The state of Louisiana has passed an unfortunate law that allows teachers to toss in any ol’ garbage into their science curricula. For most teachers, this will make no difference at all in their classrooms; this is a law that specifically caters to irresponsible instructors who want to smuggle in questionable content. All you have to know to see that this is a bad bill is to look at the backers: conservative groups that want to see more religion in the schools, old-school fundamentalist creationists, and the Discovery Institute.

People are telling me that my blog entries are getting sprinkled with creationist ads in the RSS feeds, like this:

Heh. I think it’s great. This is an old and familiar game that has been played for years, where creationists buy up lots and lots of ad placement on searches for topics in evolutionary biology, and I think they should continue to throw their money down that sinkhole. It seems like an entirely ineffective tactic, to try and dun people who are already willing to look at the evidence with appeals to their dogma.

Shall I start taking out ads in the local church bulletins, perhaps?

It’s not good news for Texas children in the public school system.

A new survey released by the nonprofit group Texans Care for Children shows that one out of every three Texas students may not make their way across the graduation stage to receive their diploma.

The survey reveals that Texas is ranked last in high school graduation rates and also found that more children in Texas had to retake kindergarten.

How are we going to fix this?

I know! Put a creationist dentist in charge of the educational system! Are you feeling reassured yet?

And seriously, this is a cruel trick to play on children. People sometimes throw out the idea that colleges ought to just smack down these states with poor science standards and a tradition of misrule by not allowing them admission — that would teach those states, but good — but let’s not lose sight of the victims. Those kids get one chance at a decent education, and they are not to be blamed for the short-sightedness and stupidity of their parents and their politicians.

When we are fighting against creationism, we aren’t just working for the future advantage of abstract scientific principle, we are fighting for children right now whose brains are being crippled and twisted and poisoned.

The Brunswick school district is still arguing about teaching creationism. As is typical, the usual clueless ideologues from the community are getting up there in front of the board and babbling. Look at this argument:

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

That statement makes no sense. The slower evolution is, the more difficult it is to see the slow changes within the brief period of recent time. He has answered his own question! The second clause is simply raw ignorance, though, since we do see organisms evolving now. Bacteria, insects, lizards, birds…we’ve got lots of examples in organisms with shorter generation times than ours, and we even have molecular evidence of genetic changes in humans in the last 10,000 years. Is Fanti Italian for “Fool”?

Worse, though, is the fact that members of the school board are buying into this nonsense. They want to stuff creationism into the curriculum, somehow.

Board attorney Joseph Causey said it might be possible for the board to add creationism to the curriculum if it doesn’t replace the teaching of evolution.

Schools’ Superintendent Katie McGee said her staff would do research.

Babson said the board must look at the law to see what it says about teaching creationism, but that “if we can do it, I think we ought to do it.”

WHY? This is idiotic.

I think the square root of 9 is 27. I think that idea ought to be shared with the students in arithmetic class. As long as it doesn’t replace the teaching of the dogmatic opinion that the square root of 9 is 3, I think we ought to do it.

I think Moby Dick was written by Herman Shakespeare. I’m pretty sure we can find lots of Ph.D. experts in literature who will tell you that Shakespeare was the most important writer in our language, so I see no harm in promoting his importance further. If discussing Shakespeare’s extensive temporal contributions to American literature doesn’t replace a few a few American authors, it ought to be possible for the board to add my theory to the curriculum.

Creationism does not belong in the curriculum because it is wrong. Teaching is not a process of pouring random noise into the brains of young people and allowing them to pick and choose what they want to believe — it’s about giving kids a solid rational foundation for learning. Teach them lies and you’ve poisoned their minds for a lifetime, and here is a school board actively promoting harm to their charges.

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For another take on teaching both sides, read some advocacy for teaching the controversy from a biblical point of view. Detailed dissection of the different claims of the book of Genesis will sow doubt in the minds of the students.

However, I disagree in one way — that doesn’t belong in science class. Spending more time teaching the garbage of chapter 1 of Genesis, and more, adding instruction in the garbage of chapter 2 of Genesis, is still teaching garbage, and giving too much time to nonsense. It’s useful for teaching that the Bible is an untrustworthy source, but that should not be part of the agenda of a science curriculum.

I’d like to see the kiddies learning that the Bible is incoherent trash in Sunday School.

Our efforts in squelching the Cincinnati Zoo/Creation “Museum” connection have yielded extra dividends. Ken Ham is weeping over the after-effects.

As a result of all this flak and the ending of the joint promotion after only two days, a prominent national travel group ended its conversations with our museum staff last month about a possible arrangement where our Creation Museum would be given a higher profile in one of its travel guides, along with a museum discount if a visitor presents their membership card. Here is what we heard from this particular travel organization:

From: KXXXXX
To: John Eytchison, Creation Museum
Subject: RE: Creation Museum

Hi John,

Unfortunately, I think [official’s name deleted] is just too leery after the incident with the Cincinnati Zoo to bring in the consignment tickets. [Name of travel org. withheld] used to sponsor a NASCAR race car and believe it or not, there were a couple members who actually dropped their memberships because of that affiliation-one which is a perfect fit for [name of travel org]. I think she’s afraid of putting something out there that has the possibility of causing a stir among some members at this time. . . .

