More on the Link Between ID and "Academic Freedom Bills"

David Murray of The Grand Rapids Press has also noted the disturbing link between the wave of "academic freedom" bill proponents and ID.

Gregory Forbes, a Grand Rapids Community College science professor, said there is nothing in the bills that demand teaching intelligent design with or in place of evolution. But he said the lawmakers who sponsored the bills -- including state Sen. Bill Hardiman, R-Grand Rapids, and Dave Agema, R-Grandville -- previously backed bills promoting intelligent design, and a version of the bill appeared on the Web site of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that has supported similar attempts.

"What this shows is that they're getting better and better at writing cryptically worded bills," said Forbes, who sits on the Michigan Citizens for Science advisory board. He said similar bills were submitted in other states.

The Trojan Horse is not working.

Strengths and Weakness Should Be Taught

Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch thinks that the strengths and weaknesses of evolution should be taught. He says so with a wink, though. About the supporters of ID, he writes:

A balanced discussion is not what they're after -- and is not going to change their minds.

You know what, though? That's OK.

IT'S OK FOR two reasons. The first is that the theory of evolution is strong enough to withstand skepticism. And it keeps getting stronger, because the evidence supporting evolution continues to grow. If creationists were right about the ease of refuting evolution, then scientists would continue to find more reasons to doubt it. They don't. They find just the opposite.

What's more, a robust discussion of the strengths and supposed weaknesses of evolution could help clear up some misconceptions. For example, science teachers might gently point out that natural selection -- the process through which genetic mutations give some offspring a greater ability to survive and reproduce -- simply doesn't bear on whether God created the universe. They're entirely unrelated questions, even though creationists often confuse the two. If science classes met such red-herring objections head-on, then perhaps public understanding of the issue might improve.

The second reason it's OK to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of evolution is that we shouldn't mind when non-scientists want to employ scientific principles. In fact, that should be encouraged as much as possible, because it is so instructive.

This is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum of teaching creation science to expose all of the weakness in it. Both would be equally effective.

Academic Freedom and ID

Brian Angliss at Scholars & Rogues has a lengthy post on the wave of "academic freedom" bills that are sweeping the country. After a mildly humorous introduction in the style of Genesis, he writes:

On the face of it, the language quoted above for these two laws isn’t really a problem. Of course, as it stands, most science teachers in the country already work hard to have an “open and objective discussion” of any scientific theories they teach, and to help their students “understand, analyze, critique, and review” those theories. So, on the face of it, both of these laws are entirely unnecessary.

But a little research reveals the state legislators who introduced the Michigan bill once introduced intelligent design-teaching legislation in Michigan. And that the religious Louisiana Family Forum was responsible for convincing the Louisiana bill’s sponsor to introduce it in the first place. Of course, the fact that the two bills have nearly identical language means that there’s a good chance they come from the same source, possibly the Discovery Institute, which has the text of the Louisiana bill on its website.

This hearkens back to the Dover Trial and "cdesign proponentsists" Although the sponsors of these bills claim to want critical teaching in science, in reality, they just don't want evolution taught. Read the whole thing.

The ROM Darwin Exhibit: A Visit by Steve Martin

Steve Martin visited the Royal Ontario Museum's Darwin exhibit earlier this year. Here is what he had to say:

Overall, the exhibit is extremely well done. It provides a brief sketch of Darwin’s life, from a young boy absolutely fascinated by the natural world around him, to a young man trying to fulfill this passion; from his famous 5-year voyage on the Beagle, to the long years putting together the pieces of his simple, yet revolutionary theory; from his initial hesitancy to publish the theory, to his feverish writing of “On The Origin” once he realized another naturalist had simultaneously worked out a similar evolutionary framework. Since his death, Darwin has been alternatively demonized and given the scientific equivalent of divine veneration. The exhibit effectively puts “flesh and bones” on the mythological Darwin.

Along the way he points out some very interesting things about the exhibit and some personal reflections. A good read.

Royal Museum of Ontario Picketed!

Protesters gathered in front of the Royal Ontario Museum to protest the Charles Darwin exhibition, according to the National Post:

Waving pamphlets that suggest Darwin "showed a certain disdain for 'savages,'" and claiming "many evolutionists are outspoken racists," the protest was part of an odd campaign to stake out the higher ground for creationists, using the unlikely racism card.

Funny, I don't know of any evolutionists that are racists. In fact, the very essence of the synthetic theory of evolution is anti-racist at its core. The article continues:

"I wrote to the president of the Royal Ontario Museum," Dr. McVety said. "I didn't ask him to stop the exhibit. I just asked him to expose the truth, to expose [Darwin's] writings about genocide, the hateful writings about the aboriginals and the negroes. He refused, and that's why we're here today."

