Red State Rabble

Patrick Ainley in The Guardian: "Fundamentalism on campus takes many forms. A colleague reports that during her history lecture on Darwin, quietly at first, an evangelical Christian student began singing hymns to ward off the evils of evolution. Perhaps, if the student had not been asked to stop and enough of her congregation had joined in, she would have drowned out the lecture. Elsewhere, a veiled Muslim student is accompanied to lectures by a minder who tells her what is haram and what is hallal in what she is hearing."

Do you suppose under that burqa her ears perk up just a little so as not to miss any of the haraam?

Intelligent design activists and creationists, it seems, don't mind looking like idiots. The problem is, they want to make idiots of the rest of us, too. That has some teachers in South Carolina up in arms.

The South Carolina school reform oversight panel recommended last week that high school biology teachers instruct students in how to "critically analyze" evolution -- which would open the door to teaching "intelligent design" and other theories on the origin of human life, according to Bill Robinson of The State.

"This puts the biology teacher in a terrible position," said Linda Mobley, science instruction director at Richland Northeast High School.

"To critically analyze biological evolution would mean that we would have to bring up scientifically irrelevant schools of thought to disclaim the overwhelming relevant biochemistry, molecular biology, molecular genetics, behavior evidence that supports evolution.

"This makes us look like idiots."

Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars wanted to rein in teachers who were teaching that man descended from apes and rattling the faith of students.

"I don't believe that anybody in there really wants their kids to be taught that their great-grandfather was an ape," Buttars says.

Now the Utah House of Representatives has reined Buttars in. They defeated his divinely inspired "critical analysis" bill by a vote of 28-46 Monday.

What's more shocking, learning your grandfather was an ape, or having your state senator prove it?

Broward County science teachers were forced to choose between a biology text that doesn't mention evolution and one that says:

Many of the world's major religions teach that life was created on Earth by a supreme being. A variation of this belief is that organisms are too complex to have developed only by evolution. Instead, some people believe that the complex structures and processes of life could not have formed without some guiding intelligence.

Rather than teach intelligent design, the teachers chose the text that leaves out evolution. Why were they forced to make that decision?

Rep. Jeremy Oden, R-Vinemont, says the Alabama House Education Committee is "deadlocked on a bill aimed at permitting critiques of evolution. Titled the "Academic Freedom Act," the bill states that teachers 'shall have the affirmative right and freedom to present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views,'" according to David Mackey of the Cullman Times.

RSR agrees that the full range of scientific views should be presented. We just don't think scientific views are really what the bill's authors envision.

"Ten years ago, high school biology teachers in Indiana spent little time teaching students about evolution" in Indiana according to Anne Kibbler of the Bloomington Herald-Times.

"Despite controversy over the place of evolution instruction in the classroom, there’s been a shift in the Hoosier state: A new study indicates teachers are devoting more, not fewer, hours to incorporating the concept of evolution into their lessons."

There's more to this article. Take a look.

Last week, intelligent design activist William Dembski published a remarkable exchange of letters between Tufts University philosophy professor Daniel Dennett and Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University.

The testy exchange of letters, between two high-profile defenders of evolution, on the blog of one of the best known exponents of intelligent design has ignited a firestorm of commentary around the blogosphere.

For his part, Ruse decried Dennett's very public atheism – some describe Dennett as both a militant atheist and a Darwinian fundamentalist – and accused both Dennett and Richard Dawkins of being "absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design."

Dennett responded in kind saying he's afraid Ruse is "being enlisted on the side of the forces of darkness." The fact that Ruse had turned the correspondence over to Dembski lent a degree of credence to that view.

As usual, Red State Rabble is coming late to the game. Last week:

PZ Myers, at Pharygula, wrote that while he disagrees vigorously with many of Dennett's ideas about evolution, he nevertheless comes off better in the exchange than Ruse. Myers doesn't believe "atheists on the side of evolution" should be hidden away like some crazy aunt in the attic.

Chris Mooney, writing on his blog, The Intersection, is concerned that people are being told that they must choose between evolution and their faith in God. That's the real hurdle, Mooney believes, and the publicly expressed views of Dawkins and Dennett don't help much in that respect.

Over at Evolutionblog, Jason Rosenhouse, is upset that Ruse gave the correspondence to Dembski, and writes that he shares both Dennett and Dawkins' "contemptuous attitude towards Christianity." Like Myers, he doesn't believe their atheism hurts the cause of promoting quality science education.

Already this week, there's been a further exchange between Myers, our old friend Josh at Thoughts from Kansas, and Mike the Mad Biologist over what role, if any, atheists and other skeptics should play in the battle to defend evolution.

Myers writes that Josh perpetuates "the usual misrepresentation of atheists in this debate," and he goes on to note "[a]theists reject religion, so we aren't at all worried that the targets of our criticism dislike our criticism. We aren't going to stop."

Red State Rabble unequivocally supports the right of atheists to defend both their beliefs and evolution in the public square. As a practical matter, we don't see men like PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett hiding their light under a bushel anytime soon.

Moreover, Myers is quite correct, for example, to point out that the metaphysical conclusions drawn from the science of evolution in Ken Miller's book, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution haven't come in for quite the same criticism as books by Richard Dawkins that draw the opposite conclusion from an examination of the same evidence.

However, the strategy of the intelligent design movement is to claim that teaching evolution in public schools is the same as teaching the metaphysical claims of atheism.

"In our greatest universities, naturalism -- the doctrine that nature is 'all there is' -- is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds," says ID strategist Phillip Johnson.

All intelligent design activists want, they say, is equal time to present their beliefs, too.

That's why, as advocates for science, those of us who are non-believers must be quite careful to keep separate the real science we want taught in public schools from the metaphysical conclusions we tend to draw from the evidence.

Some of us secular types have an unfortunate tendency, at times, to conflate Christian fundamentalism with the full range of Christian belief. Recently, we've read complaints from members of Kansas Citizens for Science, who are active and articulate defenders of evolution and believers, about the tendency among nonbelievers to crudely lump all Christians together.

There is a range of Christian thinking that extends from people like Pat Robertson and Sam Brownback on one end of the scale to Ken Miller, Karen Armstrong, and Jimmy Carter on the other.

Christianity inspired the crusades, the inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and the anti-Semitism of Hitler, but it also kindled the imagination of Kepler, Gallileo, Mozart, and Michelangelo.

Western thought is a product of the creative tension between the mysticism of Jerusalem and the rational thought of Athens.

Since nonbelievers make up an infinitesimally small portion of the population, we'll have to make allies among the faithful if we are to successfully defend science education from attacks by right-wing religious fundamentalists. The ability to make fine distinctions between biblical literalists and rational religious thinkers will be the key to building those alliances.

Red State Rabble also thinks it unwise to allow ourselves to be painted in the public imagination as nothing more than a shrill mirror image of Christian fundamentalism. Defense of public science education and the rights of nonbelievers will be more effective in the long run if we are seen, not as unthinking militants, but as the seekers after truth that we are.

Let's leave self-righteous certitude to the Christian fundamentalists and wear our doubt -- our skepticism about even our own beliefs -- proudly on our sleeves.

Those among us who want to promote reason. Who want to convince others – and for the most part that means convincing believers – that our own metaphysical beliefs are superior to religious faith would also do well, we think, to follow the advice of Charles Darwin, who wrote in a letter to Edward Aveling (often mistakenly thought to have been written to Karl Marx):

… I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds…

As we noted in a series of earlier posts, Broward County, Florida teachers were forced to choose between two biology textbooks. One mentions intelligent design the other leaves out evolution. Rather than teach ID the teachers chose the text that leaves out evolution.

When we first wrote about this issue, we asked readers familiar with the Holt Biology text (the one that was adopted in Broward County) to let us know what's in the Discovery Institute influenced Holt text.

Now an RSR reader, who is also a high school science teacher who opposed adoption of the same Holt Biology text in her own district has provided a transcription of the text:

From a "Did You Know?" sidebar:

Radioactive dating is not always accurate. For instance, as heat and pressure are applied to a rock and water flows through it, soluble radioactive materials can escape from the minerals in the rock. Because there is often no method for measuring how much radioactive material is lost, it is difficult to accurately date some older rocks than have been heated and put under pressure or that are partly weathered.

Here's how the text, while not distorting facts, subtly echoes creationist and intelligent design arguments for sudden emergence based on evidence from the Cambrian explosion:

The [Burgess] shale fossils reveal that the earliest multicellular animals included a much broader range of body plans than expected, ­ some so different that they cannot be classified into any group of modern animals. These conclusions about Cambrian life-forms are supported by recent discoveries in China, Australia, and Greenland. Scientists have unearthed similarly diverse and complex fossils dating back to the beginning of the Cambrian period, 500 million years ago. Thus, it appears that a high level of diversity and complexity developed in animals in a relatively short span of geologic time.

Note: As these citations were hand transcribed by our sources from the text, it is possible there may be minor transcription errors.

The often repeated litany of intelligent design activists is that evolution and atheism are one in the same. Still many members of the clergy remain unconvinced according to Phil Anderson of the The Topeka Capital-Journal.

"Some Topeka-area clergy members look at what the Kansas State Board of Education has done about standards for teaching evolution and see that it was good. Others wish the creators of these guidelines had rested on the first through seventh days."

The Rev. Andrew McHenry, of Maple Hill Community Congregational Church acknowledges that while some in the faith community are a part of the ongoing debate, no single viewpoint could be called representative of an entire religious group, according to Anderson. A variety of viewpoints exist within a single religious group -- and in a great many cases, within a single congregation. McHenry would prefer that the school board quit wasting time on a debate that never seems to end.

The intelligent design blowhards at the Discovery Institute claim to speak for people of faith. This article proves they do not.

Have you ever wondered what the intelligent design crowd really means when they chant "teach the controversy" or when they put forward a "critical analysis" curriculum proposal?

Well, now we have an answer -- not from someone as cynical and biased as RSR -- but from the IDers themselves. A Texas group has launched "Operation Teach Evolution Weaknesses!"

Don't take it from RSR. You can see it for yourself here.

Thanks to Texas reader RT for tipping us off.

The newly elected Dover school board -- they're the ones who inherited the mess, and a $1 million legal settlement, left behind by the the previous board which was dominated by religious conservatives -- don't want to borrow money or raise taxes to pay legal fees incurred by plaintiffs attorneys during the intelligent design trial.

They may find, however, that there isn't enough money in the districts fund balance to pay the bill.

"David Davare, director of research services at the Pennsylvania School Board Association, said when fund balances become too low, the district runs the risk of financial distress in the short term," according to the York Daily Record.

Davare said the association doesn't have a minimum guideline for fund balances, but said financial institutions like to see districts have about 5 percent to 8 percent in the fund balance.

"From a financial standpoint, they are starting to end up on the low side," Davare said about Dover's balance.

The fund balance can pay for emergency costs not covered by insurance, such as a leak in a roof, he said. Davare was concerned about districts building a budget that relies on using money from the fund balance.

"Get out of it - at some point they have to make the tough decisions," Davare said. "They either have to reduce their expenditures or they have to raise taxes. In some cases, it's a combination of both."

The Rev. Michael Jamison, of Unity Church of Christianity, says he can live with both evolution and Intelligent Design being taught.

"I think it'd be nice if both evolution and Intelligent Design were taught," he said, "because the kids will know the difference between what's bogus and what makes sense -- what's logical. By default, they would know the difference.

"I would not have a problem at all with both being taught. Let them teach Intelligent Design long enough and kids will see what it is -- a myth."

From an article by Phil Anderson in The Topeka Capitol Journal.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published an interview with Judge John Jones who presided over the Dover intelligent design trial. Jones ruled in December that the Dover school board could not order teachers to read a statement referring to intelligent design in biology classes.

This is the first time we have had a chance to hear Jones' views outside the courtroom. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

On what was perhaps the most controversial aspect of his ruling, the judge says the "controversial part of the ruling was whether intelligent design is in fact science. Lost in the post-decision debate was that both sides, plaintiffs and defense, asked me to rule on that issue. Clearly, that was resolved based on the scientific evidence presented at the trial."

Jones comments that until December 2004 he didn't know what intelligent design was. Asked if he read up on the subject, Jones says, "People have asked me, 'Did you sort of make yourself an expert? Did you read up on things?' and the answer is no, I didn't... . I tell my jurors, 'Don't read things outside the courtroom. Don't make yourself an expert. You get everything you need to decide the case inside the courtroom.' We had marvelous presentations in this case, and I got everything I needed during the trial, and before and after the trial, in terms of the submissions, so I certainly have developed a good working knowledge of the issue.

Asked if he was surprised at how weak the scientific case for intelligent design proved to be, Jones comments (in part), "I purposefully allowed the trial to extend and a record to be made... the defendants could never say that they weren't given the opportunity to present their case. I didn't cut off anybody's testimony, I didn't cut off anybody's presentation, and I allowed the testimony to be put forth in the ways the parties wanted it to be presented."

There's much more. It's all very interesting, and highly recommended reading.

If everyone intelligent design activists labeled as an atheist actually was, then the world would be filled with atheists, and there'd be no problem defending science education in the public schools.

A case in point is Kansas State geology professor Keith Miller, a member of Kansas Citizens for Science, one of the most highly articulate defenders of evolution in the state, and a deeply devout Evangelical Christian.

In a letter to the Manhattan Mercury, Richard Smith, an interim pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Manhattan, made these prescient observations in response to a column by Miller defending science education in the state:

Scientists of past years clearly demonstrate in their writings that the modern view of science promotes an atheistic worldview. As expressed in his recent column, Miller's own worldview is atheistic. While he may not be an atheist, his view is practical atheism. Miller thinks that the effort to change the science education standards by the Kansas Board of Education "is firmly rooted in the utterly false warfare view of science and faith." This is an ostrich (head in sand)observation. How can anyone not see that science has been at war with religion for a long time?

All RSR can say Rev. Smith is keep sending all those practical atheists our way. We'll welcome them, each and every one, with open arms. That's our sermon for this Sunday.

The discovery in China of a furry, beaverlike animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has been reported in countless blogs and online news articles as having "overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals."

In all these comments and articles, one thing is conspicuously absent: That's any hint of an accusation by scientists that this new evidence must be suppressed because it challenges scientific dogma about Jurassic mammals.

How do the intelligent design theorists account for the open-armed response to this new fossil evidence -- which overturns a full century of scientific thinking -- with their own fable of a close-minded scientific establishment bent on the promotion of dogma and the suppression of new ideas?

Is the Holt Biology textbook adopted by Broward County designed for "lower ability" students?

From the Holt, Rinehart, and Wilson web page for the Holt Biology text:

• Students of different ability levels benefit from a clean, easy-to-navigate text with short, concise heads and subheads that make previewing chapters a breeze.
• The Teacher Edition is full of planning resources and help for all learners. Additional teaching resources provide even more assistance for the time-starved.

So, the textbook that dumbs down evolution is perfect for the "lower ability" student, but don't worry, there are planning resources available fro all. Cutting out evolution is perfect for the time-starved.

Now that Broward County has adopted the Holt Biology text that dumbs down evolution to curry favor with the intelligent design movement's Discovery Institute, reader may want to learn more about the history.

Texas Citizens for Science has a post up about a bill up for consideration in the 2005 Texas Legislative Session that, if enacted, "would return Texas to its Dark Ages of the 1970s and 1980s, when the Texas State Board of Education routinely forced publishers to change textbook content or rejected the books for adoption and use in Texas public schools based on "viewpoint discrimination or special interest advocacy" as determined by individual powerful Board members."

We don't know the current status of this bill, but the article gives a flavor of what's going on with textbooks in both Texas and Florida.

"... Darwinism, if accepted, makes any meaningful Judaism intellectually untenable," writes David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

"In the Jewish community," Klinghoffer asserts, "the discussion [about evolution] remains mostly primitive and ill informed. Surely this embarrassing state of affairs can be corrected," and, of course he has a suggestion for how to "advance" the discussion.

“The leadership of the American Jewish community is not committed to the belief that their ancestral religion is even true and can be defended on rational grounds,” Klinghoffer, an orthodox Jew, asserts in his book, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.

We are all by now familiar with the claims of Evangelicals that Christians who accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution can't, somehow, be good Christians. Now we hear a counter echo from Klinghoffer from within Judaism.

RSR wonders, who placed Klinghoffer and his fellow ID theorists in judgement who is, and who it not, a good Christian or Jew?

In the last 20 years, studies of a number of specific species have demonstrated that natural selection can cause sub-populations to adapt to new environments in ways that reduce their ability to interbreed, an essential first step in the formation of a new species. However, biologists have not known whether these cases represent special exceptions or illustrate a general rule.

A new study – published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – provides empirical support for the proposition that natural selection is a general force behind the formation of new species by analyzing the relationship between natural selection and the ability to interbreed in hundreds of different organisms – ranging from plants through insects, fish, frogs and birds – and finding that the overall link between them is positive.

"This helps fill a big gap that has existed in evolutionary studies," says Daniel Funk, assistant professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University. He authored the study with Patrik Nosil from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and William J. Etges from the University of Arkansas. "We have known for some time that when species invade a new environment or ecological niche, a common result is the formation of a great diversity of new species. However, we haven't really understood how or whether the process of adaptation generally drives this pattern of species diversification."

