by Larry Jones
The Louisiana Science Education Act signed
at the end of June by Governor Bobby Jindal, a rising star in the Republican
constellation, will allow public school teachers to teach the theory
of intelligent design (ID) and criticism of evolution, global warming,
and cloning. It passed the state Senate unanimously and the state House
by 93-4. ID is a pseudo-scientific theory that opposes evolution and
claims that an intelligent designer, read God, must have created this
ever so complex world and its life.
This disturbing political event is not
surprising since Louisiana is considered one of the least progressive
states in the nation according to The Progressive States Network. See
(http://www.progressivestates.
Jindal, who converted to Catholicism
in high school, has a biology degree from Brown University, so his own
belief that God is the creator of the world and humankind puts him at
odds with nearly all of the world’s biologists. Further, in 1996,
Pope John Paul II stated in an encyclical that evolution was compatible
with the Catholic faith. In Jindal’s gubernatorial campaign he told
voters he believed in teaching intelligent design in the public schools.
So it’s not surprising that he was eager to sign Senate Bill 733.
Jindal’s 2003 campaign ads celebrated
the ten commandments and criticized liberals. Newt Gingrich and others
have said perhaps he should be John McCain’s running mate. Jindal
was assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
in Bush’s first term and after 2005 was a Bush supporter in the House
of Representatives for two terms. He became governor in January of this
year. Some leading Republicans are even saying that he is presidential
material, which would certainly put him in the Bush-Cheney tradition.
Rush Limbaugh thinks he’s the next Ronald Reagan.
The Louisiana Coalition for Science called
the new law “a thinly disguised attempt to advance the “Wedge Strategy”
of the Discovery Institute, a creationist think tank that is collaborating
with the Louisiana Family forum to get intelligent design creationism
into Louisiana public school science classes.” The Wedge Strategy
is a metaphor for creating an opening for belief in the supernatural
in the public’s view of science. The LA Family Forum is linked to
James Dobson’s right wing Family Forum. Dobson is a close ally of
President Bush and has just announced that he will probably endorse
John McCain as the lesser of two evils.
CHANGING THE SUBJECT SO GOD CAN BE
SNUCK IN
The new law has an innocuous sounding
statement that it “shall not be construed to promote any religious
doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of
religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion
or nonreligion.” This ruse comes directly from the Discovery Institute’s
own “Model Academic Freedom Act.” Teaching real science needs no
such disclaimer.
According to one of the Discovery Institute’s
major spokespersons, Phillip Johnson, “Our strategy has been to change
the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design,
which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and
into the schools.” However, one of the founding so-called scientists
of the ID movement, Michael Behe, claims that the discovery of apparent
design in nature (like the eye is so complex, it must have had a designer)
does not necessarily identify the designer, while most followers of
ID claim the designer is clearly God. On a personal level, Behe says
he believes that, too.
Actually, the notion that what nature
reveals is the design of a creator goes way back to the mid 1800s when
famed biologist Sir Richard Owen was amazed when he discovered, as Neil
Shubin put it in his new book “Your Inner Fish,” that “there is
a fundamental design in the skeleton of all animals. Frogs, bats, humans,
and lizards are all just variations on a theme. That theme, to Owen,”
says Shubin, “was the plan of the Creator.”
Shubin then points to the coup de grace. He writes, “Shortly after
Owen announced this observation in his classic monograph “On the Nature
of Limbs,” Charles Darwin supplied an elegant explanation for it.
The reason the wing of a bat and the arm of a human share a common skeleton
pattern is because they share a common ancestor.” (Shubin, p. 32)
Unfortunately Darwin’s “Origin of
Species” did not resolve the issue for everyone.
The ghost of Sir Richard Owen is still around and backers of the Louisiana
law hope it will become a model for other states to follow. Intelligent
design continues to cause heated debate far beyond its importance. “It’s
really quite marginal ” it’s part of a very successful marketing and
public relations campaign by a well-financed group, the Discovery Institute,”
said Dr. Lawrence Krauss, professor of physics at Case Western Reserve
University on a PBS Newshour program. ” And it shows how you can take
something that, from a scientific perspective is really irrelevant and
make it appear to be an incredibly controversial issue, which it isn’t,”
meaning not in the scientific community. It is also noteworthy that there
are almost no articles on ID in scientific journals, except a few that
are critical of the theory.
The American Association for the Advancement
of Science has stated that “There is no significant controversy
within the scientific community about the validity of evolution.”
and “Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles
of modern science.”
In 2005, U.S. District Judge John E.
Jones in Pennsylvania ruled that the Dover Area School Board’s decision
to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violated the
constitutional separation of church and state. He said ID was thinly
disguised creationism, a religious belief based on the book of Genesis.
In an earlier Louisiana case, the state had passed a law stating that
evolution could not be taught in public schools unless creationism was
taught alongside it. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional.
SCIENCE TEACHERS WITHOUT GUIDANCE MAY CHOOSE ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
The heart of the new Louisiana law allows
science teachers to use supplemental materials when teaching the origins
of life. The Discovery Institute hopes that its own book “Explore
Evolution” (which is actually about destroying evolution) will be
selected by teachers for use in classrooms. The state Board of Elementary
and Secondary Education is required, but only upon request, to give
teachers guidance on what materials to use. However, the law gives no
guidance on how this shall be carried out. The ACLU and Americans United
for Separation of Church and State are on alert for abuses that will
undoubtedly turn some science classes into religion classes.
Susan Spath, a spokeswoman for the National
Center for Science Education, a group that defends the teaching of evolution
in public schools, said of the Louisiana law: “It sounds like you’re
being fair, but creationism is a sectarian religious viewpoint, and
intelligent design is a sectarian religious viewpoint.” Religious
teaching should take place in homes or houses of worship, not in public
schools.
In 2005 Bush stated that he thought intelligent
design and evolution should be taught alongside each other, words which
have not been repudiated since then. “It’s what I’ve been pushing,
it’s what a lot of us have been pushing,” said Richard Land, then
president of the ethics and religious liberties commission of the far
right Southern Baptist Convention, who also has close ties to the White
House.
On the other hand, The Rev. Barry W.
Lynn, a minister of the United Church of Christ and the executive director
of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the president’s
comments irresponsible, and said that “when it comes to evolution,
there is only one school of scientific thought, and that is evolution
occurred and is still occurring.” Mr. Lynn added that “when
it comes to matters of religion and philosophy, they can be discussed
objectively in public schools, but not in biology class.”
Meanwhile in Texas, the legislature last
year passed a law allowing the teaching of an elective course on the
Bible as culture and literature and asking the State Board of Education
to develop guidelines. The board’s guidelines only stress “critical
thinking, communication, problem solving and decision making skills,”
according to the Austin American Statesman. The paper’s editorial
asks, “How will those vague guidelines play out in more than a thousand
Texas school districts? In every possible way. Bible study will be a
cats-and-dogs course with untrained teachers drifting, or marching,
into unconstitutional territory with regularity.” The paper’s Ben
Sargent had a cartoon about this which showed singing coming out of
a classroom, to wit: “Jesus loves me this I know, “cause my teacher
tells me so.”
One thing is clear, we must not let fake
science and dangerous politics and politicians lead us from our central
task. Since we do not want our children to grow up with an incorrect
understanding of how the world and the universe actual work, we must
consider the new Louisiana law and similar attempts by Pennsylvania,
Georgia and Kansas very dangerous, as is the related case in Texas.
The disconcerting thing is that they all conform to the Bush regimes”
agenda, an agenda which we must completely repudiate.
Larry Jones is a long time political
activist and former United Church of Christ minister who lives in Honolulu.