Why isn’t it open-minded to teach intelligent design in science classes? Here, maybe one more explanation might help people understand.
From some film project that goes by the name Qualia Soup, via Pharyngula and Phil Plait at JREF:
No, teaching intelligent design is not “open minded”
April 5, 2009
8 Comments | 
Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Reason, Science, Texas, Woo | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Open-mindedness, Qualia Soup, Reason, Science, Texas | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Well, Texas! How do you like your culture war!
March 30, 2009Historical Item: William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper in New York favored war with Spain in 1898 — the Spanish-American War. When the war got underway, on the top of the newspaper’s first page, in the corners (the “ears”), Hearst printed, “America! How do you like your war!”
Creationism lost on the votes that had been planned for weeks, on issues members of the State Board of Education were informed about. But creationists on the board proposed a series of amendments to several different curricula, and some really bad science was written in to standards for Texas school kids to learn. Climate change got an official “tsk-tsk, ain’t happenin'” from SBOE. And while Wilson and Penzias won a Nobel Prize for stumbling on the evidence that confirmed it, Big Bang is now theory non grata in Texas science books. Using Board Member Barbara Cargill’s claims, Texas teachers now should teach kids that the universe is a big thing who tells big lies about her age.
Phil Plait wrote at Bad Astronomy: “Texas: Yup. Doomed.”
A surefire way to tell that the changes were bad: The Discovery Institute’s lead chickens crow victory over secularism, science and “smart people.” Well, no, they aren’t quite that bold. See here, here, here and here. Disco Tute even slammed the so-conservative-Ronald-Reagan-found-it-dull Dallas Morning News for covering the news nearly accurately. Even more snark here. Discovery Institute’s multi-million-dollar budget to buy good public relations for anti-science appears to have dropped a bundle in Austin; while it might appear that DI had more people in Austin than there are members of the Texas SBOE . . . no, wait, maybe they did.
SBOE rejected the advice of America’s best and greatest scientists. If it was good science backed by good scientists and urged by the nation’s best educators, SBOE rejected it. If it was a crank science idea designed to frustrate teaching science, it passed. As the Texas Freedom Network so aptly put it, while SBOE closed the door on “strengths and weaknesses” language that favors creationism, they then opened every window in the house.
Read ’em, and tell us in comments if you find any reason for hope, or any reason the state legislature shouldn’t abolish this board altogether. (What others should we add to the list?)
- Texas Freedom Network’s TFN Insider, here, here, here, here, here and here
- Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science blogs here at the Houston Chronicle site; watch for updates
- Jerry Coyne had a column in The Guardian, “Evolution is a fact — except, perhaps, in Texas, where the school board is trying to cast doubt on it.”
- Don McLeroy lobs grenades to start the culture war in the Austin American-Statesman
- Pharyngula
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- Tony’s Curricublog — doing great work from a long way away; read the other posts about this issue on the blog — McLeroy hopes you won’t
5 Comments | Biology, Education, Education quality, Environmental protection, Evolution, History, Physics, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: Biology, Education, Environmental Science, Evolution, geology, Physics, Science, Science Standards, Texas, Texas State Board of Education, War on Education, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Poll: Almost 90% say Texas should teach “evolution only”
March 28, 2009A television station in College Station-Bryan, Texas, KBTX (Channel 3, a CBS affiliate) ran a poll on what Texas schools should be doing about evolution in biology classes. After hearing for days from the creationists on the State Board of Education that most people think creationism should be taught, the results are a little astounding:
Results: How do you think science should be taught in Texas schools?
Evolution only – 89.62% Creationism only – 2.96% Combination of both – 7.42% Total Responses – 9126
It just goes to show what happens when people speak up, no?
8 Comments | Citizenship, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Humor, Politics, Religion, Science | Tagged: Evolution, Polls, public schools, Religion, Science, Science Classes, Teaching, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
What’s the difference between creationism and cold fusion?
March 27, 2009Science — cold fusion has it, and creationism doesn’t.
One of my favorite comebacks to creationism advocates is pointing out that creationism is biology what cold fusion is to physics, except for the deep experimental results supporting cold fusion. It usually makes creationists bluster, because they hate to be compared to something they think is pseudo-science.
