PZ Myers. 2006 Jan 06. Alas, Texas. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/alas_texas/>. Accessed 2006 Feb 13.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, January 06, 2006
Alas, Texas
Kansans will be relieved to learn that their big buddy to the South, Texas, is going to take some of the heat off of them. We have a new target for ridicule:
Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who has made outreach to Christian conservatives a theme of his gubernatorial portfolio, thinks Texas public school students should be taught intelligent design along with evolutionary theory, his office said Thursday.
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Perry "supports the teaching of the theory of intelligent design," spokeswoman Kathy Walt said. "Texas schools teach the theory of evolution; intelligent design is a valid scientific theory, and he believes it should be taught as well."
The article does go on to mention that the chairperson of the State Board of Education, in a how-the-hell-did-this-kook-get-to-be-my-boss moment, pointed out that the educators of the state have had no intention of introducing a non-issue like ID into the curriculum.
I look forward to hearing the Discovery Institute's reaction. Will they repudiate their current strategy of pretending they don't want to teach ID in schools and embrace the propaganda opportunity, or will they let Perry twist in the wind? Will the Thomas More Law Center, fresh off their masochistic adventure in Dover, step forward with joy in their hearts and beg, "yes, whip me again, please"? Will the voters of Texas finally realize that even idiots can wear a cowboy hat and boots?
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As a science educator in Texas I often fear this insanity could take root here. Our superintendent is goofy enough to try and one of my coworkers is a out and out creationist and a Bio teacher. Our discussions have been somewhat fruitful however.
Needless to say 75% of the Biology faculty here do a good job on evolution, even if they soft peddle it somewhat. The other departments by their own admission don't know much about it per se.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 09:44 AM -
This is going to be so much fun. I'll lay odds that the DI will keeping running like brave Sir Robin and the the TMLC will dutifully ask for another spanking. Any takers?
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 10:00 AM
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I know it's Texas, but ID? Really? Then again the Houston ISD's former superindentent is Rod Paige, Dubya's Sec. of Edutainment. I guess I could see Rick "The Haircut" Perry pulling this, plus currently his biggest competition for this year's election is Scott McClellan's mom.
At least until Kinky Friedman's campaign gets going (of which I'm a volunteer).
Nathan#: Posted by on 01/06 at 10:11 AM -
Gloating may be premature. The ID'ers are going to keep trying and trying until they find a judge foolish enough, or ignorant enough, or softheaded enough or politically ambitious enough in a bible-belt state to rule in their favor. This is a core issue for some very stubborn people who are sure they're right and seem to be able to squeeze out a lot of money to try. This issue won't go away until Americans start getting better educations, and perhaps until the world takes a swing back toward rationalism.
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 10:13 AM
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Now that the plague is spreading to my home, I'm REALLY glad I'm innoculated. I don't have much else to be glad about, though.
#: Posted by BronzeDog on 01/06 at 10:23 AM
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This is really starting to get old. It's the same rehashed garbage over and over from these dimwit politicians.
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 10:43 AM
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While the head of the state board might be against ID, there are some terrifyingly powerful forces at work in Texas who are almost certainly pro-ID. The Gabbler family, who almost single-handedly chose and buy all the textbooks in the state (making them among the most hated people among textbook editors like me), are batshit crazy fundamentalists. If they get on board with Perry's proposal, Texas education is in for a long slog. If the curriculum doesn't get changed or is overturned, look at how fast the quality of biology textbooks plumments as the Gabblers and their allies start demanding evolution be stripped from the textbooks or ID be included.
To add to the scary nature of this scenario, bear in mind that Texas, as a key market, sets much of the tone for textbooks and curriculum throughout the entire nation. Craziness there tends to spread like flesh-eating bacteria across much of the central and southern US.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 10:50 AM -
Will the Thomas More Law Center, fresh off their masochistic adventure in Dover, step forward with joy in their hearts and beg, "yes, whip me again, please"? Will the voters of Texas finally realize that even idiots can wear a cowboy hat and boots?
Intelligent Design--proof that the Christian Flagellant movement is alive in America.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 11:12 AM -
Sounds like just a blatant grab for votes, nothing obviously serious at the present time.
Does the person who wrote this article really think that Democrats and independents should pound him hard over the issue? Isn't that likely to be exactly what Perry wants, to huff and puff about the wicked atheist censors who want to shut the good religious people up? Naturally there are venues and fundraisers in which his idiocy should be exposed, and I hope that in the larger arena some will be able to make a good solid case against such nonsense.
But they can't pound hard, or they're going to sound like commie atheists to too great a percentage of the masses. They have to sound sensible and be sensible in taking on this claptrap, because not actually understanding what is wrong with ID and with teaching ID is precisely the deficit that Perry is trying to exploit. Deal in measured tones and language, and the result may turn out to be like Dover, a razor-thin victory for science.
