Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@farmerman,

Right -- he's a typical conservative me-too-ist who has to trump up explanations and borrow ideas because he is bogged down in the past. The ID'ers are so far back in the past, they've missed all of evolution and prefer to rest on their mis-directed morals.

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@Lightwizard,

Barbara Forrest, had posted an informtional broadside on the web last Fall about the "protection" that the new law provides teachers who wish to challenge evolution theory with the ID or Creationist word. HINT: its all been done before so why not read your history first

Quote:

on Oct 18th, 2008Message to Louisiana School Districts: The LA Science Education Act’s Religion Disclaimer Won’t Protect You.
By Barbara Forrest

One of the clearest indications that the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) is intended to advance the religious agenda of the Discovery Institute (DI) and the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), the organizations that jointly promoted this legislation, is the law’s inclusion of a religion disclaimer that comes directly from DI’s doublespeak-titled “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.”

Here is DI’s disclaimer:

Section 7. Nothing in this act shall be construed as promoting any religious doctrine, promoting discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promoting discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.

Here is the disclaimer in the LSEA, now Louisiana Act 473 [pdf], which the Louisiana House and Senate passed as SB 733 and which Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law on June 25, 2008:

D. This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.

In addition to all of the other indications that the LSEA is a creationist law (see my analysis of the legislation), this disclaimer is a dead giveaway of the creationist (hence religious) agenda that the law advances. The truth is that the Discovery Institute’s disclaimer is included, both in DI’s model bill and in Act 473, precisely because the legislation is intended to advance religion. If the model bill and the LSEA were truly intended to improve science education in public schools, no religion disclaimer would be necessary. If DI and LFF were not trying to advance a religious agenda, they would not have included such a thinly disguised, pre-emptive effort at legal self-defense.

In recognition of the religious intent of the LSEA, Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek has sent a letter [pdf] dated August 27, 2008, to all “City, Parish, and other Local School Superintendents; Recovery School District Superintendents; Special School District Directors; and, Presidents of School Boards.” After citing legal rulings against teaching creationism, Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 107 S. Ct. 2573 (1987) and Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education v. Freiler, 530 U.S. 1251, 120 S. Ct. 2706 (2000), both of which originated in Louisiana, Pastorek issued a warning to the letter’s recipients:

Religious theories cannot be advanced under the guise of encouraging critical thinking. Written materials or oral presentations that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind or that state that evolution is only a theory are prohibited. “Academic freedom” does not encompass the structuring of public school curriculum in order to promote religious beliefs.

Mr. Pastorek’s warning should be taken to heart by all Louisiana school districts. If any Louisiana citizen has evidence that a school board or an individual teacher is using creationist materials in a Louisiana public school science class, please contact the LA Coalition for Science or the National Center for Science Education

Its unfortunate but I imagine that a "test case" of this entire law will break out sometime closer to the 2012 elections. AM I cynical enough?

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@farmerman,

Where are these real scientific theories that disavow a Darwinian foundation to all studies of evolution other than the claptrap we now have from TDI? Answer: there are no factual scientific alternatives. After it was realized that a god/designer's plan could not have possibly produced a Richard Nixon, that he must have been a bad mutation as a result of one of evolution's unfortunate examples of the straying of genetics, they would decide to shut the f**k up.

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@Lightwizard,

Well, they are busy looking. A few of our students in the past 5 or so years got offer notes from several branches of the research arm of DI, to consider a geologic post-docs as visiting scholars in the DI's "search for Design" ( specifically in the fossil record). The amounts of money were, by todays standards, modest to pretty good (depending on the degree ) and it was obvious that theyd be engaging in a competitive search for students (missionaries?). Im sure the competition process didnt revolve around significant geologic research but on buying into the DI creeds.

Its interesting but, since about 3 or 4 years ago, Ive not heard a peep out of the "search for design guys". They were going to open a web site about their research that seemed to be the same time as the DOver case was heating up.

I think that, with the latest findings in epigenetic mechanisms, the theory of natural selection will be turned on its head for a more (even complexer) overall synthesis that will involve the fusion of Darwin and Lamarck.
Its one more example of how the theory is able to with stand major onslaughts and is still able to morph within itself.