To be sure, cold fusion’s corpse remain’s pretty cold. It’s not a science that will soon spring to life to deliver safe, cheap energy to your refrigerator.
But it’s still alive, and research is still being done on cold fusion — in stark contrast to creationism/intelligent design, which remains colder than cold fusion. Bob Park reminded us of another missed anniversary that passed last Monday:
4. COLD FUSION: TWENTY YEARS LATER, IT’S STILL COLD.
Monday was the 20th anniversary of the infamous press conference called by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to announce the discovery of Cold Fusion. The sun warmed the Earth that day as it had for 5 billion years, by the high temperature fusion of hydrogen nuclei. Incredibly, the American chemical Society was meeting in Salt Lake City this week and there were many papers on cold fusion, or as their authors prefer LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions). These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look. They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it’s science.
The Texas State Board of Education failed to require that Texas kids learn about cold fusion in their high school science classes. But had they done so, they’d have been on better, more truthful, more accurate and better researched ground than their rants against Big Bang, DNA and common descent.
4 Comments | Creationism, Evolution, Physics, Science | Tagged: Bob Park, Cold Fusion, Creationism, Evolution, Physics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Listen in: Texas board considers science standards, and evolution
March 26, 2009Texas Freedom Network is live-blogging the hearings and proceedings from Austin, again today, before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). [I’ve changed the link to go to the TFN blog — that will take you to the latest post with latest news.] Testimony yesterday showed the coarse nature of the way SBOE treats science and scientists, and offered a lot of “balancing” testimony against evolution from people who appeared not to have ever read much science at all. The issue remains whether to force Texas kids to study false claims of scientific error about evolution.
As yesterday, Steve Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science is live-blogging, too, here at EvoSphere.
Schafersman’s list of several ways you can keep up with the hearings still applies:
I will be live blogging the Texas State Board of Education meeting of 2009 March 25-27 in this column. This includes the hearing devoted to public testimony beginning at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 25. I will stay through the final vote on Friday, March 27.
Go to the following webpages for further information:
State Board of Education
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=1156March 25-26 SBOE Meeting Agenda
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3994March 25 Public Hearing with Testimony, 12:00 noon
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=4034State Board rules for Public Testimony
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3958#Public%20TestimonyCurrent Science TEKS as revised in 2009 January
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/home/sboeprop.htmlFor the live audio feed, go to http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ for the link.
Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Education Agency (TEA) | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Evolution, Politics, Science, Texas, Texas State Board of Educaiton, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
God save us from preachers fouling the waters of science
March 25, 2009Waylon and Willie might have done a great service for the world had they sung, instead, “Mamas, don’t let your children grow up to be preachers./ . . . make ’em be biologists and teachers and such.”
I’m moving my response to a poster, lowerleavell, up from the depths of the thread on this old post, “Why intelligent design shouldn’t bully Texas high school kids.”
Among other things creationists do which I find destructive, they tell people stories about what evolution theory “says,” or what happens in nature, that simply are not true. Very simply, creationists, especially preachers, paint such a vivid but false view of human nature “according to science,” that a lot of misbehavior can be blamed on the preachers’ convincing people, especially children, that they are supposed to misbehave.
I’ll just let the post speak for itself; Joe’s words are blockquoted, my response set without indentation:
Joe said:
Every presented “truth” has ramifications. If you tell people long enough and dogmatically enough that they are the result of some massive cosmic accident (Dawkins viewpoint) then eventually they’re going to start getting the picture.
We can hope. As Dawkins notes, the picture they should get is that we need to be human to one another, to treat each other well, to defend human rights, to cherish life while we live it. So far, I don’t see a lot of that happening, at least, not enough — and, as I’ve noted earlier, I think it’s because religion gets in the way.
You tell people that humans are simply evolved animals and are surprised when they act accordingly.
Actually, that’s what preachers say — you won’t find a scientist putting it that crudely, or that inaccurately.
We tell people that humans are evolved animals — a true statement, as any physician can tell you — and we tell them that we expect them to act as animals do. You seem to think that would be bad. But anyone who studies animal behavior will tell you that the bravery and altruism of the tiny sparrow defending her nest against marauding crows matches the bravery of any human, anywhere, any time. You seem to think that animals have no sense of morality, but that’s not what we see in nature. You seem to think that humans’ animal morality is bad, but as Darwin noted (in chapter 5 of Descent of Man), the foundation of our evolved morality is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That’s the principal that allowed us to survive as a species, and to thrive. Darwin even went so far as to lay out a scenario for how genes that produced the behaviors could be selected for in natural selection.
