Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Brunswick school board candidates offer stances on creationism
(By Ana Ribeiro, Wilmington Star-News, October 10, 2008)

Bible in hand, Monique Weddle defended creationism in a debate in her high school psychology class.

Half that class at West Brunswick High School was for evolution, the other half for creationism, Weddle said. Influenced by her religious surroundings, she said she completely rejected evolution at the time.

Now a senior studying biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Weddle said she has come to accept both.

“You can’t deny something that’s scientifically proven,” Weddle said of evolution, adding, “I still believe very strongly that God created the world, but you can’t disprove evolution.”

There are a lot of scientists who both believe in God and accept that life evolves, said Marcel Van Tuinen, an evolutionary biologist at UNCW and one of Weddle’s former professors. A group of Brunswick County parents showed up at a lecture on evolution at the university last month, concerned about the county school board’s talk of teaching creationism, Van Tuinen said.

But to others in Brunswick County, including two school board candidates, creationism and evolution are competing views that could be debated on scientific terms. The idea, and a discussion that has gone beyond the community, were ignited by Joel Fanti, a Southern Baptist chemical engineer who has a son at West Brunswick High. Fanti suggested at the Sept. 16 school board meeting that creationism be taught side by side with evolution, a thought four board members supported and which has become the object of ridicule on some science Web sites.

District 1 incumbent Ray Gilbert voiced his support for creationism and the related “intelligent design” at a candidates’ forum Tuesday, saying he thinks it should be offered as an alternative theory to evolution, so students could come up with conclusions for themselves. Challenges to evolution should be included in the curriculum, the Libertarian and Christian minister added as he responded to a question from the public at the forum, held at Brunswick Community College’s Odell Williamson Auditorium.

District 2 Republican Catherine Cooke, who presents herself as an active parent and therefore insider in the county school system, said she knows creationism is not to be taught as science, but she’s not against the topic being explored in some form.

“There’s a lot of scientific proof for creation,” Cooke said, without elaborating on that proof. “It’s not one-sided.”

District 4 incumbent Shirley Babson, the school board chairwoman, said she also knows the law doesn’t allow the teaching of creationism as a standard course of study. But she said evolution should be taught as a theory, not as a fact.

However, “when biologists use the term ‘theory,’ it doesn’t mean the same thing as when creationists use it,” said Van Tuinen, a member of UNCW’s Evolution Learning Community, which promotes the community’s understanding of evolution and classes and lectures dealing with the topic.

Evolution is a scientific theory, which means there’s overwhelming support for it, tested and observed in the natural world, the biologist said. Long-term evolution, the kind that transforms animals, is slow and cannot be observed happening in one’s lifetime, but fossils substantiate it, he said. And short-term evolution can be observed in things like viruses mutating and dog breeds that originate through the artificial selection of their breeders.

Any holes in evolution are in the knowledge of how it occurred in certain species " because not all fossils have been found " not in whether evolution occurred, Van Tuinen said. While he can ask a student to test and compare fossils to figure out where they came from, he can’t ask a student to test whether God created him, he said.

Creationism is a religious belief that cannot be tested or substantiated scientifically, he added.

The state allows creationism to be part of an elective or presented as one of many religious beliefs in history class, but not in science class or as a standard course of study.

Although open to the idea of teaching creationism as an elective, other candidates at Tuesday’s forum were firm in stating they wouldn’t try to go beyond that.

Democrat Tom Simmons, who’s running against Babson in District 4 and is interim director of a hands-on science program for students, said he doesn’t see a place for creationism in science class because it’s faith-based. Democrat John Jones and Republican Olaf “Bud” Thorsen, the candidates challenging Gilbert in District 1, said they wouldn’t want to go against the law on the creationism matter.

In the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s mandate that evolution could not be taught unless accompanied by creationism, ruling it an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Other states and districts " including Kansas and Dover, Pa. " have tried to challenge evolution in the curriculum on behalf of “intelligent design” but found themselves forced to give up on the idea.

Jones, a born-again Christian, said he thinks creationism belongs in church or at home. The school board can’t afford a lawsuit regarding the teaching of creationism, said Jones, a veteran educator.

The separation of church and state should be upheld, Thorsen said, adding that he wouldn’t want to force creationism on students and that schools should instead focus on teaching the basics.

