Science Education

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Selective Subjectivity in Evolution Debate

As I write this from home, preparing to take a quick summer vacation, I am wearing one of my favorite T-shirts. It has a picture of some generic, primitive organism—maybe part blue-green algae, part bacterium or worm—and says in bold letters: “Proud of My Ancestry.” I guess that tells you where I stand on the evolution debate.

So it should come as no surprise that I was flabbergasted at first, and then practically apoplectic, when I saw recent news about the Louisiana legislature’s latest effort to undercut the teaching of evolution in that state’s schools. State Senate bill No. 733, purposively misnamed the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” calls upon the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to “create and foster” a school environment that promotes “objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

How long does this fight need to go on? Do we need to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory of gravity?

Setting aside for now that global warming and human cloning are not “theories” at all—a concept that Louisiana’s legislators should have learned in school—the new state legislation has a familiar ring. It resonates with similar efforts now underway in Texas to have schools teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory of evolution. Both are examples of the ongoing efforts by indefatigable religious fundamentalists to spike science classes with a dose of creationism, which relies on supernatural explanations for the origin of Earth and the life that lives on it.

If you thought that maybe this battle had already been won, you’d be wrong, though your error would be understandable. ‘Twas five days before Christmas, 2005, when the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania delivered its highly anticipated decision in Kitzmiller vs. the Dover Area School District. At issue was the legality of a 2004 Dover Area School District decision to inform all students that they should “keep an open mind” about evolution and to encourage students to peruse Of Pandas and People, which the school district gamely referred to as “a reference book,” to gain an understanding of a competing view of how life came to be, known as intelligent design.

Judge John E. Jones III did not pull his punches. He found that the testimony of school board members who favored the teaching of intelligent design in the schools “was marked by selective memories and outright lies under oath.” He labeled intelligent design as “a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory.” And he stated plainly that intelligent design was “the progeny of creationism.” That’s important, because in a previous ruling the U.S. Supreme Court had banned the teaching of creationism from science classes.

Indeed, Jones highlighted a secret game plan written by leaders of the intelligent design movement that made clear the real goal of these various academic battles. The “Five Year Strategic Plan Summary,” known to fundamentalist insiders as the “Wedge Document,” states that the movement’s goal is to replace science as currently taught and practiced with “theistic and Christian science.” The group’s “governing goals,” according to this document, are to “defeat scientific materialism” and to “replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”

In one of the more gratifying parts of the trial, Judge Jones dissected what he called the “historical pedigree” of the book Of Pandas and People. Not only is it published by a group registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a religious, Christian organization, he noted, but a look at the various versions it went through over years of editing reveals something rather amazing. Early versions of the manuscript, written before the Supreme Court’s creationism decision, refer throughout to creationism. Later edits, completed in 1987 after the Court’s ruling, are virtually identical but for the substitution of the words “intelligent design” wherever the word “creationism” had previously appeared. “This compelling evidence strongly supports Plaintiffs’ assertion that ID is creationism re-labeled,” Jones concluded.

Now America’s schools find themselves under assault by yet another relabeling of creationism, which this time is making its cowardly run for the academic goal line under the linguistic guises of “strengths and weaknesses” and “objective discussion of scientific theories.”

How long does this fight need to go on? Do we need to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory of gravity? That’s right. That’s all it is. A theory. But I don’t see any creationists defiantly jumping off cliffs.

Do we need more “objective discussions” of the atomic theory? C’mon, it’s only a theory. So why aren’t more of these activists moving next door to nuclear power plants?

I don’t see hordes of scientists beating down church doors to teach rationalism to parishioners in their pews. In a fair world, supernaturalists would similarly refrain from foisting their beliefs on kids in science classes.

But I have a theory that this is not about fairness. Of course, it’s just a theory.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Tags: STEM Education

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