Make no mistake: “Animal behavior” is not immoral behavior. We didn’t thrive as a species by stabbing our friends in the back, at least, not until the invention of religion (the story of Cain and Able is a Bible story, remember — you don’t find siblings going after each other to the point of murder much in nature).
Joe, you’re preaching against the Golden Rule. Leave it to a creationist who claims not to be advocating creationism to preach against Christian morality and claim it’s evolution’s fault.
One of my concerns is that creationists — especially people who claim to have a ministry — get this animal morality thing exactly wrong. It only strengthens my feeling that we need to keep such people from innocent children.
It’s preachers who tell children that they’re animals, and that they can act evilly, Joe, not science. Preachers probably don’t even intend to do that, but they get the science dead wrong, they tell the kids that’s what science says . . . what’s a kid to think? Would a preacher lie to them?
I agree we shouldn’t teach immorality to children. Joe, will you join me in keeping Baptist ministers from doing that? You guys should stop telling children that evolution is untrue, that animals are immoral, and that our baser, animal instincts trend toward sin.
Incidentally, that’s not what the Bible says, either. It was Man who sinned, not animals. In your zeal to get evolution, you’ve departed a long ways from what the scriptures say. I’d say it’s time to rethink what you’re doing.
You tell people that they are the evolution of nature and are surprised when they act according to their natural impulses and emotions.
I wish they’d do it more often, rather than substituting the morality of organized religion.
Geese mate for life and look out for each other. Bonobos keep peace with an almost literal “make love, not war” ethic — it protects the children very well. Prairie dogs look out for one another, posting guards to keep everybody safe — they double the guards when their children are out foraging, to double the protection. Musk oxen, tiny things, really, defend their young with the entire herd, sacrificing an adult if necessary to protect the offspring. Gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, elephants, lions, whales and others protect and venerate their aged, the sages who can guide the herd/troupe/pride/pod/clan through difficult times. Throughout the animal kingdom, we find animals as exemplars of behavior, mostly. Murder is extremely rare in most species. War is even more rare.
What in the devil is wrong with that morality? Why wouldn’t we want our children to “act as animals?”
You know, if one studies the history of evolution in science, one is struck by the remarkable sterling character of most of the scientists involved. With very few exceptions — Haeckel’s dishonesty and rampant nationalism, Watson’s general unpleasantness — these scientists are paragons of moral behavior. Darwin was a giant of morality, an outstanding, faithful and loving husband, a caring and doting father. Wallace was a pillar, too — except for his dabblings in seances later, a function of his Christian beliefs. Dobzhansky, Wilson, the Grants, Simpson, Gould, Eldredge, Coyne, Myers, Majerus, Kettlewell, Mayr — these are people you would be happy to know, whose morality is generally beyond reproach.
Contrast that with the greats of religion — Calvin burned his friend Servetus at the stake. Luther was a rabid anti-semite. Various popes robbed, murdered and fornicated. Rasputin led the Russian court to debauchery and villiany. The occasional Billy Graham is an exception among preachers, it too often appears. We lost count of the famous preachers who were caught with their pants down and their hands on the wallets of their friends.
If evolution produced evil, wouldn’t we see that in its greatest exponents? Instead, we see the opposite — evolutionists living lives of saints, churchmen living lives of evil.
There’s a parable about the fruit of a poisoned tree. Do you know it?
You say that evolution is not immoral and in and of itself it may not be – but what is presented to people can contribute to dramatic ramifications, which is what I’m saying.
Evolution is immoral only when presented, inaccurately and basely, by preachers.
It’s not science, it’s not the study of evolution, and it’s not studying science in school that is the problem here.
You’re making a great case for licensing preachers, insisting on standards, and checking their work. I think I can see where the problem is, from your presentation.
How would you propose to fix it, without taking the pro-ignorance route?
21 Comments | Creationism, Evolution | Tagged: Altruism, Biology, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Human Behavior, Morality, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Up-to-the-minute reports from the science ramparts — today’s evolution hearings
March 25, 2009If you’re not thinking of Edward R. Murrow’s reports from the roof of the building in London as the bombs fell, you’re not aware of how grave things are in Texas.
