Thursday, January 17, 2008
I’m starting to long for the days when it was respectable enough for a Bible-believing American to say science was Satan’s tool.
Things were simpler then.
Now we have more and more who want to say that the religion to which they ascribe is science — respectable in a clinical sense, with physical evidence weighed and calculated on a gram scale.
The scary thing is that this form of respectability has come to influence and infect policymakers. Recently, the Texas Education Agency’s chief science curriculum person was ousted for not adhering to a policy of neutrality toward the subject of intelligent design.
This would seem to be a tough standard for someone whose business is science. If Chris Comer’s job was to oversee philosophy or religion curricula, she’d have deserved the old heave-ho for playing favorites. Say, purging Kant in favor of L. Ron Hubbard.
But something doesn’t become science just because someone hopes to shoehorn it into studies where it shouldn’t be.
Whether you call it intelligent design or creation science, it’s philosophy. It’s religion. In said contexts, have a ball. Expound away. Just don’t call it science.
The other day a certification advisory committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board made headlines when it endorsed a graduate degree — the meaningful digits MS, master of science — in creation science for the Institute of Creation Research.
The board may have been snookered by a vague title of a “masters degree in science education” when in fact the subject was creation science.
Call it what it is
After protests were lodged, Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes said the institute might have to take the word “science” out of its proposal and make it a master’s degree in creation studies.
This week, the institute asked the commission not to consider the matter at this month’s meeting.
Free speech being free, the Institute of Creation Research can call what it does anything it wants. But the state should take care that when affixing its seal to “science” it’s scientific.
In recent years, the promotion of creation science has become a cottage industry, all in a quest to undermine Darwin and bolster Bible-based predispositions as a matter of state policy.
The General Motors of this new industry is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Backed by big money and hard-right philosophies, the center has plied a long-term strategy to replace “materialistic science” with intelligent design.
A reputed “wedge project” has pitted forces of biblical respectability against the scientists who continue to operate with Darwin on the brain and on their blackboards.
The Discovery Institute extended its tentacles when Baylor University for a time became a hive of intelligent design activity with the short-lived Polanyi Institute.
Those involved in preserving Baylor’s independence and scholarly respectability know that this is a lever ever-ready to be applied and a wedge with which some individuals hope to tear away the underpinnings of Darwinism.
With friends like these
Admittedly, as a nation we’ve let our standards sag about what constitutes science in the first place. We have a president for whom a favorite catch phrase is “sound science.” What he’s most interested in is politically profitable science, particularly that produced by industry to rationalize and justify its every impulse. Man’s role in global warming? Rank speculation.
Our president’s type of “sound science” is that which authorized $2.3 million to study the power of prayer.
As I said, it was simpler when science was the professed enemy for these forces.
Now they say they’ve come to the table in the interests thereof.
Saying so doesn’t mean it’s so.
John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
Comments
By JoAnnDuman
Jan 28, 2008 1:35 AM | Link to this
Please keep raising this issue. Texas' backward state of science education results from humoring the unscientific religiosity of creationists. We are failing our schoolchildren. We must educate them for the 21st century, not hinder them with 19th century fundamentalism and "biblical inerrancy."
By Ted Herrlich
Jan 21, 2008 3:32 PM | Link to this
Robbie said "The Amish, as a community, deside what is and is not taught in their schools through the appropriate channels set up within their educational system, as rudamentary as their particular system is."
Who pays for the Amish schools? They are not public school paid for with tax money and servicing a wide variety of students and families. If the local school district is allowed to completely define the school curriculum, how can this represent such a wide variety of students, belief systems, or needs?
Interestingly enough, have you read the Florida school standards? Evolution is not, as you said "pushed upon our children as pure fact and closed off to any other scientific theories". The standards teach it as a theory, an important theory and one that much of biological science is based on, but it is a theory. They are also open to alternative theories -- but the key here is alternative THEORIES. Creationism, and its lesser brother Intelligent Design, are not scientific theories and no amount of marketing will make them science. If a local school board allows to permit these 'ideas' as scientific theories, they will be doing a greater disservice to our students. I do not want a biology teacher teaching something that is not science much in the way I don't want my parish priest teaching my kids biology. Neither is trained to do so, and neither would do the subjects justice.
