The Discovery Institute Strikes Again

We don't even have to play “Guess that party!” do we? This time it is Mike Fair, R-Greenville, South Carolina, using the DI template.  The Columbia Post and Courier carries the story:

The S.C. Education Oversight Committee on Monday sent proposed language to the board that would require biology students to construct scientific arguments that seem to support and seem to discredit Darwinism.

The decision comes more than two months after the subject became a divisive issue for many in the Palmetto State and nationally in February, when Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, voiced opposition during the review and approval of a new set of science standards for 2014.

At the time, Fair argued against teaching natural selection as fact, adding there are other theories students deserve to learn. He said the best way for students to learn was for the schools to teach "the controversy." On Monday, he reiterated his stance.

"We must teach the controversy," Fair said. "There's another side. I'm not afraid of the controversy. ... That's the way most of us learn best."

There is no Controversy. The only controversy is one that is manufactured by the Discovery Institute and organizations like it.   Maybe we should start teaching other controversial things.  Controversies exist in science where the data does not clearly point one direction or the other.  It does not exist when the information clearly points one direction.  I would call on rep. Fair to state what, exactly, the controversy is.  My suspicion is that it would be usual canards about transitional fossils and irreducible complexity.  It is one thing to fear a controversy that is real and can shake things up.  It is another to fear one that only exists in the minds of some.