Darwinists try to dogmatize Texas science standards

I decided to drop the "a" because some people found "Darwinistas" to be offensive. It is against my principles to disparage anyone on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, etc..

A NY Times article erroneously titled "Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy" says,

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.

The term "creation science" (sometimes called scientific creationism) appeared much longer ago than the last decade -- the term appears in the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education district court decision of 1982 and the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court decision of 1987. Also, creationism did not directly give rise to "creation science" and intelligent design," because the latter two disciplines are based on scientific observations and reasoning and not on religious sources. Finally, the federal judge did not ban ID "from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania" -- he only banned it from the Dover Area school district.

The article continues,

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

That's ridiculous -- it is like arguing that teaching evolution is an underhanded way of introducing atheism into public schools.

The NY Times article says,
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The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

How can the words "strengths and weaknesses" be a "new strategy" (as claimed by the article's title) if the words have been in the Texas science standards since the late 1980's? It is certainly not new in Texas.

The NY Times article says,

“Serious students will not come to study in our universities if Texas is labeled scientifically backward,” said Dr. Dan Foster, former chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

There we go again with that tired old familiar "scaring them away, denying us opportunities, making us a laughingstock" bogeyman again.

The NY Times article says,

Although the state education board is free to set aside or modify their proposals, committee members will recommend that the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase be removed, said Kevin Fisher, a committee member who is against the teaching of creationism.

“When you consider evolution, there are certainly questions that have yet to be answered,” said Mr. Fisher, science coordinator for the Lewisville Independent School District in North Texas.

But, he added, “a question that has yet to be answered is certainly different from an alleged weakness.”

Mr. Fisher points to the flaws in Darwinian theory that are listed on an anti-evolution Web site, strengthsandweaknesses.org, which is run by Texans for Better Science Education.

“Many of them are decades old,” Mr. Fisher said of the flaws listed. “They’ve all been thoroughly refuted.”

The Darwinists are not willing to just maintain the status quo, but are seeking to roll back the protections of critics and criticism of Darwinism.

“[A] question that has yet to be answered is certainly different from an alleged weakness”? If the question could be answered, it wouldn’t be a weakness. Also, an unanswered question about evolution is a flaw in the theory, so how could alleged flaws in evolution have "all been thoroughly refuted" if unanswered questions about the theory exist?

Also, the Darwinists have a double standard. They say of unanswered questions about Darwinism, “we don’t know the answers now, but we are working on finding the answers and we may find them someday," but they say that no new questions or revisions of old questions are going to be found in the future.

Yes, I remember reading intelligent-design and irreducible-complexity arguments many decades ago, but a lot of the evidence is of recent origin. Recent discoveries have shown that cells are not just amorphous blobs of protoplasm as previously presumed but contain remarkably complex nanomachines (e.g., bacterial flagella), biochemical factories (e.g., the blood-clotting cascade), and data-processing systems (e.g., genetic codes).

The NY Times article has stirred a lot of interest and controversy and articles about it have been posted on Evolution News & Views, Panda's Thumb, Uncommon Descent, etc. (see sidebar for links).

It used to be that Cornelia Dean wrote the Darwinist hatchet jobs for the NY Times. Now it looks like the NY Times has a new hatchet man (or, should I say, hatchet woman or hatchet person?), the author of this article, Laura Beil.

The story was also covered by the San Antonio Express-News.

Also, the National Center for Science Education reported,

Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science told NCSE, "What Bradley and his colleagues actually plan to do is damage evolution instruction by trying to get the new science standards to mention alleged but false 'weaknesses' of evolution, in order to weaken evolution content, confuse students and make them think science is less accurate and reliable than it really is about biological origins, and intimidate teachers to avoid or minimize the subject (as many of them do now in Texas)." With respect to Bradley's description of evolution as theory not fact, he added, "This banal canard is indulged in by every creationist who thinks he can get away with it. ... Evolution is a fact, if fact is defined as something for which so much reliable evidence exists that it would be irrational to deny it."

Wow -- so evolution is a fact. I guess that settles it, doesn't it?

Steven Schafersman wrote a long article about the controversy for Texas Citizens for Science.

A NY Times editorial says,

The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow. This is code for teaching creationism.

It has the advantage of sounding more balanced than teaching “intelligent design,” which the courts have consistently banned from science classrooms. It has the disadvantage of being nonsense.

"[W]hich the courts have consistently banned from science classrooms"? Only one judge ever ruled on intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones III in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Darwinists’ paranoia towards all criticisms of Darwinism is stifling scientific inquiry. For example, the Florida Citizens for Science blog has banned me from discussing co-evolution there.

I discuss co-evolution in several articles in the "Non-ID criticisms of evolution" post-label group in this blog. This post label is also in the sidebar.
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