One wonders if the good reverend has actually read Darwin. See this post from the TalkOrigins site about Darwinism and genocide.

More on SB733

The Washington Times has an article on the passing of SB733, the academic freedom bill in Louisiana. One of the supporters is quoted thus:

"It's not about a certain viewpoint," said supporter Jason Stern, Vice President of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative group pushing the bill. "It's allowing [teachers] to teach the controversy. It's an academic freedom issue."

This notion of teaching the controversy is not new and is a classic ploy by many groups seeking to ameliorate the effects of teaching evolution. The problem is that there is no controversy. That part has been constructed out of whole cloth by the DI and YEC groups.

Louisiana Coalition for Science: Reject SB733!

The Louisiana Coalition for Science has issued a press release decrying the new academic freedom bill and calling upon science school teachers to reject it. This quote sums it up:

Patsye Peebles, a veteran biology teacher from Baton Rouge and a founding member of the Louisiana Coalition for Science, agrees that the bill should be rejected. “I was a biology teacher for 22 years, and I never needed the legislature to tell me how to present anything. This bill doesn’t solve any of the problems classroom teachers face, and it will make it harder for us to keep the focus on accurate science in science classrooms. Evolution isn’t scientifically controversial, and we don’t need the legislature substituting its judgment for the scientists and science teachers who actually know the subject.”

This is what happens when non-scientists get involved with science education.

Academic Freedom and the ACLU

I wondered when these guys would get involved. According to Nola.com, the ACLU is considering filing lawsuits to keep religion out of public schools in Louisiana. As it eventually came down, the bill is remarkably vague about how the controversy should be addressed:

Heavily amended since it was first introduced, the bill now specifies that teachers in public school science classes will have to teach from state approved science textbooks. However, it also allows local teachers and school boards to introduce "supplemental materials" in science classes. The bill specifically mentions evolution, global warming and human cloning as topics on which such materials might be introduced.

Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would be able to prohibit the use of such materials if they are deemed inappropriate, under an amendment added in the House.

As of late, there seems to be a link between teaching about global warming (anthropogenic) and teaching about evolution, as if both are examples of scientists who have got it wrong and need top be straightened out. If the creationists are smart, they will push this because there is enough doubt in the minds of many people about global warming models. Interestingly, Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas has thought of this as well. As far as what the ACLU will do, the article notes:

Esman was asked Thursday if the ACLU might file suit against the Nevers measure once it becomes law or wait to see if religious materials are introduced into classes as a result of the law. "We're not going to say now what we may or may not do. That's a legal strategy," said Esman.

Scientists Gone Wild!!

CBS news has a video about some shenanigans that occurred at Oak Ridge National Laboratory involving some overspending and abuse of public funds. The video is here. The notion of scientists gone wild is amusing but, on a more serious note, plays into this notion that scientists need to be watched and that there is something sinister about what they do. Not a shining day for the lab.

Louisiana Academic Freedom Bill Passes

Nola.com (Everything New Orleans) has informed us that the bill sponsored by Ben Nevers on academic freedom has passed. According to the story:

The Senate already has agreed to the bill, but it heads back to that chamber for approval of a provision that would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to prohibit supplemental materials it deems inappropriate. Nevers said he will ask the Senate to approve the amendment. He stressed that the amendment does not require BESE to review all the materials. The state board would only step in if someone raised a question about whether the material was appropriate.

Well, I guess the question now is who would deem material appropriate or inappropriate? As I mentioned earlier, critical thinking should always be part of the classroom and it is very hard to believe that this bill is not aimed at the teaching of evolution.

Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins, Part II

I didn't get to finish my reading of Alister McGrath's treatise on Richard Dawkins. Here we go. McGrath characterizes Dawkins' reaction to the widespread belief in God thus:

Since faith in God, for Dawkins, is utterly irrational, it remains to be explained why so many people share such a faith. The answer lies in the `meme', which Dawkins defines as an intellectual replicator. People do not believe in God because the intellectual case for such belief is compelling. They do so because their minds have been infested with a highly contagious and highly adapted `God-meme'

As McGrath correctly points out, there is no concrete thing such as a 'meme.' Unlike a gene, one cannot identify a meme. It is like quantifying a thought—"I like ice cream." Aside from the declarative statement, there is no way to prove that what I said is true. McGrath continues:

Not only is there a total absence of any observational evidence that ideas are like viruses, or spread like viruses - a decisive consideration that Dawkins glosses over with alarming ease. It is meaningless to talk about one kind of virus being `good' and another `evil'. In the case of the host-parasite relationship, this is simply an example of Darwinian evolution at work. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the way things are.

