Red State Rabble

Red State Rabble was, at first, highly amused by the conceit offered by William Saletan in a post on Slate titled "What Matters in Kansas." Saletan writes that the battle of science education in our public schools is more evolved now -- something supporters of science education should welcome. As the morning wore on, our amusement turned to a slow burn. We're going to vent now.

Saletan sees the Bible-thumpers who outlawed the teaching of evolution in Dayton, Tennessee in the 1925 as the equivalent of Australopithecus, the earliest hominid. The intelligent design "theorists" who came to Kansas as part of the bible college biology roadshow last week, were more highly evolved -- they are homo sapiens.

All this is hugely entertaining until we come to Saletan's concluding paragraph:

It's too bad liberals and scientists don't welcome this test. It's too bad they go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously. It's too bad they think good science consists of believing the right things. In the long view—the evolutionary view—good science consists of using evidence and experiment to find out whether what we thought was right is wrong. If they do that in Kansas, by whatever name, that's all that matters.

So, It's scientists, school teachers, and defenders of science who are the bad guys here? As we have pointed out time and again, but we will point it out for our friend Bill, intelligent design is not a more evolved form of creationism. It is creationism wearing a disguise.

Anyone who doubts this need go no further than the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document." Here's what they say:

"The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

Those of us who live in Kansas, who drive the mean streets of Topeka past right-wing zealots waving "God Hates Fags" signs, who are fighting the book banners at our local school board meetings, working with educators to prevent abstinence only sex education from taking over the schools, trying to defend some access to abortion from a over-zealous Attorney General, mobilizing voters to defend church state separation, and working our butts off to keep science from being defined by born again Christians who believe that nuclear war is a hopeful sign of the second coming of Christ, might have hoped for more from our friend Bill.