A campaign is wholly different from yammering in the blogosphere. I'm happy to call IDers IDiots and anything else on these forums, but it is precisely because I am not trying to persuade voters that I can feel free to try to dissuade ID propagandists from trying to spew their garbage onto the web.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm#: Posted by on 01/06 at 11:27 AM -
Gracchus: Please - this stuff has nothing to do with intelligence or education. It's more a matter of what type of beliefs one accumulates. Behe is not a dumb person nor does he lack education. Behe, like all of us, uses his intelligence to justify his beliefs.
However, he is a bad scientist. A good scientist holds a belief in the rational scientific process as their highest value - and refuses to allow beliefs they may come upon in their subject matter to ever supercede it. In fact, belief is not the right word for scientific theories and hypotheses that are always provisional.
I agree with the gist of your post. I just want to dispel the myth (belief, meme) that people become creationists because they are are dumb or uneducated. This incorrect belief causes us to underestimate the damage they can cause to mankind. It also promotes the idea that atheists (or atheist scientists) are intellectually superior to creationists - and that's not necessarily so.
Good scientists have simply placed more noble beliefs at the top of their belief system hierarchy. But we all use our intellect to defend and support our beliefs.
Margaret#: Posted by Margaret on 01/06 at 11:31 AM -
I live in Austin and we had to deal with this crap two years ago...and dealt with it soundly we did, at a hearing attended by the likes of Dembski, Behe and Wells as well as an army of UT biology professors, Eugenie Scott, Alan Gishlick, Robert Pennock and Steven Weinberg. And misleading info about evolution was soundly kept OUT of Texas textbooks as a result of that meeting. Now here this crap raises its stupid head again. At least now we have a decisive case like Dover as a major precedent.
Remember, Perry is the asshat who signed legislation in a church in Dallas and proudly paraded this contempt for separation in front of cameras. He's a pandering scumbag through and through.#: Posted by Martin Wagner on 01/06 at 11:41 AM -
While the head of the state board might be against ID, there are some terrifyingly powerful forces at work in Texas who are almost certainly pro-ID.
Like the Texas Republican Party, which has a plank in its platform calling for "the objective teaching and equal treatment of scientific strengths and weaknesses of all scientific theories, including Intelligent Design - as Texas law now requires but has yet to enforce. The Party believes theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught only as theories not fact..." (quote on page 17 under the heading "Scientific Theories").
At the moment, I'm whatever the Master's equivalent of ABD is at Texas Tech, and I've had numerous conversations with professors in the Biology, Anthropology, and Museum Science departments there about Creationists students in the intro classes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Texas hosts the next big fight over ID.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 11:50 AM -
The Texas Republican Party has a plank in its platform calling for "the objective treatment of scientific strengths and weaknesses of all scientific theories, including Intelligent Design - as Texas law now requires but has yet to enforce. The Party believes theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught only as theories not fact..." (Quote on page 17 under the heading "Scientific Theories".)
I'm presently all-but-thesis in a Master's program at Texas Tech, and I've had numerous conversations with professors in the Biology, Anthropology, and Museum Science programs about the strong current of Creationism in students from Texas. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Texas hosts the next big fight over ID.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 12:06 PM -
I'm eager to hear what Texas columnist Molly Ivins will have to say about it all. Could be some good stuff coming out of this. :D
#: Posted by Hank Fox on 01/06 at 12:21 PM
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Based on the recent Fordham study of science and mathematics performance, Governor Goodhair can not do too much (more) damage. Texas is already 48th of 50 and so cannot fall much pietiefurther. We inmates have been entertained for several years by a State Republican circus simultaneously uttering soundbites about the value of eduaction while trying to figure out how to fund it without any of their constituents having to pay. Culturally, Texas is unable to reconcile a phobic reaction to taxation with their educational rhetoric; probably because they are fundamentally suspicious of knowledge and intellect. For an example, see the aformentioned governor or Texas' gift to clear thinking and good government, Dubya.
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 12:27 PM
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'I agree with the gist of your post. I just want to dispel the myth (belief, meme) that people become creationists because they are are dumb or uneducated. This incorrect belief causes us to underestimate the damage they can cause to mankind. It also promotes the idea that atheists (or atheist scientists) are intellectually superior to creationists - and that's not necessarily so.'
This is true I think. But it also shows the paucity of most religious beliefs as they are simply placed inside the heads of the young who then grow to defend these beliefs they came to for no good reason.
Science tends to remove the indoctrination in many as the brain wires to a better way of thinking but not in all.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 12:43 PM -
I think "theory of intelligent design" should be at the top of the list of forbidden oxymorons.
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 01:14 PM
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Based on the recent Fordham study of science and mathematics performance, Governor Goodhair can not do too much (more) damage. Texas is already 48th of 50 and so cannot fall much pietiefurther. We inmates have been entertained for several years by a State Republican circus simultaneously uttering soundbites about the value of education while trying to figure out how to fund it without any of their constituents having to pay. Culturally, Texas is unable to reconcile a phobic reaction to taxation with their educational rhetoric; probably because they are fundamentally suspicious of knowledge and intellect.
