Saner Heads Prevail in South Carolina

The Columbian Mammoth is now the official state fossil of South Carolina.  Seanna Adcox has the story:

Olivia, who wants to become an Egyptologist, requested the designation after realizing South Carolina was among just seven states without a state fossil. Her research showed that slaves dug up fossilized mammoth teeth on a South Carolina plantation in 1725. They are thought to be among the first identified vertebrate fossils in North America.

"That just fueled her passion. It was not just about fossils but about her state being recognized," said her mother, Amanda McConnell.

But Olivia's seemingly simple idea, which easily passed the House in February, drew opposition in the Senate.

Senators tacked on language declaring mammoths were among God's sixth-day creation, as written in the book of Genesis. They also attempted to create a symbol moratorium. Both amendments were eventually tossed out by a House-Senate committee that worked out a compromise, which both chambers approved last week.

Not sure exactly how the compromise was structured because the bill's sponsor is a believer in “biblical creation” as well. Apparently, he said it did not make sense to tack the language on to just this bill.

I have seen this phrase “biblical creation” creeping into the literature of the young earth movement and I find it offensive. Those who use it equate it with young earth creationism and the language is stark: those who don't agree with that movement don't believe in the bible because their creation theology is not “biblical.” That is arrogant, myopic, condescending and (I believe) scripturally indefensible.

Congratulations, Olivia.

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. 

South Carolina: Naming the State Fossil

An eight-year-old girl by the name of Olivia McConnell had a great idea: suggest that the Columbian Mammoth, common to the state during the Pleistocene, be named the state fossil.  Great idea, right?  Not when politics and creationism get involved.  According to Ron Barnett of USA Today:

The Columbian mammoth survived an ice age, but whether it can survive the South Carolina Senate remains to be seen.

The elephant-sized mammal that once roamed this part of the world is on a path to become the state's official fossil. But it faces a new challenge this week, and the dream of 8-year-old Olivia McConnell who suggested that the Legislature adopt a state fossil hangs in the balance.

Last week, state Sen. Kevin Bryant tried unsuccessfully to insert a Bible verse into the bill. This week, the Republican from Anderson, S.C., is putting forward a new amendment that refers to the animal “as created on the sixth day with the beasts of the field.”

“I think it's an appropriate time to acknowledge the creator,” he said.

Every time that I read that the number of creationists who are democrats is more than you think, I have to wonder: “Yes, but did all of the Republicans who are creationists end up in the state house??”  It is one thing to honor the creator.  It is another to honor the creator with language that is patently young earth creationist in its origin.  The irony, of course, is that this language would be inserted over the traditional understanding of the Columbian mammoth, described originally by Falconer in 1857, which is that it went extinct around 13,000 years ago and was part of an adaptive radiation of Elephas genera beginning around 25 million years ago from what later became East Asia.  The other half of the clade is the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus. This would be jarring, to say the least.