The Texas Freedom Network is live-blogging the hearings in Austin, before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). Testimony of a sort is being offered on whether to force Texas kids to study false claims of scientific error about evolution.
Steve Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science is live-blogging, too, here at EvoSphere.
Schafersman listed several ways you can keep up with the hearings:
I will be live blogging the Texas State Board of Education meeting of 2009 March 25-27 in this column. This includes the hearing devoted to public testimony beginning at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 25. I will stay through the final vote on Friday, March 27.
Go to the following webpages for further information:
State Board of Education
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=1156March 25-26 SBOE Meeting Agenda
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3994March 25 Public Hearing with Testimony, 12:00 noon
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=4034State Board rules for Public Testimony
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3958#Public%20TestimonyCurrent Science TEKS as revised in 2009 January
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/home/sboeprop.htmlFor the live audio feed, go to http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ for the link.
Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, History, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Evolution, McLeroy, National Center for Science Education, NCSE, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedm Network, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Four Stone Hearth #63: Bathing in the warm waters of ancient knowledge
March 25, 2009Welcome to the 63rd edition of Four Stone Hearth (4SH), the only blog carnival on the planet dedicated entirely to the four stone foundations of modern anthropology. We’re happy to invite readers in for a soak at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
It’s spring, and in spring a young anthropologist’s fancy turns to thoughts of . . . grading papers, maybe love, getting ready to dig over the summer, finishing up the term, love, getting the snow tires off the car, the Texas State Board of Education, if not love then maybe a good dinner companion, finishing the paper up for publication (where?), how to finance next semester, how to stretch the grant, love in the future, where to get the next grant . . . almost everything but submitting entries to that history and social studies guy at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
Need some cowboy coffee?
Interesting entries this edition, but in onesies and twosies, not by dozens. Trusting that the enterprise is blessed by the patron saints (St. Damasus I, or St. Helen, for archaeologists; is there a patron saint for anthropology or linguistics? In a pinch we can just invoke St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers and authors), we push on.
The Four Stone Hearth name pays homage to four areas of anthro: Archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, bio-physical anthropology and linguistic anthropology. Shorter form: What humans did, and a bit of what we do.
So, grab a cup of cowboy coffee (the favorite of diggers and backpackers, and sheep herders). In no particular order, and in no particular theme, here’s what caught our fancies over the past couple of weeks:
Globalization — love it or hate it — how does it really affect us? The Spitoon comments on newly-published research that reveals people are choosing mates from farther abroad than before. At least, that’s what our genes show. People don’t marry people from their own village so much. Unanswered: How does this affect human evolution?
Digital Archaeology: Colleen Morgan at Middle Savagery, demonstrates the clash between the earthen and the electronic — she spoke on a panel at SXSW (“South By Southwest”), the massive, hip music conference and riot in Austin, Texas. Topic: The Real Technology of Indiana Jones. It starts out with a promising description: “Archaeologists no longer rely on whips and fedoras . . .” The panel also featured Bernard Frischer of the University of Virginia, and Adam Rabinowitz, University of Texas at Austin. “Notes and tweets” from the panel.
Cover to Goldschmidt's book, The Bridge to Humanity, Oxford Press
Does morality have any connection to evolution — Appropriate for the opening day of hearings and voting on Texas public school science standards, Greg Downey at Neuroanthropology looks at the evolution of altruism, with a review and commentary on Walter Goldschmidt’s book, The Bridge to Humanity. Goldschmidt notes that selfish genes don’t explain everything, and that there’s probably a good function to a baby’s being very cute. (Goldschmidt must hang out at our PTA meetings: “It’s a good thing the kid’s so cute, or he’d have been dead long ago.”) “Affect hunger” is not a common phrase in daily conversations, and it deserves a solid explanation. Altruism cannot form naturally, many education officials in Texas believe, and so they oppose teaching evolution in public schools. They’ll be too busy to read this article before they vote on Friday — but they should read it, and maybe the book, too.
Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology offers a lighter but critical note, on putting ice cream sticks in museums. Archaeological museum weirdness. What should a museum be? In the past 14 months I’ve had the pleasure of spending time (on someone else’s dime!) at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, and at the greatly expanded museum and visitor center at Mount Vernon, Virginia, George Washington’s estate. In these places there is a concerted effort to make museums more informative, more inviting, and more focused on education missions. Both museums feature multimedia presentations designed to kick off anyone’s visit with a punch, holographic images in Springfield, and theater seats that kick and get snowed on at Mount Vernon.
Tuamatuan Conception of the Cosmos, by Paiore. Inspiration for Margaret Mead's fieldwork in American Samoa. Running After Antelope
RafRaf Girls notes that someone is collecting images used to illustrate anthropology, linguistics and social theory. It’s a form of on-line museum, and Martin’s concerns are well directed: How much of this stuff should be preserved, especially if the preservation perpetuates odd ideas or misinformation? Browse the images, see for yourself. Nice to know it’s there, if you need it. (Is all this stuff from Running After Antelope?)
Again at Neuroanthropology, Daniel Lende offers what a reader in comments calls “the best damn article on alcoholism” in “The Insidious, Elusive Becoming: Addiction in Four Steps.” I thought it ironic that the post is illustrated with a diagram showing how to tie the famous knot, the bowline, in four steps. Every Girl Scout and Boy Scout knows the bowline is the “lifesaving knot,” a knot that is used to tie loops used to hoist people from danger. The bowline will not slip, and so will not suffocate the victim upon lifting. Addiction is no bowline. Falling into addiction involves four steps Lende outlines, basing the title on a line from Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story.
But we do know much more about the process of becoming than we used to. Here I will outline four important factors that shape the terrible becoming – vulnerability, training, intention, and meaning. My focus will be on understanding the subjective transformations, and I will use Knapp’s own words and experiences to help us grasp how this happens. In a forthcoming post, I will address a core biological process—competitive plasticity—that acts as the complement to this description, a process that has also helped me see the interactions in new light.
A Primate of Modern Aspect (formerly Zinjanthropus?) offers what I thought to be a fascinating story about studying the inner ears of fossilized primates, “Navigating the Bony Labyrinth.” It’s a continued exercise in pulling paleontology out of the usually-imagined realm of dusty reconstructions in badly-lighted corners of musty museums.
Fossil primates can pose some especially interesting questions to a paleoprimatologist. Because they live in trees, many different kinds of locomotion are possible. We can look at limb proportions to see if the little guys were clinging to vertical supports and then leaping from them, or perhaps walking on top of thick, horizontal branches, or maybe even swinging below these brances. We can look at the shape of the scapula to see whether the animal kept its arms underneath itself or used them to reach out to the side or above itself. We can look at the fingers to see if they were grasping branches or balancing above them. In species known only from cranial bones, we can also look at the ear bones to see how these guys positioned themselves while in the trees.
It’s spring, I know, and we are hopeful. Politics and war push on, however, and they push into the fields of science we love. Some things we would like to confine to dusty corners of musty museums, like war.
Afarensis notes that the coup d’etat in Madagascar threatens lemurs in the forests of the island.
It’s on the fringes of blogging, but well worth knowing about: San Diego City Beat tells a story of guerrilla archaeology, beating the construction of the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico to get a dig done, “Hush hush archaeology.”
It’s spring, and students in American schools look forward (ha!) to the standardized tests they must take under the New Regime. I was interested to see Kris Hirst has started a weekly quiz, this week about bog bodies — just the sort of stuff I need for my classroom to take out the tension and get kids to think. Now, if only it were on PowerPoint, or in a form I could just print off to open a class . . .
Wish us luck here in Texas this week. Science standards, especially evolution studies, are on the grill before the State Board of Education, where creationists hold sway. If you know someone in Texas, you may want to persuade them to call their representative on the state board. No scientist is an island, as John Donne would have said had he thought a bit longer about it. How Texas goes will affect us all.
Four Stone Hearth #64 returns to the hands of people who know a bit about the topic, at Quiche Moraine.
Thanks for reading. Remember to send your nominations for the next edition to Quiche Moraine, or to Martin.
