ScienceFreedom.org

Utah K-5 and 9-12 Science Standards
Issues and Recommendations
By Vincent Newmeyer
January 2018

This document started as suggestions for the K-5 and 9-12 Science Standards committee, which first met in the end of November 2017, to review potential changes to the science standards. It has been further flushed out and enhanced but conveys the same concepts, part of which are a few of the scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution, which are totally ignored by Utah public education. The draft for the science standards proposed for adoption in January 2019 suffers from these same problems, but to an even greater degree!

- - - - - - -

The present science standards introductory materials for the secondary grades are lacking in these ways:

• They present some of the data as a dogma rather than in a scientific manner. For example, “Science is a way of knowing” is repeated over and over.

• There should be an invitation for teachers to consider, with their students, scientific research that challenges controversial scientific theories and invite the student to explore them if they desire. This will foster and activate the scientific process in the minds of these youth.

Utah standards can emphasize a scientific approach using the following examples taken from the UC Berkeley science website:

“Science is always a work in progress, and its conclusions are always tentative.

In science, the tentativeness of ideas such as the nature of atoms, cells, stars or the history of the Earth refers to the willingness of scientists to modify their ideas as new evidence appears.”

“Scientific ideas are subject to scrutiny from near and far, but nobody ever takes a vote.

Scientific ideas are accepted or rejected instead on the basis of evidence.”¹

Missing The Concept of Falsification

The concept of Falsification is also missing. We do establish lines of evidence in science practice, however, the quality of the questions that we ask determines the quality of the answers that we receive and also defines the limits of truth that we can discern. The secondary science materials do little to encourage critical questions. This is especially true in the consideration of data on highly controversial issues like man caused Global Warming, and the Darwinian Evolutionary paradigm, which is the common ancestry of all life and purely materialistic origins for the observed existence of complex structures, systems, and organisms.

The scientific method includes the notion that there must be some experiment or test that could be conducted that would challenge or disprove a theory or show its error. This is not found in the current standards. If there is no way in which a theory could be shown to be false then the theory is merely a mantra, a belief system, a dogma, a philosophy, in which data can only support but never detract to show the theory to be false. Theories that lack a mechanism for falsifiability are not scientific theories.

Material Processes Alone Have Shown to Be Insufficient

Further, science has not produced a cohesive “molecules to man” narrative that holds up to scientific scrutiny, contrary to the impression cast by the current science standards. There are many areas where material forces have been shown to be insufficient mechanisms, such as for the origination of life, the origin of proteins, the origin of DNA, the origin of stars, the origin of planets within a solar system², etc. Statements or questions such as “How do matter and energy interact to form the physical world?” are founded in philosophy -- a materialistic philosophy. They are not scientifically founded and do not belong in the science classroom.

Issues with Current Standards Content

Jumping to the biology evolution section of the current “Core Standards for Secondary Education”:

What is not directly stated but is obviously implicated in standard 5, and is taught in our Utah science classes, is the assertion of a common ancestry of all life and a purely materialistic mechanism for the existence of complex biological structures, functions, and organisms. As a comparison, an even less desirable option which many are pushing, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), moves further in the materialist dogma, clearly implicating unquestioned sufficiency of material mechanisms and the alleged accuracy of the Darwinian concept of the common ancestry of all life premise³.

For a living organism to exist, let’s say the first organism, there must be first the arrival of specific proteins, among other things that can carry out the various processes in the cell and a mechanism to replicate the cell. Then for different organisms to evolve from that spark of life, there must be the emergence of new and different proteins to perform unique functions not found in the parent.

Genetics Challenges Darwin

The emergence of a different protein from minor variations of other existing proteins may explain some of the diversity we see in life. However, it has been found that the normally assumed mutation/natural selection mechanism appears to be an insufficient explanation for a significant portion of the proteins and the genes that code for those proteins. An article available in Trends in Genetics 2009 reported report that “10-20% of genes lack recognizable homologs in other species.”⁴ In other words 10 – 20% of genes in species don't have evidence of ancestry.