The specific question that Funk and his colleagues set out to answer is whether there is a positive link between the degree of adaptation to different environments by closely related groups and the extent to which they can interbreed, what biologists call reproductive isolation.

Read more here.

If you missed all the excitement at the AAAS Conference in St. Louis last weekend, you can still watch the presentations on the AAAS Program Page.

It's all there, including: "Teachers and Evolution on the Front Line," Ken Miller and Eugenie Scott and much, much more.

"High school biology students in Broward County will use a textbook next year that watered-down passages about Charles Darwin and evolution theory," according to Chris Kahn of the Sun Sentinel.

"Science teachers picked Florida Holt Biology this month in a countywide vote, favoring it over another book that discussed the controversial idea of intelligent design...

It gets worse...

But publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston did edit several sections at the request of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that has peddled intelligent design around the country for years.

The group has made a point of attacking "gaps" in Darwin's theory, lobbying textbook companies to give equal time to experiments that suggest species don't change over time as he predicted.

It focused on Holt's biology book in 2003 when the publisher tried to get it approved for Texas schools. The publisher agreed to make numerous changes, which in some cases were simple clarifications about historical experiments.

But Holt also added one section that introduced students to the "Cambrian explosion," a period in early earth's history that suggests species aren't the result of gradual change over time, as Darwin thought.

"That was a key change," Discovery Institute spokesman John West said. "We want to keep the textbooks honest."

The Texas edits now have wound up in Holt textbooks for other states, including Florida.

RSR would like to know exactly how the Holt textbook introduces students to the Cambrian Explosion -- does it, for example, lapse into discredited ID pseudoscience in this area. Does the textbook, in fact, teach intelligent design under the guise of "teaching the controversy?"

The Texas edition has already been around for awhile. But, following Dover and Ohio, the political context has changed. Do these revisions open up Broward County schools to a suit? We don't know, but we'd certainly like to hear what supporters of science education in Florida or Texas think.

Do any RSR readers have access to the textbook in question? We'd like to see citations from the text, if readers have access to them.

Evolutionary biologist and filmmaker Randy Olson managed to spark a controversy recently that reveals some of the anxieties among those of us who are fighting to defend evolution from its creationist and ID detractors.

Olson's film, "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution – Intelligent Design Circus" has been playing to packed houses on college campus such as Harvard, Stonybrook, and Yale since its wildly successful premiere earlier this month in Kansas.

In March, the film will be screened at Rice University, Florida State University, and Kansas State University. For the full list of upcoming screenings, readers should check the Flock of Dodos website.

Olson's film makes a persuasive case that scientists have been less than effective at communicating science in general and evolution in particular to the public.

And now, Olson has followed up the film with a post, on Carl Zimmer's The Loom, titled "Ten Things Evolutionists Can Do to Improve Communication."

One of Olson's Ten Commandments for Evolutionists is never to "rise above" or condescend. Whenever you do, writes Olson, you lose the sympathy of your audience. "When evolutionists call intelligent designers idiots… it just makes everyone side with the people being condescended towards."

We won't try to capture all of Olson's Ten Commandments here, but we urge readers to follow the link (above) and read it for themselves.

There have been two distinct reactions among evolutionists to the film and Olson's subsequent remarks:

Chris Mooney, who is representative of one reaction to this discussion, writes on The Intersection blog that the film and Olson's comments should "serve as a wake-up call to scientists, alerting them to the fact that they are losing touch with the American public."

PZ Myers, who publishes Pharyngula, is representative of a rather different reaction: "Maybe it's my own high dork factor talking," he writes, "but I'm not too receptive to people telling me I need movie star qualities to be able to support science, or that we have to pander to superficial sensibilities to communicate a message."

RSR reads Dr. Myers every day, and we're not anxious to see him take a leave from writing Pharyngula or teaching classes up in the frozen North to develop abs like Brad Pitt or high cheekbones like Angelina Jolie. In our opinion, Dr. Myers is an extremely effective and tireless communicator.

That being said, Red State Rabble remains convinced that many scientists, educators, and defenders of civil liberties have abstained from this battle for far too long.

Most of us have other important work – not to mention family, community, and social obligations – to attend to.

Some have argued the sudden entry of religion into the political life of the nation is just a passing fad. If we simply wait it out, it will go the way of Hula Hoops, tie died shirts, and streaking.

Until recently, many of us were understandably uncomfortable taking on other people's religious beliefs. Perhaps, some of us still are. Most of us don't think of ourselves as political activists. We may even share a certain distaste for the tawdry spectacle into which American politic life has devolved.

Often, as “Flock of Dodos” vividly illustrates, when we have responded to attacks from the religious right on the separation of church and state and the teaching of evolution in public schools we have been less than effective.

Olson's film, made as a self-conscious exercise in effective communication, touches the viewer on an emotional level that debates and lectures seldom do.

The film – as we writers are fond of saying shows (it does not tell) – that the debate is not, in the end, about science. It's a battle, one of many, in a broader culture war. It will not be won or lost on facts alone.

Science, Olson argues, must adapt to this new reality, or die.

While we think our message must be conveyed to the public more effectively, Red State Rabble does not subscribe to an alarmist view of our current situation.

The recent AAAS Conference in St. Louis demonstrates clearly that our side, at long last, is beginning to mobilize its big institutions to do battle.

Recent statements by a number of university presidents indicate that the deadly seriousness of this battle has become apparent even to those who face certain institutional pressures, such as raising funds from corporations or conservative alumni, for staying on the sidelines.

We have won big victories in Dover and Ohio. And these aren't just legal victories, either. In Dover, we won in the voting booth as well as in the courtroom.

Judge John Jones' clearly written and unequivocal ruling has prompted journalists to penetrate the smokescreen of ID rhetoric and to report more critically on their claims.

The reversal in Ohio reflects, at least in part, the dawning recognition on the part of Gov. Taft that ID was hurting his chances, slim though they may be, for re-election. Rick Santorum, it would appear, has experienced a similar epiphany.

Interestingly, Martha Wise, the woman who led the Ohio board to reject ID-inspired "critical analysis" language in the standards there plans to run for state senate. She describes herself as a creationist.

The success of the Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Sunday reflect a growing concern among mainstream denominations that attacks on evolution are, at the end of the day, attacks on their religious freedom, too. Initial hopes, on the part of those in the intelligent design movement, that a new Pope might move quickly to distance the church from science, have not materialized.

A big election battle between right-wing radicals on the Kansas School Board and moderate Republicans and Democrats who want to take the state back into twenty-first century is shaping up here.

Yesterday, a new candidate stepped forward to challenge rightist Ken Willard. Now each of the theocrats on the Kansas State Board of Education has at least one opponent in the upcoming election.

It's too early to tell how it will all turn out, but the early signs are promising. Many, we think, are beginning to sense, just as we did in 1999, a groundswell of opposition to the ludicrous policy decisions made by the current ultra-conservative board majority.

We can't win every battle, but there is every reason to believe that if we mobilize to defend science education and the constitutional guarantee of church and state separation from attacks by the religious right, and we learn, as we will, how to do it effectively, we will, in the end, win this battle.

RSR would like to ask readers to comment with their ideas for improving communications with the public. We'd like to hear what we're doing right, and what we're doing wrong. This is a healthy discussion. One that, in the end, will help strengthen the movement to defend science and the constitution.

Tomorrow, RSR will take a look at the Michael Ruse, Daniel Dennett exchange.

After the Dover School Board voted Tuesday to pay $1 million to settle the suit over the district's intelligent design policy, Beth Eveland, one of the parents who sued the district, said she was dismayed that the taxpayers and children were left with the bill and believed the old board members should be held accountable, according to Lauri Lebo and Michelle Starr of the York Daily News. The smallest amount of accountability is an apology, she said.

Heather Geesey, the only remaining member from the previous board, said "I don't think I have anything to apologize for."

Former board member Ronald Short also isn't planning to apologize.

"I don't have anything to apologize for," Short said. "I believe in what the board did before."

Reportedly, some former board members -- the ones who adopted the intelligent design policy -- are suggesting a bake sale to raise funds to pay the judgement.

Note: Dover plaintiffs will each receive a check for $1 as their share of the settlement. The rest of the $1 million judgement will go toward paying the estimated $2.5 million in legal expenses incurred by the plaintiffs.

A statement by Martha Wise, who played a pivotal role on the Ohio School Board in removing the ID-inspired "critical analysis" language from the science standards there, hasn't received much attention outside of Ohio.

RSR believes it is an interesting example of the kind of alliances supporters of quality science education are beginning to build -- the kind of alliances that must be built if we are to defeat efforts to sneak religious fundamentalism into the public schools.

As a skeptic and a squishy liberal, RSR finds that we have little in common with Ms. Wise other than our agreement that separation of church and state must be defended, and real science must be taught in science classrooms in the public schools.

While we suspect that many RSR readers will find they have little in common with Ms. Wise, as well, we urge our readers to follow the link to the read the rest of her opinion piece in the Cinncinnati Enquirer. Here's how she starts out:

I believe in God the creator. I believe in freedom. I believe in America, and the state of Ohio, and the Republican Party, fiscal conservatism, fairness and honesty.

These values guided me last week to lead the Ohio Board of Education to remove creationism from our state's Science Standards and Model Curriculum.

You may ask: Why would being a creationist make me want to remove "critical analysis"/"intelligent design" creationism from the standards? It's simple, really:

It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about the nature of science.

"The president of the McPherson school board will seek a seat on the State Board of Education held by a member of the conservative majority that controls it," according to the Associated Press.

Donna Viola said if she unseats Kenneth Willard, of Hutchinson, a priority would be to remove Bob Corkins, the education commissioner who was picked in October by the board's conservatives on a 6-4 vote.

Viola would face Willard in the Aug. 1 Republican primary. Her selection as a challenger was the result of the flip of a coin after she met last week with another potential candidate, Hutchinson attorney Ken Peirce, whose wife is a principal in the Hutchinson school district.

The 7th District Willard represents on the board encompasses all or part of 20 counties in south-central Kansas, and superintendents from some school districts in the area met earlier this year to discuss strategy for finding a challenger they could support...

Viola said she initially took a wait-and-see attitude on Corkins, but her view of him soured after he told school representatives attending a Blue Ribbon School awards program that "we can do better."

"That told me right there that he had no clue what it takes" to win the Blue Ribbon award, she said.

The state board's conservatives have also drawn widespread criticism for their vote in November adopting science standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory.

Viola said she would have voted differently than Willard on that issue but added, "I don't want to make a big deal out of evolution."

A group of graduate students has written to the South Carolina Aquarium to complain about the lack of evolutionary material it had on display, according to the Charleston City Paper.

"If the Aquarium is to excel in education, as its mission statement claims, it must devote resources to explaining the central idea of biology. The theory enables us to describe how the Aquarium's 10,000 plants and animals are related," wrote Natalie Renew, a graduate student in Public Administration at the College of Charleston.

To read the clueless response from Aquarium director Whit McMillan, which mirrors the equally clueless response from a number of programming directors at IMAX theaters located in science museums last year, go here.

For now, here's a sample for those who are growing short on time and patience: McMillan is "fairly certain" there wasn't any conscious omission of evolutionary material during the aquarium's creation.

Here are RSR's nominations for a new category of Darwin Awards. The new category will salute the improvement of state legislatures across the country by honoring those who remove themselves from it in really stupid ways:

• Mississippi Sen. Charles Edwin Ross said he feels no need to change his bill on science education because it doesn't mandate teaching any one point of view. Instead the bill, which passed the Senate, clarifies that teachers are allowed to discuss or answer questions about intelligent design or other challenges to evolution.
• "My sense is the state board in Ohio may have overreacted to a court decision regarding intelligent design," said Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, whose bill would require students to analyze weaknesses in scientific theories including evolution and global warning.

The three legal organizations that represented the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District -- Pepper Hamilton LLP, ACLU of Pennsylvania, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- have agreed to reduce by more than $1 million the attorneys' fees and expenses that they are entitled to recover for their successful representation of the plaintiffs.

Judge Jones will enter an order awarding plaintiffs' attorneys more than $2 million in fees and expenses. This award reflects the amount of legal work required to vindicate plaintiffs' constitutional rights and protect their religious freedom in this important and complicated federal lawsuit.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have agreed, however, to accept $1 million in full satisfaction of that award.

They made this compromise because the people of Dover voted to remove the school-board members who supported the unconstitutional intelligent-design policy, and the new board, which is committed to acting lawfully, has many other uses for this small school district's financial resources.

The civil-rights laws of the United States permit plaintiffs' attorneys to recover their attorneys' fees when they win cases for individuals whose constitutional rights have been violated.

The law is designed to provide a way for people to secure legal assistance to vindicate their rights. It is also designed to deter public officials from committing civil-rights violations.

An editorial in the Enid News (Oklahoma) urges the state to reject intelligent design:

We think the state would be wise to avoid going down this divisive road. Intelligent design is not science, and thus should not be taught in science classes. It is better suited for discussion in philosophy or comparative religion classes.

Science teachers would be better off sticking to science, not dealing in theories that border on religion.

The National Academy of Sciences, the agency that advises the government on critical national issues, supports the theory of evolution as “one of the foundations of modern science.”

By permitting the teaching of intelligent design, the Legislature would be opening the state up to time-consuming and costly court challenges.

There is no harm at looking at both sides of any issue, even the origin of life. But a science class in a public school is not the place to do it.

We also oppose a measure authored by Rep. Odilia Dank, R-Oklahoma City, which would allow students to leave their school for one hour each week for religious instruction without being counted absent.

A bill, authored by Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, that would authorize instructors to teach broader views of evolution without fear of legal consequence is pending in the Oklahoma Legislature.

Thanks to reader IB for keeping Oklahoma on our radar screen.

The Kansas Board of Education hasn't made any move to reconsider science standards even though Judge John Jones ruled it unconstitutional to teach intelligent design in the Dover case, and the Ohio School Board voted recently to take ID-inspired "critical analysis" language out of its standards there, as a result.

Yesterday, the Dover Board voted to pay $1 million in attorney's fees after they lost that case. So, why hasn't the Kansas board acted to keep taxpayers here from footing the bill for a large settlement?

The answer, from board spokesman David Awbrey, may surprise you.

First, the standards haven't been tied to a lesson plan in Kansas as they were in Ohio.

Second:

Board members have said they will not revisit the standard this year because the board composition might change, Awbrey said. Four of the six conservatives who supported it are among five seeking re-election, and they face challengers in both the Republican primary and general election."

Conservative board member Iris Van Meter has yet file for re-election, or raise money for a campaign, and no other conservative has announced for her seat.

Other conservatives may have trouble getting re-elected, particularly Connie Morris. John Bacon and Ken Willard have come in for increasing criticism, and both have been slow to raise campaign contributions.

Perhaps, they already see the handwriting on the wall.

Our dear friend, Casey Luskin, has posted a news item on the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog -- that fearless defender of accuracy in media located up in rain-soaked Seattle. Luskin's piece calls attention to a letter by Stanford undergraduate Tristan Abbey in yesterday's Stanford Daily entitled The myths surrounding intelligent design. Luskin writes:

Abbey blazes past the ad hominems, motivation-mongering, and labels so commonly promulgated by Darwinists to get right to the core issue: there's legitimate scientific dissent from Darwinism, and students deserve to hear about it. Abbey's argument is so simple, and so compelling, that it makes clear-as-day why the efforts of Darwinists must focus so intensely upon making scientific dissent look "illegitimate."

In her letter to the Stanford Daily Abbey writes that "creationism is not the same as intelligent design." And, she cites as examples Reasons to Believe, a creationist group which accepts that the earth is billions of years old, and dismisses intelligent design as “not science.”

Abbey, obviously a good student, also dutifully compares and contrasts the views of The Institute for Creation Research, which argues for a literal six-day interpretation of Genesis, and she says, similarly criticizes intelligent design for not being biblical.

Abbey is deeply saddened by the caricature painted of intelligent design by cynical neo-Darwinists who stereotype critics of evolutionary theory as religious zealots, and thus reduce the debate to the simplistic but familiar terms of science vs. faith.

Red State Rabble has, from time to time, been accused of bias against both creationism and intelligent design, so rather than offer yet another neo-Darwinist caricature of intelligent design, we'll let the ID theorists speak for themselves.

The 1989 edition of the ID textbook, Of Pandas and People was written by Percival David and Dean Kenyon and edited by Charles Thaxton. Both Thaxton and Kenyon are fellows at the Discovery Institute. What better place to see how intelligent design theorists themselves define intelligent design?

Of Pandas and People informs us that "[i]ntelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc. (Pandas 1989, 1st edition, pp. 99-100) [emphasis added]

An early draft, written in 1987, says, "[c]reation means that various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent Creator with their distinctive features already intact—fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc. (Pandas 1987, creationist version, FTE 4996-4997, pp. 2-14, 2-15) [emphasis added]

So, we needn't rely on the dubious stereotyping of neo-Darwinsts such as RSR to come to the conclusion that for the ID theorists themselves creationism and intelligent design are one and the same. Now that's a simple, compelling argument.

Abbey may be forgiven because she is young and impressionable, but she also asserts that "intelligent design theorists, by and large, do not support the mandating of intelligent design in public schools." Doesn't the production of an intelligent design textbook such as Of Pandas and People, directed as it is toward high school students, suggest, even to those less cynical than RSR, that we might not want to take that assertion at face values, either?