Friends of Four Stone Hearth, sites that link to this edition (if you’ve linked and I missed it, please note it in the comments):
6 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, Evolution, History, Paleontology, Research, Science | Tagged: 4 Stone Hearth, Anthropology, Archaeology, Evolution, Four Stone Hearth, History, Linguistics, Paleontology, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Campolo: Still wrong on evolution
March 18, 2009I’ve been itching to get at Tony Campolo’s republication of his errors on evolution and intelligent design. There’s a lot on my “to do” list.
Mike at Tangled Up In Blue Guy has beat me to it, and probably done it better than I could have. Go read, “Is, and ought, and Darwinism.” I agree.
Related material at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Education, History, Racism, Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Culture, Darwin, Evolution, History, Racism, Science, Social Darwinism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Fighting cargo cult science
March 13, 2009Creationism is not taught at any major university, as science. It’s difficult to find creationism taught in any curriculum, including theology schools, because it’s not a part of the theology of most Christian sects. And yet, creationism continues to pose hurdles to good science education in almost every state (especially Texas).
The hard work of spreading creationism is long entrenched, and continuing, though largely out of the view of most observers of cultural and scientific trends.
For example, consider this blog by a guy who teaches creationism at Bryan College. It’s been discovered by supporters of science education — but what can anybody do about it? P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula noted the non-scientific contents of the stuff being taught. That’s not really enough.
We need to more aggressively promote good science teaching in public schools.
Here’s one thing we might do, as I noted in the comments at Pharyngula. We need to create institutions to aggressively promote good, powerful science teaching. Here is what I wrote there, essentially.
Notice that this is Bryan College that Todd Wood preaches at, the college set up to honor William Jennings Bryan, the creationist prosecutor from the Scopes trial. This is part of the evidence that scientists and other lovers of science and good education slept too long on some of these issues (“While Science Slept” might be a good essay somewhere).
Remember Scopes lost his case, and was fined; the overturning on appeal was due to a technical error in the fine, not due to other obviously major flaws in the law (which was signed and promoted by Gov. Austin Peay, who also has a college named after him). The law against teaching human evolution remained effective in Tennessee until after 1967, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Epperson v. Arkansas — which finally persuaded the Tennessee legislature to repeal the act.
Some people thought H. L. Mencken’s mocking judgment on the Scopes trial was final. Not creationists. While the rest of the world went on, fundamentalists developed a powerful, out-of-the-major-media network to spread and promote their ideas. Part of this network was the establishment of Bryan College, and to some degree, I think Austin Peay State University (though, as a state university with serious intentions on educating people, APSU is in the evolution camp in curricula).
Why is there no Clarence Darrow College? Why is there no John T. Scopes Institute for Teachers (say, at the University of Chicago, where Scopes went back for his advanced degree)?
Unless we get out there and fight in the trenches of education and religion and culture, evolution will continue to face silly opposition. Feynman warned us of the dangers of cargo cult science. (Honestly, though, Wood’s stuff looks like cargo cult cargo cultism, it’s so far removed from real science — doesn’t it?)
In the end it’s odd that a progressive-on-most-issues guy like Bryan would be memorialized by naming a college after him to preserve his most profound errors. It’s effective propaganda. I’d be willing to wager Bryan would have come around to evolution with the evidence stacked as it is now. His error was emotional and theological, I think. Education can prevent and correct such error. Bryan College doesn’t do that in evolution — something else needs to be done to fight what Bryan College does.
The John T. Scopes Institute for Teachers could run in the summer months, it should have a thousand teachers of science from primary and secondary education in every session, and it should emphasize the best methods for teaching the best science we have. We really need such an agency — or agencies — now. Our children lose interest in science between fourth grade and graduation, their achievement in science plunges in comparison to other nations.
Our economy suffers as a result.
Creationists have Bryan College to help them spread their versions of cargo cult science, with that mission specifically in mind. We can fight fire with fire, but we have to fight ignorance with education. And, my friends in science education, we are behind.
4 Comments | Cargo Cults, Creationism, Education, Education quality, Evolution, Higher education, Science, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: Bryan College, Cargo Cults, Creationism, Curricula, Education, Evolution, Higher education, Science, science education, teacher training, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Bacteria had sex before fish did
March 11, 2009Greg Mayer, who blogs at Jerry Coyne’s place, Why Evolution Is True, explains that fish didn’t start sex, regardless what the headlines say (what do copy editors know, anyway?).
