Posted on 10/09/2005 11:50:56 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Jeb Bush, the self-styled straight-talking education governor, is having trouble speaking clearly about one of the hottest education topics these days: evolution.
Bush isn't sure if the religiously inspired ''intelligent design'' concept belongs in public school science classrooms.
''I don't . . . I don't know,'' he said Thursday. ``It's not part of our standards. Nor is creationism. Nor is Darwinism or evolution either.''
He's wrong about that: Evolution is required. The Sunshine State Standards want high school students to understand ``how genetic variation of offspring contributes to population control in an environment and that natural selection ensures that those who are best adapted to their surroundings survive.''
Bush blamed his education commissioner, John Winn, for telling him that evolution wasn't in the standards. Winn's department didn't return phone calls.
It's no shocker Bush blamed an error on an underling -- politicians often do -- or that he got one fact wrong; after all, the governor's wires are bound to short-circuit once in a while, considering the way he devours and discusses massive amounts of policy, news and legislation.
What's tough to figure is Bush's waffling -- or this circumlocution: ''I like what we have right now,'' he continued. ``And I don't think there needs to be any changes. I don't think we need to restrict discussion, but it doesn't need to be required, either.''
Of the candidates who want to succeed Bush in 2006, the two Democrats, Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua and U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa, said intelligent design belongs in religion -- not science -- class. But Republican state Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher doesn't oppose it in science class, a spokesman said. Republican Attorney General Charlie Crist couldn't be reached.
Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican who chairs the state House Education Council, said he supports teaching intelligent design, which posits that life on the planet is so complex that something other-worldly must have guided it.
LIKE HIS BROTHER
Baxley guessed Bush will come out in support of intelligent design, just like the governor's big brother, the president. ''I don't think he wants to be pushed into a box over it,'' Baxley said. ``He probably wants this, but it's not the right time.''
Next year, Baxley said, the issue is bound to surface when the state revisits its education standards. Commissioner Winn has, so far, refused to discuss the subject publicly. However, Florida's new K-12 chancellor, Cheri Yecke, has told newspapers she wouldn't make intelligent design an issue.
Yecke, a conservative think-tank contributor, caused a stir in 2003, when, as Minnesota's schools chief, she wanted a science-standards committee to consider mentioning alternatives to evolution, according to press reports. The language making it easier to teach intelligent design derived from Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum's failed amendment to President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
FILLS GAPS
Whether it's Santorum or Baxley, proponents say intelligent design fills in evolution's gaps and should be taught to broaden kids' perspectives -- a type of postmodern all-things-are-equal viewpoint that conservatives once decried.
Now liberals and moderates are close to arguing against this inclusive approach. Intelligent design is an evolved form of creationism that doesn't posit an Earth-created-in-six-days model.
The debate is playing out in a courtroom in Santorum's state of Pennsylvania, where the Dover Area School Board required intelligent design in biology class.
Eight families sued, saying the policy unconstitutionally mixes church and state. Echoing the overwhelming majority of scientists, one teacher testified last week that the concept is not scientifically valid and doesn't belong in science class.
In Florida, your tax dollars are already paying for students to learn Bible-based creation concepts at a number of private religious schools that take former public school students who are poor, disabled or undereducated.
Using public money for private schooling is a cornerstone of Gov. Bush's A Plus education plan, which has been declared unconstitutional in every Florida court. It now awaits a Florida Supreme Court decision.
Some wonder whether there's a contradiction in Bush's push to spend hundreds of millions of tax money on the high-tech Scripps Research Institute for science while also funding religious schools that question one of biology's basic tenets.
When asked about this, Bush was again uncharacteristically evasive.
''That is so loaded. That's like, you've already written the article, why do you want me in it? It's not fair,'' Bush told a reporter when asked.
So that's a ''no'' then?
''No, that's nothing,'' Bush said. ``That's no comment. The governor refused to comment. That's what it is in the article: The governor refused to comment.''
When will he?
Marc Caputo is a reporter in The Herald's Capitol Bureau.
