The circus is coming back to town! I hope everyone is ready for the spectacle that is certain to ensue. And I hope everyone is ready for the expenses that this particular circus is guaranteed to incur.
The host will (again) be the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) as it continues its assault on science education across the state of Texas. Two years ago, despite outrage expressed by the country's scientific community and over the express wishes of educational experts, the SBOE rewrote the state's science guidelines to make them particularly friendly to creationism. In March the SBOE will begin the process of approving the textbooks to be used in implementing the new guidelines. Because Texas is such a large market for textbooks, publishers across the country ensure that their offerings will be acceptable to the SBOE. Thus the SBOE's actions directly impact science education everywhere.
And the fun has already begun! Amid the dozens of publishers that notified the SBOE of their intent to submit scientific material for review is one that should raise serious concerns for anyone who cares about science literacy. Similarly, those who believe in religious pluralism, that students should not be indoctrinated in any particular religion, should also be alarmed. The publisher is the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), and its track record is as clear as it is biased.
FTE is the publisher of the notorious intelligent design (ID) text Of Pandas and People at the center of the Dover, Penn., trial in 2005 in which Judge John E. Jones, III ruled that teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional.
To this day, FTE continues to make the outrageous claim that there are no religious overtones to either ID in general or Of Pandas and People in particular. Nothing could be further from the truth, however.
As the trial so well documented, FTE simply took creation science, a subject the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard ruled could not be taught in public schools due to its unconstitutional promotion of religion, dressed it up in fancy new clothes and called it intelligent design. Judge Jones was brutal in his assessment of the book and of FTE in his ruling:
As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were complete prior to and some after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards, which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge: (1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition for ID; (2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberatively and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and (3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards. This word substitution is telling, significant and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE's argument that by merely disregarding the words "creation" and "creationism," FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas.
Some of the data presented by Barbara Forrest to demonstrate the transmogrification of creationism into intelligent design is every bit as humorous as it is sad. By comparing different drafts of the book, obtained via subpoenas issued in the Dover case, she found examples of "evolutionary" change.
As Judge Jones pointed out, in an attempt to "fix" the book to make it compatible with the Supreme Court ruling, word substitutions were employed. However, at times the substitutions were done so poorly that "fossils" of the original forms remained. Consider two versions of the book. The first, the creationist version, reads as follows:
The basic metabolic pathways (reaction chains) of nearly all organisms are the same. Is this because of common descent from an ancestor, or because only these pathways (and their variations) can sustain life? Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view. Creationists reason...
The second, the ID version, reads as follows:
The basic metabolic pathways (reaction chains) of nearly all organisms are the same. Is this because of common descent from an ancestor, or because only these pathways (and their variations) can sustain life? Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view. Design proponents reason...
"Cdesign proponentsists" is obviously a perfect example of a transitional form between the original "creationists" and the latter "design proponents." It is also a perfect example of what Judge Jones meant when he referred to "a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content."
FTE has also tried to cover up its actual intent in a very similar fashion. Judge Jones noted, for example, that FTE's articles of incorporation with the IRS describe itself as a "religious, Christian organization." As late as 2002, FTE described its mission on IRS tax returns as "promoting and publishing textbooks presenting a Christian perspective of academic studies." None of this is to be found on FTE's web site today. Instead, it dons fancier clothes: "The purpose of FTE is to restore the freedom to know to young people, especially in matters of worldview, morality, and conscience, and to return the right of informed consent to families in the education of their children."
While this rhetoric isn't likely to fool anyone, an alliance between FTE and the SBOE is likely to do great damage to science education. And, the lawsuit that is certain to be generated, is likely to drain the coffers in a state that is already reeling from a massive budget deficit.
Years ago, when I took my older son to the circus for the very first time, for some reason, it was the clowns that scared him the most. Having watched the Texas State Board of Education in action in the past and recognizing where the current script is likely to take us, I have begun to appreciate just how frightening clowns can be.
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April 30, 2010 ~ Texas Textbook Controversy | Religion & Ethics ...
Sadly, our religious history is profoundly scarred wirh the damage of repeated indefensible positions held too long and only reluctantly abandoned. It is a basic human tendency to stoke the ego by playing the prophet-warrior game. When will we surrender once and for all the intoxicating, attrocity-promoting concept of Holy War? I've had it up to here with "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war."
To this Christian pastor, the scientific process, with its open-minded "take-me-where-the-truth-is" outlook is the more faithful worldview. Many of my religious brothers and sisters (and, no doubt, me, too, in ways I don't yet recognize), are guilty of foolish, destructive assaults on justice and kindness, stubbornly attempting to force the wide world into a narrow worldview. Meanwhile, science, forever asking questions and seeking answers, walks humbly with our God.
If we will be judged by the fruits of our faith, I'll take science's medical cures, environmental stewardship and liberating wisdom over some yahoo pounding me on the head with his ridiculous, self-aggrandizing presumptions any day.
Honestly, we Christians make it so hard to be Christian.
I often wonder if they really believe in reason at all?
I think that these folks really think if they tell the same story long enough, eventually we'll believe it.
The creationists are lifting up the 0.15% of scientists agreeing with them, and ignoring the 99.85% who accept evolution over any creationist explanation. At the risk of being called a “name caller,” my Christianity says the creationists are being hypocritical.
I'm surprised that you find any of my writings to have violent overtones. Yes, I am dismissive of the ideas creationists keep raising and, like Judge Jones in the Dover intelligent design trial, I can see how the creationists have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the truth. But violence? While I've received death threats over the years, I've certainly never issued any and I don't believe that I've ever come close to being personally inappropriate to any individual with whom I disagree on this topic. If I have crossed that line at some point, I shouldn't have!
But, to repeat, the struggle is taking place in the public education system because the creationists want to control it in a manner that is scientifically and legally inappropriate.
Yes, there are those who are anti-creationist, anti-theism, anti-every religion, anti-atheist, anti-just about everything, but this is not about being anti-creationism, it's about being anti-non-science being taught as science.
Read the Dover trial transcript, especially the testimony of the star ID witness, Michael Behe and answer this question, "Is he a scientist is the strictest definition of the term or is he a theist using his scientific knowledge, superior to the average person, certainly beyond what a state school board would comprehend, intent on using scientific misdirection to promote a religious view as science."
If you think America's youth are behind in science today, wait ten years and see where they are if education leaders allow faux material to be included in school courses.
http://sites.google.com/site/intelligenceprograms/Home/TheoryOfIntelligentDesign.doc
The theory (and new computer model with 2-Lobe Cross-Talk enabled brain) is currently being discussed/argued here.
http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1267935#post1267935
Here's from the beginning of the current Introduction, for a quick look at how it begins:
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause whereby an intelligent entity is emergent from another intelligent entity, and in engineering recognizable intelligent designs have an intelligent cause from intelligent entities which produce them. There are here multiple levels of unique organization, where nonrandom behavior of matter is the behavioral cause of molecular intelligence, which is in turn the cause of cellular intelligence, which is in turn the cause of multicellular intelligence, which is in turn the cause of collective intelligence.
......
The biological operational definition of intelligence (where at all levels intelligence comes from) is an autonomous sensory-feedback (confidence) controlled sensory-addressed memory system that through trial-and-error learns new successful actions to be taken in response to environmental conditions.
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