Posted on 06/30/2005 10:35:00 PM PDT by CHARLITE
When it comes to the classroom, religious extremists have an ambitious agenda: to replace science with ideology at every opportunity. As if denying even that their own ideas can evolve, they've recently taken up their dusty arms against an old, familiar issue — the teaching of evolution in public schools.
New Name, Same Agenda
The supposed rival to the theory of evolution — creationism — now goes by the new name of "intelligent design." Just as with other phrases (like the Bush administration favorite, "culture of life"), the name change is merely the latest tactic in an ongoing strategy by conservative ideologues to manipulate language to achieve their goals.
"They've gotten a little more sophisticated in stripping out religious references," says Witold Walczak, Pennsylvania legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But make no mistake. By any name, "intelligent design" is creationism: the religious belief that human life was divinely created and cannot otherwise be explained, certainly not scientifically and definitely not by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 against the teaching of creationism in public schools, thereby upholding the constitutional separation of church and state. Yes, just about every scientist and scientific organization accepts the theory of evolution, and many mainstream religious leaders (the late Pope John Paul II among them) have had no problem with it. And yes, the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial," in which a teacher fought for the legal right to teach evolution in public schools, took place 80 years ago, in 1925. (It was fictionalized as the play, and film, Inherit the Wind.)
But the creationist camp hasn't given up — and this time around, there are some new twists.
Georgia
The school board in Cobb County, a wealthy Atlanta suburb, pasted stickers on its high school biology textbooks: "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." The stickers were later sold on eBay as a novelty item.
The text's co-author, Brown University biology professor Kenneth Miller, opposed the stickers, charging that they advanced "a particular set of religious beliefs." The ACLU helped parents to bring a lawsuit, and in January, a federal judge, seeing the stickers for what they really were — an inappropriate government endorsement of religion — ordered them removed. But that didn't deter conservative ideologues. The school board will appeal the judge's ruling.
Kansas
As The Washington Post recently reported, ideological extremists in Kansas have been waging a war against the teaching of evolution in public schools for the last six years.
Despite the ruling of a science standards committee earlier this year that refused to open classroom discussions of evolution to "contrary views," the conservative majority of the state Board of Education has forged ahead. Its leader, Steve Abrams, has scheduled four days of hearings to explore the issue further. Kansas scientists, along with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, are boycotting the hearings. The first of these hearings begins today.
It should come as no surprise that conservative leaders in Kansas are waging a battle between science and ideology. In a similar battle — pitting right-wing ideologues against the medical profession — Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri is currently fighting to protect dozens of confidential patient records that have been subpoenaed as part of an "inquisition" pursued by anti-choice Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline.
Pennsylvania
In the first case of its kind in the United States, the Dover, PA, school board commanded high school science teachers to read a disclaimer to their classes, describing intelligent design as "an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view." They also asked teachers to endorse the book Of Pandas and People as a "reference" for "students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves." The book was published by a Christian think tank.
Dover's science teachers refused to read the disclaimer, so, starting in January, administrators did it themselves. In protest, several parents sued the school board; the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) are representing them. AU spokesman Jeremy Leaming calls intelligent design "an effort by the religious right to control the public-school curriculum." The case is scheduled to be heard in federal court in September.
A National Trend
According to the First Amendment Center, throughout 2004, evolution-related controversies arose in as many as 11 other states, including Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.
The evolution issue is just one piece of a larger puzzle. "We're certainly in the crosshairs of the culture wars," says the ACLU's Walczak. "The religious right is flexing its political muscle."
Leaming, of AU, says that intelligent design is part of "an assault by fundamentalist evangelicals that has been going on since the 1960s." And it doesn't end in science class. "If they had their way," says Leaming, "there wouldn't be any sex education or health classes at all." In fact, school districts in at least three states have already begun censoring science textbooks, removing material on human reproduction and sexually transmitted infections and shoehorning abstinence-only sex education into science classes. These school districts may also be plum targets for creationists.
In the larger sense, attacks on evolution, like those on comprehensive sex education, are attacks on science itself. "There's a real danger of going back to pre-Enlightenment days," warns the ACLU's Walczak, calling the attacks "a contemptible approach" to scientific inquiry. After all, if you think the big questions, such as how the universe came to be, are too complex for all but a "master intellect," why bother with human inquiry at all?
Indeed, creationists' clamor has reverberated beyond school districts that include evolution in the curriculum. Many teachers, fearful of causing controversy, simply duck the issue. The executive director of the National Center for Science Education recently reported that some teachers feel "it's just too much trouble" to cover evolution in the classroom.
Just a Theory?
Language-manipulating ideologues bash evolution for being a "theory," not a "fact." Not so, says science writer David Quammen in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic. The word "theory," he writes, isn't just "a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence — an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact."
As Georgia State University biology professor Sarah Pallas said in a recent television interview, "If we're not allowed to talk about one theory, then we shouldn't be allowed to talk about all other theories." No more discussing atomic theory or gravitation or planetary motion or Einstein's theory of relativity.
A Place for Science, A Place for Theology
The 120,000-member American Association for the Advancement of Science says that "the contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry," and calls intelligent design "an interesting philosophical or theological concept" — one that could be appropriately discussed in a class on philosophy or comparative religion.
No one questions the right of parents to instill in their children whatever religious beliefs they see fit. But there's a time and place for religious instruction, and as the Constitution guarantees, a public high school's science or sex education class isn't it. As 14-year-old Jessika Moury, a Dover student, recently told The New York Times: "There's Bible Club in school for this, and that's where it should be taught."
Eric Plosky is a writer and city planner living in Cambridge, MA.
Char :)
I'm not sure why "Planned Parenthood" has taken an interest in this issue, but I always feel safe taking a position opposite theirs.
I think planed parenthood has taken this on because it's too much like religion for them to feel safe about it.
They're afraid of religion creeping into the minds of their potential customers because religion makes people see life as a gift from God and not to be destroyed.
With planed parenthood, it's all about the money.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1432029/posts?page=4#4
Flushing the money.
Sure. With allies like Planned Parenthood, who needs enemies?
So I'll crank up the ping machine ...
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Thanks for the ping!
Not this time. I agree 100% and this is damaging the conservative party in a big way IMHO.
Religion should not be taught in a science class. And make no mistake, ID is religion, just all wrapped up in a pretty wrapper to try and sound scientific even though it is not.
It's more than distasteful, and I think it's intellectually dishonest to decry the insertion of ideology in the classroom when in reality the only reason they don't like it is because it isn't their preferred ideology. Science is science and as such is the pursuit of truth. As a Catholic, I know that truth cannot contradict truth, and I have no problem with whatever theories science puts forward in an attempt to explain the world around us. Planned Parenthood and their ilk are not the least bit interested in truth.
Note the difference between extremist and wacko branches of this religion. Planned Parenthood and Evolutionism are off the extremist trunk. Scientology and UFO-SETI-SAGAN folks are off the wacko trunk.
Total codswallop!
Note the difference between extremist and wacko branches of this religion. Planned Parenthood and Evolutionism are off the extremist trunk. Scientology and UFO-SETI-SAGAN folks are off the wacko trunk.
Clueless. A refund on your education may be in order.
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As you well know, there are plenty of Christiians who are pro-life but who also accept evolution.
I'm an atheist and evolutionist and I am also pro-life. The efforts to force ID into science education are comparable to attempts to force the sex-positive agenda into sex education.
The minister's work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.--Margaret Sanger
Letter written to Clarence Gamble, 10 December 1939
I look at this as an example of stopped clock phenomena.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. This is an example
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