Must government agencies be “neutral” between science and non-science, between evolution and intelligent design?
The Texas Education Agency lost it’s long-time science curriculum expert Chris Comer last year in a sad incident in which Comer was criticized for siding with Texas education standards on evolution rather than remaining neutral between evolution and intelligent design.
Comes now Timothy Sandefur of the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation with an article in the Chapman Law Review which argues that science is solid, a good way of determining good from bad, dross from gold. Plus, Sandefur refutes claims that evolution is religion, and so illegal in public schools. TEA’s position in the Comer affair is shown to be not defensible legally; Sandefur’s article also points out that the post-modern relativism of the TEA’s argument is damaging to the search for knowledge and freedom, too.
In short, Sandefur’s article demonstrates that the position of the Texas Education Agency is untenable in liberty and U.S. law.
Moreover, science is an essential part of the training for a free citizen because the values of scientific discourse — respect, freedom to dissent, and a demand for logical, reasoned arguments supported by evidence — create a common ground for people of diverse ethnicities and cultures. In a nation made up of people as different as we are, a commitment to tolerance and the search for empirically verifiable, logically established, objective truth suggests a path to peace and freedom. Our founding fathers understood this. Professor Sherry has said it well: “it is difficult to envision a civic republican polity — at least a polity with any diversity of viewpoints — without an emphasis on reason. . . . In a diverse society, no [definition of ‘the common good’] can develop without reasoned discourse.”
Science’s focus on empirical evidence and demonstrable theories is part of an Enlightenment legacy that made possible a peaceful and free society among diverse equals. Teaching that habit of mind is of the essence for keeping our civilization alive. To reject the existence of positive truth is to deny the possibility of common ground, to undermine the very purpose of scholarly, intellectual discourse, and to strike at the root of all that makes our values valuable and our society worthwhile. It goes Plato one better — it is the ignoble lie. At a time when Americans are threatened by an enemy that rejects science and reason, and demands respect for dog-mas entailing violence, persecution, and tyranny, nothing more deserves our attention than nourishing respect for reason.
III. CONCLUSION
The debate over evolution and creationism has raged for a long time, and will continue to do so. The science behind evolution is overwhelming and only continues to grow, but those who insist that evolution is false will continue to resist its promulgation in schools. The appeal to Postmo-dernism represents the most recent — and so far, the most desperate — attempt on the part of creationists to support their claim that the teaching of valid, empirically-tested, experimentally-confirmed science in government schools is somehow a violation of the Constitution. When shorn of its sophisticated-sounding language, however, this argument is beneath serious consideration. It essentially holds that truth is meaningless; that all ways of knowing — whether it be the scientist’s empirically tested, experimentally confirmed, well-documented theory, or the mumbo-jumbo of mystics, psychics, and shamans — are equally valid myths; and that government has no right to base its policies on solid evidence rather than supernatural conjurations. This argument has no support in epistemology, history, law, or common sense. It should simply not be heard again.
Some students really struggle with the idea of the role of religion in the founding and settling of America. Among interesting misconceptions I’ve run into in the past 18 months: Spanish settlers of Texas were Baptists (since so many Texans are Baptist today); the religious fights in England leading to the English Bill of Rights was between “Christians and others.”
Are churches doing their part in teaching the importance of freedom of religion, and especially of the history of religious strife in the western world? It doesn’t appear so. Maybe that list is the 100 top places for educators to visit to ask for help in getting the kids straight on the history of religion.
By the way: Spanish settlers of Texas were Catholic; the religious fights in England tended to be between Catholics and Anglicans, both considered Christian sects, to the surprise of too many students. Oy.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of the great joys of history, to me, is the diving into a story and finding that the details of the true story do not correspond well with the popular myths. For example, most sailors of the late 15th century were aware the Earth is a globe, when Columbus sailed — his crew did not fear falling off the edge of the Earth. This fact raises questions about why the great European powers were not more enthusiastic about exploring to the west, and that question is probably more difficult to answer. That means more work for the historian.
The problem is that the leaders of Galileo’s day didn’t think the sun revolves around the earth. My former colleague Thomas Lessl is an expert on Galileo, and from him I learned that virtually every aspect of the Galileo legend is false.
Consider these facts:
1. Neither Galileo, nor any other scientist, was put to death by the medieval Church. Giordano Bruno, a 17th-century Dominican, was indeed condemned by the Inquisition, not for his scientific views, but for preaching a quirky, New Age-ish view called hermeticism, which was only incidentally connected to heliocentrism.
2. The Catholic authorities of Galileo’s day had little trouble with heliocentrism per se. Many of the leading Catholic scientists were actually Copernicans. Copernicus’s treatise on heliocentrism had been in print for seventy years prior to Galileo’s conflict with the Church.