Read more about the history Of Pandas and People here and here.

AP: "Committee members re-examining the state science teaching standards agree that any new lessons should not single out evolution for criticism."

"From there, opinions differ, with both sides accusing the other of being motivated more by politics than science. The debate is likely to take months."

... Members will be in a tough spot: trying to stay true to science while appeasing a vocal group that wants students to pick apart evolution, says Jim Craig, of Canton, who leads the committee along with Michael Cochran, a suburban Columbus lawyer and minister who supported the original plan. "The problem is there's more politics involved than real education and science," he said.

AP: "The Dover Area School Board unanimously agreed Tuesday to pay $1 million in legal fees to the plaintiffs who successfully sued to end the policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution."

Kenneth Chang writes in the New York Times: "Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition."

No kidding.

For the past few days, Red State Rabble has been basking in the warm glow of having been called a moron by DaveScot, the intelligent design activist who plays Sgt. Shultz to William Dembski's Col. Klink over at the Uncommon Descent blog.

RSR was called a moron because we wrote a post quoting Dembski as having written:

At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated ("irreducibly complex") biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.

The relevant statistical methodology is identical for both fields. As a result, the two fields stand to profit from each other.

In our post, we compared Dembski's touching faith in ID and the Bible Code Hoax to a belief that persists among those in the UFO-alien abduction sub-culture. Namely, that the so-called Mars "face" is also a product of design. We also noted striking similarities between the pseudoscientific arguments offered up for all three "theories" by the faithful to give them a scientific veneer.

Today, however, the warmth went out of RSR's world. Cold reality came rushing in. DaveScot re-published Pat Hayes and the Logical Fallacy of False Analogy over at Uncommon Descent and he inexplicably -- and rather unfairly -- changed this:

When will morons like Pat Hayes cop to the fact... [empahsis added]

To this:

When will uncritical thinkers like Pat Hayes cop to the fact that seeing the Virgin Mary’s face in a tortilla is not the equivalent of seeing design in an interdependent network of subcellular biological nanomachinery... [empahsis added]

In the wake of having been called a moron, RSR received many congratulatory e-mails from readers wishing us well now that we'd reached the big time. Our ticket was punched, we thought. We're going places now.

Now that DaveScot has jerked the rug out from under our feet, we've been left to console ourselves with the cold comfort of what might have been.

Richard Hoppe, who picked up our original post -- "The IDiots Guide to Design Detection" -- on Panda's Thumb was luckier. He and Panda's Thumb still receive a good old-fashioned -- and no doubt well-deserved -- horsewhipping from DaveScot. To make his point about false analogies, he asks:

Does RBH have National Enquirer on his reading list too? There’s a true analogy. At least we found out where Hoppe gets his news and information from.

Disappointed as we are, we comfort ourselves in the knowledge that we're still being called "Red State Rubbish" by DaveScot. Now that's an honor.

The "Dissent from Darwin" petition being circulated by the Discovery Institute may not include many working biologists among its signatories, but it does include the signatures of three KU Medical Center doctors: James Harbrecht, clinical assistant professor of cardiology; Gregory Ator, associate professor of head and neck surgery; and Jeanne Drisko, clinical assistant professor of alternative medicine, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.

“There’s no doubt that these scientists represent a minority, but it is a growing minority,” said Robert Crowther, spokesman for the Discovery Institute, which started the petition. Signatures are vetted to ensure those who sign have doctoral degrees, Crowther said.

Ah, but were they vetted to see if they have a brain?

When they are speaking to the public -- as opposed to the message they convey when speaking to their fellow Christian fundamentalists -- we often hear spokespeople for intelligent design say they want to "teach the controversy." They even say, disingenuously, they want more evolution taught in public schools.

But what's really driving this know-nothing movement is given away by the actions of their supporters on the ground. A case in point:

Ladue [Missouri] middle school teacher Liz Petersen says every year a parent steps close, puts a finger to her nose and says she doesn't want her child to learn evolution. Petersen shrugs it off.

"Scientists aren't just defending evolution anymore. Over the weekend in St. Louis, the nation's leaders in science went on the offensive," report David Hunn and Tim Townsend in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Tom Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for Mid America located in Cleveland, Missouri, believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Unsurprisingly, he's unimpressed by the ringing defense of evolution demonstrated at the AAAS conference in St. Louis. Willis calls the scientists "desperate."

"Most would be out of a job if they couldn't sell evolution to children," Willis said.

Willis' more sophisticated cousins at the Discovery Institute share his view.

"I don't understand how you can have a discussion of intelligent design if you only invite critics," said John West, a senior fellow at Discovery.

Funny, RSR's sense is that the scientists gathered in St. Louis had a very rich discussion.

Crosswalk, which describes itself as a "for-profit religious corporation dedicated to building up the Church, which is the Body of Christ," has published a fairly straightforward news report on the Clergy Letter Project, a statement now signed by more than 10,000 religious leaders urging school board members to "preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge."

The Clergy Letter Project article was written by Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress and a reporter for American Family Radio News.

As a man of faith, Hans Kueng sees God reflected in creation, but says this does not mean the Almighty tinkers with the laws of nature or creates life forms so complex they could not have evolved.

Last week when the Ohio State School Board voted to take intelligent design inspired "critcal analysis" of evolution out of the science curriculum, they also decided to refer the issue back to the Achievement Committee.

This morning Catherine Candinsky of the Columbus Dispatch took a look at the people and personalities who will review the standards in the coming weeks.

"Being a former fundamentalist," writes Will Martin in The Minnesota Daily, "I can sympathize with the intelligent designer thought process; but as a religious studies major, I’m finding it harder to do so. I actually read Michael Behe’s book when I was very strict about my fundamentalist beliefs and grabbed onto every word he fed me. I felt that believing in God required there be a literal Genesis chapter one (and/or two) creation. In retrospect, I realize our amazing abilities to deny evidence when it contradicts our beliefs. I willfully remained ignorant of evolution out of fear of what it might disprove in the Bible. I even had talked with biology professors about evolution but immediately would discard their professional views because of my belief filters. This willful ignorance and denial of facts is a powerful force. I believed because I wanted to believe, not because the facts compelled me to."

"Clearly, Ohio’s board has taken steps to rectify what it sees as a bad decision for its schools. No similar reversal is being considered by the six-person majority on the Kansas Board of Education," says an editorial published this morning in the Lawrence Journal-World.

"If Kansas residents disagree with that judgment they will have an opportunity to express that opinion at the ballot box later this year. Four members of the Kansas board’s conservative majority are up for re-election; most already have announced opposition. It’s up to voters to examine the candidates and make their wishes known."

Nothing would do more to reverse the attacks on science education in Kansas -- and across the country -- than to hand the wingnuts on the Kansas Board of Education a stinging defeat next November. That is the goal supporters of quality science education should be working toward now.

That means raising money for moderate candidates, making sure they're invited to community events such as PTA meetings, writing letters to the editor, and spreading the word among friends and colleagues. It's time for all of us to roll up our sleeves and get down to the hard work of winning this next election.

After the Ohio School Board voted last week to save the taxpayers of that state from footing the bill for yet another effort to proselytize school children for fundamentalist Christianity through the medium of creation science and intelligent design theory -- now being passed off as "critical analysis" -- the Discovery Institute, fogbound up in Seattle, cried foul.

“The effort to try to suppress ideas that you dislike, to use the government to suppress ideas you dislike, has a failed history,” said John G. West, associate director of the institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Of course these ideas, if you can call them that, aren't being suppressed. They're in the papers every day. You can find them on the web. Books are being published. ID proponents pop up all across the country to present their views on college campuses.

Moreover, creation science and intelligent design theory, far from being suppressed, are being taught with fanatical devotion to defenseless children every week at Sunday School classes in tiny, impoverished rural churches and glitzy suburban megachurches, alike.

The beliefs of the biblical literalists and their ultra-sophisticated city cousins, the intelligent design theorists -- like fencing, dance, French, debate, algebra, and the semiotics of the modern novel -- have been deemed not part of the high school biology curriculum.

Just as we wouldn't expect to find hamburger in the bread aisle, or boxed cereals in the freezer section with the frozen orange juice at our local supermarkets, we don't teach religious belief in science classes. Science is not unique in this respect. We pick and choose the appropriate elements of the curriculum taught in all elementary, middle, and high school classes.

When we were growing up, RSR's mother was fond of saying that people in glass houses shouldn't throw bricks. If Discovery Institute's John West truly believes what he says about suppressing ideas, he might want to urge that his colleagues on the religious right, as a first step to quieting the doubts of skeptics like RSR, put down their bricks just long enough to set their own affairs in order.

Missouri Citizens for Science reports that Dr. Carl Huser, a long-time biology professor at Southwest Baptist University has been forced to “retire” for not teaching creationism. Dr. Huser, you see, is one of those theistic evolutionists. A devout evangelical and a scientist, he believes in God, teaches evolution, and sees no contradiction between the two.

That makes him a dangerous radical.

You can read this story about the theocracy's touching fidelity to the ideals of free expression and academic freedom, here.

Okay, students take out a No. 2 pencil and answer this question: On what day did God create the dinosaurs? Since RSR knows the heathens who read this blog haven't got the chance of a snowflake in hell of getting the answer right, so we're sending you here to find the crib sheet.

An organization representing 10,000 Christian clergy from many denominations has joined with scientists and educators to launch The Alliance for Science, which opposes the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public schools.

The announcement was made at an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium entitled, "Anti-Evolutionism in America – What's Ahead."

The current legal and educational challenges to teaching evolution taking place at all levels, as well as scientific content of both sides of the issue was addressed by speakers at the symposium. Since the anti-evolutionary movement presumes a conflict between religion and science, the support for evolution among the 10,000 Christian clergy is particularly noteworthy.

The impact of the anti-evolution movement on its primary target: high school students and teachers, with a frontline report from Cobb County, Georgia and Dover, Pennsylvania, sites of successful court challenges to the teaching of intelligent design was also discussed.

"The goal of this symposium," said organizer Dr. Irving Wainer of the National Institute on Aging, "is to set the basis for a united effort of the scientific community, allied with the religious, educational and business sectors, to educate the public about the different but complementary roles of science and religion. We want to improve the teaching of science in our public schools and to restore the excitement about science that once characterized the United States."

Paul S. Forbes, co-chairman of the Alliance for Science also announced that in addition to keeping creationism out of public schools, the Alliance will mobilize national support for a new bipartisan national science agenda that is now being formulated in Congress. This agenda, which is based upon a report from the National Academy of Sciences, includes increased support for basic research; more scholarships for future math, science and engineering teachers; more graduate fellowships in these fields; tax incentives for scientific innovation; establishment of a new federal Advanced Research Projects Agency; and expanded access to broadband communications.

"According to a study funded by the National Science Foundation, 93 percent of Americans are scientifically illiterate," says Forbes. "That is unacceptable in a world in which scientific knowledge, prosperity and security are inseparable. Unless we remain the world leader in science and technology, it is doubtful that our families will be able to continue to enjoy the comfortable, middle class life to which they have become accustomed."

"The Sacramento Zoo's spring lecture series, traditionally a modest event geared for zoo docents, is sold out, with long waiting lists of people hoping to catch talks on the provocative subject of evolution and intelligent design," reports Eddie Lau of the Sacramento Bee.

There is a good story behind science, but no one is telling it in American classrooms. According to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, science continues to be taught from K-12 to the college and university levels, in fragmented, incoherent bits and pieces rather than a coherent narrative, a history of nature.

"What's totally lacking in the teaching of science is what I call a history of nature, what happened from the Big Bang on," said Goodenough. "In the past few decades, the history of nature has really come together as an integrative story, with theories of the Big Bang, plate tectonics and advances in understanding biological evolution all tying the story together.

Studies have shown that humans learn best when information is packaged in the form of a story. But the historical sciences –cosmology, evolutionary biology and earth science – exist independently in their own domains. There is no linkage."

Goodenough presented her Plenary Lecture, "The History of Nature: Why Don't We Teach It?" at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science being held this week in St. Louis.

Read more here.

The University of Colorado at Boulder will hold the 21st Regional Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science, "Darwinian Evolution in the 21st Century” on April 7th and 8th.

Keynote speakers include Robert Pennock from the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University speaking on “Organs of Extreme Perfection: The Design Argument meets Evolution, Then and Now” and Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis from the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida, speaking on “Avoiding the Pitfalls of the ID-Evolution 'Debate,' Perspectives from the History and Philosophy of Biology.”

The sponsors are now accepting papers and abstracts. Presentations will be allotted approximately one-half hour each. The deadline for submissions is March 6th, 2006. Please send submissions to Carol Cleland at:RCHPS, Carol E. Cleland, Department of Philosophy, CB 232 University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0232

---

Over at William Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog, Doug Moran asks, “If an alien found human engineering on Mars, would they be able to detect products of intelligence and deduce that these objects had not evolved from the surrounding materials by chance?”

This, of course, is a refrain we hear commonly from the intelligent design choir. Michael Behe wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times last year in which he said:

... we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology.

"Science is essentially a skeptical endeavor, and over the long run the way science proceeds is to be skeptical of received knowledge, to be skeptical of authority. But there are many interesting questions that don’t lie in the realm of science. For example, is there a God? Or what is the nature of love? Or would we be happier if we lived to be 1,000 years old?"

"These are extremely interesting questions. They are important questions. They are questions that provoke us and stimulate us and express our humanity but they are not scientific questions. They cannot be falsified. They are questions that you cannot test definitively with experiment. So science has its limitations and there’s a great deal of life and human longing that lies outside of science. It’s a mistake to try to lump these questions in with science.
Science is very powerful but it has its limitations."

From "The Future of Science: A Conversation with Alan Lightman" published at LiveScience by Sara Goudarzi. Lightman, a physicist, novelist, and science writer, is the author of Einstein’s Dreams and the recently released The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-century Science.

On Feb. 14, the Ohio ACLU sent a letter to the Toledo Public Schools demanding that they cease allowing staff to teach intelligent design in science classrooms throughout the district.

The ACLU noted that a news article in the Toledo Blade featured teachers in the Toledo Public School system who admitted teaching intelligent design in science classrooms. In the article, teachers acknowledged they taught lessons on various pieces of evidence that seemed to refute evolutionary theory, despite the fact that all were proven to be hoaxes by the scientific community.

The next day, Feb. 15, John Foley, the school district's chief of staff said, "We intend to inform our teachers that they need to stick with the state standards."

"We have sanctioned the state standards, which includes evolution as the scientifically proven theory" of how life developed, Foley added.

Darlene Fisher, president of the Toledo Board of Education, said the district will send a reminder to those in charge of curriculum that all must adhere to the state standards.

Several of the most prominent voices in the national debate over religion in public schools will take part in a daylong symposium on Feb. 24 sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law’s First Amendment Law Review.

The keynote speaker will be William Van Alstyne, Lee professor of law at the College of William & Mary and a nationally regarded expert on constitutional law.

Designed for attorneys, educators and the public alike, the symposium will feature panel discussions centering on three of the most pressing issues related to religion in public schools today.

Speakers will discuss constitutional questions associated with the following topics:

• The teaching of intelligent design in public school classrooms;
• The words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and government-sponsored religious exercises in public schools; and
• The possible reintroduction of religious symbols in classrooms in light of a reconstituted Supreme Court.

Members of the legal, religious and education communities will give remarks regarding these issues. Dr. Michael Newdow, plaintiff and attorney in the cases challenging inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, will be a panelist. Two prominent scientists also will discuss the validity of the theories of intelligent design and evolution.

Other panelists include:

• Anthony R. Picarello Jr., president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. In November 2005, the Becket Fund filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit seeking to reverse the U.S. District Court’s injunction prohibiting recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in California public schools.
• Dr. Scott Minnich, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho. Minnich recently testified as an expert witness in support of the teaching of intelligent design in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The case resulted in a federal court holding the teaching of intelligent design in Pennsylvania public schools to violate the First Amendment.
• Richard B. Katskee, assistant legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Katskee represented plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Get more information here.

Jim Edwards, a governmental relations specialist with the Kansas Association of School Boards believes the Kansas School Board that takes office in January 2007 could be philosophically quite different from the one setting policy now, according to Carol Bronson of the Pratt Tribune in Central Kansas.

Four of six board members, who Edwards describes as being among the conservative majority, are up for re-election, including Ken Willard, a Republican, who represents Pratt County.

Willard is the only only conservative incumbent who has filed with the Secretary of State's office to date.

Willard defends the new intelligent design inspired science standards as providing an objective way to teach that there may be other explanations for the origin of human life besides evolution, not "a way to sneak religion into public schools." The Kansas Association of School Boards, whose members represent all the local Boards of Education in the state, opposes the State Board's modification of "scientific standards developed by the scientific community."

Jon D. Miller, a professor at the Northwestern University Medical School, studies the public's understanding of science. Miller is the organizer of “Science Under Attack,” at the AAAS conference being held in St. Louis.

Miller believes the struggle over teaching evolution in schools has been fueled largely by religious conservatives hoping to secure office in Republican-dominated states.