By Richard
Jan 18, 2008 10:46 PM | Link to this
Lynn... being only an associate professor of chemistry and having taught for 25 years, I might not know as much as you about science or academic degrees, but I know a BS or MS (master of science) in business, or English, or Leadership is not very "science" ....
By Richard
Jan 18, 2008 10:43 PM | Link to this
Fred... being only an associate professor of chemistry and having taught for 25 years, I might not know as much as you about science or academic degrees, but I know a BS or MS (master of science) in business, or English, or Leadership is not very "science" ....
By Lynn
Jan 18, 2008 4:12 PM | Link to this
Richard,
Do you invoke supernatural answers to explain chemical reactions? Would you give a chemistry teaching credential to someone who did?
By Richard
Jan 18, 2008 3:20 PM | Link to this
Lynn> Something tells me you don't know anything about science or academic degrees.
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Probably not as much as you since I'm only an associate professor of chemistry and have taught for over 25 years...
But, I'm quite sure that you know you can get MS degrees in such topics as business, leadership, English, etc.... I don't consider those "sciences" but you might...
By Lynn
Jan 18, 2008 12:49 AM | Link to this
Sorry, I should have opened the post below with "The point of the column is ...". It really is a very good column, and well researched.
By Lynn
Jan 18, 2008 12:34 AM | Link to this
The point of the opinion piece is that the officials in Texas are trying to change the definition of science in order to bring religion into the science classroom. Once science is redefined to include supernatural explanations, biblical creationism, astrology, tarot card reading, faith healing, voodoo and astral projections can all be taught as science. Also, as the piece describes, theology students can be granted science degrees, presumably qualifying them as science instructors. The "Wedge Document" mentioned above (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/02/Wedge.pdf) plainly lays out the religious ideology that promotes Intelligent Design, as well as discussing the problem that there is no scientific basis for ID. This is a direct assault by the Discovery Institute on the the teaching of science and on the establishment clause of the first amendment.
By Robbie
Jan 17, 2008 7:51 PM | Link to this
I obviously put a tremendous amount faith in local people to make te best decisions for themselves. You sort of made my point with your comment about the Amish. Their education system suits their life-style and needs as a community. Imposing state or federal educational mandates, whether the be for creation sciences or evolutionary sciences, would prove to be counter-productive to their educational needs and desires as a community and to many of the individuals within their system. The Amish, as a community, deside what is and is not taught in their schools through the appropriate channels set up within their educational system, as rudamentary as their particular system is. The people of Woodway and Hewitt have vastly different needs and desires for their children than do the Amish. The same system that works for the Amish will not work for the people under the Midway school system, for example. And vice versa.
But what we have are state and federal level bureaucracies essentially dictating what is essential for our children to learn, whether through standardized testing or debates over particular curriculum agendas. People on one side of the arguement want science and evolution pushed upon our children as pure fact and closed off to any other scientific theories. They view religion as hog-wash magic for the feeble-minded. On the other, we have religious purists seemingly rejecting a valid scientific theory and wanting pure creation taught in biology as a result of a few verses in a book of otherwise strong history and moral context. Each side strives to win over the powers that be while those that end up on the loosing end are our children and essentially the system as a whole. While bureaucrats duke it out in Washington and Austin, students in school districts across the state and the country are left high and dry, and parents are left in the dark on matters of their own children's education. More bureaucracy, more spending, more tax funding, are not the solutions to this problem. It has not worked in the past, and nothing has proven to me that it will work in the future. More over, forcing one view over another is not the answer. Putting education back in the hands of local school boards and parents is the answer.
By Fred
Jan 17, 2008 7:12 PM | Link to this
Look up into the stars and you are gazing millions of light years into the past. The window into the past and future is our own eyes. Someday science will prove that God (not religion) actually exists. The search for the actual God is the last frontier. Let the adventure begin.
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