I don't know about that. There are plenty of Republicans who don't want their children taught magic and mythology (oops, I mean Intelligent Design) dressed up as science. School children are being dumbed-down enough without throwing the bedrock of biology out the window in favor of teaching fairy tales to please a small segment of the Christian Right.
ID may be the perfect "wedge" issue, but not the way the Discovery Institute intended. It may wedge between Reps and Dems in a way that Dems can claim that Republican's are knuckle dragging morons and Reps will in effect say "yeah, we are".
two Democrats, Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua and U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa, said intelligent design belongs in religion -- not science -- class.
The Dems merely want ID where it belongs, in religion studies. They didn't come out "against" ID.
It's good that he mentions postmodernism. Now these reporters need to make the connection between postmodernism and IDers' motivations for waging this fight in the first place.
The leaders of the ID movement have been able to raise millions of dollars to wage this fight in the last decade, because they and their followers are afraid that postmodernism is correct: There really is no objective truth in this world. But where "traditional" postmodernists accept this starting assumption and try to figure out how to live in harmony with it, IDers are stuck in stage 3 of the mourning process: Bargaining with God. They want to get everyone to believe in the same supernatural Authority Figure who simply declares a moral code for us to live by, to stand in for the objective truths that the IDers fear don't really exist.
This is more subtle than it being a simple case of believers vs. atheists. Creationists are afraid that anything that undermines their particular conception of God as arbitrary authority figure will be harmful to society.
The real way out of this fight is to get enough religious conservatives to understand that the real world is objective, and that it gives us perfectly objective criteria by which to judge actions or moral systems as right or wrong, good or bad.
Yes, it can take a generation or two for the full, long-term effects of a societal fad to reveal themselves. But eventually history does teach us its lessons. That's why we can learn from history - actions have objective consequences. If the IDers & postmodernists are correct, then nobody'd ever be able to learn from history.
In which case we'd all have much more to worry about than Charles Darwin!
Very good point. If the subject comes up around here I'll have to personally contact some folks.
Creationism and all permutations, belong at home and in houses of worship, where “faith” is the driving force. Evolution, on the other hand, belongs in laboratories and schools, where evidence, data and facts are necessary for functionality, repeatability and testability.
This may very well be the case, but science needs to reach those conclusions based on research, not leaps of faith. I doubt that anyone with a stomach ache would have much confidence in a physician who immediately wished to perform surgery without evidentiary testing to confirm his or her hypothesis.
Sadly, religious impatience with the Scientific Method leads many to question whether the Faithful truly have "faith".
Yes it is. There's enough DNA evidence in the ERV virus insertions common between apes and humans to demonstrate common ancestry to a higher statistical probability than that the DNA at Ron and Nichole's murder scene belonged to OJ.
It was the extension of the evolutionary ideas of Darwin to an atheistic world view that accentuated the false antagonism between science and religion.
Evolution is a scientific theory of how species change, and does not speak to whether a deity exists. Yes, some athiests use evolution to push their worldview, but they are dishonestly doing so just like you are dishonestly claiming that evolution and faith are mutually exclusive.
You've been around these threads plenty long enough to know this stuff M-PI. So what's your real agenda?
Agree- both parties blow.
Good luck on that.
At the rate we're going, we're not going to get there.
Fine with me. Sell it to the Discovery Institute.
My view is that they don't have faith.
"This is more subtle than it being a simple case of believers vs. atheists. Creationists are afraid that anything that undermines their particular conception of God as arbitrary authority figure will be harmful to society. "
Ah, PH...I'm an iNTp, and sadly have no patience with illogical lines of thought, much less individuals or groups that massage data to fit with their preconceived notions (I'm just as unforgiving with scientists who pull the same crap, so don't anyone get their panties in a binder).
My opinion as well. The more strident the opposition, the more likely the proponents haven't any confidence in their conclusions.
The Belgians?
I have no problem with ID and evolution being equal partners in education. Actually, as a thinking human being, I don't think one can separate the two. So, what's your intense interest in the subject?
I'm asking an honest question to you and I'm not a troll, crackpot, half-wit, or incurable ignoramus.
FMCDH(BITS)
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