“There's a very pragmatic reason why these (debates) reappear, and it's not at all accidental that they appear right before major primary elections,” Miller said. “These issues become in right-wing politics a very powerful tool, because it's a way of mobilizing a base. . . . It's a litmus test, and besides, it's kind of a throwaway issue. It doesn't really make any economic difference to anybody.”

From a report on the AAAS Conference by Bruce Lieberman in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Washington Post has posted a transcript of an online chat with Robert M. Hazen of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and author of "Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins," which examines the debate between scientists over theories on the origin of life.

Interesting discussion that ranges from what we know scientifically about life's origins -- not that much, yet -- to the intelligent design debate and the nature of science.

James Dobson's Focus on the Family doesn't like the bill against teaching intelligent design sponsored by a Wisconsin legislator. They panned the legislation on their Web site this week, saying:

"If you can't beat them, keep them from showing up for the game," whines Focus on the Family. "That's the tack Wisconsin evolutionists and liberal lawmakers are taking in attempting to ban the study of intelligent design in public schools."

When it comes to sex education, Dobson takes a slightly different view:

One of the problems with sex education... is that it also strips kids - especially girls - of their modesty to have every detail of anatomy, physiology and condom usage made explicit.

ID: Let it all hang out. Prevention of STDs and pregnancy: Cover up. Consistency: What's that?

In the run up to the Ohio Board of Education vote to drop references to intelligent design inspired "critical analysis" of evolution from the standards, the Discovery Institute gave wide publicity to a public opinion survey conducted by Zogby International purporting to show that by "more than a 3-to-1 margin, Ohio residents strongly support public school teachers presenting both the evidence for evolution, as well as the evidence challenging the theory." The survey was commissioned by Discovery.

Yesterday, Red State Rabble wrote that there are good reasons be skeptical about the survey results being touted by Discovery. We offered some of our own thoughts on why the results should be read with a hefty helping of skepticism.

Today, Mathew Nisbet who publishes the Framing Science blog and Chris Mooney over at The Intersection have both posted a pieces on the Discovery poll.

Nisbet's post is titled "Discovery's Pseudo-polling: Public Accountability Emphasized on Both Sides of the Ohio School Board Decision." RSR likes Nisbet's blog, we've been visiting frequently, and recommend it to others. In his post, Nisbet asks:

... [W]hy should anyone trust a poll released by the Discovery Institute, now notorious for pushing religiously inspired pseudoscience on the American public? OR a poll conducted by John Zogby, a pollster criticized heavily in the past for conducting polls that seem to always favor the policy positions of his clients...

Why indeed?

Nisbet goes on to detail problems with the methodology, the sample, and the question asked in the survey. It's well worth reading.

Mooney, who also links to Nisbet's post, adds, "[s]uffice it to say that by touting these surveys, Discovery is undermining the science of polling in pretty much the same way that it is undermining the science of evolution.

"Sure it's a setback, but this is a case of one board of education essentially being misled," said the Discovery Institute's Luskin. "What this tells us is when the Darwinists can't win on the facts, they have to change them. If the only way they could defeat the lesson plan was by raising false fears about intelligent design, then that shows exactly how strong their position is."

Jim Beckerman of the North Jersey Media Group reports that "unlike a certain other religion in the news, the First United Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't object to cartoon depictions of the supreme being."

"For one thing, He's easy to draw -- a tangle of pasta strands with a meatball body."

The Manhattan-Ogden School Board voted 6-0 in favor of a resolution submitted by Kansas State faculty members to reject the new intelligent design inspired definition of science adopted by the state board and use the definition written by the standards revision committee.

A post on the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog titled "Biologist Dan Ely testifies in Support of Ohio's Critical Analysis of Evolution Lesson Plan" says that Ohio board Member Martha K. Wise repeatedly emphasized the claim that authors of the Critical Analysis of Evolution Lesson Plan were creationists. Wise alleged that during the Kansas hearings, Dan Ely testified that he was "struggling with the age of the earth" and stated “He [Ely] thinks the earth is only Five-thousand years old. That’s not just ID. That’s young earth creationism.”

Ely said that in Kansas, many of the witnesses were asked about their views on the age of the earth. "My answer was ‘We heard today anywhere from five-thousand years to five million years or five billion years,” and everybody laughed, “And most of the evidence looks like it's very old.” Ely called Martha Wise’s alleged explanation of Ely’s views on the age of the earth “totally erroneous.”

The Discovery Institute has always demonstrated utter contempt for the truth. And, as the transcript of Ely's Kansas testimony, reproduced below, reveals almost nothing they say can be believed. You read Ely's side of the story, above, now read what he actually said when he was in Kansas:

Cross Examination by Pedro Irigonegaray: (From page 27 of the May 6 PM transcript)

Q: Welcome to Kansas. I have a few questions for the record for you. First I have a group of yes or no questions that I would like for you to answer, please. What is your opinion as to the age of the earth?

A: In light of time I would say most of the evidence that I see, I read and I understand points to an old age of the earth.

Q: And how old is that age?

A: I don't know. I just know what I read with regards to data. It looks like it's four billion years.

Q: And is that your personal opinion?

A: No. My personal opinion is I really don't know. I'm struggling.

Q: You're struggling with what the age of the earth is?

A: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. There's a lot of ways to measure the age. Meteorites is one way. There's a lot of elements used. There's a lot of assumptions can be used and those assumptions can be challenged so I don't really know.

Q: What is the range that you are instructing?

A: I think the range we heard today, somewhere between 5,000 and four billion.

Q: You-- you-- you believe the earth may be as young as 5,000 years old. Is that correct?

A: Well, we're learning that there's such a thing as junc --

Q: Sir, answer –

A: -- really has a function.

Q: Just please answer my question, sir.

A: We're learning a lot about micro --

Q: Sir?

MR. IRIGONEGARAY: Mr. Abrams, please instruct the witness to answer the question.

CHAIRMAN ABRAMS: I think –

Q: (By Mr. Irigonegaray) The question was -- and winking at him is not going to do you any good. Answer my question. Do you believe the earth may be as young as 5,000 years old?

A: It could be.

Q: Do you accept the general principle of common descent, that all life is biologically related back to the beginning of life? Yes or no?

A: No.

The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4 yesterday to eliminate an intelligent design inspired requirement that 10th-grade biology classes there include "critical analysis" of evolution.

A letter sent to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft on Feb. 7 by 24 of the 32 members of the school board's science advisory committee describes the board's "critical analysis" requirement and accompanying lesson plan as "intelligent design creationism poorly concealed in scientific sounding jargon."

The decision by the Ohio board to toss out "critical analysis" is the third strike intelligent design activists have suffered in the past two months.

In December, Judge John Jones ruled intelligent design violates the constitutional separation of church and state. In the decision, Jones wrote, “We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.”

Following the Dover decision, the El Tejon school board in California agreed to cancel a philosophy class that proposed taking "a close look at evolution as a theory… discuss the scientific, biological, and Biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin’s philosophy is not rock solid… discuss Intelligent Design as an alternative response to evolution."

If this were baseball, intelligent design would be out. They'd have to put down their bat and sit on the bench. But, this isn't baseball. It’s politics, pure and simple, and we can expect activists from the religious right to stay at the plate and swing wildly for the fence for some time to come.

As right-wing Ohio school board member Deborah Owens Fink told the New York Times, the vote was just another round in the culture war, not a knockout.

"There are no permanent victories in politics," Ms. Fink said. "You do not get paradigm shifts overnight. Whether the ultimate victory is today or it's tomorrow or it's two years from now, people demand that they get open discussion of this issue."

Predictably, Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based intelligent design think tank, was unhappy about the decision.

“This is a completely outrageous slap in the face to the 69 percent of Ohioans just polled who said they want students to hear the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory,” says John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Supporters of quality science education are right to be concerned about public opinion polls that indicate high levels of support for teaching variants of creationism, intelligent design, or critical analysis. We must do more to educate the public about the importance of science and the central role of evolution in biology.

But, there are also good reasons be skeptical about the survey results being touted by the Discovery Institute.

Here in Kansas, voters who'd had a belly full of the antics of creationists and intelligent design activists on the state board of education voted them out in 2000.

Last November, in Dover, Penn., voters in the school board election there reached the same conclusion about intelligent design in public schools that Judge Jones did. They voted out every incumbent member of the board who had voted to mandate reading a statement to students critical of evolution.

Those are the kind of public opinion surveys that really count. Just ask Ohio Gov. Bob Taft.

Taft, an early supporter of the intelligent design inspired "critical analysis" of evolutionary theory in Ohio turned against it for very pragmatic reasons. Public opinion surveys show he is one of the least popular governors in the nation. After reading the tea leaves, Taft concluded that intelligent design was a liability he just couldn't afford.

Since Taft controls the appointment of a number of Ohio school board members, his decision to abandon "critical analysis" to its fate set the stage for yesterday's vote.

Following their defeat in 2000, a number of Kansas creationists and intelligent design activists found their way back onto the board. One of them, Iris Van Meter, ran as a stealth candidate, refusing to speak publicly prior to the election. An election-eve smear against her opponent succeeded in putting Van Meter into office.

The success of the religious right in that election happened because the moderates who became energized by the battle to defend science education assumed they'd won a decisive victory. They became complacent, and failed to recruit candidates, communicate effectively, raise money, and go to the polls on election day.

Today, the situation in Kansas is much different. Moderates are ready to take back Kansas once again. Early indications in the school board race suggest the religious right may be in for the same kind of beating they took in 2000.

We should not be surprised that surveys of public opinion on teaching creationism, intelligent design, and critical analysis, tend to show a high level of support, particularly if they are framed in terms of "teach both sides of the issue."

That frame appeals strongly to the ingrained sense of fairness that most Americans possess. However, experience shows that when voters become familiar with the real agenda of the religious right, they turn decisively against it.

A survey takes a couple of minutes to complete over the phone, but you have to live with a board of education for a number of years. And voters who live with creationists and intelligent design activists on their school boards for any period of time learn the hard way that anti-science agitation comes as part of a package.

Here in Kansas, for example, intelligent design comes bundled with charter schools, vouchers, the appointment of an education commissioner utterly unqualified to hold his job, a cavalier attitude toward the filing of expense reports, foolish statements to the media, and a mindset hostile to public education.

Intelligent design activists are hopeful that Dover, El Tejon, and Ohio will start a backlash against science education. In truth, the backlash was already well underway. Each of those decisions reflects a growing uneasiness with the consequences of the religious right's war on science.

While we see a continuing series of setbacks for ID and its variants, Scientists, educators, and supporters of science education must begin to organize for a long-lasting battle with the right. As Deborah Owens Fink points out, there are no permanent victories in politics

"The Ohio Board of Education voted 11-4 on Tuesday to delete a science standard and correlating lesson plan encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution. Critics had called the material an opening to teach intelligent design, which holds that life is so complex it must have been created by a higher authority," according to an Associated Press report by Carrie Spencer Ghose.

Check back later this morning for a fuller report on the implications of ID's third strike.

An editorial in the Hutchison News says right-wing board member Ken Willard's testimony contradicts his public actions:

Ken Willard, R-Hutchinson, cannot decide whether voters should - or should not - weigh in decisions made by the Kansas Board of Education.

Consider that last week the House Education Committee debated a bill to require the board to hire an education commissioner with educational expertise.
Willard represents District 7 on the state board. He also serves as the board's liaison to the Legislature.

So he testified against the proposal, stating that citizens elect people to the state board to make decisions on their behalf. If citizens disapprove of the board's decisions, they have the power to vote the representative from their district out of office.

That sounds reasonable enough.

Yet at a meeting last fall in Hutchinson, involving members of Reno County school boards and local educators, Willard pointedly announced that he would turn a deaf ear to criticism of the state board's decisions.

Apparently, citizens only have power to influence the state board when they go to the polling station to vote, once every four years.

No wonder Kansans have called on legislators to propose ways to limit the board's
authority.

"The Manhattan-Ogden School Board [Kansas] is set to accept a resolution Wednesday night that rejects the definition of science adopted by the state board of education in November," reports Leah Fliter, a staff writer for the Manhattan Mercury (reg. req).

"Supt. Bob Shannon will recommend that the local board approve the resolution — which was presented by a group of school district and university scientists — 'because I agree with them.'"

"The resolution endorses and states the definition of science that was developed by the Kansas Science Standards Revision Committee in March, 2005. That definition, although sanctioned by the majority of the revision team, was rejected by the state board. The board instead adopted a definition that deleted the word "natural" from the previous definition used in the state's science standards."

The move by the Manhattan-Ogden School Board is one more indication of the stiffening of resolve among moderates in Kansas to take education back from the right-wing radicals on the state board.

Just released campaign finance reports on file with the Federal Elections Commission, and reports made available earlier by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, show that on Dec. 29, 2005, just before the end of year campaign finance reporting deadline, Merilee K. Martin, a right-wing Republican, wrote 15 checks totaling $6,000. (see note below)

All of the money handed out on Dec. 29 eventually found its way into the campaign coffers of three right-wing state school board members: Connie Morris, John Bacon, and Ken Willard.

Kansas election laws limit contributions made to state school board candidates from political action committees (PACs), such as those for which Martin serves as treasurer, to a total of $500 in period leading up to the primary election, and $500 prior to the general election -- $1,000 in total.

Despite those limits, Morris, Bacon, and Willard ended up pocketing contributions of $2,000 each from the checks written by Martin that day – twice what the law allows for the entire election and four times what's allowed during the primary election cycle.

Martin is listed on documents filed with the FEC and the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission as treasurer of four PACs: the Free Academic Inquiry and Research (FAIR) Federal PAC, the Free Academic Inquiry and Research (FAIR) State PAC, the Kansas Republican Victory Fund (KRVF) Federal PAC, and the Kansas Republican Victory Fund (KRVF) State PAC.

In addition to listing Martin as treasurer, all four PACs share the same post office box – P.O. Box 626 in Topeka – with the ultra-right Kansas Republican Assembly. Martin is also listed as treasurer of the KRA. All five PACs solicit contributions on a single webpage maintained by the KRA.

The quadrupling of the allowable limits on campaign contributions to the three right-wing school board members, all of whom are up for election this year, is accomplished by funneling the money through this network of PACs.

On Dec. 29, when Martin wrote out those 15 checks, the KRVF Federal PAC, had an embarrassingly small amount of money remaining in its campaign war chest. The PAC reported just $638.60 in cash at the beginning of the reporting period, and it raised only two contributions totaling $130 during that six-month period.

That was no problem for Martin, who needed to max out Morris, Bacon and Willard – who also had trouble raising money during the period – in order to get their re-election campaigns rolling with a quick infusion of cash.

Martin simply wrote a check for $1,500 from the FAIR Federal PAC to cover the contributions she planned to make on behalf of KRVF Federal PAC.

In similar fashion, Martin wrote checks out of the FAIR Federal PAC fund to cover shortfalls in the other PACs. One check for $1,500 went to the KRVF State PAC, another $500 went to the FAIR State PAC.

The three checks Marin wrote that day to the other PACs under her control were turned immediately into contributions to Morris, Bacon, and Willard.

In effect the PACs run out of the Kansas Republican Assembly by Martin are slush funds designed to evade the Kansas election law limitations on campaign contributions to state school board candidates.

Right-wing activists may feel they can thumb their noses at the state's election laws because, in the past, reporting of contributions has been difficult to obtain in the state.

Although the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission recently took steps to improve it's campaign finance disclosure reporting, the state was ranked 39th out of the 50 states, and received a grade of F, in a 2003 study of candidate campaign finance disclosure laws conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

See Red State Rabble's previous reports on this issue here, and here. As a reader has pointed out, the total of the 15 checks written on Dec. 29 comes to more than $6,000. However, that counts the money passed from the FAIR Federal PAC through the FAIR State, KRVF Federal, and KRVF State PACS twice. As we reported, $6,000 eventually found its way into the campaign war chests of Connie Morris, John Bacon, and Ken Willard.

"Basically critical analysis is intelligent design relabeled, just as intelligent design was creationism relabeled." Patricia Princehouse, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science who has led the charge against the lesson plan. Via the New York Times.

Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times reports in this morning's edition that a "majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for 'critical analysis' in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design."

"A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge's ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional," says the Times.

Ohio state school board member Martha Wise says she will offer a motion to remove intelligent design inspired language that calls for "critical analysis" of evolution from the state's science lesson plan and science standards at today's meeting unless the board takes other action before hand.

"I probably won't attend'' any Darwin Day event anywhere, says [intelligent design activist Michael] Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. "It's not simply meant to celebrate science or Darwin. It's an in-your-face exhibition, saying, 'Look what we have on our side, and you guys who aren't with us are a bunch of dopes.''' Reported in Science and Theology News.

"There was a growing need to demonstrate that the loud, shrill voices of fundamentalists claiming that Christians had to choose between modern science and religion were presenting a false dichotomy," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the major organizer of the Clergy Letter Project. From an article on Evolution Sunday by Neela Banerjee and Anne Berryman in today's New York Times.

"In the basement of an apartment building in Evanston, Ill., the Rev. Mitchell Brown said to the 21 people who came to services at the Evanston Mennonite Church that Darwin's theories in fact had compelled people to have faith rather than look for "special effects" to confirm the existence of God," report Neela Banerjee and Anne Berryman on Evolution Sunday in today's New York Times.

"He forced religion to grow up, to become, really, faith for the first time," Mr. Brown said. "The life of community, that is where we know God today."

