Abnormal Interests

« Leveraging the New Pope to Advance Intelligent Design Creationism
Main
On Damning Your Protector »

April 21, 2005

Threat of Legal Action Based on Errors in Biology and Law

Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Cultural Wars calls our attention to the threat of a lawsuit against the Gull Lake Community Schools in Richland, Michigan. The suit is being threated by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) of Dover Pennsylvania infamy. Here' s what AP says as reported in the Detroit Free Press says:

A Christian-oriented law center says it may sue Gull Lake Community Schools unless two middle school science teachers are allowed to include an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution in their classes.

The specific theory involved is called "intelligent design," which holds the universe is so complex it must have been created by an unspecified higher power. Critics say that is a secular version of creationism, which regards God as the creator of life. They say teaching the theory in public schools violates the separation of church and state.

I'll get back to the Free Press story in a minute because it has its own problems. The TMLC says in its press release:

For the past two years, science teachers, Dawn Wendzel and Julie Olson, have been spending part of their classroom instruction teaching the theory of Intelligent Design alongside the theory of evolution. However, this past Fall they were told that they could no longer teach intelligent design, they could not teach the controversy between the theory of evolution and intelligent design and that they could only teach the scientific evidence for evolution.

It sound to me that the Superintend of Schools did his job. Intelligent Design is creationism pure and simple. Contrary to the claims of its small but very vocal number of supporters it has no scientific support in evidence or in theory. It is not in anyway science. It should not be taught in a science class.

The TMLC press release goes on to make the following untrue claim:

Since the late 1950s advances in biochemistry and microbiology, information that Darwin was not privy to in the 1850’s, have revealed that the machine like complexity of living cells – the fundamental unit of life- possess the ability to store, edit, transmit and use information so as to regulate biological systems. This suggests that the theory of intelligent design offers the best explanation for the origin of life and living cells.

The first clause is true, there have been great advances in biochemistry and microbiology since the time of Darwin. The problem is, these advances have confirmed evolutionary theory as suggested by Darwin rather than negated it. In fact, it could well be argued that biochemistry has done more to validate the theory than all the many other confirming discoveries put together. Yet, creationists continue to hope they can dupe the public.

Ed Brayton ends his post with these words:

Also ironic is that the TMLC makes a point of arguing that ID is not creationism, yet the teachers in this case used a mixture of ID and traditional young earth creationist material. This will be fun to watch the ID crowd deal with, as they are loathe to have their ideas associated in any way with "creation science", despite the fact that all of their arguments originated in creationist material. But here we have ID and YEC material mixing together, even while their attorneys attempt to claim they have nothing to do with each other. Stay tuned for much, much more on this one.

Now for the Free Press article: They published much of the TMLC press release without comment or critique, then added an account of the reaction of the school district. Whoever is doing PR for the TMLC is very happy with the AP on this. Among the worst claims that when unchallenged is this.

Intelligent design theory is accepted by a growing number of credible scientists, . ..

This is false and the AP should have said so. Even if true in small absolute numbers it is false in prospective. The truth is that the overwhelming majorities of biological scientist think that Intelligent Design is what it is: creationism dressed up in new cloths. If one reviews a list of the so called "credible scientists," one finds that an incredible high percentage of this small group are not biologists.

Now the school district is justifiable concerned about the cost of such a suit.

The district has formed a committee -- including the two teachers and the superintendent -- to examine the issue and make a recommendation to the school board, perhaps by the end of the academic year, Swem said. Gull Lake schools are in Richland, about 10 miles north of Kalamazoo.

"The approach being taken is steady and calm, taking a look at the issue without being influenced by emotions," Swem said.

Perhaps this is a good approach. At least it should buy time. However, I think the two teachers should be fired rather than put on a committee to solve a problem that they created. First you teach want you know to be against school policy. Then, when told to stop, you bring it to the attention of a creationist law firm. When suit is threatened, you become part of the solution!

I hope the board knows that hordes angry parents, herds of biologists and the ACLU will come after them if they end up with any of this nonsense in their curriculum.

Posted by Duane Smith at April 21, 2005 8:04 PM | Read more on Evolution |

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1129

Comments

Posted by: ~DS~ at April 21, 2005 8:34 PM

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
Send me an email if it is important.

Tags: