Citizens for Science

Hi. This is my first contribution to this site. I'll introduce myself by giving you my main URL:

www.gregladen.com

which is a blog about evolution, science education, and various other topics. (As of this writing, my most recent blog is on “teaching the controversy”). I currently teach at the University of Minnesota, and I'm very interested in excellence in science education. My wife, Amanda, is a teacher at Columbia Heights High School (Go Highlanders ....) and my daughter, Julia, is a student at Brimhall, a public school in the Roseville School District.

My research is on human evolution, and I'm an active member of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education.

For me, the reason human beings exist could be compared to the same reason mold grows on an old loaf of bread. If you put a piece of bread in the freezer it will freeze and there is no chance it will get moldy becuase it just too cold. Same thing goes for if a piece of bread is burnt in the toaster its just to hot and too harsh of an enviorment for it to get moldy. Yet, we all know what happens when a loaf of bread is kept for too long in room tempature, soon than later mold begins to grow, a living bacteria has found the right conditions and plenty of food to raise a family mold all over your bread. Now lets compare the loaves of bread to three planets, technicly two becuase one of the planets is pluto and thats not considered a planet any more, ha. Regardless lets compare the loaves of bread to Pluto, Mercury, and Earth. Pluto is much to far from the sun and is much too cold just like the piece of bread left in the freezer, its too cold for anything live. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and is much too hot just like the piece of bread in the toaster, its too hot and dry for anything to live. Yet, low and behold the planet earth, out of pure chance, out of pure one in a billion, winning the lottery, lucky chance, the planet Earth landed in just the right distance from the sun, not to hot and not too cold, room tempature, just like the piece of bread left out on the counter mold grows, we humans being are that mold. We are merely mold, we are nothing more than realy old, smart mold that has been left on a counter in room tempature for more than four and a half billion years. It take a lil to take it all in and many people will thumb their nose and have no part of the mold theory, but this is not my opinion, this is the truth. Don't hide from facts, embrace them. It is a realy awesome thing when you think about it and it makes you relize just how insignificant humans realy are and what an opportunity we have.

Nikhil (Nick) Rao, recently elected to the Board of Governors of Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE, http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/oese/) has now launched this new national group that has already received a lot of attention in the blogosphere and the mission statement in support of the group is receiving signatures.

John Derbyshire, conservative columnist and contributor to National Review Online, has posted his support and signed the statement, as have several other conservative spokespersons. The Scientific American editors blog has applauded the effort. The site is at www.caidweb.org. Anyone of a conservative political bent (Republicans, conservative independents, libertarians, etc.) is encouraged to visit the CAID site and sign on. Help spread the word to individuals, organizations, blog sites, media outlets, etc.

"Ethics, Education,
and the Evolution Debate"

The Center for Ethics at The University of Montana will be offering this 3-credit short course next month (June 19 -22 and 26 - 29).

The description is as follows:
Ever since Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859 the theory of evolution has been hotly contested. In recent years the debate again has intensified over science education. On the one hand, the opponents of evolution argue that teaching evolution promotes an atheistic, materialistic philosophy.

This is at least suggested by a paper in the November issue of BioScience. Here is a news item on the paper in Science:

Teaching the intelligent design controversy

Dear fellow CfS,

I recently asked the PA Dept. of Education whether they had a formal position on the teaching of intelligent design in PA public schools. The response was no. In fact, not only is there no formal position, there is in fact not a single mention of intelligent design or creationism on the PDA web site. Have other CfS groups tried to find similar information from their respective Depts. of Ed? I'd be very interested in hearing about it, if you have. Ulitimately, it seems that Depts. of Ed. should at least say, "We are politically unable to weigh in on science versus religion" (or whatever), just so that citizens don't take a lack of position as tacit approval of intelligent design activities in individual school districts.

Here are some reports and exchanges over last Friday night's debate in Colorado Springs.

From Steve Mahone, participant, Secretary/Treasurer of CCFS
On a clam, Friday evening I marched onto a stage along with physics
professor Sam Milazzo and "Dr." Kent Hovind to debate the question, "Science
or Religion?" Here's my (admittedly biased) assessment of how the evening
unfolded:

1) The organizer of the debate sent an email to all participants on the
preceding Wednesday stating: "Slides and multimedia will not be used for
this debate. Your verbal presentation is your only means of communication."

We've installed a chat server that CFS will be using to host chats. You can access the server on the web at http://scit.us/jwchat/. If you have another Jabber client, you can use the scit.us server.

Citizens for Science is a network of grassroots organizations devoted to protecting and promoting science education. A large proportion of today's students are not adequately taught fundamental scientific concepts due to political and sectarian pressure against modern science. We are grassroots organizations that have formed in many communities and states to address this trend and promote science education. Science needs scientists, and by promoting science education we hope to develop the children of today into the scientists of tomorrow.