These days, it seems as though you can't open a paper or watch the television news without hearing some pulpit-pounding creationist or intelligent design activist declare that real Christians must decide between the Bible and evolution.

Here in Kansas, for example, school board chair Steve Abrams told a group of fundamentalist Christians that “[a]t some point in time, if you compare evolution and the Bible, you have to decide which one you believe. That’s the bottom line.”

Believers in God and evolution, according to these fundamentalists, are either atheists in disguise or theologically confused.

We're not quite sure who put the holier-than-thou crowd in charge of passing judgement on the beliefs of others, but its now clear that many Christians have grown tired of having their faith challenged -- some would say demeaned -- by those whose own faith is so fragile they find themselves compelled to demand that science be redefined in order to affirm their own peculiar set of beliefs.

Now, however, we have two significant indications that the bible beaters, despite their claims to the contrary, speak only for a narrow subset of religious believers.

The first intimation that the overweening arrogance of the fundamentalist right is beginning to grate on other Christians is the success of the Clergy Letter Project. To date, over 10,000 clergy members have signed a statement affirming that evolution is not incompatible with the Bible.

"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests," the letter reads.

"To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."

The second important development, is the growing impact of Evolution Sunday, which was celebrated in more than 400 churches around the country yesterday, marking the 197th anniversary of Darwin's birthday.

"I don't think there's a conflict between scientific discovery and what's going on in Scriptures," says Rev. Timothy Dombek, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Greenville, N.C. whose church took part in Evolution Sunday. "I think we're speaking of two different things, two different kinds of truths, and one doesn't negate the other."

Evolution Sunday was so successful, and poses such a serious challenge to the intelligent design movement's "Wedge" strategy of branding all supporters of science education as atheists, that the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog was forced to respond to it:

“Evolution Sunday is the height of hypocrisy,” says Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute. “Why do Darwinists think it is not okay for people to criticize Darwin on religious grounds, but it is just fine to defend him on religious grounds?”

As all RSR readers are aware, "Darwinists" have no problem with people criticizing evolution. We just don't want religion taught as science to school children. Chapman has made a very highly paid career out of criticizing evolution on religious grounds, and, so far as we're aware, no one has made any effort at all to stop him.

It is the biblical literalists, of both the creationist and intelligent design species, who have a problem -- a big one -- with Christians who accept the fact of evolution.

Moderate Kansas School Board member Carol Rupe, a good church-going Episcopalian, for example, has been branded as an atheist because she opposes introducing intelligent design into the curriculum. Rupe says of her experience:

"There has been the implication that those of us who want the true science standards taught must be atheists, because otherwise we wouldn't want that. But the whole idea that you can't be a person of faith and want good science is just ridiculous."

Likewise, in Dover, moderate school board member, physics teacher, and Kitzmiller plaintiff Brian Rehm, who is also a Bible school teacher, was labeled "an atheist" because he opposed efforts to introduce intelligent design into the curriculum there.

If intelligent design activists were just a bit wiser, they'd be more worried about Chapman's tendency to get things backwards. That's because the sharp edge of their wedge strategy may be pointed not at science but intelligent design itself. ID's wedge was designed to split Christians off from science. Instead, it appears to be splitting fundamentalists from mainstream Christians.

The Ohio School Board is expected to discuss state science standards, which include a controversial lesson plan that scientists and educators describe as a "pointed attempt to insert old and discredited creationist content in Ohio’s science classrooms," when it meets tomorrow.

In January, the board vote 9-8 not to re-open debate on the standards, which were first adopted in December 2002 and include an intelligent design inspired critical analysis statement that singles out the theory of biological evolution.

Since the January vote, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who appoints eight of the 19 members on the school board, has suggested the board seek a legal opinion about whether the state could be open to a lawsuit over its standards.

In addition, on February 7, 23 of the 32 members of the board's Science Standards Advisory Committee wrote a letter to the governor recommending repeal of the creationist and intelligent design influenced portions of the science standards and lesson plans.

Here's the text of their letter:

Dear Governor Taft:

In 2001 Superintendent of Public Education Dr. Susan Tave Zelman asked us to serve on a committee to advise in the preparation of Ohio’s K-12 science content standards.

The Ohio Board of Education accepted those standards in December 2002. The Board, however, added an indicator-benchmark singling out biological evolution from the rest of science by requiring students to “describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.”

Many of us warned then that in singling out this one scientific theory that has historically been opposed by certain religious sects, the Board sent the message that it “believes there is some problem peculiar to evolution.” This message was unwarranted scientifically and pedagogically. We also noted that such wording created an opportunity to teach creationist misrepresentations of science to Ohio’s students. Indeed, such a lesson tied to this indicator was prepared and accepted by the Ohio Board of Education in March 2004.

Within the last six weeks Federal Judge John E. Jones III has determined that similarly motivated efforts by the Dover, PA school board are unconstitutional. At the same time the Ohio Department of Education released documents associated with the development of this lesson.

These show that ODE’s own staff scientists repeatedly called portions of this lesson “a lie,” “wrong,” “inaccurate,” “oversimplified” and based on references they described as “highly religious,” “horrible,” and “non-scientific.” One reference was an outright creationist fabrication.

Our own review of the lesson finds it to be a pointed attempt to insert old and discredited creationist content in Ohio’s science classrooms. The pedagogy is weak at best, of negative, misleading and debilitating educational value. This lesson is devoid of scientific thinking or the scientific method. It is wholly without merit. And while the lesson’s authors assiduously avoided using the words “intelligent” and “design,” the lesson embodies intelligent design creationism poorly concealed in scientific sounding jargon. Such cheap ploys are a disservice to Ohio’s children and an insult to the intelligence of its good citizens. Nonetheless, this lesson, along with the associated science indicator, has passed because of overwhelming support by your appointees to the Ohio Board of Education.

Documents released by your office show that a member of the Ohio Board of Education worked “behind the scenes” and made threats “to bring the state down” on your office and the Board if this indicator-benchmark-lesson combination was not supported. The ODE documents show this threat was carried out and was effective.

Governor Taft, we compliment for your recent support of science-only standards and Model Curricula for Ohio’s children. Thank you for your efforts to improve education in Ohio and for all the efforts and hope you have placed in the “Third Frontier” and development of a high technology economy in Ohio, especially in the broad areas of biotechnology. However, we cannot envision how such development efforts can succeed when such blatant attempts to misuse and subvert the quality of public education in Ohio are permitted to stand.

Hear Harvard Biologist E.O. Wilson on "Darwin and Dover" on PRI's Open Source: A public radio show with Christopher Lydon. Originally broadcast Dec. 21st (but we missed it first time around.)

In the interview, Wilson says he believes intelligent design reached its high water mark with President Bush's endorsement of teaching ID. While the battle will go on, as it has since the publication of Origin of the Species, believes Wilson, its unlikely that ID will make much headway.

"If they think we are wrong, take us to court," says Ohio School Board member Michael Cochran.

But, an editorial in The Columbia Dispatch says that Cochran's attitude cavalierly puts Ohio taxpayers "on the hook for the legal costs such a lawsuit would entail."

Tellingly, 24 members from the committee that advised the state school board on the science standards back in 2001 have told Taft that the offending section ought to be removed.

They aren't Darwinist crusaders, as intelligent-design supporters say derisively; they are among the most respected scientific minds in the state. And this is not akin to censorship; it's a matter of intellectual honesty.

For the good of Ohioans and the reputation of this state, the governor should urge school-board members to do the right and honest thing.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." Charles Darwin, From the introduction to The Descent of Man.

The trend line for the Discovery Institute, the highly-caffeinated intelligent design think tank on the shores of Puget Sound, continues its shocking downward plummet.

First, there was last December's court ruling in Dover, Penn. that teaching intelligent design in public schools violates the Constitution's guarantee of the separation of church and state. Then the El Tejon school board out in California, under threat of a losing a lawsuit brought by a group of parents there, backed away from proselytizing for creationism and intelligent design in a philosophy class.

And now, to top it all off, Pope Benedict, the source of much early hope among ID activists, now says, according to Reuters, that science has made such rapid progress in the 20th century that people may sometimes be confused about how the Christian faith can still be compatible with it.

But science and religion are not opposed to each other and Christians should not be afraid to try to understand how they compliment each other in explaining the mystery of life on Earth, he told the Vatican's doctrinal department.

The Pope made his comments at a time of heated debate, mostly in the United States, about intelligent design arguments challenging evolution. A Pennsylvania court ruled in December that intelligent design could not be taught as science in school.

"The Church joyfully accepts the real conquests of human knowledge and recognizes that spreading the Gospel also means really taking charge of the prospects and the challenges that modern knowledge unlocks," he said.

The Pope's statement is particularly difficult for Discovery because their Wedge Document calls evolutionary theory incompatible with Western Christianity. And, the ID playbook calls for branding all Christians who accept evolution as atheists.

After reading news reports of the Pope's statement that modern science and Christianity are indeed compatible, some young staffers at the Discovery Institute -- RSR has not been able to confirm persistent rumors that it was Casey Luskin -- reportedly drafted a post for Discovery's Evolution News and Views blog denouncing the Pope as an atheist.

Our sources inform us that, in the end, cooler heads prevailed. A threat by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to cut off funding if the post was published may have been a factor in Discovery's decision.

Other sources tell us the issue isn't completely settled and there is still some back-channel discussion with televangelist Pat Robertson about reviving the old fundamentalist charge that the Pope is the Antichrist, perhaps through one of Robertson's now famous statements on the "700 Club."

Fearing that the Pontiff's statement might cause confusion over Discovery's "teach the controversy" slogan, by suggesting that the controversy is not between Christians and atheists, but between Christians themselves, the public relations wizards at Discovery have set down their iced caramel macchiatos long enough to write a memo suggesting that the ID think tank distance itself from the slogan and adopt one that more accurately sums up the current situation.

A plan to quietly drop the "teach the controversy," slogan, according to our sources, is now in the works. According to these insiders, a plan to publish "teach the controversy' one last time on William Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog and then have DaveScot delete the post, has won the support of the majority of staffers.

The only difficulty, according to our sources, has been coming up with a replacement slogan.

Here's RSR's suggestion: "I'm havin' a baaad day."

David Oliphant, an architect, has entered the 3rd District race for Kansas Board of Education, according to David Klepper of the Kansas City Star. Oliphant says the recent controversy over the teaching of evolution convinced him to run.

Oliphant, 47, said he objects to last year’s board decision to incorporate criticism of evolution into the state science standards. He said that’s a decision that should be left to local school districts.

Retired science teacher Harry McDonald, a former president of Kansas Citizens for Science has already announced he is running in the Republican primary for the seat now held by incumbent board member and intelligent design supporter John Bacon.

Don Weiss, a Democrat, is also running for his party's nomination.

Incumbent John Bacon has not yet announced his intention to run, but has accepted campaign contributions from right-wing PACs affiliated with the Kansas Republican Assembly.

Thanks to the "intelligent design" movement, Charles Darwin's birthday is evolving into everything from a badminton party to church sermons this weekend. From an AP wirestory picked up by the Topeka Capitol Journal (reg. req.)

When Hesiod, that wise man of ancient Greece, looked back into the dim recesses of time he thought he could discern five great ages of human history: the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Heroic Age, and Iron Age.

RSR, though not nearly so wise as Hesiod, believes we are now living through a new era: the Irony Age. One of the key characteristics of the Irony Age is the turning of fact into fiction, and fiction into fact. We've commented here repeatedly over the past year about the ID movement's conflation of science with dogma and dogma with science.

Now there's been a striking parallel development in the popular culture that may, in the end, become one of those memorable little events that, when we look back from the future, turn out to be one of the defining events of this new Age of Irony.

Just a few short weeks ago, James Frey, author of the best-selling memoir -- and Oprah Book Club selection -- A Million Little Pieces, was publicly taken to task by Oprah on national television for having passed off his highly fictionalized account of addiction and recovery as a work of non-fiction.

"My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret," Frey later wrote in an author's note to be included in future editions of the book, "is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience."

Yesterday, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists announced it will present its annual journalism award to novelist Michael Crichton for two books, State of Fear and Jurassic Park, at the group's annual convention in Houston in April.

Crichton's latest techno-thriller, State of Fear, casts environmentalists who call attention to the dangers of climate change as terrorists. Crichton's tree-hugging Al Qaeda conspire to calve a giant iceberg from the Antarctic continent; generate terrible storms and flash floods in the US; and trigger a Pacific tidal wave.

State of Fear will undoubtedly convince many who are unfamiliar with the overwhelming evidence that the case for global warming is weak. In an appendix to the novel, Crichton warns of the dangers of politicized science.

Go ahead and say we have no taste, but we like Chrichton. We've passed any number of cosy, rainy-day afternoons reading, with guilty pleasure, his fast-paced thrillers, including the two that won the Petroleum Geologist's journalism award, Jurassic Park and State of Fear. Like other reviewers, however, we find his one-dimensional characters less than convincing.

Red State Rabble feels a bit under-qualified to write with any confidence about climate change, but, as a writer with an advanced degree in English -- and a personal history we'll reveal in a moment -- we have no such compunction about analyzing the characters Crichton has created in his mind to stand in for environmentalists in State of Fear.

Crichton opens his novel with the assassination Jonathan Marshall, a graduate student in physics who works at the "ultra-modern Laboratoire Ondulatoire -- a wave mechanics laboratory -- of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris."

Crichton describes the woman, an environmental activist, who lures Marshall to her apartment in order to extract information before killing him with an exotic poison, as having "dark skin, high cheekbones, and black hair, she might have been a model. And she strutted like a model in her short skirt and spike heels."

At that point, we were only a couple of paragraphs into the novel, but Crichton had already lost us. The novel's verisimilitude had been shattered into a million little pieces. We found ourselves utterly unable to suspend our sense of disbelief from that point on.

That's because, in our formative years, RSR dated any number of environmentalists, radical feminists. and other assorted do-gooders. Many of these women, like Crichton's assassin, were quite good looking. Better, they were interesting and exciting to be around. Some wore hiking boots, and some wore Birkenstocks. Some wore ballet flats. We've even known environmentalists who wore Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals. But anyone who knows anything about the environmental movement knows you'd never catch any self-respecting tree-hugger in spike heels.

Crichton's inability to create multi-dimensional characters, which is demonstrated beyond any doubt by his clumsy caricature of environmentalists as terrorists, provides a mirror with which to examine the weaknesses in his argument that global warming is a dangerous fraud. It doesn't take long to conclude that neither are believable.

Like Frey, Crichton has constructed characters, and a case against the science of global warming, that exist only in the author's mind. We now have fiction as memoir, and fiction as journalism. To our way of thinking, neither works.

In the writing seminars RSR used to attend as a graduate student, we talked of writing fiction as a way of getting at deeper truths. The problem with Frey and Crichton is that they've turned this process on its head. Each has held up a mirror, not to show us the world as it really is, but as they wish it was. And, in doing so, each has entered into an abusive relationship with their craft.

"A proposal targeting evolution survived its toughest challenge Wednesday when it eked out of a House committee by one vote," reports Matt Canham of the Salt Lake Tribune. "

"SB96, which requires teachers to say the state doesn't endorse any theory involving the "origins of species," needs only the support of the full House to pass the Legislature after gaining approval by the House Education Committee 7-6. "

"The bill is the brainchild of Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who is disgusted that some educators teach that humans have a common ancestor with chimpanzees. "

John C. Drake of the Associated Press reports that a meeting called to hash out differences over how evolution is taught in S.C. classrooms ended in disagreement Wednesday.

"It's time to vote it up or down," said Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum, who refused to offer anymore concessions to lawmakers [Rep. Bob Walker, R-Landrum, and Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville] who want the state's biology standards changed.

... Tenenbaum rejected the notion of "teaching the controversy" about evolution in biology classrooms across the state. She said doing so would imply that there is an alternative theory to evolution with as much support in the scientific community as Darwin's theory.

She said there is not, prompting applause from several biologists attending the meeting.

Robert Stephens, retired head of cell biology for SRI International in Menlo Park, started a group to promote Darwin Day in 2000. He expects about 600 celebrations this year, three times more than last year.

The Darwin Day website list of worldwide events can be found at www.darwinday.org.

Among other listed events is this one: Starting at midnight Saturday, scientists and celebrities in Hollywood plan to read The Origin of Species on stage in its entirety. They're expected to finish sometime late Sunday afternoon.

“We want to discredit Darwinism,” Johnson told students at Campbell University in Bules Creek, N.C. on Tuesday, Feb. 7. “This theory has had an enormous impact on secularization because it eliminates the Creator. We thought that if the theory of evolution was cast into doubt, it would have a big cultural impact, just as it did when it was discovered.

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education describes evolution as a Darwinian tree of many branches stemming to a common ancestor. Creationism, she says, is a lawn with equal blades of grass.

We all laughed when televangelist Pat Robertson took a short break from exhorting the faithful to send money in order to warn the long suffering residents of Dover not to seek God's help if disaster struck their area.

We can't help but think that a slow-moving disaster really has struck Dover and the cause is God. Or more accurately, people who hear God's angry voice speaking to them through the random snap and hiss of old eight track tapes, who answer Him aloud in dark, empty rooms, and know, really know what He wants.