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If Mr Jindal, who we musn't forget has been elected, unlike the peer-reviewed appointments of others, or his office, offers a response it may well be a mutation of other dicta such as the happiness calculus.

For those unfamiliar with that very influential dictum it posits that perfect freedom is contingent upon the service of God and that scientific fatalism produces not moral emancipation but an enslavement to the passions which is, as de Sade and others have conclusively demonstrated, to be a far more unbearable kind of determinism leading, as it does, to rabid consumerism and a view which sees the world as the servant of the untrammelled ego and thus in thrall to the blandishments of media and other salespersons of snake-oil remedies for ennui, angst and alienation.

This dictum proceeds from the notion that man is not a machine but a responsible moral agent and will, under the sway of religion or duty, choose that which produces the greatest good and that this is not to be understood as a loss of liberty.

The liberty of intellectual beings rests upon a search for happiness in which personal desires relating to animal urges can be suspended until they have been examined to see whether their satisfaction is conducive to the enjoyment of the greatest good.

Without religion only bureaucratic edicts can control such considerations and those promulgating them are subject to the same animalistic urges which science has nothing to say about, they are facts, except in relation to the social consequences which, in the nature of the case, do not apply to them as they are a tiny minority.

It is a reasonable assumption that professors and senior members of the unelected AIBS and the AAAS see themselves as key components of an elite which oversees the social control of the profanum vulgus and thus their statements and positions are identical to those of the chap with big feet continually explaining that he takes a large size of shoe and that the happiness calculus will not apply except in relation to themselves.

Bearing these matters in mind, which I know anti-IDers will refuse to do, it is easily seen that Mr Jindal is a sound democratic politician who has had the courage to offer himself as an easy target for the partial arguments of the scientific community ( the biology teachers being mere dupes- they won't be in the elite) and that he might well be a potential candidate in the Republican interest in a future presidential election as a man with the proven credentials to resist the control freakery of the socialists, rabid scientific wannabees and foaming at the mouth atheists.

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@spendius,

The snake-oil salesmen are firmly implanted in TDI and they have no remedy for ennui, angst and alienation. In fact they are creating it.

There are no partial arguments from the scientific community -- they are fully thought out with reason, logic and fact. Give me an example of this partial argument (which is actually the transgression of the Iders). It is the teachers and professors who are affected and they must have a voice in devaluing a politician's desperate attempt to control, if you want to address controlling urges.

Mr. Jindal is heading for rougher waters than Katrina.

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@Lightwizard,

Conservative religious fanatics tells us they want less government intervention into our lives, but they are the ones who wants to limit equal rights for gays and lesbians, abortion rights, and now wants to teach religion in our science classes.

They are the most dangerous to our society, because they know not what they do. They can't see their own hypocrisy.

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@cicerone imposter,

I believe they fully recognize their hypocrisy and are foolish enough to believe it isn't showing. In the US, it's always been the danger from the right, not the left, that we would end up with a despot. Orwell wrote about it. We have barely escaped that with the last president, who in a classic Freudian slip stated it would be better to be a dictator.

Turnabout is fair play -- if the schools are prompted to teach religious quasi-science theories, than real scientific theories with real facts to back it up should be taught in church from Sunday School on up. They want to destroy separation of church and state, then do it up right.

There are a few clerics who deny the Bible's version of the beginning as being real and admit it is an allegorical myth, and do not deny that life began in the oceans. They depart a scientific explanation, of course, by stating there must have been a creator who planted that seed of life in the oceans. Then the divine designer just let it do its thing. No further control, no back-and-forth "communication" possible.

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There are a few clerics who deny the Bible's version of the beginning as being real and admit it is an allegorical myth, and do not deny that life began in the oceans. They depart a scientific explanation, of course, by stating there must have been a creator who planted that seed of life in the oceans. Then the divine designer just let it do its thing. No further control, no back-and-forth "communication" possible.

Pretty much what Frank Apisa was getting at.

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@Lightwizard,

I don't know what to say about that LW except that it's bloody ridiculous. The post it purports to answer is the answer to it.

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@edgarblythe,

Yes, very close. I just don't buy that there's any entity we can understand and it's not of our concept of intelligence, nor our concept of a designer.
It's not a celestial Papa with a long white beard but that's the artist conceptions throughout history because their depiction was limited by their intelligence and knowledge at that time. Well, and the dictatorial, controlling church.

If this abstract intelligence meant to plan anything, it was a program inserted into the origin of the Universe. This is far greater concept, far beyond our imagination and awe than anything invented in the Bible. That's now just Cecil B. DeMille epic extravaganza kind of inspiration. Ever wonder why those Biblical epics are now passe? I don't think you do.

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@spendius,

Huh? Are you going daft?

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@Lightwizard,

If that's what floats your boat it's okay by me.

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@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

Yes, very close. I just don't buy that there's any entity we can understand and it's not of our concept of intelligence, nor our concept of a designer.
It's not a celestial Papa with a long white beard but that's the artist conceptions throughout history because their depiction was limited by their intelligence and knowledge at that time. Well, and the dictatorial, controlling church.

If this abstract intelligence meant to plan anything, it was a program inserted into the origin of the Universe. This is far greater concept, far beyond our imagination and awe than anything invented in the Bible. That's now just Cecil B. DeMille epic extravaganza kind of inspiration. Ever wonder why those Biblical epics are now passe? I don't think you do.

Go, wiz.

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@Lightwizard,

Ive come up against the DI fellows in various arena and, I am convinced that they are convinced of the right thinking they possess. I really dont believe that they even consider the hypocrisy until it is repeatedly hammered on them. Mike Behe is a commited believer in the irreduscible complexity as a footprint of te great designer. Hes not faking it.

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@farmerman,

I'm sure most like Behe are sincere in their beliefs. It's really quite interesting to observe how they believe in their religious god and can't let go even though evidence is presented ad nauseam. I think it's a fear they have that their whole belief system will crumble if they didn't believe in their god.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Its unfortunate but I imagine that a "test case" of this entire law will break out sometime closer to the 2012 elections. AM I cynical enough?

I dunno, Boss . . . i suspect that a "test case" wouldn't have very much in the way of legs. The Supremes ruled the Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of evolution (Epperson versus Arkansas, 1968) unconstitutional because the motivation was religious, and not scientific. In McClean versus Arkansas, 1981, a lower court found that "balanced treatment" (which is essentially what Louisiana is attempting here) is unconstitutional on basically the same grounds. The 1981 case Seagraves versus California found that teaching evolution in schools does not infringe on the free exercise clause. Finally, Louisiana tried to sneak it in the backdoor with their "Creationism Act" which required the teaching of creationism whenever evolution was presented. The Supremes struck that down in Edwards versus Aguillard, 1987, on the basis of a violation of the establishment clause. They wrote:

Quote:

The Louisiana Creationism Act advances a religious doctrine by requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety.

I don't think the "critical thinking" dodge will work, because i believe Federal courts will see it in exactly the same light as the "balanced treatment" attempt by Arkansas more than 20 years ago. Given the decision in the Dover case, i suspect that as soon as this gets challenged, it will be struck down in lower courts, and that there won't be enough money or interest to take it to the Supremes. This is simply political grandstanding, and it doesn't matter if the majority of Louisiana voters favor it--which is the only plausible reason for Louisiana politicians to have supported it.

This won't pass the Lemon test, based on Lemon versus Kurtzman, 1971, in which Rhode Island and Pennsylvania laws to supplement salaries of teachers in religious schools were invalidated. The Lemon test is: "First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." As with Dover, nobody is going to pull the wool over the eyes of Federal judges about the purpose of this law.

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@farmerman,

Hypocrisy is an absolute necessity in a civilsed society.

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@spendius,

No. Honesty is the best policy.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

As with Dover, nobody is going to pull the wool over the eyes of Federal judges about the purpose of this law.

Well--there you are. Federal judges are the ultimate source of wisdom. Frail and flawed human beings themselves and not above a bit of grandstanding on their own account.

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