News to Note, August 18, 2012

1. Recreating Ancient Voices

By constructing anatomical models of extinct animals, scientists make educated guesses about how those animals sounded.

2. Domestic Terrorism Strikes Conservative Advocacy Group

The sense of security of those who take a stand for biblical values came under fire, literally, this week.

3. Yeast Hatches New Evolutionary Model

Evolutionists believe organisms acquire and accumulate new genetic information that provides blueprints for new kinds of organisms. However, the source of such new genes has always remained a little fuzzy, to say the least.

4. Meteorite Complicates Search for Life in Space

Planetary geologists have found unusual chemistry in the Tagish Lake meteorite.

5. Animal Sexual Behavior

Ascribing human moral standards to animals reinforces the unbiblical concept that humans are merely highly evolved animals.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• School Leadership 2.0—a website dedicated to providing resources to help “school leaders and aspiring school leaders to come together to meet present and future challenges”—has recently posted an article called “An Evolving Controversy: The Struggle to Teach Science in Science Classes.” The article by political science professors Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer—coauthors of the book Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms—was originally published in American Educator. Author Michael Keany, retired educator and cofounder of School Leadership 2.0, says that, despite a national consensus on the need to improve science education, “our schools have a long way to go.” He writes, “One of the worst areas—highlighted in the 2011 National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education as one of the four core ideas in the life sciences—is evolution.” (Readers may recall we discussed the National Research Council’s work on science education standards in “Influencing Next Generation Science Standards.”) Echoing Berkman and Plutzer, Keany claims that there is no controversy about whether molecules-to-man evolution has occurred. Typical of evolutionists, he tries to build his case for evolution of new kinds of organisms from the fact that organisms vary within their kinds. These two are not the same; the latter involves reshuffling and sometimes loss of genetic information whereas molecules-to-man evolution requires an organism to randomly acquire new genetic information. Furthermore, variation “within kinds,” such as speciation, is regularly observed in the present, whereas molecules-to-man evolution has never been observed and involves an effort to explain the unobservable origins of life without God. Keany agrees with Berkman and Plutzer that teachers who even acknowledge the existence of controversy about any of the tenets of evolution are undermining the education and scientific literacy. Be sure to read today’s blog posting, “Educators Who Want Indoctrination in Evolution,” by Ken Ham and Steve Golden analyzing the article from American Educator. For more information about the importance of honest and open acknowledgement of controversial and untestable assumptions underlying evolutionary thought in the development of genuine science literacy, see “The Teacher Protection Academic Freedom Act.”