Job-like, the poor people of Dover have endured the breathtaking inanity of the previous school board, a bitter election to reclaim that board from the religious fanatics who'd taken it over, and a difficult six-week trial.

With the election of a new moderate board, they might have been forgiven for believing that the trials and tribulations visited on them by the bible beaters was, at long last, over.

They were wrong.

Now, Kent Hovind and Repent America are descending on Dover like a plague of locusts. God may be merciful. We don't know. But the religious right, the creationists, the intelligent design theorists are Old Testament to the core. The secular Sodom must be punished and, if God won't send a tornado, an earthquake, a great fire, something, anything... well, they'll just have to supply it themselves.

For the long-suffering residents of Dover, ID must seem like the Energiser Bunny of disasters. It keeps going, and going, and ...

"Critics of evolution cite scientific debates to undercut Darwin's credibility. That strategy fails when research clears up some of the issues. Results from two separate research projects announced this week make that point," observes Robert C. Cowen of the Christian Science Monitor.

• They found their proof in Nicaragua's isolated volcanic crater Lake Apoyo. There, two species of cichlid fish — Midas cichlid and Arrow cichlid — live together. Detailed genetic, morphological, and ecological study confirms their relationship as separate species that evolved from a common ancestor. They live separate lives in the same geographical space. Misas feeds along the bottom. Arrow exploits the open water. The two do not interbreed.

• Vincent Stavolainen at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and nine fellow scientists find what they call "clear support" for Darwin's idea in palm trees on Lord Howe Island 600 miles east of Australia. Two species of the trees live side by side. The scientists find it "highly unlikely" that they evolved while geographically separated. There is strong reason to conclude that they evolved from a common ancestor without geographical separation

From an editorial by Robert Gropp, director of Public Policy at the American Institute of Biological Sciences:

High-profile attacks on evolution education, such as those in Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have rallied scientists. All too often, these attempts to redefine science have resulted from a perception among political activists that the science and education communities lack the organization and sophistication to fend off their efforts. Moreover, these political attacks have been made possible by the inadequate public understanding of what does and does not constitute science. Thus, the political interests behind the intelligent design/creationism movement have been able to prompt the formation of coalitions of activists.

Introductory biology courses are an excellent forum for university faculty to improve the understanding of science among future teachers, scientists, and college graduates. However, only a fraction of the public attends college, and only a fraction of these individuals take a biology course. Thus, biologists must continue to participate in myriad informal science education initiatives that reach the general public. Museums and other science centers provide excellent means to reach the public, yet those who visit these institutions are often not the individuals in greatest need of an improved understanding of science. Other means to reach the public must be pursued.

Discovery Institute fellow Paul Nelson, a faculty member in the Science and Religion program at Biola University will lecture on “Challenges to Darwin’s Tree of Life,” at Eastern Kentucky University’s Chautauqua Lecture Series tonight.

“I’m anxious for the students to hear him because a lot of social issues are going to be brought up.” says Dr. Bruce MacLaren, the program director of the EKL's Chautauqua series who asked Nelson to speak.

So, now we know, the challenges to Darwin's Tree of Life are social, not scientific.

Jeff Hecht of New Scientist reports that "palaeontologists have extracted soft, flexible structures that appear to be blood vessels from the bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex that died 68 million years ago.

"They also have found small red microstructures that resemble red blood cells.
The discovery suggests biological information can be recovered from a wider range of fossil material than realised, which would greatly help the tracing of evolutionary relationships."

Oops: As you'll see from the comment below, RSR should have looked a little more closely at the date on this item. In fact, we posted on this about a year ago, and from our reading -- and perhaps faulty memory -- thought we were reading an update of the original notice. In fact, as the reader notes, the reported finding is controversial, and has been commented on extensively in other forums, including Pandas Thumb.

The following Kansas Churches will will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science on February 12, Evolution Sunday:

• St. Paul Lutheran Church Herington, KS The Rev. Alix Pridgen
• Plymouth Congregational Church (UCC) Lawrence, KS Peter Luckey, Senior Pastor
• Pilgrim United Church of Christ Leavenworth, KS The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth J. Nicks
• New Jerusalem Church (Swedenborgian) Pretty Prairie, KS The Rev. Jane Siebert
• Trinity Presbyterian Church Topeka, KS The Rev. Shelley Craig, Pastor
• Unity Church of Christianity Topeka, KS The Rev. Michael Jamison

A statement issued by the churches, which included 412 Congregations from 49 states as of February 3, states:

For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science. More than 10,000 Christian clergy have already signed The Clergy Letter demonstrating that this is a false dichotomy. Now, on the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, many of these leaders will bring this message to their congregations through sermons and discussion groups.

Together, participating religious leaders will be making the statement that religion and science are not adversaries. And, together, they will be elevating the quality of the national debate on this topic.

Lat October, Hunter Rawlings, Cornell's interim president, made a strong statement decrying "the challenge to science posed by religiously-based opposition to evolution is described in its current form as 'intelligent design.'" He added, "This controversy raises profound questions about the nature of public discourse and what we teach in universities, and it has a profound effect on public policy."

Rawlings statement seems to have had a profound effect at Cornell as evidenced by the schedule for Darwin Day:

Thursday, Feb. 9 -- "Where Do We Go From Here? The Future of Darwinism in American Society," at the Museum of the Earth, 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. This panel discussion, moderated by Cornell Provost Biddy Martin, will examine the impact of the recent Dover decision on the future of Darwinism. Panelists include Cornell faculty members Barbara Crawford, Sheila Ann Dean, Bruce Lewenstein, and Steven Shiffrin; and Janet Shortall, associate director of Cornell United Religious Works. Seating is limited, call (607) 273-6623, extension 33 for tickets.

Friday, Feb. 10 -- "Evolutionary Biology: Present and Future," Uris Hall Auditorium, Cornell campus, 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Moderated by Stephen Kresovich, vice provost for life sciences with Cornell faculty members Richard Harrison, Amy McCune, Kern Reeve, Steve Tanksley and Mariana Wolfner.

Friday, Feb. 10 -- "Inherit the Wind" (1960) Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Dick York, Harry Morgan, Claude Akins and Norman Fell star in this classic film based on the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, a case about a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution. Warren Hall Auditorium, Cornell campus. 7 p.m - 9p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 11 -- "Evolution and Creationism: An Educator's Guide to Evolution," Ray VanHoutte Classroom, Museum of the Earth, Noon-1 p.m. PRI director Warren Allmon will present the Natural History at Noon lecture.

Saturday, Feb. 11 -- Darwin-related family activities that will engage visitors through games and demonstrations, utilizing museum exhibits and live specimens, including snakes courtesy of the Cayuga Nature Center. Museum of the Earth, 1 p.m.-4 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 12 -- Special advance screening of the new film, "Flock of Dodos: the Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus," (2006) Filmmaker and biologist Randy Olson's new documentary probes the great communication struggle between evolution and intelligent design being waged in today's mainstream media. Olson will introduce the film and hold a discussion after the showing in David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, Cornell campus, 7-9 p.m. Free.

Monday, Feb. 13 -- "Evolution -- Why Bother?" a feature film made by the National Association of Biology Teachers. Panel discussion with Ithaca College faculty follows the film. Clark Lounge, Egbert Hall, Ithaca College. 3 p.m.-5 p.m.

The Kansas Association of Teachers of Science has adopted the following resolution on the adoption of the 2005 Kansas Science Standards:

KATS resolves that:

• Kansas teachers of science should continue to teach science as it is practiced throughout the world, and not attribute natural phenomena to supernatural causation;
• Kansas teachers of science should explore with their students the extensive evidence for evolutionary theory and actively refute the so-called evidence against evolution, as outlined in the new science standards;
• The Kansas Association of Teachers of Science recognizes that the KSBE is exhibiting educational irresponsibility in ignoring mainstream scientific understandings by substituting its own religiously motivated agenda;
• State assessments should not include items related to the disputed portions of the 2005 Standards, as these statements do not reflect the global view of the science community;
• The KSBE should reconsider the inclusion of non-scientific ideas about the origins and development of life in order not to damage the prospects for student admission to high-quality colleges and universities;
• The KSBE should be aware that their anti-science actions are indirect conflict with the recent Kansas Bioscience Initiative.

Be it further resolved, that the Board of Directors of the Kansas Association of Teachers of Science (KATS) does not support and disassociates itself from these Kansas Science Education Standards (2005) as approved by the Kansas State Board of Education and recommends continued use of the 2001 Standards for curriculum development and assessment.

"It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator ... [emphasis added, RSR]

"This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

The immortal words of George C. Deutsch, the once and former public information officer at NASA, who attempted to control public statements by NASA scientists. His qualifications for the job? He was a Bush campaign worker. He also claimed to have a degree from Texas A&M.

But, like so many other ID activists, it turns out he is a liar. He never graduated.

Now, he's resigned, perhaps to become another victim to be placed in the Discovery book of martyrs. The would be censor who had to resign because he wouldn't tell the truth about his degree (and couldn't tell truth from a turnip.)

The story first broke, here.

Jim Provance of the Toledo Blade reports that critics of Ohio's science lesson plan which contains a controversial lesson plan drafted by intelligent design activists are hoping recent comments by Gov. Bob Taft will convince regulators to pull the controversial language next week:

"The governor thinks evolution should be taught and tested," said Taft spokesman Mark Rickel. "He's OK with the standards as written. They do not mandate teaching intelligent design.

"He said the [state Board of Education] should have its attorneys look at the lesson plan in light of the Dover case," Mr. Rickel said. "He's not aware of what the lesson plan calls for."

Scientists, educators, and supporters of science education hope the presence of two members who were absent in January, plus Mr. Taft's more recent rhetoric, will result in a different outcome when the board meets again on Feb. 14.

At the Discovery Institute, they say what they'd do:

We should encourage schools to teach better science and to teach more about evolution, [emphasis added, RSR] including the gaps and controversies surrounding evolution. We should not be afraid to teach children what we know and what we have not yet discovered in science, and we should certainly not deny our children the truth about controversies surrounding science. By teaching the controversy, we remain true to science and yet sensitive to the ideas and interests of parents and children.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports challenges to Darwinian evolutionary theory, praised the Kansas effort. “Students will learn more about evolution, not less as some Darwinists have falsely claimed,” institute spokesman Casey Luskin said in a written statement. [emphasis added, RSR]

So, when ID proponents, like Caroline Crocker, are in charge of the classroom do they do what they say? Do they really teach more about evolution?

Before the class, Crocker had told me that she was going to teach "the strengths and weaknesses of evolution." Afterward, I asked her whether she was going to discuss the evidence for evolution in another class. She said no.

"There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution," Crocker said.

The American Geological Institute has produced an interactive map that allows users to click on any state in yellow to read the details of how evolution is being challenged in classrooms, school districts and state legislatures across the country.

You can use the interactive features of the map on the AGI website.

The AGI notes that the "teaching of evolution in schools has long been a contentious topic, particularly among evangelical Christians who make up the so-called "religious right." They believe that it is narrow minded to exclude "alternative theories of human existence" by not exposing children to creationism in science classes. Periodically, the issue is raised to the state legislative level, but through the efforts of concerned citizens and scientific organizations, the efforts of creationists to remove the topic of evolution or to include creationist dogma in science standards and textbooks have been contained."

"In God's book, the Bible, he says we can know him by his creation," writes Albert R. Boynton of Whitefield in the Kennebec (Maine) Journal. "At least 80 percent of scientists now believe in intelligent design, and some don't even know the designer."

The nice thing about being a supporter of intelligent design is that if the facts aren't on your side, you can just make them up.

"Duke University biologists have evolved a complex trait in the laboratory -- using the pressure of selection to induce tobacco hornworms to evolve the dual trait of turning black or green depending on the temperature during their development," according to a report in Medical News Today. "The biologists have also demonstrated the basic hormonal mechanism underlying the evolution of such dual traits."

"Their experiments, they said, offer important insight into how complex traits involving many genes can abruptly "blossom" in an organism's evolution."

"Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a plan Tuesday that would ban public schools [in Wisconsin] from teaching intelligent design as science, saying "pseudo-science" should have no place in the classroom," according to Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press.

"Our children must be exposed to what science really is about and how the scientific enterprise functions, free of political or religious connotations," said Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison at a news conference where she was flanked by Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, and University of Wisconsin-Madison professors. "It is designed to prevent the introduction of pseudo-science in the science classroom."

Author Michael Ruse will lecture on the creation-evolution debate at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15 in the University of North Carolina -- Wilmington in the Warwick Center Ballroom.

The lecture is free and open to the public. It is being sponsored by the UNCW Honors Scholars Program in collaboration with the departments of earth sciences, history, philosophy and religion, English and psychology.

For more information regarding the event, contact Bo Dean at 910-962-4181.

Tom Chase, has a background in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, he writes for Welcome to Planet Earth, an astrology magazine, and he has a theory about the ValueJet airliner that crashed into the Everglades near Miami in 1996.

Using astrology and New Age techniques to analyze the disaster, Chase has concluded there is an astrological connection between the fire that brought down the Valujet airliner, and the fire that burned down the Atlanta home of Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind.

The asteroid Vesta, writes Chase, is connected with fire, and Vesta was trine (120 degrees) to the moon on May 11, although, he is careful to note, not at the same time of day as the crash. The fire at the Mitchell house occurred on May 12, but let's not go into that, either.

And, that's not all. There are other connections, as well. A suspected cause of the fire was the transport of unlabeled oxygen canisters in the jet's cargo hold. And, as Chase points out, one of the names of Satan is "Prince of Power of the Air" and oxygen generators, are a kind of "power of the air."

Chase also sees a connection to secret codes written in the Bible:

… [O]ne way to analyze numbers is to consider that in the languages of the Bible, Greek and Hebrew, each letter is also a number. Totalling (sic) these numbers, you can associate each word with a number. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, "Jesus" totals to 888, which is interesting because the "number of the Beast" (a Satanic number) in Revelation 13 of the Bible is 666. If you multiply 888 x .666= 591.4 or about 592, the flight number. The Beast is supposed to be a Satanic imitation of Christ that rises out of the sea ("sea of world politics") -- a beast from the sea, like an alligator in the Everglades.

The real power of Tom Chase's astrological and New Age analytical techniques, it seems, is that they allow us to understand that Satan can be both a "power of the air" and a "beast from the sea" all at the same time.

There is a name for this condition. It is apophenia, the perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, an internationally known figure in the field of neuropsychology and psychopathology at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, who died in 1961. Conrad defined apophenia as the unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.

Why is all this a matter of interest to the readers of Red State Rabble who come here chiefly, we assume, out of concern about attacks on science education by creationists and intelligent design advocates?

Well, because a review of The Fated Sky: Astrology in History in the Sunday New York Times Book Review by Dick Teresi claims that, "… superstring theorists insist they will reconcile the lumpy, acausal quatum world with the smooth determinism of relativity; and neo-Darwinists emphasize natural selection, a god-like mechanism that sorts through mutations and chooses only the optimal one. To them, every feather, fetlock and pubic hair bristles with meaning."

Teresi, the author of Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science – From the Babylonians to the Maya and a former editor of Omni magazine, claims, in other words, that "neo-Darwinists" suffer from apophenia.

In statistics, apophenia is characterized as a Type 1 error: seeing patterns in meaningless data. And, Teresi makes a explicit connection between Type 1 errors and string theory, neo-Darwinism, cosmology, economics, and God.

What Teresi does not make explicit is his own attraction to intelligent design. In an article written for In Character, a publication of the Templeton Foundation, he wrote:

… some sciences defy falsification. Cosmology and evolutionary biology are but two. You can’t recreate a big bang or evolve a new species in the lab. Here in the modern age, we are supposed to construct a firewall between science and religion. In my search for purpose in science, however, I found myself drawn to purpose in religion as well. For most of human history, religion and science have been inextricably bound, and, in fact, science and math were actually subservient to religion.

In the same article, Teresi goes on to laud intelligent design proponent Michael Behe:

… Behe is straightforward about his own purpose: “I am a Roman Catholic. There is an overarching purpose to human life – to be in communion with God, to live a moral life, and to go to heaven and be with God forever.”He is a proponent of ID, intelligent design, which holds that the universe was built by an intelligent designer, probably God. Like many other IDers, he doesn’t think the world was built in a week, and he believes that evolution took place and that natural selection probably played a role, but that natural selection can’t explain everything.

I’ve seen Behe debate Darwinists and neo-Darwinists, and he more than holds his ground.

To make the argument that it is the neo-Darwinists, and not intelligent design activists, who suffer from apophenia, Teresi has to ignore Behe's recent – and rather inconvenient – connection to the science of astrology in testimony at the Dover intelligent design trial.

Question: And using your definition, intelligent design is a scientific theory, correct?

Answer: Yes.

Q: Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

A: Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that -- which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other -- many other theories as well.

Q: The ether theory of light has been discarded, correct?

A: That is correct.

Q: But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?

A: Yes, that's correct…

There are other links between intelligent design and astrology, as well. Read for example Ed Brayton's recent posts on his Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog. Brayton recounts, in hilarious fashion, the mysterious appearance and rather sudden disappearance and subsequent reappearance of an Indian Astrologer on Uncommon Descent, the blog of intelligent design theorist William Dembski.

Teresi must also skip over the connection between intelligent design activists Phillip Johnson and William Dembski and the bible code hoax -- which holds such deep meaning for our friend Tom Chase -- of a few years back.