This is further discussed in an article available in Nature Reviews, Genetics 2011. It said,

“[E]very evolutionary lineage harbors orphan genes that lack homologues in other lineages and whose evolutionary origin is only poorly understood. Orphan genes might arise from duplication and rearrangement processes followed by fast divergence; however, de novo evolution out of non-coding genomic regions is emerging as an important additional mechanism.”⁵

This sudden appearance of genetic material by “de novo”, or out of nothing, through material process, lacks credibility in the light of several other studies. In the journal Nature in 2012, it was reported that the ENCODE Project revealed that by their analysis, 80 percent of the human genome has a “biochemical function”⁶. The lead researcher also expressed his thoughts that this percentage of functionality would move to a statistical 100 percent⁷. This level of functionality in a genome ,removes most all of the opportunity for non coding regions of the cell to be the incubators for the “de novo” or out of nothing sudden emergence of proteins. As an aside, “junk DNA” or non-coding genomic regions, has been claimed in the past by some as the best evidence of Darwinian evolution.⁸ The “junk DNA” argument appears to be evaporating.

Further, Douglas Axe reported in his studies in 2004 in the journal Science Direct, on challenges of random mutations being responsible for the origins functional protein folding.⁹ According to Axe's experiments, “the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77.” For a comparison of that number, there are believed to be 10^80 sub atomic particles in the entire Universe. Hence, relying on random processes to beget “de novo” proteins is out of the realm of statistical possibility regardless of the billion of years that one could imagine, according to his research.

Darwin said that:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ [or in this case protein] existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

Origin of the Species p348

I am not saying that we should not teach evolution in our schools. What I am saying is that we should teach the evidence for and also the evidence against the theory.

The Fossil Record Challenges Darwin

Further, the fossil record does not show the neat gradual branching tree that is usually shown in our science classes. When considering actual fossil data, the animal phyla or the basic body plans of life, 23 are living today and are found in the fossil record. The Cambrian is the first real “blossoming of animal life.” In just the Cambrian environment, according to main stream science reports, there existed 23 phyla. Furthermore, there was not significant variation from that number at any time in the fossil record according to the data reported. See research quoted in Darwin’s Doubt chapter 2 & 3 by Stephen C. Meyer and related appendices of peer reviewed papers.¹⁰

When the Cambrian fossils in southern China near the town of Chengjiang were discovered, there were discussions that the number of basic body plans (the phyla) must be over 100. This uncomfortable number was whittled down by expanding the definition of some phyla and regrouping to avoid an even more embarrassing comparison than what we have today. Even with the regrouping, etc., the numbers show that the fossil record does not support the gradual branching pattern of Darwin’s Tree of Life.¹¹ Such regrouping masks the evident greater diversity that existed in the past.

Furthermore, even vertebrate fish with binocular vision were found in the Cambrian environment¹² with no evolutionary evidence. It is as if this fish just appeared.

Darwin knew the challenges the fossil record presented to his theory, even in his day, and noted it when he stated:

“There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which many species in several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments which have convinced me that all the existing species of the same group are descended from a single progenitor, apply with nearly equal force to the earliest known species.”¹³

Darwin assumed that with further research the fossil evidence would come to light. However more recent findings were summed up by evolutionist Dr. Stephan J. Gould. He said:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. … a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’."¹⁴

DNA structural similarities

Studies of certain genes in a selected groups of organisms do at times produce the evolutionary predicted cladogram or evolutionary tree¹⁵. Yet other genes in those same organisms create a very different cladogram.¹⁶ These are not isolated cases. Such inconsistencies are common.¹⁷ Evidence of these discontinuities are easy to discern using publicly available data and publicly available analytical tools¹⁸.

If DNA evidence is cited in support of the Darwinian evolutionary theory, in the scene of modeling and encouraging scientific thinking, instead of uttering dogmatism, should we not also tell our students about the DNA data that contradicts^{19 20} these alleged evolutionary trees?