I’m sorry things have not worked out, but I do wish your museum success and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas.

Thanks,

R—

Well, gosh, what can I say?

QQ MOAR, KEN HAM!

And of course, to everyone here — Happy Monkey!

The fine state of Mississippi is about to be led astray by the cretins they’ve elected to congress. They have introduced yet another textbook disclaimer bill, which will require that all school books that mention “evolution” be slapped with this sticker:

The word ‘theory’ has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind.

Sound familiar? They all kind of run together into one blur of noise, don’t they.

This is nothing new. Here’s the textbook disclaimer they tried to push in Cobb County, Georgia.

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Here’s the disclaimer that was read to classes in Dover, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

They all have some things in common: in particular, the pettifogging and incorrect attempt to hide behind the word “theory”, as if that somehow discredited the idea; the pretense of open-mindedness, when these are actually attempts to slander good science; the setting aside of evolution as a special case, when all scientific ideas are supposed to be regarded critically; and just the general notion that the fact that evolution is discussed means the whole subject must be treated gingerly.

The Cobb County and Dover disclaimers have something else in common: they were slapped down hard by the courts. The Mississippi disclaimer should join them soon, and it’s a little surprising that the backers of this bill didn’t bother to consider legal precedent.

The differences are also interesting. Mississippi tries to get specific, and offers a list of topics that are not discussed in the textbook. This is very peculiar, because all of those items are topics that are discussed in some detail in the college-level textbooks with which I am familiar. The creationists have been campaigning for decades to strip out the evolutionary content of our public school science texts, and now they are using the absence of substantive discussion of select issues as an argument for further damning them? The lesson to authors and publishers should be clear: you don’t gain anything by caving in to these troglodytes.

Maybe the message to the Mississippi school board now is that they should pick out science texts that carefully discuss the evolutionary context of the Cambrian, describing the pre-Cambrian antecedents that led to the tens-of-millions-of-years “explosion”. Then they can describe how the majority of animal phyla (but not all forms!) diversified over the next 500 million years into the different patterns we see now, and how there are many transitional forms on record illustrating portions of this process, and how we are now discovering the details of molecular complexity that further reinforce the idea of common ancestry. These are the conclusions of modern science, and we shouldn’t allow the history of censorship by public school boards stand in the way of letting these stories be told in the science classroom.

The message should be to broaden and deepen the coverage of evolution in our schools, so that we stop seeing ignorant clowns like Representative Gary Chism foisting their inanity on our children.

This looks interesting: a group of geologists have organized to write a book that specifically shows the fallacies of intelligent design creationism from a geological perspective. This should be good.

The letters to the editor section of our local newspapers is where you find the proud regalia of the American boob in prominent display. Here’s a fine example of creationist inanity from Dothan, Alabama. Try to count the misconceptions about evolution here.

Grade school textbooks teach evolution as fact. It is a monstrous lie that harms our children.

The evolution theory says we evolved from the original Big Bang and later crawled out of a green slime from the ocean.

Here is one example of its ludicrous hypothesis.

Of all the mysteries surrounding evolution, the one that is most baffling to the evolutionists, is “water.” Where did all the oceans come from?

As explained on the National Geographic program, it came from a massive collision in space. As the Earth was cooling from the Big Bang, it was approached by a stray planet that was teeming with water. It collided with Earth, spilled its water onto the Earth, then careened off into space.

Talk about fairy tales. By the way, where did the stray planet get its water?

Come on evolutionists, surely you can develop a more plausible explanation that can be easier to swallow. Until then, I accept the Bible’s answer. After all, the 4,000-year-old book has a perfect track record.

The evolution theory is only 140 years old.

Bill DeJournett
Dothan

Where to even begin? Evolution only starts once you have chemical and biological replicators; the Big Bang preceded it by a few billion years. We didn’t crawl out of a green slime, other organisms evolved in the oceans that preceded us.

I have never heard of the “ludicrous hypothesis” he’s talking about, and I rather doubt that NatGeo advocated anything of the kind.

His 4,000 year old book actually has a miserable track record — it’s just that gullible fools keep making excuses for it. It also doesn’t describe how earth got its water, other than to claim a god poofed it into existence.

It’s an interesting strategy, though, to invent unbelievable claims for the other side of the argument and then laugh snarkily at how crazy they are. For another example of such disinformation, take a look at what Wesley dug up.

The state of erv now has an embarrassing distinction: Oklahoma has put up the first anti-evolution bill for 2009. The year isn’t even a week old and they’re already pushing this nonsense.

Senate Bill 320 (document), prefiled in the Oklahoma Senate and scheduled for a first reading on February 2, 2009, is apparently the first antievolution bill of 2009. Entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” SB 320 would, if enacted, require state and local educational authorities to “assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.” The only topics specifically mentioned as controversial are “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Expect these so-called “academic freedom” bills that are really stealth creationism bills to pop up like crusty pimples all over the country all year long.