3. Galileo remained a devout and loyal Catholic until the end of his life. He held no animosity toward the Church over his conflict with Church authorities.
4. Most important, the conflict between Galileo and the Church took place in the context of the Protestant Reformation, a context that is almost always omitted from popular accounts of Galileo’s trial. The key issue in this conflict was not heliocentrism per se, but the authority of the individual Believer to interpret Scripture. Galileo’s argument that scientists should interpret the Bible to conform to their scientific views was close to Luther’s view that the Believer should be his own interpreter of Scripture. It was Lutheranism, not heliocentrism, that alarmed the Church leaders.
Galileo, in other words, was caught up in a larger, theological and ecclesiastical controversy. He was not simply a truth-seeking scientists going up against a bigoted Establishment.
Klein urges that we should be distrustful of scientists who invoke the old myths about the Galileo story. He fails to assert the more powerful point, to me: Christianity traditionally supported good science, and therefore creationism is the odd duck — the Bible, and Christianity, are not opposed to good science.
Preachers should be preaching for the truth, not for creationism. Of course, one should ponder when, if ever, preachers have paid attention to economists.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s more shooting at education and educators in the continuing War on Education.
So the law is legal, but largely unenforced, and maybe unenforceable. The law is on the books. I have yet to find a school in Texas that is ambitious about enforcing the law. A suggestion that kids should “honor a moment of silence” is often met with laughter, and generally met with conversations and actions that do anything but follow the law. The lesson the kids take away is that laws can be flouted, or maybe that they should be flouted. I’m imagining a bit — I don’t know what lesson the kids are taking away. The Texas moment of silence is not honored by students in many schools; administrators are reluctant to enforce it with any disciplinary action. Students are not learning respect for religion, nor respect for any God. Sadly, they’re not learning respect for others’ faiths, either.
Teachers are charged with assuring compliance with the law. The legislature decided not to punish students for disobeying it, but instead hold teachers responsible for making sure students obey it.
I imagine the defenders of the law, including Kelly Shackleford at Plano’s Liberty Legal Institute, think this law is a boon to faith. It seems to function much as the establishment laws in Europe, however: It discourages kids from making their faith their own, discourages an honoring of faith, and ultimately pushes kids out of the pews. Students do not think the moment is anything other than a time for prayer in my experience. Some schools get around much trouble by making the legally required minute last about 15 seconds.
There’s no law on the books that says legislators and judges must be intelligent and show common sense. One wishes they would use common sense once in a while. Mark Twain noted that God goofed in prohibiting the apple to Adam; God should have prohibited the snake, then Adam would have eaten it instead, Twain said. In this case, the legislature has prohibited talking. Guess what happens.
David and Shannon Croft filed their initial lawsuit after they said one of their children was told by an elementary schoolteacher to keep quiet because the minute is a “time for prayer.” The complaint, filed in 2006, named Gov. Rick Perry and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, which the Crofts’ three children attended in the suburbs of Dallas.
District Judge Barbara Lynn upheld the constitutionality of the law earlier this month, concluding that “the primary effect of the statute is to institute a moment of silence, not to advance or inhibit religion.”
Tony Campolo argues that Charles Darwin supported the kind of racism that would eventually lead to Nazism and, by extension, the Holocaust (“The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” Jan. 20). This point cannot be sustained upon closer examination of Darwin’s writings. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin made use of the term race on a number of occasions, but almost exclusively in reference to animals and plants. He did not relate his conclusions about plants and animals to the human world, and he never advocated “the elimination of ‘the negro and Australian peoples,’ ” as Campolo insists.
In Descent of Man, Darwin did not rank “races in terms of what he believed was their nearness and likeness to gorillas,” as Campolo states. In fact, Darwin did the exact opposite, taking apart theories about the origins of humanity that suggested that different races originated from different (and inferior) species. Darwin’s fundamental position was that any differences we have are either overshadowed by our similarities or so mutable that they have little explanatory power.
Jonathan C. Friedman Director
Holocaust and genocide studies
West Chester University
Science has evolved
Tony Campolo’s rant draws a tenuous connection between what he sees as Charles Darwin’s personal prejudices and Nazism in an effort to make us think twice about teaching Darwin’s scientific principles (Inquirer, Jan. 20). Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Should we not study the Declaration of Independence? The fact is that the science of evolution, with 150 years of substantiated science behind it, has evolved well beyond Darwin. David Messing Willow Grove
Teaching equality
Saying Charles Darwin’s “theories are dangerous” (Inquirer, Jan. 20) is like saying Newton’s Laws are dangerous. Darwin’s concepts have been proven by developments in biology, geology, paleontology and other sciences since his time. Fortunately, as Tony Campolo notes, few people currently read Darwin’s works, so we hardly have to feel threatened that “he sounds like a Nazi.” In the last 50 years, we have gone from a society that accepted Jim Crow to one that recognizes it is a diverse, multiracial nation. We have a long way to go to be fully accepting of that diversity, but teaching evolutionary science in the schools is vital and necessary, hardly dangerous. Let’s leave teaching the humanity and equality of all persons to our religious institutions.