In the late 90s, a series of books claimed to have used statistical methods to detect hidden messages planted by God in the Bible. The bible code hoax remains a fascinating study in human credulity, but, as this post is already far too long, RSR will simply refer readers who want to learn more to these excellent resources:

Hidden Messages and The Bible Code by Dave Thomas in the Skeptical Inquirer

Scientific Refutation of the Bible codes by Brendan McCay

Mathematicians Statement on the Bible Codes

Both Johnson and Dembski wrote favorable reviews of Cracking the Bible Code, a book touting the existence of a hidden code concealed in the Bible, by Jeffrey Satinover. In a 1998 review written for First Things, Dembski wrote:

At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated ("irreducibly complex") biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.

The relevant statistical methodology is identical for both fields. As a result, the two fields stand to profit from each other.

After recommending Satinover's book in a 1997 review, also published in First Things, Johnson first laid out the case now taken up by Teresi:

Evolutionary biology, whether practiced by strict materialists, theists, or Aristotelian teleologists, bears a striking resemblance to alchemy.

Teresi's assertion that evolution is not falsifiable is wrong. All it would take to falsify evolution, is the discovery of a rock strata containing the fossilized remains of both humans and dinosaurs – or any combination of species that the theory explains as being separated by millions of years of evolution. This has yet to happen.

Evolution might also be falsified by the discovery of an island, such as the one envisioned in King Kong, where the 99.9 percent of species now extinct might still be found alive.

If believers Behe, Johnson, and Dembski are correct about the role of God and the Bible, evolution might also be falsified if Jesus, bearing a flaming silver sword in his right hand, rode a snow-white stallion across the sky. God was immanent then, why not now?

Of course RSR, condemned as always to play the skeptic, will insist the event be witnessed by believers and non-believers alike. Tortillas or grilled cheese sandwiches bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary just won't get it.

The fact is, there is a direct link between astrology, the bible codes, and intelligent design, and it can be found equally in the perception of meaning in the relationship of the stars, the belief in a hidden code in the Bible, and the inference of design in the structure of DNA. All appeal to the credulous, the gullible, and to those who want more than anything else, to believe that some outside force – God or the stars -- must give meaning and purpose to their lives.

The curious and the courageous among us will have to make do with evidence-based science. It may not be as flashy, but it appeals to those who understand that the real means of investing our lives with meaning and purpose are to be found, not in the heavens above, but right down here on the ground, in the human heart and mind.

" ... [H]onest Christians, intelligent design proponents, and believers in creation understand that the Bible says that creation is a matter of faith (Hebrews 11:3). However, we observe evidence, not proof, that creation is logically probable, writes pastor Tim Kuske.

"The overwhelming science, facts, and knowledge that scientists have uncovered show, for example: that animals do not change. Created life does divide into breeds, but not one animal has evolved.

"A god who could create the complexities of evolution could certainly create the world in the time that he designated in the Bible. A god who could communicate amazing amounts of information in DNA should also be able to communicate clearly and accurately through words in the Bible. Quit being so illogical. Believe God or choose evolution.

"Logical evolutionary scientists laugh at your double-minded delusions, 'evolutionary Christians.'"

Guess those 10,000 religious leaders who signed the Clergy Letter Project are deluded. Here's their statement:

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

Derek Briggs, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Cambridge, Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and curator in charge of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum will speak Friday, Feb. 10 at 7:00 pm in Pappert Lecture Hall in the Bayer Learning Center on "The Cambrian explosion - the evidence of the fossil record."

Here's the abstract for Dr. Briggs' lecture:

The fossils of the Cambrian include the earliest examples of most of the major groups of modern animals, from arthropods to vertebrates, and therefore provide critical evidence of the timing and nature of the early evolution of metazoans (many-celled animals) – the Cambrian explosion.

While the fossil record is dominated by hard parts (mineralized shells, bones and teeth) Cambrian rocks yield an unusually high number of deposits that also preserve soft-bodied animals, representatives of those groups like worms that are normally lost through decay but which nonetheless form the major portion of marine communities.

Most famous of these sites of exceptional preservation are the Lower Cambrian localities around Chengjiang in Yunnan Province in China (525 mya), and the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia (510 mya).

The preceding Ediacaran Period, which dates from 630 mya to the base of the Cambrian at 542 mya, yields a range of remarkable forms known as vendobionts as well as other unusual organisms which are early representatives of lineages leading to the modern groups. The Ediacaran Period is also yielding an increasing number of remarkably preserved embryos, particularly from the 570 my old Duoshantou Formation of China, evidence of how early animals developed.

Briggs' lecture will describe recent discoveries of Cambrian fossils and explain their significance. It will explain how animals become preserved in the rocks and how the evidence of the fossils of the Ediacaran and the Cambrian Periods can be analysed to reveal the nature of the Cambrian explosion.

"Rodney Stark, sociology and religion author, will speak at Vanderbilt four times starting Feb. 14 as the first Templeton Research Fellow. The lecture series, funded by a $270,000 grant from the Matanexus Institute, will allow scholarly exchange between religious and scientific thinkers over the next three years at Vanderbilt," according to Blake Farmer of the Nashville City Paper.

Intelligent design, sometimes called scientific creationism, suggests a creator played a role in some part of the evolution of life, usually the origin of life itself. [Richard] Haglund [a Vanderbilt physics professor] said that theory is impossible to test scientifically. Thus, many scholars believe that a good scientist cannot be devoutly religious. Virtually a unanimous consensus among Vanderbilt science faculty would admit that intelligent design fails as a scientific theory, Haglund said.

Phillip Johnson, the father of intelligent design theory, continues his speaking tour of major academic and scientific research institutions with a Feb. 8 appearance at Campbell University in Bules Creek, North Carolina.

The FAQ section of the Campbell website notes: "the purpose of Campbell University arises out of three basic theological and Biblical presuppositions: learning is appointed and conserved by God as essential to the fulfillment of human destiny; in Christ, all things consist and find ultimate unity; and the Kingdom of God in this world is rooted and grounded in Christian community."

Here's an offering from Campbell's Biology Dept.:

351 Creation, Evolution, or Both? (3)
An investigation into the origins of life, using an integrated scientific and Christian perspective. Coverage includes the scientific method, the philosophy of science, the relationship of science and religion, the history of evolutionary theory, the science behind evolutionary theory, the history of creationism, young-earth creationism, intelligent design, and major creationist objections to evolutionary theory, focusing on the geological record and earth history. Three lecture hours per week. Occasional Fall semesters. Prerequisites: BIOL 111, ENGL 101, 102, and two 200-level literature courses; RELG 125.

This year, Darwin Day at the University of Tennessee will focus on “Science and Religion” and how the two philosophies can coexist without controversy.

• Feb. 7: The Rev. Michael Dowd will discuss how understanding evolution and science can strengthen everyone’s acceptance of religion and science at Church of the Savior starting at 7:15 p.m.
• Feb 7: Gary McCracken and Andrew Kramer, both ecology and evolutionary professors, will hold a teacher workshop at 7 p.m. at Tennessee Valley Universalists Unitarian Church, to address historical and recent controversies surrounding intelligent design and teaching evolution in schools.
• Feb. 9: Tim Berra, professor emeritus of evolution and organismal biology at The Ohio State University will discuss the life, writing and significance of Charles Darwin at 7:30 p.m. in the Cox Auditorium.
• Feb. 10: Berra will speak as part of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Seminar Series held in the Science and Engineering Building, Room 309 at 3:30 pm.

You'll find more information on Darwin Day at the University of Tennessee here.

An editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer observes that in the wake of the Dover intelligent design trial, "scientists are being criticized, even by their own colleagues, for working on anything that might be construed as pseudoscience - and string theory is drawing most of the heat."

Case Western physicist Lawrence Krauss, whose latest book, Hiding in the Mirror, has stirred the controversy, feels that science's current struggle against political and religious agendas makes string theory a dangerous liability. As he writes in the journal Nature, the scientific status afforded to string theory "opens us up to otherwise avoidable attacks, particularly from those who would include religious ideas in high school science curricula."

Being a squishy humanities type, Red State Rabble has to admit we have only the dimmest grasp of what string theory is. So far as we know, the churches are ignoring it. No movement that we've been able to detect is rising up to teach it in elementary, middle, or high schools.

Still, the defense of science education in public schools demands that scientists and educators be absolutely clear about what science is, and what it isn't.

One key strategy intelligent design activists now employ with increasing frequency is to pretend -- falsely -- that the metaphysical speculations made by scientists in books and articles written for non-scientists are actually taught biology classes.

This is most often seen in curriculum battles over abiogenesis, the development of living organisms from nonliving matter. Here in Kansas, the standards proposed by professional scientists and educators were silent on the origin of life -- a subject quite different from evolution.

The origin of life is a matter of some controversy among scientists. Like much else, it is the subject of ongoing investigation. No satisfying explanation has yet been advanced to explain abiogenesis, although there are some half-dozen hypotheses about how it might have occurred. For these reasons, creationists and intelligent design activists see the issue as an especially ripe gap into which they might insert their god.

While many scientists may harbor their own suspicions on the origin of life, they have so far resisted the urge to teach what they can't yet prove in science classes. Ironically, it is the creationists and intelligent design forces who have inserted their own confused metaphysical speculations on abiogenesis into the Kansas science curriculum under the guise of teaching the controversy.

The disastrous consequences of confusing religion for science are well known -- particularly as they relate to public education -- but this new discussion over the proper place for string theory also points to a seldom discussed, but equally undesirable effect.

It stifles the creative side of science.

In the debate with the religious right over what should and shouldn't be taught in public school science classes, we often focus on the side of science that involves observation and testing.

But, testing and observation are only half of the equation. As Albert Einstein once observed, imagination is more important than knowledge. Both intuition and imagination are essential ingredients in the creative process that gives rise to new scientific hypotheses.

The evolution of species proceeds as natural selection acts on random mutation like a sieve to sort better adapted organisms from those less equipped to survive. In much the same way, science acquires new knowledge when observation and testing work to choose among competing hypotheses, in effect, sorting those that successfully explain natural phenomena from those that don't.

Both are a two-step process. Natural selection must have the variation of random mutation to work on. Likewise, scientific observation and testing must be preceded by the intuitive process of hypothesis building.

We must not confuse hypothesis with theory, but we must also be careful not to limit science to the evidence gathering processes of observation and testing.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious," Einstein also observed. "It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

We don't know if ways will be found to test string theory in the real world -- perhaps it would be better to call it the string hypothesis -- but it would certainly be a shame to allow a crank science such as intelligent design to make us so cautious we end up closing our eyes.

From a report by Janese Heavin in the Rolla Daily News in South-Central Missouri:

"Both Rep. Bob May, a Rolla Republican, and Sen. Frank Barnitz, a Lake Springs Democrat, expressed concerns about the state controlling what local schools teach in science class — but both stopped short of saying they would vote against a bill requiring the teaching of intelligent design.

“I would have to weigh upon the public opinion of the people of my district,” Barnitz said.

With politicians, as with so much else, you get what you pay for.

The State asks, if South Carolina classrooms will soon be teaching both evolution and intelligent design:

The South Carolina state Board of Education meets Wednesday, according to The State, for the first time since it was criticized for adopting new teaching standards in December for all science fields except the high school biology section on evolution.

State Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican, wants to allow teachers to discuss alternative theories for the origin of man.

"Faith's domain is evident everywhere at the Utah Legislature, where about 90 percent of the elected officials are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayers are commonplace, and lawmakers speak of their relationship with God in ordinary conversation," reports Kirk Johnson of the New York Times.

So it might be tempting to assume that state legislation relating to the divisive national debate about the teaching of evolution in public schools would have a predictable outcome here.

Senate Bill 96 is proving that assumption wrong. The bill, which would require science teachers to offer a disclaimer when introducing lessons on evolution - namely, that not all scientists agree on the origins of life - has deeply divided lawmakers. Some leaders in both parties have announced their opposition to the bill, and most lawmakers say that with less than a month left in the legislative session, its fate remains a toss-up.

What's the deal? Are some of these good Mormons legislators really atheists?

Marie Woolf, political editor, of The Independent (UK) reports that "MPs have expressed fears that the Government's education reforms could lead to children being taught a concept that contradicts Darwin's theory of evolution.

"They have warned that 'intelligent design', which suggests human beings were created by God rather than through natural selection, could become a mainstream subject in some schools."

The DC area Alliance for Science now has a website. The mission of the Alliance for Science is to heighten public understanding and support for science and to preserve the distinctions between science and religion in the public sphere. Why not pay them a visit?

Caroline Crocker wants "students to know what she herself deeply believed: that the scientific establishment was perpetrating fraud, hunting down critics of evolution to ruin them and disguising an atheistic view of life in the garb of science."

She's teaching Biology 101 at Northern Virginia Community College according to Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post. In "Eden and Evolution" Vedantam says religious critics of evolution are wrong about its flaws. But asks, if they are right that it threatens belief in a loving God?

These kids are paying good money for this class. Can they get a refund?

The Sacramento Zoo is presenting a lecture series on evolution and intelligent design. Here's the schedule:

• Feb. 22: Science and Non-Science: The Truth Behind Intelligent Design: Why intelligent design is fundamentally nonscientific, and flaws in intelligent design arguments, by Maureen Stanton, professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis.
• March 22: The Hard Evidence For Evolution: How fossil finds support evolutionary theory, by Richard Cowen, paleontologist and UC Davis professor emeritus of geology.
• April 26: History of Evolutionary Thought: The people, politics and debate of the 19th-century era when Charles Darwin published the seminal book on evolution, "The Origin of Species," by Robin Whittall, zoo education director.

All lectures are on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Admission is $8 for members, $9 for the general public. Teachers may qualify for discounted admission of $5. For more information, call (916) 264-5889 or www.saczoo.com

Kendall Powell, a writer for Nature, traveled to Kansas City for the first public screening and panel discussion of "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution -- Intelligent Design Circus" and now, she's blogging about it. You can read what she has to say, here.

Here's an excerpt:

... The film does not set out to debunk the arguments of the ID movement. Instead, the take home lesson is about communication and which side is getting its message across to the masses-the clear winner to date is ID.

But perhaps Olson has scored one for the evolutionists (the film is, after all, biased toward the view that evolution accounts for the way life progressed on earth).
He succeeds in getting 300 moviegoers to laugh, grumble, and even mutter a few thoughtful 'aha's throughout his 84-minute documentary...

Carey Gillam of Reuters reports that a sold-out crowd of about 300 attended the screening in Overland Park, Kansas, of "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus."

“Since sophisticated discussions on evolution and religion are not common in our society,” [Kansas Citizens for Science President Jack]Krebs says, “it’s very easy for right-wing groups to brand the challengers as godless atheists.”

Science magazine reporter Yudhijit Bhattacharjee spoke to Krebs at the Intelligent Design, Science Education and the Law forum sponsored by Kansas Citizens for Science and the National Center for Science Education last Saturday. The article appears in the Feb. 3 edition.

Want to learn why evolution is science and intelligent design is not from a professional scientist? Then you might want to sign up for this University of Missouri -- Kansas City Communiversity course. Here's the course description:

Science is structured on the terms fact, hypothesis, law and theory. The definition of these terms is illustrated with examples in cosmology and thermodynamics.

While evolution accomodates the scientific usage of these terms, the tenents of Intelligent Design do not. Intelligent Design is critically discussed.

Dr. Schmitz earned his PhD from the University of Washington, was a post doctoral fellow at Stanford University and is a professor of chemistry at UMKC.

Section: 2601A
Fee: $9.00
1 Session; Saturday, February 11, 10:00 AM –1:00 PM
Royall Hall, Rm 111, 52nd between Rockhill & Holmes, KCMO

RSR was at the Glenwood Theater in Overland Park last night to see the first public screening of "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution -- Intelligent Design Circus." We were also able to speak to filmmaker Randy Olson -- as he was enthusiastically greeted by a long line of theater-goers -- following the screening.

The publicity for Flock of Dodos poses the question, Who is the flock of Dodos? Is it the people who are so certain they see the hand of a designer in nature they're willing to defy the Constitution? Or is it the evolutionists, allowing their profession to be turned into a debate they feel doesn't exist.

Olson, an evolutionary ecologist turned filmmaker, says he's always viewed evolution as an obvious fact. A Harvard trained PhD who grew up in Kansas, Olson was surprised when the state board of education attempted to teach creationism in science classes in 1999. Last year, when he learned that John Calvert, perhaps the leading advocate for ID in the state, lived in the same neighborhood as his mother he decided to write and direct the film.

In the film, Olson is quite clear about the fact that intelligent design is not science.

In a sequence early on in the film, Olson takes a highly amusing, and revealing, look at the notion that all living organisms are a product of intelligent design. If this is so, the film suggests, then God, the designer, has a rather cruel sense of humor. Training his camera on a pet rabbit, we watch as it eats the pellets -- caecotrophs -- it has excreted through its anus. It must do this, we learn, because the rabbit's small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed, is located upstream from the fermentation chamber where digestion takes place.

Rather than intelligent design, perhaps we should call this bass ackwards design.

In another sequence, shot at John Calvert's Lake Quivira home, we watch as Calvert, echoing an assertion in Jonathan Wells ID book, Icons of Evolution, claims that scientists lie to students about the evidence for evolution by continuing to publish Ernst Haeckel's 19th century embryo drawings in biology textbooks even though they've been proven to be inaccurate, and, perhaps, faked.