Bacteria started sex, Mayer says. Probably about 7th grade, but it got worse in high school.
Mayer also discusses the Neanderthal genome study.
Now we know why creationists don’t study these areas of evolution: Too much sex.
You probably should bookmark that blog. I’ve added it to the science blogroll here.
2 Comments | Biology, Evolution, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: Biology, Evolution, Neanderthall, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas expects every Texas scientist to do her or his duty
March 9, 2009Science needs your help, Texas scientists.
Last month science won a victory when members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) agreed to strip creationist, anti-science language out of biology standards.
In the lightning round that followed the vote, however, some bad stuff was proposed. The National Center for Science Education asks every Texas scientist to contact your representative on the SBOE to urge them to vote against the bad stuff at a meeting near the end of March.
Don’t take my word for it. Below the fold, the full rundown of bad stuff, copied from NCSE’s website.
Details are available from Texas Citizens for Science.
New Texas Science Standards Will Be Debated and Voted Upon March 26-27 in Austin by the Texas State Board of Education — Public Testimony is March 25
Radical Religious-Right and Creationist members of the State Board of Education will attempt to keep the unscientific amendments in the Texas science standards that will damage science instruction and textbooks.
THE TEXAS SCIENCE STANDARDS SHOULD BE ADOPTED UNCHANGED!
The Texas Freedom Network has good information, too.
Also check out Greg Laden’s Blog.
Even Pharyngula’s in — Myers gets more comments from sneezing than the rest of us — but if he’s on it, you know it’s good science.
3 Comments | Charles Darwin, Citizenship, Creationism, Education, Education quality, Evolution, History, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Education reform, Evolution, Politics, Religion, Science, Science Standards, Texas, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Creationism, at the Bad Idea Blog
March 9, 2009Bad himself has gone silent for a while.
Go give it a look.
I may post some of the stuff over here, eventually. In the meantime, go discuss. Maybe Bad can be convinced to come out of retirement.
Definitely related post:
3 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Religion, Research, Science | Tagged: Bad Idea Blog, Creationism, denialism, Evolution, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Critics of evolution will damage the economy of Texas and the nation, Tyson says
February 20, 2009I had work to do, and I missed it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson casts spells over the audience at the University of Texas at Arlington, on February 17, 2009 - UT-Arlington photo
America’s living-room astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson came to Texas. Last Tuesday he spent a day trying to inspire college kids to study physics, or to stick with physics, and then he spent the evening with 3,000 close friends in an auditorium at the University of Texas-Arlington, talking about how much fun physics is, and how the use of real science and reason could improve our lives.
According to the on-line press release from the University Tyson covered a lot of topics, deftly and smartly:
The greatest scientist of all time was Isaac Newton. “Hands down. Darwin and those other guys pale by comparison. Newton is the reason we have seat belts, because he proved objects in motion stay in motion. If you ask people in cars who are not wearing seat belts if they ever took a college class in physics they say no, every single time.”
About using math illiteracy to distort truth, Tyson said he was called for jury duty and the defendant was charged with possession of 6,000 milligrams of a controlled substance.
“Why would you say that? Six thousand milligrams is 6 grams, about the weight of a dime,” he said. When a newspaper headline proclaims half of the children at a school are below average on a test, he said, no one stops to think that’s what average means.”
On the importance the media places on celebrity news, Tyson showed a newspaper cover with a near full-page cover story on entertainer Michael Jackson and two important news stories teased in small boxes above the fold. Tyson said the country suffers from a “warped sense of what is important.”
Great scientific discoveries have not come about because people are interested in science, Tyson said. Just like the voyage of Columbus, funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, discovery is spurred by wars, cold wars and economic gain, he said. The only other inspiration for counties to spend lots of money is to celebrate royalty or deities, like with the Pyramids or the great cathedrals in Italy.
“We live in a country where people are afraid of the number 13. It’s delusional,” Tyson said, pointing to a book titled, “How to Protect Yourself from Alien Invasion” and the hysteria a few years ago with the Mars Hoax, with lots of science fiction circulating because Mars came closer to Earth than it had in 60,000 years. The widely circulated reports overlooked the fact that Mars was just a few inches closer and that was completely insignificant, Tyson said.
