There’s goofy stuff coming out of the lunatics following Ian Paisley—the chair of the Education Committee is a creationist, apparently, that wacky party is trying to get creationism taught in the schools, claiming “it can stand scientific scrutiny”, and what’s this about trying to label the Giant’s Causeway with a creationist explanation? The Pagan Prattle has the links. This is not a good path for Northern Ireland to be taking.

Adnan Oktar/Harun Yahya has been interviewed in Spiegel Online (that’s in German; you might want to read this short paraphrase in English). He says a number of, umm, interesting things.

• He dislikes Intelligent Design intensely, and sees it as a dishonest form of creationism.

• The Islamic terrorists aren’t actually Muslim—they are all foreign-educated Darwinist atheists. That includes Osama bin Laden.

• In the 2009 Darwin year, he plans to celebrate the collapse of Darwinism. I don’t think so.

• He claims that he can finance sending out free copies of the Atlas of Creation because he doesn’t accept royalties, so the publisher profits heavily. Uh, wait — how does the publisher profit off books that are given away?

As is commonly discovered, arch-creationists are very wacky people.

I mentioned before that Richard Dawkins’ site was banned in Turkey, by the legal actions of Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar, the Muslim creationist. Now you can learn a little more: a spokesperson for Turkish creationism called up the editors of the New Humanist to explain their side of the story. As you might guess, they aren’t very convincing — it boils down to the fact that they were offended by the mean things said about professional con man, liar, and religious kook Adnan Oktar, so they had to shut down access to the site.

And then they have the gall to sweetly ask the New Humanist if they’d like to come to Istanbul and interview Oktar. They want the rich nectar of publicity, but only if it favors their agenda, of course.

So the New Humanist has a poll: Should we bother talking to creationists? They only offer two choices, though: “Yes – debate is good” and “No – we should just ignore them”. I don’t care for either alternative.

How about “Yes – we should slam them down hard at every opportunity, but not on their ground and not with any unwarranted deference to their bogus beliefs”?

Well, well, well. Look what the Brunswick school board in North Carolina has been up to…

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom.

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?”

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.

How many fallacies can you find there? Evolution is a secular theory; it’s not our fault if atheists are copacetic with the evidence, while crazy creationists can’t abide it. Fairness is also not an issue here, since the reason evolution is taught is because it is the best explanation of the evidence. What would be unfair is bringing unsupported fairy tales into the science classroom and giving them a privileged place over hard-earned, well-supported science.

The facts of evolution, such as that the earth is old, there was a pattern of faunal succession, genetic mechanisms can account for variation, etc., are facts. Of course they should be taught! The parts of evolution that are theoretical, the way common descent explains observations in molecular biology, for instance, are no less valid and valuable for being theories. This guy is making the common mistake of thinking that calling an idea a theory is a demotion.

We do see organisms evolving now, in both the lab and in nature. We can indirectly see the effects of evolution even over time-spans which we could not live long enough to witness: we can infer evolution by comparing human and chimpanzee genomes, for instance, and by knowing rates of accumulation of mutations in populations, we can make estimates of the time course of change. Someone doesn’t have to be there to be able to assemble a convincing argument for physical events that have left physical traces.

Uh-oh. He got applause. Now people are going to push for the inclusion of this nonsense in their curriculum. Yep, here it comes…

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.

What kind of attorney is this? No, that’s not an acceptable legal solution. That state science standards mandate certain content in the public schools does not mean that if you meet the standards, you can then spin off any random line of baloney that you feel like. This was the Dover argument, remember: that they would just mumble some lip service to Intelligent Design, and all would be well.

Also like the Dover case, the proponents of introducing ID had already scuttled their case with public discussion at school board meetings of using it to introduce the religious concept of creationism, so the sectarian purpose was obvious to the court. Look here: Brunswick has already admitted that they’re floating this idea because some gomer was ranting about bringing bibles into the science class room.

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.”

Somebody from the ACLU or NCSE ought to inform these people fast that their attorney is all wet and they are about to screw over their school district badly…before they go down that familiar path to self-destruction. The law says that they can’t do it.