Olson and Calvert then search for Haeckel's embryo drawings in the biology textbooks in Calvert's library, only to find that they aren't there -- except in one published way back in 1915. Calvert then admits that he's never bothered to confirm that what Wells' writes in Icons of Evolution is correct.

Olson notes that where the embryo drawings do appear in textbooks, they do so, not as evidence for evolution, but as a recounting of the theory's history.

Scientists also come in for their share of criticism in "Flock of Dodos." Not, however, because they have the facts wrong, as ID advocates suggest, but because they have been ineffective at communicating science to the public.

Olson's film points out that intelligent design has a well thought out marketing strategy that frames the debate through the use, and ceaseless repetition, of a small number of easily graspable marketing slogans:

• Teach the controversy
• We can recognize the effects of design in nature -- think Mount Rushmore
• Irreducible complexity -- think mousetrap

Now ask yourself, what short, one sentence explanation of evolution has been put forward in this debate. The scientists in Olson's film can't name one.

In the information age, Olson suggests, facts may not matter so much anymore. Victory may go not to the side that has the facts on its side, but to those who are better able to communicate their message.

Who is the "Flock of Dodos?" We don't know yet, but if scientists and supporters of reason do not begin to engage the public and learn to more effectively communicate their message, Olson makes a strong case that it could be us.

Some may doubt that a marketing strategy will be enough to do the job. RSR is not so sure. In our lifetime, straight-talking newsmen like Edward R. Murrow have been completely replaced by talking heads with strong facial features and great hair. Genuine war heroes -- not just John Kerry, but John McCain, and triple-amputee Max Cleland -- were all swift-boated by men who avoided service in Vietnam.

Note: In an earlier post about the screening of "Flock of Dodos" at the Glenwood Theater last night, we said the theater was full. Some comments on that post have challenged that statement.

The screening was reported as sold out in the Kansas City Star and other media outlets, and the theater set out folding chairs to accommodate the crowd. At the start of the film, those seated in the folding chairs were allowed to take empty seats in the theater. Even so, a handful of empty seats remained.

The theater where the film was screened holds 330 seats, according to the owner of the Glenwood Arts. All of those seats were sold ten days in advance of the showing.

We'll allow our readers to decide for themselves whether our description was inaccurate or not. In any case, we believe that attendance at the film indicates a great deal of interest in the subject matter.

In our opinion, "Flock of Dodos" is provocative, highly entertaining, and very educational -- it deserves to be widely seen. Future screenings are scheduled in February for Harvard, Stonybrook, Cornell, and Yale. Readers in those areas who would like to see the film, and participate in the scheduled panel discussions following those showings, should visit the "Flock of Dodos" website for more details.

Just a brief report for now. We'll be back later this morning with a full report on the screening of the film by Randy Olson, "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution -- Intelligent Design Circus." The film played before a full house. Interestingly, there were supporters of both intelligent design and evolution in the crowd, a rare event these days.

The film is both funny and powerful. It deserves to be seen by a wide audience.

After the film, the audience asked questions of a panel composed of intelligent design advocates John Calvert, Kathy Martin, and Jack Cashill, as well as science education supporters Bill Wagnon, Sue Gamble, and Steve Case, all of whom appeared in the film. Dave Helling of the Kansas City Star acted as moderator.

During the question and answer period, Jack Cashill was booed for asserting that over the last 2,000 years, only Western Christianity has supported science. Cashill also suggested that those who support the teaching of evolution haven't read much about it, once again eliciting groans from the audience.

Check back for a more complete report later...

Moderate school board candidate Sally Cauble kicked off her campaign in Hays Wednesday.

About 80 people attended a campaign rally for Sally Cauble, Republican candidate for the 5th district’s seat on the Kansas Board of Education, at the Hays Arts Council on Wednesday evening. In attendance were local citizens ranging from soccer moms to biology professors to school board members to college students. There was a healthy mix of Democrats and Republicans, but as varied as the audience was, one consistent theme ran through the evening: Who is Sally Cauble, and why should we vote for her?

Granted, a few attendees admitted they were there for the ABC candidate – Anybody But Connie (Morris, the current District 5 KBOE rep). Although Garden City’s former mayor, Tim Cruz, has also filed for the seat on the Democratic ticket, he hasn’t officially visited Hays yet. But the great majority who attended were there to learn about Sally’s stances on a variety of issues. She didn’t disappoint, either. Although her statements weren’t exactly what we all expected, she was clear and definite on most issues.

Former Hays mayor Jayne Clarke introduced Sally, noting the candidate’s native western Kansas roots as well as her previous experience on the school board in Liberal and as a Southwestern College Trustee. She has extensive service volunteering in her church and community.

Questions:

Why are you running? As I served on the school board in Liberal, I got tired of the folks at the state & federal levels handing down more and more demands on the public schools. I talked to Sonny Rundell, who said he’d like one more term, then he’d step down in my favor. Instead, Sonny lost that election to Connie Morris. So, I’m taking the opportunity now to fulfill that earlier ambition.

Vouchers: When special ed kids go to private schools, the public school district is still required to provide and pay for the special education services. So I don’t see how vouchers would provide any more help for these kids.

Evo/ID: Intelligent design should not be taught in public school science classrooms, and the current science standards should be revoked. I attended an event at KU last Saturday that featured the attorneys from the Dover ID case, and Kansas should learn from Dover’s mistakes. Thomas Jefferson had the right idea about the separation of church and state.

Tenure for public school teachers: The general public & teachers view tenure differently. The general public regards it as job security for a cushy, 9-month, 8 am – 3 pm job. Teachers view it as protection from political vagaries and vengeful parents or administrators. More communication needs to occur to resolve the discrepant views. Differential pay and bonuses should be considered. (This question flustered Sally, and she took awhile to think her way out loud through this issue. As she pointed out, though, she is capable of learning, as she has with the evolution/ID issue.)

Role of KBOE in state funding: It’s the job of the KBOE rep to work with the district senators & representatives to find equitable solutions. I recognize that I’m one of 10 members of the state board, and it’s also my job to work with the other members.

Bob Corkins: The role of the commissioner of education is to carry out board policy. If you don’t like the commissioner, you need to elect a new board. Bob Corkins does not have the basic qualifications for his job.

Tax increases: Who knows where we’ll be in five years? The increases that have been put in place must be phased in gradually.

Role of judiciary: We need a strong, independent judiciary. The Supreme Court shouldn’t have put a dollar amount on their ruling last summer, but their ruling otherwise was correct.

Consolidation: (A questioner noted that consolidating the 100 smallest districts would save a whopping 2% of the education budget.) Some of the folks from the eastern part of the state need to visit western Kansas; they just don’t understand how long our kids would be on buses if schools consolidated. Most small towns out here, if they lose the school, the town dies. Why not consolidate Wichita?

Although the event was billed as a meet and greet function and not a fundraiser, $1425 was raised from 22 different donors, with more promised.

Sally comes across as somebody you’d like to have as your neighbor – friendly, level-headed, caring. She didn’t have glib, pat sound bites prepared for her audience tonight, but came across as someone who’ll consider input from others to formulate her stance. During the next six months, she’ll need to work hard to garner votes in this vast & vastly conservative 5th district. Last night’s event was a good step along that road as she worked to clarify her stance on the issues.

In an online chat yesterday sponsored by the Lawrence Journal-World, Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins said he expects that when Kansans move past the "paranoia of perceptions" about the anti-science revisions written into the curriculum by the right-wing school board majority they'll find objections to the science policy to be without substance.

He also dodged this question: "It is my understanding you support vouchers 'scholarships.' Do you believe private and parochial schools, that accept vouchers, should be required to meet the same state and federal regulations as public schools and accept all children?"

But, don't take our word for it, you can read it for yourself by following the link above.

The Contra Costa Times continues its excellent series on evolution, intelligent design, and creationism today with an article by Jackie Burrell and Betsy Mason that points out even California is not immune to pressure from religious activists who want their beliefs taught as science in public schools:

The question of whether life evolved over millions of years or whether a superior being created it has generated classroom controversy across the nation -- even in California, where evolution is imbedded in public school curriculum standards and textbooks.

"One of the chief problems with ID is its arbitrary application of the non-scientific, purely subjective word "intelligent" to natural phenomena," writes James H. Dee, a retired classics professor, in The Austin American-Statesman. "However, if we consider, among many counter-examples, life's ruthlessly predatory and destructive aspects ("nature red in tooth and claw") — or just the oddity of nipples on men — this "intelligence" seems much less evident."

Since proponents focus on ostensibly inexplicable facts and unhesitantly invoke divine intervention, why not call it "MD" ("Miraculous Design") instead of using the misleading and blatantly anthropomorphic word "intelligent"?

Thanks to sharp-eyed RSR reader BF, who, incidently, hails from the Lonestar state for calling it to our attention.

Got a question you'd like to ask Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins? The Lawrence Journal-World is sponsoring an online chat with Corkins today.

The chat will begin on Thursday, February 2, at 1:00 pm, but you may submit questions at any time before or after that time. The form for submitting your question is here.

Back in December, after the Dover decision came down, we wrote "that the news out of Dover is grim beyond all belief for the ID crowd has been convincingly demonstrated by the feverish output on the Evolution News and Views blog since the decision. No, matter how Discovery spins the decision, in the end all they've succeeded in proving is that you can't spin a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

"The game is up," we said then. "Men such as Howard Ahmanson who have bankrolled the Discovery Institute... will be looking at their investments over the coming months and asking themselves hard questions about the likely payout."

Of course, it didn't take a genius to predict that Judge Jones' ruling would prompt a cool-headed re-appraisal of the ID strategy by those advisers and financial backers on the right who see themselves as hardened practicioners of realpolitik. They will ride one horse until it breaks down, and then they will find another. There are always plenty of horses.

The hysterical tone and frantic pace of the posts on the Evolution News and Views blog -- written, for the most part by true believers who saw lucrative fellowships and career paths coming to an abrupt end-- was enough to give that game away. (Here in Kansas, we would have said they were howling like a scalded dog.)

Even so, it's gratifying to learn that our prediction is already beginning to play itself out up there in latte land.

An article by Roger Downey in the Seattle Weekly, which you really must read if you haven't already, confirms that the money flowing into the Discovery Institute has begun to dry up as a result of the Dover ruling:

What will the long-term impact [of the Dover ruling] on the Discovery Institute be? A number of former contributors have already cut back or eliminated support. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged nearly $1 million a year for 10 years to the transportation arm of the institute, is known to be both uncomfortable with the adverse publicity that's come its way through funding an anti-Darwin organization and concerned that some of the funds earmarked for transport issues have been applied to other areas of Discovery's operations, including a substantial portion of Chapman's $120,000-a-year salary.

While trying to maintain a position above the partisan fray, the Discovery Institute has found itself more and more isolated ideologically. Former fellows have departed, concerned by what they see as a drift away from policy issues toward doctrinaire religiosity

.

The audio from the "ID, Science Education and the Law" forum featuring Dover lawyers Eric Rothschild, Steve Harvey, and Richard Katskee, with an analysis of the Kansas standards by Jack Krebs is available here. The event, sponsored by Kansas Citizens for Science and the National Center for Science Education, took place in Lawrence Saturday, Jan 28.

Jack Krebs promises to have audio of the panel discussion up soon.

If you weren't able to attend, this is a good opportunity to hear about the ID movement's strategy and what citizen's groups are doing to combat it.

Since the Dover decision there is, we sense, a new caution in the air. Divine design, to take but one example, morphed into critical analysis in the Utah legislature so suddenly it made the slow unfolding of the Cambrian Explosion look, well, positively geological by comparison.

Although the abrupt appearance of critical analysis might be interpreted in certain circles as evidence of separate creation, cultural anthropologists, bloggers, late-night comedians, and perhaps even judges will have little difficulty determining that critical analysis is but the latest spawn of a common ancestor: biblical literalism.

Creation "science" and intelligent design "theory" are, you might say, the Adam and Eve of the epigone critical analysis, Discovery Institute, the hovering midwife.

Critical analysis presents a characteristic morphology -- teach the controversy, teach all the scientific theories about evolution -- that makes it easy for connoisseurs of the organism to identify. The species also displays a unique social behavior -- individuals tend to gather in herds where they make a loud "shhhing" sound when the young ask adult animals where they came from.

Missouri House Bill 1266, a Midwestern variant displaying the protective coloration so typical of the species, requires teachers to identify “theory, hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, extrapolation, estimation, unverified data, consensus of scientific opinion, and philosophical belief," when they give their lessons, according to Missouri Citizens for Science.

Oh yeah, it also holds harmless any teacher who introduces creationism into the classroom, demonstrating convincingly that we are witnessing a micro rather than macroevolutionary event.

The abruptly evolved camouflage of critical analysis may prove -- once again -- ineffective in protecting it from the selective pressure placed on it by sharp-eyed predators who have adapted an uncanny ability to spot each of the variants of this species in its favored environment.

Scientists familiar with the organism suggest we should expect further, increasingly rapid adaptations of the organism. Extinction, they say, is unlikely.

“There aren’t any alternative scientific theories to evolution,” Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education told a group of educators at Kansas University’s Natural History Museum in Lawrence last night.

“If there were any, obviously we’d be teaching them.”

Missouri Citizens for Science now has its website up and running.

MCFS is a grass-roots group of Missourians organized as a nonprofit corporation to support science in public schools. Like other groups nationwide, they are concerned about attempts to introduce creationism into the public school curriculum, whether that involves bills in the legislature, school board policies, injecting personal religious beliefs into science classes, or pressure on teachers to not teach biological evolution.

They have a post up about HB 1266, the first creationism bill introduced in the 2006 Missouri legislative session.

Why not pay MCFS a visit and welcome them to the web?

Many assume that intelligent design is a product of the heartland. An example, as if another were needed, of the rural idiocy that infects so many of those who inhabit the vast emptiness of the flyover zone.

In truth, ID is a left coast product, hatched, where else, in Berkeley, California.

As Betsy Mason notes in the Contra Costa Times, "In the battle over teaching intelligent design in public schools, the national spotlight has been on the front lines far from California in places such as Kansas and Pennsylvania. But key soldiers on both sides of the fight live in the Bay Area."

ID is to Kansas what kudzu is to the South, zebra mussels are to the Great Lakes, and Asian swamp eels are to Florida canals and waterways -- an invasive species.

The world premiere of the film documentary, "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus'' is sold out, but if you didn't get a ticket, don't worry. RSR will be at the Glenwood Arts in Overland Park on Thursday to tell you all about it.

We missed Sundance this year, but we'll have a red carpet report from the opening posted Friday morning. Check back then for our review.

Leah Fliter, a staff writer for the Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury reports (sub. req.) that, "the Manhattan-Ogden Board of Education will be asked Wednesday to approve a resolution that rejects the Kansas State Board of Education's change in the state's science standards last November.

The request comes in the form of a document, signed by more than 100 Kansas State University professors, asking the board to endorse a definition of science developed by the Kansas Science Education Standards Revision Committee but rejected by the state board. The professors also want the board to state that the science standards used in that definition will be used in the district's science curricula.

Biology professor Mike Herman, who is expected to advocate for the statement at Wednesday's meeting, said this morning "we are concerned about education of children all over the state and there's little we can do about that now, but we want to insure that students in Manhattan receive a quality education."

View a pdf (page 4) of the resolution, here.

The K-State chapter of Sigma Xi is sponsoring "Evolution in Action: Facts and Fantasies," a talk by Dr. David Rintoul, an associate professor of Biology, on Wednesday, February 15, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. in Fiedler Auditorium, 1107 Fiedler Hall in Manhattan.

Rintoul's talk, illustrating the relevance of understanding evolution, will be followed by a panel discussion and question period addressing challenges to teaching evolution.

The panelists are:

• Albert Frisby - Master Teacher, Biology, Liberty High School
• Brad Williamson - Master Teacher, Biology, Olathe East High School
• Larry Scharmann - Professor and Chair, Secondary Education
• Srini Kambhampati - Professor, Entomology
• Keith Miller - Research Assistant Professor, Geology, will act as moderator

"In an interview, [Ohio school board member] Owens Fink maintains that she has no intention of bringing intelligent design into the classroom. Her desire, she says, is to strengthen the teaching of evolution by allowing for disagreements 'within the scientific community.'

"But a close reading of Calvert and Lattimer’s writings indicates that intelligent design is the only competing explanation. In January 2002 remarks to the Ohio Board of Education’s standards committee, Calvert, a geologist and lawyer by training, said, “There are essentially only two scientific hypotheses about our origins. The Naturalistic (evolution) and the Design Hypothesis.” The board should censor neither, Calvert argued, adding “science essentially abandons the scientific method” when it ignores design."

From an article by Charu Gupta in The Free Times, Ohio's premier news, arts, and entertainment weekly

"A Seattle think tank launched the modern intelligent-design movement with a simple memo. The idea has evolved into a media sensation. And the cause has mutated beyond rational control...

From an article on the birth of the Discovery Institute by Roger Downey in The Seattle Weekly. Don't miss this one.

Kansas students should be allowed and encouraged to fully discuss and critique all science-based theories for the origin of life in science curricula. ...