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State school board's creeping creationism


Editorial

Why would The New York Times editorial board weigh in on the Texas Board of Education?

Two good reasons.

First, what Texas requires of textbook publishers has nationwide ramifications. It is the nation's second largest bulk purchaser behind California.

Second, what’s happening on the board is what’s happening in several other states — the quest to ease non-science into science class.

It is portrayed as science but is driven by religion.

But rather than having textbooks espouse creationism, proponents want to have evolution presented alongside statements of “weaknesses” in evolution theory.

A lot of what is portrayed as a “weakness” in evolution theory is really a misrepresentation of it.

Evolution is fact, not theory. Life forms change — evolve — based on natural selection. What’s theoretical is explaining all life forms, particularly humankind, within the template.

With most creationists, their template is a “young earth,” one only thousands of years old. But from carbon dating, scientists estimate the planet to be 4.5 billion years old.

State school board president Don McElroy, a San Antonio dentist whose district represents Falls, Franklin, Limestone, Navarro, Freestone, Leon and Robertson counties, is a creationist. Though he has said he doesn’t support creation per se in science class, he and other social conservatives on the board want to include the “strengths and weaknesses of evolution” in curricula.

That approach is fraught with problems. The most alarming is the quest to make evolution theory into something that it’s not: overly descriptive and thereby rebuttable. What we know of evolution is broad and evolving itself.

Creationists will say that evolution theory doesn’t allow for rapid onset of new life forms, as in the Cambrian period. That’s a misrepresentation. Evolution simply implies change, whether at stable or rapid rates, based on conditions for thriving and surviving.

A lot of creationists’ challenges are so arcane as to take pages to explain. Imagine inserting them in a middle-school or high school textbook.

But, then, by and large creationists’ claims are calculated roadblocks to understanding the most basic building block of biology.

The central problem is that those who wish to attach qualifications to evolution aren’t really driven by science but by their faith.

“If the creationist view prevails in Texas,” says the Times editorial, “students interested in learning how science really works and what scientists really understand about life will first have to overcome the handicap of their own education.”

Texas, the nation is watching.

— Editorial
Waco Tribune-Herald
2008-06-11


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