Richard S. Greeley St. Davids
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
If Science no longer has the ear of society, if it cannot put forth the results of its findings, good or bad, favorable to me or not, without being shouted down by those who have both reason and the resources to suppress those findings, then we have lost far more than the future benefits of scientific and technological contributions to society. Contributions that, over the last two hundred years, have permitted the human species to achieve a standard of living far beyond the wildest imaginings of pre-Industrial Revolution humanity.
We have lost the essence of Liberty.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).
Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.
Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).
Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.
His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.
Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.
Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.
Creationism is a doctrine to which I, like most Christians, do not subscribe. It springs from a wrong understanding of the Word of God. And anybody who thinks he or she is going to impose his own personal narrow, vain, idolatrous doctrine on the children of this state as they sit helpless in their tenth grade Biology classrooms will have a fight on his hands. Again.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In addition to Amazon, the book is available for free download at the National Academy of Science’s site. It’s a great backgrounder for anyone interested in learning “what scientists say” about evolution and creationism, from our nation’s oldest and most trusted society of science advisors (Lincoln called on NAS for advice, and wise policy makers still do).
They just don’t make many like Thomas Jefferson any more.
Thomas Jefferson, in bas relief, in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, a gallery of lawgivers who contributed to the heritage of U.S. law and freedom. Architect of the Capitol photo. C. Paul Jennewein, sculptor
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
January’s meeting still has the item on the agenda, officially, but the actual vote won’t come without considerably more study.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board had been scheduled to consider the proposal by the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research at a meeting Jan. 24.But Eddy Miller, dean of the institute’s graduate school, said in an e-mail to the coordinating board Monday that the school needs more time “to do justice to the concerns you raised,” according to a news release issued by the coordinating board. Miller asked the board to delay consideration of the matter until its April meeting.
Texas’s science community panned the motion. Rumors say many of Texas’s top scientists wrote or called to urge disapproval of the motion.
There’s still time to send a letter calling for a stand for good, hard science. Details, as always, at the Texas Citizens for Science page.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Cleaning up the mess left by the Texas Lege: Texas kids need help on history, Texas history, math, English and science, according to test scores. Texas colleges are fighting a wave of kids who graduate high school and head off to college without the key tools they need in writing and calculating.
But Republican state Rep. Warren Chisum has awarded them a “right” to get a Bible class, the better to avoid preparation for college, I suppose. No kidding.
A new law soon will require all Texas public school districts to offer a Bible as Literature course if 15 or more students express interest, but one San Antonio public school has been offering such a course for more than 30 years.
Churchill High School in the North East Independent School District has offered the Bible as Literature since the 1970s, when English teacher Frances Everidge pioneered the course. Last year, Reagan High School, also in the NEISD, added one. New Braunfels High School has offered the course for a year, and Seguin High School will begin offering it in the fall.
Last spring, the Legislature passed House Bill 1287, along with two other bills regarding religion in public schools. HB 1287, which Gov. Rick Perry signed into law last summer, states that all school districts must offer the course as an elective at the high school level by the 2009-10 school year.
Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee the bill’s author, said that if 15 or more students express interest in the Bible as Literature course, districts must offer it.
School districts may not be able to provide the mathematics instruction kids need, but — By God! — they must provide instruction in the Bible.
If Warren Chisum were not real, Norman Lear, William Faulkner, the Coen brothers and the screenwriters for “Deliverance” couldn’t dream him up.
Chisum is at least up front about his bigotry against science, math, literature and other faiths:
Because the law requires a school district to offer the Bible as literature course if 15 or more students express interest, what if 15 or more students express interest in the Koran or any other religious text?
“The bill applies to the Bible as a text that has historical and literary value,” Chisum said. “It can’t go off into other religious philosophies because then it would be teaching religion, when the course is meant to teach literature. Koran is a religious philosophy, not of historical or literary value, which is what the Bible is being taught for.”
One marvels at the coincidence that Chisum never had to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) — with history chops like that, it’s unlikely he could pass the test every high school kid must. (There is neither an education nor intelligence requirement to serve in the Texas legislature.)
I was unaware of the mandatory nature happy to hear the mandatory part had been stripped from of Chisum’s Folly. Nothing like a drunken-sailor-spending unfunded mandate from the legislature. Charles Darwin at least supported Sunday school classes with his personal fortune. Warren Chisum doesn’t have such ethics — he’s stealing the money from your property tax contributions to do it, while stealing education from the kids.
We need one of those New Yorker cartoons with some sage carrying a sign, “The End is Near.”
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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