Faith Based Initiative: Fundamentalist Religious Attack on Science in Texas

The debate about teaching creationism in the classroom is set to start again in Texas after a report was released this week by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund detailing a survey conducted of what scientist in Texas think should be taught in Texas science classrooms. The survey concludes that 98% of scientists favor the unadulterated teaching of evolution in public school science classrooms.

The Discovery Institute, the conservative Christian anti-science “think tank,” posted an article in which the claim is made that it is actually the TFN that wants to “water down the teaching of evolution” and “remove the strengths and weaknesses language.” The article goes on to claim that the 95% of scientist in the report only want “half of evolution taught” and “are seeking to limit the free flow of information and censor science.” Another claim is that there are “valid and significant scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution that students need to know about. Evidence is not contingent on a consensus.”

Teaching evolution in science class is not teaching half of evolution, because intelligent design is not half of the theory of evolution. Intelligent design is not science, in fact it does not even met the basic criteria of a scientific theory. Also, there is not a significant amount of scientific challenges to evolution that students need to be taught; Lawrence Krauss reviewed 10 million scientific articles and scientific citation indexes over twelve years and found that there were 88 articles about intelligent design and only 11 were not in engineering journals and out of those 8 out of 11 were critical of intelligent design and the remaining 3 were not in peer reviewed journals.

Other notable findings in the survey included that 89.7% of scientist surveyed believed that “modern evolutionary biology is largely correct in its essentials, but still has open questions for active scientific research.” While 0% of scientists (none of the 464 survey recipients) believe that “modern evolutionary biology is completely wrong” and that “life was created essentially as we see it today.” When asked if there was significant difference between creationism and intelligent design 78.2% said that there was no difference and 15.5% said that there was a difference.

This evening the Texas State Board of Education is conducting a public forum on current curriculum requiring students to be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories, and according to the Houston Chronicle “89 people had signed up to testify on the proposal, which also suggests encouraging middle school students to discuss alternative explanations for evolution.”

Despite the voices of hundreds of scientist from Universities across the state, including conservative Christian colleges such as Baylor University, Dallas Baptist University, and Texas Christian University, there are still voices that insist that intelligent design and creationism is actually about science and not religion. In the same article Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the conservative Christian organization Texas Free Market Foundation, said, “The reality is this issue is about evolution and teaching strengths and weaknesses of evolution. It’s about science and teaching science right, regardless of what religious beliefs people have.”

The Public’s View on Evolution vs. Creation:

According to a Gallup poll 60% of Republicans believe that “God created humans as in within the last 10,000 years,” while 55% of independents and 56% of Democrats believe that “Humans developed over millions of years, God guided,” or “Humans developed over millions of years, God had no part.” Overall 50% of respondents believe in some type of evolutional theory; this number has stayed relatively constant since 1982.

In another Gallup poll respondents were asked if explanations about the origin and development of life on earth (evolution, creationism, and intelligent design) should or should not be taught in public school science classes. The results where that 61% thought evolution should be taught, 54% thought that creationism should be thought, and 43% thought that intelligent design should be thought.

However, the controversy of evolution and creationism seems to only be debated in the United States, even within the religious community. In a survey of 103 Roman Catholic priests, Anglican bishops and Protestant ministers/pastors in Brittan 97% did not believe that the world was created in six days, and 80% do not believe in the existence of Adam and Eve.

The Politics of Religion and Science:

The debate is not a scientific debate; the debate is a political debate. There is not a debate within the scientific community about whether or not evolution, creationism, or intelligent design should be taught in science classrooms. The theory of evolution is a scientific theory. Intelligent design and creationism are religious beliefs.

Moreover, intelligent design or creationism should not be taught in science classrooms if only for the simple reason that it is absolutely not science. Neither creationism nor intelligent design are testable hypothesis and they cannot be proven false and be their very nature not science.

The irony about the debate is the fundamental Christian organizations and individuals are simultaneously devaluing both education and their own religion. By undermining science they are promoting anti-intellectualism, and they are promoting the idea that someone else’s beliefs are less valuable than their own. Through all of this there is also the underlying point that the religion your faith is not strong enough to be challenged by scientific ideas. There is an idea that somehow students cannot separate Sunday school class from their science class, or that they cannot have faith that God created the world while also understanding the scientific world.

Further Reaction from the Blogosphere
Capitol Annex:
An Interview With Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director Of The National Center For Science Education

South Texas Chisme:
Why on earth would a modern day paper need to print this headline?

Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
Ignorance of Evolution Damages Texas Business