More ID Craziness
July 10th, 2008 Posted in Creationism, ReligionYes folks, guess what? Yet another wacky US state is sliding backwards to the dark ages with more legislation designed to sneak intelligent design into the science classroom. And you thought it was all over with Kitzmiller vs. Dover. Well, this time it’s Louisiana with the sneaky legislation aimed at making American kids stupid.
There’s no denying it – the Intelligent Design lobby is getting much cleverer. Well, as clever as you can possibly get whilst still believing in something dumb, but I digress. Here’s the exact wording of the new legislation:
The state… shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment… that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.
Well that’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, who could be against the teaching of “critical thinking skills” and “logical analysis”? Well, nobody, of course – that’s why this is such a subtle and clever move. America’s constitution prohibits the teaching of religious ideas within the state school system, which is the main reason why science has been successful in every legal challenge against creationism over the last few decades. So the ID proponents are now trying to sneak their ideas into schools under the grounds that it’s just fostering a fair, healthy scientific analysis of evolution. Whereas, of course, we all know that it means they will try to force their propaganda into science lessons under the guise of ‘critical textbooks’. One such example is Exploring Evolution, a textbook which questions the evidence for evolution with the aim of supporting intelligent design ideas but which, as with all these books, simply proposes a series of misleading straw man models and tears them down. The funniest quote I could find was from the wonderful Professor PZ Myers, who works at the University of Minnesota:
In general, the book presents the subjects superficially, cherry picks examples, and sets up shallow hypotheses that bear little resemblance to what scientists actually think about the subject, and then shoots down the examples in such a way as to cast doubt on entire disciplines. It’s a dirty, dishonest book in a slick package. It’s gonna sell like hotcakes to every lazy, stupid teacher who wants to substitute vacuous crap for an honest and serious examination of a difficult and important subject.
I love the guy already.
Unfortunately, in America, education standards are largely set on a per-state basis, as opposed to the UK where they are decided centrally by the government, meaning that it is far easier to sneak a few anti-evolution activists into a position where they can cause real damage. In America, scientists must rely solely on the seperation of church and state, so their entire argument against ID rests on whether or not they can prove that an educational policy is largely religious in nature. This stands in contrast to the UK where we seem to keep ID out of schools purely because of the fact that it’s just plain retarded.
So will this new law have an adverse effect on science teaching in America? It’s a tough question, but perhaps the Louisiana lawmakers have shot themselves in the foot. After all, there’s a lot of subjects covered by “not limited to”. Maybe it might include religion?