Homologous Structures

Similar structures are indeed found in otherwise very different creatures. At times these similarities are claimed to be evidence of a common ancestor which must have had the same structure. Yet other times similar structures are found in organisms in which the alleged common ancestor is not believed to have had such a structure. As a result, the commonality between the creatures is attributed, not to a believed common ancestral trait, but to “convergent evolution”. It appears at times, that no matter what the evidence, evolutionary theory morphs to accommodate it. But a theory that, no matter what the evidence is, does not challenge the theories fundamental premises, is not a scientific theory at all. In other words, if the theory is so flexible that no matter what the evidence is, evolutionary theory can accommodate it, it is not a scientific theory but simply a mantra or philosophy.

A good example of homologous features between creatures, that are not believed to have a common ancestor that included a common feature, is bats and whales²¹. Both employ echolocation, but it is not believed that there was any common ancestor between the whales and the bats that had the ability of echolocation²². Necessary for echolocation is a protein structure of Prestin which is common between the two creatures²³. This protein structure is not believed to have existed in any alleged common ancestor.²⁴ Yet this complex gene is a near identical match between the two. Such similarity is difficult to explain by simply invoking convergent evolution²⁵. For natural processes of mutation and natural selection to arrive at a nearly identical protein, along with all of the other necessary morphological changes necessary for echolocation, truly tests one’s commitment to purely natural processes in the origin of living things.

The common ancestry homologous structure argument has also been challenged further by genetics. It has been assumed for many years that similar structures are the result of similar genes, which genes originated with a common ancestor. In research summarized by Jonathan Wells and Paul Nelson, it has now been discovered that at times “non-homologous structures [are] produced by organisms with supposedly homologous genes, but organisms with different genes can also produce similar structures.”²⁶

Vestigial structures

Vestigial structures are defined by Utah’s open resource Biology book as:

“structures that no longer serve a purpose to the organism.”²⁷

At one time evolutionists listed 180 vestigial structures in the human body.²⁸ Today it is recognized that every one of these structures in the human body serves a purpose^{29 30} even if it be just for facial expression. There is no doubt that genetic entropy does take its toll^{31 32}. Things once working in organisms break down. Fish living in a cave may, after a period of time, lose their sight, etc. But considering human life, each of these structures once claimed to be vestigial has shown function or purpose³³. Also, any of the once supposed vestigial structures of other creatures have also been shown to be functional^{34 35}. It is said by some that in the distant past these structures had different or greater functionality, and evidence of past function is claimed by an appeal to other living creatures which may have a similar structure that do have different or greater function. Such arguments are circular reasoning because it is assumed that the evolutionary history is already demonstrated.

Genetic Entropy Challenges Darwin

As mentioned above, modern studies of genetics challenge the very foundations of Darwinian evolution. Dr. John C. Sanford has summarized well concerns voiced in the peer reviewed literature concerning this point. “John was a Cornell University Professor for more than 25 years. His Ph.D. was in plant breeding and plant genetics. . . . John has published over 80 scientific publications and has been granted over 30 patents. His most significant scientific contributions involve three inventions, the biolistic (‘gene gun’) process, pathogen-derived resistance, and genetic immunization.” He also wrote a book called Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome.

Dr. Sanford was once an atheist and an evolutionist. Some of Dr. Sanford’s personal experience, as well as some of the physical studies he has made, has caused an “about face” in his assessment of the origins of life.

For example, Dr. Sanford’s studies of genetics show that each parent to child generation introduces, (using numbers that are very conservative) 100 new mutations in the gene pool (his research actually indicates that it is likely to be 10 times this amount)³⁶. He further shows that mutations are overwhelmingly harmful to any species. Regarding his observations of the human genome particularly, but also applicable to many other species of a longer generational reproductive rates, he notes any beneficial mutations are drowned out by the burden of the deleterious mutations such that there can only be a downward spiral of viability of the species. In analyzing these facts, he has ascertained that in the worst case scenario, in as little as 100 or so additional years of man's existence, the ability for humans to produce viable offspring may diminish to the point of a statistical zero. Dr. Sanford has noted that other scientists, committed to evolutionary theory, have expressed a long standing concern that with just “one deleterious mutation per person per generation, long-term genetic deterioration would be a certainty”³⁷.