And then, according to the blog Politex, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (one of America’s legendary newspapers now facing the crises that seems to afflict all our better news organizations) someone asked him about creationism:
During the Q&A, an audience member asked Tyson about conservative members of the state Board of Education who want to teach the “weaknesses” of the theory of evolution in Texas high school classrooms.
“I think they should stay in the Sunday school,” Tyson said. Calling intelligent design theory a “philosophy of ignorance,” he argued that a lack of appreciation for basic scienctific principles will hurt America’s scientific output, which has been the largest economic engine in the country’s history.
“If nonscience works its way into the science classroom, it marks…the beginning of the end of the economic strength this country has known,” Tyson said.
Tyson, who spent time in Washington, D.C. after being appointed to committees by then-President George W. Bush, went on to say that he always knew a Republican judge in Pennsylvania would ultimately side with evolution backers in the high-profile Dover education case in 2005. The judge understood that respecting science is good for the US economy, Tyson said.
“What I learned from my tours of duty in Washington is no Republican wants to die poor,” Tyson said.
He’s right about Republicans ( said the former employee of Orrin Hatch/William Bennett/Lamar Alexander). I hope it’s true for Texas Republicans, especially those on the Texas State Board of Education.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ediacaran, on the Fort Worth side of the Metroplex. Another tip to Physics Today from the American Institute of Physics.
15 Comments | Creationism, Evolution, History, Physics, Science, Texas | Tagged: Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Physics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Why intelligent design shouldn’t bully Texas high school kids
February 19, 2009You can go read this at P. Z. Myers’s Pharyngula, but I’m going to pirate most of his post here to reiterate the point for Texas: Intelligent design doesn’t belong in Texas science classrooms, and intelligent design’s attacks on evolution don’t belong there either, because they are not backed by science.
ID’s propaganda tank, the Discovery Institute, invited a biologist from the University of Vermont, Nicholas Gotelli, to debate one of their spokesmen. The biologist declined.
Unable to perform in science venues, the Discovery Institute is working to get Texas high school students to take Dr. Gotelli’s place. That’s why Texas scientists and educators are up in arms against the proposals from the Texas State Board of Education — Texas high school kids cannot do the work of science, and shouldn’t be called on to be the patsy for the Discovery Institute in classrooms, for grades.
Here’s the invitation; be sure to read Dr. Gotelli’s response, further below.
Dear Professor Gotelli,
I saw your op-ed in the Burlington Free Press and appreciated your support of free speech at UVM. In light of that, I wonder if you would be open to finding a way to provide a campus forum for a debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, where I work, has a local sponsor in Burlington who is enthusiastic to find a way to make this happen. But we need a partner on campus. If not the biology department, then perhaps you can suggest an alternative.
Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you’re aware, he’s known mainly as an entertainer. A more appropriate alternative or addition might be our senior fellows David Berlinski or Stephen Meyer, respectively a mathematician and a philosopher of science. I’ll copy links to their bios below. Wherever one comes down in the Darwin debate, I think we can all agree that it is healthy for students to be exposed to different views–in precisely the spirit of inviting controversial speakers to campus, as you write in your op-ed.
I’m hoping that you would be willing to give a critique of ID at such an event, and participate in the debate in whatever role you feel comfortable with.
A good scientific backdrop to the discussion might be Dr. Meyer’s book that comes out in June from HarperCollins, “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.”
On the other hand, Dr. Belinski may be a good choice since he is a critic of both ID and Darwinian theory.
Would it be possible for us to talk more about this by phone sometime soon?
With best wishes,
David Klinghoffer
Discovery Institute
Gotelli wrote back:
Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:
Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as “intelligent design”) with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute’s website: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/
However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.
Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.
Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.
“Conspiracy” is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn’t live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don’t maintain scientific standards.
Finally, isn’t it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded
institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn’t science and doesn’t merit an invitation.
In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can’t tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.
Sincerely yours,
Nick Gotelli
P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.
Of course, that’s what Judge William Overton told creationists to do way back in 1982, in the Arkansas trial. Just do the science, and it will be in the textbooks as if by magic.
If creationists won’t listen to a federal judge, why would they listen to Vermont biologist?
111 Comments | Creationism, History, Intelligent Design, Research, Science | Tagged: Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Nicholas Gotelli, Quackery, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 