“The issue is to teach students how to read and write,” said Thorsen, a former member of the Brunswick County school board.

Democrat Christy Judah, also a longtime educator and Cooke’s adversary in District 2, said the school board should follow the state’s stance on creationism in schools, as well as abide by a strict procedure before trying to point out any errors in the curriculum.

“I’m feeling really uncomfortable with some of these responses,” Judah said of her fellow candidates.

“There’s a lot of scientific proof for creation,” Cooke said, without elaborating on that proof.

(unlike the girlwho became a bio major so was forced to accomodate the facts of evolution)

Sad really.

With voters like that, we could end up with leaders who are so in denial that they allow the global economy to collapse because they refuse to accept basic math

His "could" is an in-your-face sign of the bogeyman-monger and renders everything that follows quite meaningless.

Science at stake in state school board race
(BUD KENNEDY, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 12, 2008)

Science is at stake in the election for the Texas state school board.

And voters in Denton County, Wise County, Granbury and Stephenville can make a difference.

Two Denton County challengers " one a conservative Libertarian, the other a liberal Democrat " are both taking on a Hill Country Republican who describes herself as a creationist and doubts humans have anything to do with climate change.

"The chairman and a faction on the State Board of Education are completely trying to tear down science in Texas," said Carrollton Libertarian John E. Shuey, a former John McCain county campaign chairman.

He’s running as the independents’ choice against incumbent Gail Lowe of Lampasas for the board of education.

That’s the board that approves school textbooks and curriculum, including a forthcoming new science curriculum.

Edra Bogle of Denton, a retired University of North Texas English professor, is the Democrat.

"Texas is headed down the wrong path," she said. "We need to teach children real science and real facts.  . . . The Puritans tried to mix religion in government. It didn’t work."

In its current edition, Texas Monthly writes about our Strange Board of Education.

As the magazine notes in a "Know Your Board" quiz, our schoolbooks are chosen by a 15-member board that includes home-schooling parents and a chairman, Don McLeroy, who thinks God literally created the Earth barely a few thousand years ago.

Lowe was mocked for telling the magazine that the National Academy of Sciences "has still stated that [evolution] is not a fact." The academy, according to the magazine, describes evolution as both scientific theory and fact.

That was before Lowe wrote recent letters lobbying schools to add Bible classes and buy a curriculum promoted by sidekicks of evangelists Pat Robertson and the late Marlin Maddoux.

As far as I can tell, Lowe has not spoken at forums in Denton County or suburban North Texas. The district stretches from the Red River to the Hill Country.

But she did talk to a Republican club in Graham last week.

According to the Graham Leader, she said Bogle and Shuey are "not family- or faith-friendly."

Lowe also warned textbook publishers not to connect humans to climate change.

"That’s another textbook that will be turned down," the Leader quoted her as saying.

She said she’s against any textbook promoting a "political agenda and not objective science."

Shuey said Lowe’s faction is all about political agendas.

She is "part of this parochial religiosity that has found its way into the board," said Shuey, 64, a retired sales agent who also runs presidential candidate Bob Barr’s state campaign.

"If Mrs. Lowe hadn’t been behaving the way she has, I wouldn’t have run against her," he said.

He hopes to win votes from the North Texas backers of Republican Ron Paul: "Campaign for Liberty voters understand the importance of science. Here’s somebody who is totally anti-science."

Bogle met Lowe on Oct. 2 at a campaign forum in Lampasas partly sponsored by Lowe’s newspaper, the Lampasas Dispatch Record.

Bogle was taken aback when Lowe said that gay and lesbian sexuality shouldn’t be covered in school because it’s "physically harmful" and "The lifespan of homosexuals is reduced."

Bogle, 74, has worked with UNT gay and lesbian student groups. Stereotypes and shaming lead to teen suicides, she said.

Neither Bogle nor Shuey has much money to campaign.

Lowe has plenty: $17,000, two-thirds of it from Graham car dealer Fred Gough, a big backer of Gov. Rick Perry.

For Perry, it’s all about political science.

Quote:

As the magazine notes in a "Know Your Board" quiz, our schoolbooks are chosen by a 15-member board that includes home-schooling parents and a chairman, Don McLeroy, who thinks God literally created the Earth barely a few thousand years ago.