His conclusion, therefore, is that the “Primary Axiom” of the evolutionary premise—that life is merely the result of mutations and natural selection, is false. Further, man and any other organism could not have evolved³⁸.

Dr. Sanford has, along with some other associates, put together an analytical program to assess the genetic viability of life over the ages. It is very revealing of the challenges of Darwin’s theory and the inability of natural selection to “cull” out the mutations that are incompatible with an organisms’ viability. This program is freely downloadable and one can enter in their own factors of generation times, mutation rate, etc.³⁹

Where is the Scientific Controversy?

It has been said by some that “Evolution theory is just as solidly supported by data as gravitational theory or the theory of relativity.” If what I have submitted is accurate, then this stated assurance of Darwin’s theory is false. Also, if what I have submitted is accurate, then where is the debate in scientific circles, concerning the challenges to Darwin’s theory? The answer is that there are public discussions in scientific circles about the soundness of the theory that all life sprung from some common ancestor⁴⁰. There are discussions about the viability of the theory that claims that unguided, purposeless genetic mutations, and natural selection have lifted life from a single spark about 3.4 billion years ago to the diversity and complexity we see today. The debate has been going on for years⁴¹.

The Royal Society in England, a scientific organization, in November 2016 held a conference, New Trends in Evolutionary Biology, to discuss whether evolutionary theory (specifically the neo-Darwinian mechanism) can adequately explain the diversity of life, or if other propositions are necessary. Hundreds of scientist attended the meeting. Over 20 top scientist presented, prompting considerable debate. Once such presenter was Gerd B. Muller who published an article claiming that some data is in agreement with the standard theory of Darwinian evolution and other data is not explained by an appeal to a Darwinian premise⁴². He further states that “Indeed, a growing number of challenges to the classical model of evolution have emerged over the past few years.”⁴³ At the November 2016 conference Muller listed key areas of Biology that are not adequately explained by the neo-Darwinian theory. These include:

1. The origin of the anatomical and structural features of living creatures;

2. The origin of new forms throughout the history of life (for example, the Cambrian explosion);

3. Non-gradual forms or modes of transition, where there are abrupt discontinuities in the fossil record between different types.

These are challenges that our Utah children may find answers to in the future. But it is doubtful that our Utah children will find reasoned answers to these challenges if the State Board of Education listens only to some professors who refuse to look at Darwinian evolution with a critical -- a scientific eye, instead of the dogmatism that it has become. Let’s lead our children out of the Darwinian dark ages, by allowing a scientific attitude and critical questions to be asked about Darwinian evolution and other controversial science topics.

Considering Earth Sciences

The complete “Geologic Column” does not exist anywhere on Earth as stated in college geology books:

BUILT BY CORRELATION

"Because we cannot find sedimentary rocks representing all of earth time neatly in one convenient area, we must piece together the rock sequence from locality to locality. This process of tying one rock sequence in one place to another in some other place is known as correlation, from the Latin for 'together' plus 'relate.'"⁴⁴

And also

"A rock that had an early form of an organism was clearly older than rocks containing later forms. Furthermore, all rocks that had the early form, no matter how far apart those rocks were geographically, would have to be the same age … fossil successions made it possible to say that the Cambrian rocks are older than the Ordovician rocks. In this way our geologic time table came into being....Without the theory of evolution and the interdisciplinary science of paleontology, it could not exist."⁴⁵

Our Students should also know this about the “Geologic Column.”

Time does not permit further considerations. This was a busy time of the year to do an evaluation like this.

Thank you for your consideration of these thoughts, Vincent Newmeyer