Posted on 01/29/2005 6:54:41 PM PST by PatrickHenry
THE Republican “red states” that voted for President George W Bush in America’s Bible Belt are claiming their reward in an unexpected area: rolling back the teaching of evolution in schools.
Bold initiatives to introduce the concept of “intelligent design”, wrought by a god or higher being, into theories about Earth’s creation are being sponsored in towns and communities across America.
Religious fundamentalists — or “theocons” — opposed to Darwinism have adopted sophisticated tactics enabling them to pass under the political and legal radar that keeps church separate from state and forbids the promotion of religion in schools.
The champions of intelligent design, who are mindful not to specify a particular creator, are poised for victory in Kansas later this year after a new school board favouring the teaching of evolution as a theory rather than a fact was elected in November by a majority of six votes to four.
Jack Krebs of Kansas Citizens for Science said: “The re-election of Bush has emboldened the intelligent design movement. They feel they have the wind at their backs.”
The president, a born-again Christian, has proclaimed his own scepticism about Darwinism in the past. “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth,” he once said. A recent CBS poll found that 55% of Americans and 67% of those who voted for Bush do not believe in evolution.
This Tuesday marks the start of a series of public meetings in Kansas on the teaching of Darwinism and the battle lines are firmly drawn.
The prairie town of Salina, Kansas, in the centre of the United States is modern enough to have a two-mile airstrip. When it comes to religion, however, little has changed for some families since the pioneers rolled by on their wagons.
In a small diner on the outskirts of the town, Ruth Coleman, 58, the mother of a Baptist pastor, was treating her five-year-old granddaughter Kendra to lunch. “I am creationist,” she said stoutly. “I believe God made the Earth 6,000 years ago and he deserves the credit. If there was evolution, why are there still monkeys?”
A 14-year-old girl asked members of Coleman’s congregation last Sunday for guidance on how to answer exam questions about the origin of mankind. “Shall I give the right answer and fail the test or give the wrong answer and pass?” the puzzled teenager asked.
“We teach kids not to lie and if we believe in creationism, evolution is a lie, so the grown-ups were kind of stumbling,” Coleman said. “A mom said, ‘Just put the textbook says this, but I believe that.’ Everybody thought it was a really good idea.”
Educationists across the state arrived in Salina last week for a meeting of a science standards committee on rewriting the curriculum. The leading protagonists on each side traded barbs as they discussed changes that would open the door to challenging evolution.
“Darwinism is a non-theistic religion,” protested one supporter of intelligent design, “and you’re trying to give it to our kids even though they don’t want it.” An opponent retorted: “The alternative to natural causation is supernatural causation . . . and that’s what you are trying to open the door to.”
The well-funded, nationally based intelligent design movement is casting itself as the promoter of academic freedom. It is hard for opponents to write the group off as the American equivalent of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban when it appears to be challenging received wisdom rather than stifling debate.
For Bill Harris, a 56-year-old scientist and a Christian, the question is: “Is it impossible that a god created the Earth? If it is impossible, then take it off the table, but if it’s possible don’t ignore it.”
He believes evolution should continue to be taught with important caveats. “There are definitely elements of Darwin’s theory that are well founded, but the origins of the universe, the origins of life and the origins of the genetic code are currently unknown. We can’t state frequently enough that science is still looking for the answers.”
Harris believes the finely tuned relationship between the planet and its living creatures point to the existence of a higher designer. “It’s not a religious debate,” he insisted. “It’s a scientific debate with religious implications.”
Krebs, 56, a veteran of skirmishes with anti-evolutionists, said his opponents had learnt from past mistakes. “It used to be easy to dismiss the views of young Earth creationists as an embarrassment, but the intelligent design movement is deliberately keeping them in the background. It is a cleverly designed strategy to say, ‘You guys are being dogmatic’, and we wind up looking like the ones who want to limit science.”
There are signs that the tactic is paying off, even among staunch supporters of evolution. In the same diner as Coleman, Doug Guenther, 48, had just finished a plate of fried chicken. His job for the Kansas rural water authority has led him to develop a passionate amateur interest in fossils.
“I’ve dug up shark teeth that go back 67m years to the Cretaceous period when the sea spread from Texas all the way to Canada,” he said proudly. “I’ve seen mammoth teeth, camel teeth and large arrowheads belonging to early man. It would be pretty hard to explain that in the Bible.”