This is a remarkably frank, evolutionary way to look at it and yet cuts to the heart of the weakness of Dawkins' position. His idea that religion is bad and evil, like a virus is simply not logical and, worse, is non-Darwinian in explication. McGrath closes by pointing out another irregularity in the writings of Dr. Dawkins:

But there is another issue here which we need to note. Dawkins is quite clear that science cannot determine what is right and what is wrong. What about evidence that religion is bad for you? And what criteria might one use to determine what was `bad'? Dawkins himself is quite clear: `science has no methods for deciding what is ethical.

Quite simply, if religion is bad, then that decision is not based on science but rather on an emotional response to one's experiences, which in the case of Dawkins, have been bad. I have often thought that if polled, most scientists would say that whether or not they believe in God has very little to do with the practice of science but rather much more to do with their sociocultural upbringing and experiences. It seems that Richard Dawkins is just one such person. Read the whole piece.

NASA is Going to the Sun!

So quoth the NASA web site:

"We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts."

But they're going at night.
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New Louisiana Bill Will Create Problems, AAAS Says

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has written an open letter to the Times-Picayune protesting the new "academic freedom" legislation. He writes:


The 21s t-century economy will require a new generation of scientist and engineers, and signs point to trouble ahead for New Orleans and Louisiana. Employers already are struggling to fill science and tech jobs, and recent test scores show that 53 percent of the state's eighth -graders-the workforce of tomorrow-lack basic competence in science. It is therefore alarming that the Louisiana Senate has passed a bill that directly threatens science education. Proponents offer deceptive arguments about encouraging students to think critically But Louisiana's education standards already do that.

He argues that such a fight would expend needless money that could be used to further science education. He is right. Sadly, they don't see it that way.

The Discovery Institute Responds to Laura Beil

The DI is responding to a New York Times article by Laura Beil (that I am now going to link to because it is very important but i am not happy about it) here. She writes:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

After the fiasco that was Dover, one wonders how successful these movements will be. There is still funny business going on, though:

The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”

That is nothing short of malarkey. Teaching "strengths and weaknesses" has been applied only to evolutionary theory because people don't like evolution. If this were an honest effort, that language would be applied to other theoretical constructs that we teach in science class, such as germ theory, gravitational theory and quantum theory. To say that evolution has not been singled out is deceptive at best and lying at worst.

Anyway...

Here is how the Discovery Institute replies:

The central premise that teaching "strengths and weaknesses" of Darwin's theory (and chemical origin of life theories) is a new, post-Dover innovation is flagrantly false.

That this is false can be proven with only a minimal amount of research, which makes it so much more surprising that Beil would blindly follow the assertions of the NCSE and others without bothering to call the people they're attacking – Discovery Institute and Texans for Better Science Education.

Here's the problem: Ms. Beil doesn't say that it is new. She clearly says:

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

The rest of the piece is devoted to arguing that the notion of teaching strengths and weaknesses is not new, something Ms. Beil never said. Beyond that, in typical DI fashion, there is no substance to the piece. Oops. screwed that one up.

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JDL Up In Arms Over Expelled!

The Jewish Defamation League has waded into the controversy surrounding the film Expelled, narrated by Ben Stein, an orthodox Jew. According to the story in JTA:

The Anti-Defamation League blasted the film Tuesday, saying in a statement that it “misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community.” The ADL adds, “Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people.”

The Oakland, Calif-based National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, has “had its eye on” the film for a few months, according to spokeswoman Susan Spath.
“We are concerned about the long-term impact of this film and its irresponsible misrepresentation of a terrible history,” she said. “It propagates the message that Nazis were Darwinist, with the implication that today’s Darwinists are proto-Nazis, and that’s not OK.”

As Glenn Reynolds would say: Ouch!

Oops! Got That One Wrong.

The Australian is reporting a story of a discovery of the fossilized partial remains of a megaraptor not where it ought to be:

The 19cm bone was found in southeastern Australia but it comes from a very close cousin to Megaraptor, a flesh-ripping monster that lorded over swathes of South American some 90 million years ago.

The extraordinary similarity between the two giant theropods adds weight to a dissident view about the breakup of a super-continent, known as Gondwana, that formed the continents of the southern hemisphere, the authors say.

The thought is that if Australia had broken away from South America when it was thought to have, then evolutionary pressures of selection and drift would have resulted in a dinosaur that had phenotypically diverged from its Australian cousins.

The investigators, led by Nathan Smith of the University of Chicago, say the two dinosaurs are so similar the two land masses of South America and Australia could not have been separated for so many millions of years beforehand.

Back to the drawing board.

Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins

On a site called Science, Religion and Society, Alister McGrath takes on Richard Dawkins. It is a transcript of a lecture given at Cambridge in November 2004. He writes what I and others have often thought:

If Darwinians choose to dogmatize on matters of religion, they stray beyond the straight and narrow way of the scientific method, and end up in the philosophical badlands. Either a conclusion cannot be reached at all on such matters, or it is to be reached on other grounds.

He argues that Dawkins has put up a straw man in the form of his definition of faith as "blind trust in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence." He then states that this definition is false and is one that no theologian would support. I am reminded of the opening verse of Hebrews 11, which reads:

1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.

Christ also speaks of those who have not seen and yet believed as being blessed in John 20. In some sense, we do believe in things not seen and have no evidence that God exists. The evidence for Christ being who he is is circumstantial and we do have "faith." That is why they call it that. More tomorrow.

Slightly Off Topic But Relevant

Last week's Parade Magazine had a small story on Home Schooling. In their "Intelligence Report," the writers quote Richard Kahlenberg, the "author of a number of books on education." He states that the homeschooling controversy

...pits those who believe parental rights are paramount against those place a premium on well-educated citizens."

That is astounding. My wife has a bachelors degree and a masters degree in Art Education. I have two masters degrees and a Ph.D. As I noted a few posts back, my son Marcus, who is homeschooled, just took the second grade Stanford Achievement test and blew it out of the water compared to public school children who took it. My wife and I have come to view the homeschooling controversy as not being an "educated versus uneducated" one but one that reflects the state not having control over what my children are taught.

Despite numerous studies to the contrary, the NEA continually wants more control over what children are taught in this country. One of the problems is that they can get their foot in the door by pointing out to legislators that creationism is being taught at home. That raises the red flags, as well it should. This is where creationism is at its worst. I will fight to the death for my right to home school our children, and I know that they and the vast majority of the kids that are home schooled get a great one, but when I see the debate over evolution, I can kind of see the other side's point.

Michael Ruse in the Miami Herald

Michael Ruse, the philosopher of science, has a guest column in the Miami Herald called Knowledge and its discontents: Darwin passes his own test

He very clearly and concisely lays out the case for predictive science:

Darwin realized full well that often we don't have direct evidence, but that doesn't stop us from talking about facts. Indirect evidence can be overwhelming. It can trump direct evidence even! Take a murder, or some other crime against the person. What would lead you to point a finger at a culprit? Sure, eyewitness testimony is going to be very powerful. But we all know that people under strain can be very unreliable about remembering faces. That is not a weakness; it is a very understandable aspect of human nature.

Much better in such cases is the indirect evidence -- the clues, the bits and pieces that point to the culprit. Today, DNA evidence is nigh definitive and with good reason. Any good judge and jury would much sooner know about the molecules on the weapon than the recollections of someone who caught a fleeting glance and whose prejudices may be coloring memory.

It is funny that such an obvious example is lost on people like Ken Ham, who famously asks "Were you there?" Ruse also posits a stunningly simple case for the argument of evolution from homology:

Why -- and this was really powerful evidence -- are the front leg of the horse, the arm of the human, the wing of the bat, the flipper of the porpoise, the paw of the mole, all apparently molded from the same bones connected in the same order when the functions that these forelimbs serve are so very different? Because these animals share common ancestors, and evolution took the early forelimbs and shaped them in different ways, according to need.

Ruse does not share my religious convictions but he writes very easily and clearly. Read the whole article.

Pharyngula

There is a glowing tribute to P.Z. Meyers' blog Pharyngula in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (intelligencer??) Meyers is similar to Dawkins in his outlook:

"It's true that a number of good scientists also have religious beliefs," he said. "I'm not saying they are not good scientists. I'm just saying they also appear to believe in a magic sky fairy."

The genesis of Meyers' religious convictions is also outlined:

Myers, 51, said he didn't start out to wage a war on religion. He was raised a Lutheran, he said, and went to Sunday school as a boy growing up in Seattle's suburbs. In 2003, he launched Pharyngula (the word refers to one stage in vertebrate embryonic development) as a tool to assist his students' writing projects.

"I just see science as a wonderful thing that everyone should be excited about," Myers said. But he soon discovered that presenting even the most basic facts of his particular branch of science, evolutionary biology, provoked angry denunciations and even personal attacks by those who saw it as an assault on their religious beliefs.

The war was on. The Lutheran boy from Kent became one of the world's leading atheists, speaking from the pulpit of science.

So once again, we have another scientist who has a bad experience with creationists and, using somewhat twisted logic, throws belief in God out the window. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Myers is at once insulting and irrational in his attacks on religion. That he had such bad experiences with Christians does not excuse their behavior which can be abominable and very unChrist-like. I know this from personal experience. It does not, however, qualify as a logical position.