Michael Reiss has resigned from his position as the director of education of the Royal Society.

Some of Professor Michael Reiss’s recent comments, on the issue of creationism in schools, while speaking as the Royal Society’s Director of Education, were open to misinterpretation. While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the Society’s reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the Society, he will step down immediately as Director of Education a part time post he held on secondment. He is to return, full time, to his position as Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education.

The Royal Society’s position is that creationism has no scientific basis and should not be part of the science curriculum However, if a young person raises creationism in a science class, teachers should be in a position to explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism is not, in any way, scientific.

The Royal Society greatly appreciates Professor Reiss’s efforts in furthering the Society’s work in the important field of science education over the past two years. The Society wishes him well for the future.

The second paragraph above is a short, clear outline of how creationism should be handled in the classroom. Reiss may have been trying to say the same thing, but unfortunately his words got all tangled in the appearance of an unwarranted accommodation to creationism.

Richard Dawkins responds:

Although I disagree with Michael Reiss, what he actually said at the British Association is not obviously silly like creationism itself, nor is it a self-evidently inappropriate stance for the Royal Society to take. Scientists divide into two camps over this issue: the accommodationists, who ‘respect’ creationists while disagreeing with them; and the rest of us, who see no reason to respect ignorance or stupidity. The accommodationists include such godless luminaries as Eugenie Scott, whose National Center for Science Education is doing splendid work in fighting the creationist wingnuts in America. She and her fellow accommodationists bend over backwards to woo the relatively sensible minority among Christians, who accept evolution. Get the bishops and theologians on the side of science — so the argument runs — and they’ll be valuable allies against the naive creationists (who include a worryingly high proportion of Christians and almost all Muslims, by the way). No politician could deny at least the superficial plausibility of this expedient, although it is disappointing how ineffective as allies the ‘sensible’ minority of Christians turn out to be. The official line of the US National Academy, the American equivalent of the Royal Society, is shamelessly accommodationist. They repeatedly plug the mantra that there is ‘no conflict’ between evolution and religion. Michael Reiss could argue that he is simply following the standard accommodationist line, and therefore doesn’t deserve the censure now being heaped upon him.

Unfortunately for him as a would-be spokesman for the Royal Society, Michael Reiss is also an ordained minister. To call for his resignation on those grounds, as several Nobel-prizewinning Fellows are now doing, comes a little too close to a witch-hunt for my squeamish taste. Nevertheless — it’s regrettable but true — the fact that he is a priest undermines him as an effective spokesman for accommodationism: “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he!” If the Royal Society wanted to attack creationism with all fists flying, as I would wish, an ordained priest might make a politically effective spokesman, however much we might deplore his inconsistency. This is the role that Kenneth Miller, not a priest but a devout Christian, plays in America, where he is arguably creationism’s most formidable critic. But if the Society really wants to promote the accommodationist line, a clergyman is the very last advocate they should choose. Perhaps I was a little uncharitable to liken the appointment of a vicar as the Royal Society’s Education Director to a Monty Python sketch. Nevertheless, thoughts of Trojan Horses are now disturbing many Fellows, already concerned as they are by the signals the Society recently sent out through its flirtation with the infamous Templeton Foundation.

Accommodationism is playing politics, while teetering on the brink of scientific dishonesty. I’d rather not play that kind of politics at all but, if the Royal Society is going to go down that devious road, they should at least be shrewd about it. Perhaps, rather than resign his job with the Royal Society, Professor Reiss might consider resigning his Orders?

I particularly like that last point. Dawkins and I are both often slandered as being relatively uninterested in promoting good science education, preferring to fight the culture war against religion (a claim that ignores the fact that we may feel strongly that the only way to achieve a lasting investment in understanding science is by reducing the pernicious influence of religion) — we are told that we think atheism more important than science. Let us ask, though, if these brave paladins of Jesus-compatible science would be willing to set aside their religion to better endorse science…and I think we all know what the answer would be.

Should creationism be taught in the classroom? It depends on what you mean by “taught”.

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