Yet Guenther has no problems with teaching children about intelligent design. “Evolution is definitely not a theory — it is a fact. But you can fit in it with the Bible as long as you don’t believe everything it says literally.”
Evangelical Christians, such as James Dobson’s influential Focus on the Family movement, are delighted by the success of intelligent design as a “wedge” issue to challenge and undermine Darwinism.
Changes to the science curriculum are being sought by religious conservatives in Wisconsin, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Montana and Pennsylvania, where one educational district has already placed stickers in biology textbooks with the warning that evolution is a theory rather than a fact. It plans to appeal against a recent court decision ordering the schools to remove them.
"Don't teach any of them, including evolution, in the public schools to elementary kids."
Agreed, as long as the Christian version of creation is also not taught.
Let the parents and the churches instill their chosen 'creation' belief system into the child(ren).
You have a nice day too. I am comfortable in my mere dust final exit. I accept it. That ultimate final end does not cause me a moment on this mortal coil of anguish. And so it goes.
Fortunately, right now Box and her Chappaquiddick KKK buddies are getting the attention.
Darwinists comprise the current Flat Earth Society.
Hey, Patrick, wishing you all the best. Maybe we will see eye to eye someday, before it's too late...
Guitarist
And all so some hucksters can make some easy dough on videos.
You got that right.
Exactly. The Evo's have exactly the same reaction that any other special interest group has. They assume and act like anything bad for their cause is bad for the republicans, when they are the minority and the exact opposite is true.
“I’ve dug up shark teeth that go back 67m years to the Cretaceous period when the sea spread from Texas all the way to Canada,” he said proudly. “I’ve seen mammoth teeth, camel teeth and large arrowheads belonging to early man. It would be pretty hard to explain that in the Bible.”
And...how does he know that the shark teeth are 67m years old? Answer: he has no idea how old they are.
No. The parents have the responsibility to oversee the education of their child. If the teaching is in accordance with the parents wishes, then it's fine.
But there is absolutely no justification to use public schools and public funds to push evolution to elementary kids when the majority of American's do not believe in evolution and do not want their kids taught that.
And you once again equate a scientific theory, backed up by multiple, independant lines of evidence, and 150+ years of research and study which all reputable biologists consider to be sound with religious mythology, even to the point of banning ALL of the above because you can't handle reality.
And while you're at it, you'll make the conservative movement and the Republican party look like complete fools.
Let's not be coy, here...if you actually got the TOE removed from schools, you'd then be screaming to add ID/creationism to replace it shortly after.
And thus, the current slide of American students in math and sciences would accelerate apace.
Wonderful. You hurt not only conservatism, but the Republican party and ultimately the country, just to have your religious beliefs taught as fact.
"Theocons." Now I'll have to add, "But I'm NOT an idiot" when I tell people I'm a Republican.
I bet that Karl Rove cringes and reaches for the Glenfiddich when he reads stuff like this. Especially since it's promoted by a group of voters he considers pretty unreliable.
And as Theodosius Dobzhansky said, nothing in biology makes sense without it.
It was in his famous essay, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution that he wrote:
One of the great thinkers of our age, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote the following: "Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more, it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems much henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow, this is what evolution is." Of course, some scientists, as well as some philosophers and theologians, disagree with some parts of Teilhard’s teachings; the acceptance of his worldview falls short of universal. But there is no doubt at all that Teilhard was a truly and deeply religious man and that Christianity was the cornerstone of his worldview. Moreover, in his worldview science and faith were not segregated in watertight compartments, as they are with so many people. They were harmoniously fitting parts of his worldview. Teilhard was a creationist, but one who understood that the Creation is realized in this world by means of evolution.
So Bush thinks evolutionary theory is about planetary cosmology?
I'm convinced. Anyone that can look at one photo and determine that the mammoths went extinct because he had a flat penis is OK in my book! He then shows a photo of a baby mammoth. Er, wait a minute ... Mammoths couldn't reproduce because he had a flat penis ....
Students coming out of private schools that teach both evoltuion and creation/ID, don't lag behind students out of schools that teach just evolution. So it's not that it's so bad for kids to learn how evolution tries to explain everything and also what the major areas are in which some people doubt evolution is true. It turns out this whole thing is a power grab. But, as Patrick Henry said above, if we have private and home schools, these problems will work themselves out. After all, some private schools teach only evolution and some teach ideas besides evolution, and the sky is not falling...
I've been hearing this for years. Perhaps those saying so were only prescient.
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