Meanwhile, In Tennessee...

Lauri Lebo has a piece in Scientific American on the “academic freedom” bills that have popped up and sheds a spotlight on one that has just come to light in my back yard—Tennessee. She writes:

The home state of the Scopes Trial is now on the verge of adopting the "strengths and weakness" language with the February 8 introduction of House Bill 368 (pdf). A week later, its identical counterpart, SB 893, was introduced in the senate. Whereas similar bills in Oklahoma and New Mexico have already perished in committee this year, observers are watching Tennessee's developments warily.

"The fact that it's moving so quickly is a matter of concern," says Josh Rosenau, a spokesperson for the National Center for Science Education, a watchdog organization that monitors attacks on classroom teaching of evolution. "There appears to be some momentum behind it, which suggests it could pass."

So where does this bill come from?:

"…[T]oday's evolutionary scientists have become the modern-day equivalents of those who tried to silence Rhea County schoolteacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in 1925, by limiting even an objective discussion of the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory," David Fowler, head of the Family Action Council of Tennessee and chief lobbyist behind Tennessee's proposed anti-evolution bill, wrote recently in an op–ed in the Chattanoogan.

One can almost see the hand labeled “Discovery Institute” up the back of his shirt making his mouth move. All of the supporters of these bills say the same thing: that they want to inject critical thinking into science. The problem is that they do not give a rip about the rest of the scientific enterprise. Chemistry? Physics? Geology? Not important. The entire focus is on evolution. They want it gone and they do not care how they go about it.

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“Alleged”

The trailer for the new film on the Scopes trial called “Alleged” is out. This is not a backwoods production—it has Brian Dennehy, Fred Thompson and Colm Meaney. It bills itself as

“a romantic drama based on events occurring behind the scenes and outside the courtroom of the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925”

and the trailer is pretty ambiguous in terms of a position statement but it does deal with lawyerly prevarication and media bias at some level. Fred Thompson is a staunch conservative so it is not likely that he would lend himself to a project that makes William Jennings Bryan look like a fool, which is what Inherit the Wind kind of did with Fredric March. The tag line is “Some Lies Just Have to be Told.” Here is the trailer:



I missed “Creation” and will not Netflix it yet until we get away from the controversy being such a hot topic at the Kidder household. I will try to see this when it comes out. Here is the web site for the movie.

Hat tip to Todd Wood.

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Now playing: Alleged The Movie - Trailer
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