This time the subject is Darwinian dogma in the Texas public school curriculum. It kills me how the apostles of evolution speak so confidently of how accepted and airtight Darwinian evolution is, yet when it is suggested that a public school textbook designed for practical education of a variety of students of various backgrounds actually look at various theories on the origin of life, they flip out. How dare anyone not blindly accept a given theory! Don’t you people know that every scientific advancement has been made by asserting one “scientific” fact to be true and excluding the discussion or even consideration of any other ideas! Exploring various theories and ideas in science, bah! From the article:
In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate
AUSTIN, Tex. — The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.
The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.
Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.
“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”
In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.
But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.
What is really being dealt with here is whether or not a textbook can include opposing viewpoints on a controversial and far from universally accepted theory on the origins of life. I would think that a real academic who was convinced that the questions surrounding Darwinian evolution would want the chance to interact with and show conclusively that evolution is the only possible explanation for the origins of life. Especially when you consider how many people, a huge percentage of Americans, believe in some variation of the creation narrative or at least the existence of an intelligent designer who was behind it all. Instead they refuse to even consider opposing viewpoints, which really makes it look like they are afraid of the debate and are hiding behind their own dogma. Huh, and I though religious folks were the closed-minded ones…
More from the article…
“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”
Whew, it is good to know that there is not an agenda among the academics and scientists!
Of course we also see the most grotesque of scare tactics, the notion that somehow having a textbook that seeks to ask question and explore knowledge will drive employers away…
Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.
“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.
“Yeah we were going to build a $250 million dollar steel plant in your state, but then we looked at you high school science curriculum and pulled the plug.” I couldn’t find much about Obsidian Software other than it was founded in 1997 by three engineers. I looked into Obsidian’s hometown of Austin, Texas and it doesn’t even list them as one of Austin’s biggest employers, much less Texas. So I am not sure what qualifies Mr. Hennenhoefer as a “business leader”.
Really, in the grand scheme of things do employers really look at high school textbooks when deciding whether or not to relocate their business to a state? Even if they did, would the mere suggestion that perhaps the case for Darwinism is not as airtight as the dogma of the evolutionist priesthood makes it out to be serve as a signal for poor preparation and academic achievement? Those sorts of arguments are unserious and shrill, but all too often unchallenged. Give a company enough tax breaks and other incentives and they will move to your state. You can have the image of Charles Darwin branded on every high school student's forehead and if your business climate stinks, no one is moving there.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight. The public schools are free to do whatever they want. After all, no rational person sends their kid to a secularist government school and expects them to learn anything other than a secularist worldview that runs contrary to Christianity and the Bible. The only reasons I bring this up for comment are to remind parents that you cannot think that your kids in public schools are getting an education that is God-honoring and indeed what they are getting denies Christ and His Word, and also that your kids really aren’t getting much of an education at all when you look at how narrowly they define what knowledge is or is not approved and how much political and dogmatic agendas play into what your kids are learning. Text books, curriculum, teacher training, education programs at colleges, teachers unions all have an agenda and not much of it is supportive of the Christian worldview. There is a definite and intentional agenda defined by a secular worldview that drives what kids are learning in public schools and parents who choose to send their kids off to those schools need to get their collective heads out of the sand and realize not only what your kids are not getting (i.e. a Christian worldview education) but also what they are getting (i.e. an education that has as its core a denial of the basic truths of Christianity). There is no such thing as a value neutral educational choice, where and how your kids are educated may be one the most important decisions that a Christian parent makes. You and your kids will have to deal with the aftermath of that decision, one way or the other.
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