Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

The fact that both ID and Creationism are totally counter-factual, means that they too must be repudiated as valid science. Thats primarily what this whole kerfuffle should be about , and not some cultural debate or some hunt for a moral central.

Does it never enter your head that your leadership class and a large majority of your fellow citizens might have a valid point to make.

Explore Evolution: A Stealth Creationist Textbook to Accompany the Stealth Creationist “LA Science Education Act”
(Louisiana Coalition for Science, September 27, 2008)

Scientist and writer John Timmer has reviewed the Discovery Institute’s stealth creationist textbook, Explore Evolution, in Ars Technica. Three of EE’s authors are well-known intelligent design (ID) creationists. Stephen C. Meyer is the director of the Discovery Institute’s ID creationist wing, the Center for Science and Culture (CSC). Two of his co-authors are his CSC associates Paul Nelson (a young-earth creationist) and Scott Minnich (a witness for the defense in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District). The other two, Jonathan Moneymaker and Ralph Seelke, are lesser-known ID supporters.

In “A Biologist Reviews an Evolution Textbook from the ID Camp,” Timmer refers several times to the prospect that this book may be used in Louisiana science classrooms as a “supplement” of the kind intended by the “LA Science Education Act” (LSEA), which was approved by the Louisiana legislature and signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal during the 2008 legislative session. Indeed, according to one Louisiana newspaper, Meyer’s colleague, CSC associate director John West, indicated that the Discovery Institute hopes to see EE adopted in Louisiana science classes as one of the supplements that the LSEA will permit teachers to use. Contrary to its misleading title, Explore Evolution is a sustained, error-ridden attack on evolutionary theory. It also contains a section on Michael Behe’s concept of “irreducible complexity.” Both aspects of EE make it very much an intelligent design creationist textbook.

Timmer’s review comprises four web pages. Page 1, “The Politics of Exploration,” contains a reference to Louisiana:
In June, Louisiana became the first state to enact a law specifically enabling the use of supplemental materials for the critical evaluation of evolution; similar legislation has been introduced in several other states. EE appears to have been intelligently designed to be the sort of supplemental text that’s appropriate under the Louisiana legislation, and so it’s likely to be making an appearance in classrooms there. . . .

On page 2, “Shaking and Breaking the Tree of Life,” Timmer points out the scientific errors and underhanded tactics that permeate EE. With respect to the latter, he highlights the old creationist trick of finding “someone with a Ph.D. who’s willing to say anything.” He is referring to the EE authors’ citation of the work of Christian Schwabe, whose kooky views are far outside the scientific maintream:
Another PhD the authors found is Christian Schwabe, who apparently has established a career studying a protein called reflexin, along with its relatives. But every couple of years he publishes a paper in which he argues in favor of his belief that the genomes of all modern and extinct species originated during the formation of life billions of years ago. According to Schwabe, those genomes have continued to exist, hidden underground as stem cell-like entities. Whenever these cells sense a favorable environment above ground, they head for the surface and self-organize into a fully formed, multicellular animal. No, I am not making this up. This isn’t simply evidence-free (although it is); it’s borderline deranged. And yet, in the hands of Discovery’s authors, it becomes a serious scientific controversy about the existence of the tree of life. . . .

On page 3, “Spurious Arguments and Logical Flaws,” Timmer exposes a tactic that mirrors Discovery Institute creationists’ dishonest attempts to win unearned legitimacy by getting themselves onto high-profile, public platforms with legitimate, mainstream scientists and scholars. In EE, the authors have placed a reference to Schwabe’s work in the same footnote with a reference to the work of Carl Woese. Woese is a “serious and significant scientist who has made contributions to our understanding of the history of life on earth,” which, Timmer points out, Schwabe is most certainly not. However, says Timmer, “By lumping them together in a single footnote, the authors attempt to illegitimately transfer some of Woese’s credibility to the evidence-free inanity that Schwabe publishes.” This kind of tactic is standard operating procedure for ID creationists at the Discovery Institute.

On page 4, “Not Fit for the Classroom,” Timmer points out that “The text of EE assiduously avoids any mention of intelligent design or creationism, but anyone familiar with the literature of these movements will recognize that their ideas pervade EE.” The scrubbing of the overt use of the term “intelligent design” in EE is clear evidence of the Discovery Institute’s recognition that using overtly creationist language " even their own brand name, “intelligent design” " is a legal liability. Their effort to sanitize their terminology began even before the Kitzmiller trial.

