The Waco Tribune published an opinion piece three weeks ago that I should have noted earlier. Trib columnist John Young noted that creationism isn’t science, and that generally creationists are not friends of science education (or any other education, sadly, not even Bible education).
Conditions surrounding Texas science standards, and education standards in general, have deteriorated very rapidly, with the chairman of the State Board of Education going on the warpath against mathematics, English and science teaching. For quick destruction to get the foolishness out of the way, one might hope he’ll go on the warpath against football and cheerleading. I’ve not had time to pass along all the sad details.
But then, not all crazies are stupid.
Earlier:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Thanks. Will do.
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Hugo, be sure to check out the work of Andy Ellington, and wander over to the site for Astrobiology Magazine. Good stuff.
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Ed, I’ve been looking into Abiogenesis, with growing interest, at Matt’s behest. I love your succinct characterization of it.
Spontaneous generation? I thought that was gophers.
Didn’t some famous biologist show a long time ago that God is indeed a gopher, onnacounta proving that gophers are everywhere and you can’t kill them; ergo, omnipresent and immortal.
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Spontaneous generation of mice? Falsified.
Abiogenesis? Still a hypothesis in search of disproof.
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can someone prove spontaneous generations false please tell me
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Whew. Just finished scrolling through the screaming debate…Ed, considering your comment way back (#10 or so) about the relationship between time spent on a post and number of comments, perhaps a separate (smaller, given your specialty) blog for scientific issues would be in order. I, for one, would read it more often, since I unfortunately do not share your passion for Filmore.
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Thanks for your interest in this. I’d be happy to have them archived by Pattee, at Penn State. They’ve beautifully housed an old collection of mine and made it widely accessible. But I really want to keep the originals of the Bryan letters, simply because they are the only thing I have of my great grandfather’s other than an old clergyman’s vest pocket quarto of orders of burial. He died in the depths of the Great Depression, leaving my grandmother little choice but to sell off his entire research library. In hopes of finding a volume or two of his I’ve looked and looked to no avail in seminary libraries in New England and California, where he died, So I feel that the originals should be passed on within the family, reminders of a time when American scholars of the most rigorous academic training still upheld quaint notions.
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At a minimum, there must be a library or university somewhere with Bryan’s papers who would love to have copies for scholars to work from. I’ll wager there are several museums who’d love to have them.
And you could always auction them off for cash — are you a fan of Antiques Roadshow?
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Hi, Ed. Well, frankly I’d have to dig them out of whichever of four storage pods they’re stored in, in a warehouse across the country. That is, assuming that I didn’t lose them in my just now concluded divorce! They’re not really very interesting, mostly convivial discussions of arrangements for Secretary Bryan’s lodgings and speaking engagements, etc.
There are, in two of the letters, references to a talk WJB planned to give just prior to the trial, taking as his subject—what else?—“The Bible and Evolution”. My guess is that he was warming up the audience for the show, so to speak. He was a devout and thoughtful man, and a somewhat homespun intellectual. Ironically his politics were flawed in same way Mencken’s were: by German chauvinism (Midwest-style) and anti-Semitism. This isn’t evinced in the letters, but rather is borne out repeatedly during his career; I mention it because I suspect that the match with HLM hasn’t been noticed.
At any rate my great grandfather had no use for any of that stuff; as an exegete he was of the Hebraist, not the German Hellenist, school;he was repulsed by Southern racism; and as the child of Norwegian immigrants he was wary of Germans—and Swedes, of course.
I do have some fun photographs of WJB taken during the last great Bull Moose hurrah of the Proggies. They are in the public domain already.
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When will you publish these treasures?
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Agree with you about the poor procedure on cross. The point of the evidentiary exclusion was of course that the evidence did not go to the hilariously narrow issue before the court. I thought that Bryan, the godfather of my grandmother, did a fine job for a guy going up against Darrow like the fatally nostalgic Confederates going up against Sherman’s juggernaut. He was in love with his own voice, of course, but was also a man of many good works, some of them great. In any event, a textbook Pyrrhic victory. (I still have Bryan’s letters, preparatory to the trial, to my great grandfather, a Yale theologian influential, at the time, in Tennessee.)
I’m sure you’re aware that most of the famous showdowns between church v. science were not at all what the mid-century scholars wanted to have us believe they were. Scopes is merely the most recent example of these hoedowns repackaged as showdowns for the benefit of an audience duly impressed by the Manhattan Project and Sputnik.
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