Species Shifts in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Los Angeles Times.
48. Kenell J. Touryan. ASA in
the 21st Century: Expanding Our Vision for Serving God, the Church,
and Society Through Science and Technology. Perspectives
on Science and Christian Faith, 56, (June 2004): 82-88.