The Discovery Institute’s sanitizing of their terminology in EE repeats the tactic ID proponents used in an earlier creationist textbook, Of People and Pandas, the first high school textbook that the ID movement produced. Pandas was written while Louisiana’s first creationism law, the 1981 “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act,” was being litigated. When the U. S. Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional in 1987, the creationist terminology was hastily scrubbed from Pandas and replaced with the terminology of “intelligent design” prior to its initial publication in 1989. Continuing the creationist strategy of shifting their terminology in the wake of defeats in federal court, EE is the sanitized product of ID creationism’s resounding defeat in the Kitzmiller trial, a fact that Timmer clearly recognizes:
If it never mentions creationism or intelligent design, the decision to avoid doing so appears to be strategic, rather than intellectual. Presumably, it’s done for the same reason that many of the Discovery Fellows have chosen to downplay their personal beliefs about the identity of the designer: it would only get them in trouble when they try to get the book into the school system.

Timmer closes his review with a parting reference to Louisiana. Recalling the statement by Kevin Padian, a scientist and expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller trial, that intelligent design “makes people stupid . . . essentially makes them ignorant,” Timmer concludes on a note that should resonate strongly with all Louisiana citizens who value our public schools and want our children to be decently educated:
Sadly, thanks to the actions of the Louisiana state government, that state’s students are much more likely to be exposed to this sort of stupidity. But the book doesn’t only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book, but its authors are expecting that legislators and the courts will be too stupid to notice that, or to remember that the Supreme Court has declared teaching creationism an unconstitutional imposition of religion. As laws similar to Louisiana’s resurface in other states next year, we can only hope that legislators choose not to live down to the low expectations of EE’s authors.

Down here in Louisiana, we can only say “AMEN TO THAT.”

In “A Biologist Reviews an Evolution Textbook from the ID Camp,” Timmer refers several times to the prospect that this book may be used in Louisiana science classrooms as a “supplement” of the kind intended by the “LA Science Education Act” (LSEA), which was approved by the Louisiana legislature and signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal during the 2008 legislative session. Indeed, according to one Louisiana newspaper, Meyer’s colleague, CSC associate director John West, indicated that the Discovery Institute hopes to see EE adopted in Louisiana science classes as one of the supplements that the LSEA will permit teachers to use. Contrary to its misleading title, Explore Evolution is a sustained, error-ridden attack on evolutionary theory. It also contains a section on Michael Behe’s concept of “irreducible complexity.” Both aspects of EE make it very much an intelligent design creationist textbook.

The fight over teaching science in Texas begins
(Corpus Christi Caller-Times Editorial, September 29, 2008)

Last week the first draft of the science curriculum that would be used in Texas schools for the next 10 years was released. The size of the fight to come was quickly made evident by members of the state Board of Education who want to inject religion into the public schools.

The draft, the work of science teachers and academics, would remove language from the guidelines that govern the teaching of science that mandates that classrooms include covering the "weaknesses" of major scientific theories. The only major scientific theory the conservatives have in their bull's eye is evolution. The draft was the opening shot in what promises to be a long and contentious debate next year.

The guide that directs science teachers to include lessons on the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of scientific theories has been part of the state's teaching guidelines for decades. But the guide has meant little because there is no detail on what that means. The growing power of the conservatives on the State Board, however, could make that mandate explicit, especially as the board goes through rewriting the entire teaching curriculum.

The illusion of balance and even handedness, exploring strengths and weaknesses, distracts from the real goal of the conservatives. They want to open up the public classroom to religious teachings about the origins of the universe. Such teachings are about faith and man's relationship with a greater being, the kind of teaching that is appropriate for church, but not for public schools. The business of science classes is science, not religion.

The harm is that the teaching of science to Texas public schoolchildren suffers. The state, whose future depends on an educated work force, risks diluting the grounding for its students in the very bedrock principles of science with an outlook that is more properly in the realm of Sunday school and the pulpit.

But proponents of such teaching are unbothered by the risks to sound science by including the "weaknesses" mandate. Don McLeroy, chairman of the State Board, believes there are many weaknesses to the theory of evolution. "To teach it as scientific fact presents a real problem to me."

This same conservative faction, which now holds the upper hand on the board, has already had its impact on the teaching of English. The board majority shoved aside the best thinking of English teachers whose own curriculum proposal was ditched. And the board has seen bickering in the past over the teaching of history. The single theme running through this is an agenda that sees the world narrowly and wants that view taught in the public schools.

The draft science curriculum won't be taken up until next year but the lines of division have been drawn for some time. And those lines have been drawn by the candidates for election to the board. The state Board of Education is not a high profile body, although it can have enormous influence on what schoolchildren are taught. That makes it imperative that voters inform themselves about the candidates vying for a place on the board and whether those candidates sound teaching of science or whether they advocate some intellectually slippery notion of "weaknesses" of one of the bedrock principles of science.