Other than that last sentence, much of what you say here is also true of good old blue California, and a whole bunch of other states, I'd bet. I suspect we're somewhere in the 40's in public schools, and we've long had a chronic problem of voters refusing to fund schools properly. It began with fucking Proposition 13 in 1978, where schools basically lost their property tax funding with nothing replacing it. It continues today with local voters routinely voting down bond initiatives to fund schools. Schwarzenegger tried to ramp up the GOP school-bleeding, but he got smacked down so decisively last fall we can assume the status quo will prevail for some time.
Many Americans claim to 'support public schools', but much/most of the time, it's simply not true, not if they have to pay anything for it.
At least we're not under any Creationist threat here. :ยท)#: Posted by on 01/06 at 01:35 PM -
If Texas switches, they'll get to re-write all of their science standards as well, just as Kansas was required to do - all 123 or so pages of them . See:
Science 4 November 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5749, p. 754
DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5749.754a
The NSES and NSTA don't want Texas to violate the copywrite permissions.
#: Posted by on 01/06 at 02:06 PM -
I find the idea of editing scientific textbooks to reflect fundagelical views twice as deplorable as deploying an existing piece of creationist faeces like "Of Pandering People" or whatever the hell it's called. As if these jackholes don't already have their godfilthy booger-covered fingers in enough pies of reason and progress already.
I have a better idea -- let's let histrogeek and his colleagues edit the Bible for scientific accuracy and strip out the lewd content, like Lot being banged by his two daughters while passed out drunk. Granted, it wouldn't be the same book after all was said and done, but at least kids would get to learn about evolution in the first few pages (probably two competing versions of it, but oh well).#: Posted by Beaming Visionary on 01/06 at 02:06 PM -
My mother, who teaches geography at my old high school in Texas, says she was shocked to hear one of the basic biology teachers complaining in the teacher's lounge: "Oh, I have to go over evolution next. I know I have a bunch of good, Christian kids, and I'm just not sure how I should teach it to them!" And yes, she is probably a Baptist. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the movement took root in Texas, even after its resounding defeats elsewhere...
However, until Perry actually puts his money where his mouth is, I'm in agreement with Glen. It's a vote grab, at least for now. If his constituents eventually spur him to action, the NEA and all the biologists in Texas should be ready to put a quick end to it, but making a huge deal out of it now would give Perry and the IDers more ground. Just ignore it for what it is and see if he shuts up about it.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 02:57 PM -
DC said:
Science tends to remove the indoctrination in many as the brain wires to a better way of thinking but not in all.
I agree with your statement but I think this is a very interesting area that deserves greater scrutiny. For the sake of discussion if anyone is interested I propose:
a) That life is making decisions and acting on them. At the moment any decision is made it is the result of summing only emotional inputs. We feel our decisons - we don't reason them.
b) These emotional inputs come mainly from our personal belief system. Our personal belief system is everything we believe to be true about the world and our place in it.
c) New ideas are accepted only if they feel good to us and support our existing beliefs. We reject new ideas that contradict our existing beliefs - no matter how logical.
d) Logical persons have an emotional committment to reason - not because they use reason in lieu of emotions in their decisionmaking (which I deem impossible).
e) Their emotional committment to reason causes them to use their reason more frequently and more effectively. They (emotionally) value the results of their logical reasoning. It also causes them to discount dogma and ideology (to feel negative emotionally about them) as inputs into their emotional calculator.
f) But if that ideology is part of their own belief system - look out. If they are smart they will simply use their intellect not to examine but to find clever justifications for their ideology.
And that's the story of ID.
Takers?
Margaret#: Posted by on 01/06 at 03:09 PM -
texas governors who cant/don't read science books is not news but this dodo is so afraid of one particular constituency that he acts like he can't/doesn't read news papers either ...sheesh!
#: Posted by greensmile on 01/06 at 03:38 PM
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Can any of you ezplain why this whole ID and creationist BS is so strong in the USA and is pretty much a non issue in Canada and Europe (I don't know much about the issue in Asian countries)?
I have long considerd the USA as a world leader in most areas of science but it will not remian that way much longer if this kind of drivel is permitted to continue. What a huge waste of time.
I also don't udnerstand how a governor can ignore the ruling by a Federal judge that ID is emphatically not science and that trying to put it into science classes is not just stupid but unconstitutional. Do state governors not swear to uphold the constitution? (or is that just a Federal thing and education is in the hands of states?)
Religion is taught to children that have not yet developed critical thinking skills. I agree with Dawkins that this is a pernicious and damaging meme that infects those least able to withstand it. I would hope that the educators of Texas can see this and resist further damaging the youth that are in their care.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 03:54 PM -
CanuckRob, the justification is that Texas is in a different district than the federal court that ruled on the Dover case, and therefore holds no juristiction over Texas. Since the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the overall validity of ID, then it's still fair game and valid theory in areas outside of Pennsylvania. At least, that's the arguement of folks like Perry and the Discovery Institute.
And yes, this is a blatant vote grab by Perry to try and blunt Strayhorn's indy appeal to Republican voters. It's a very insincere gesture by Perry (who I really suspect doesn't believe ID has a thimble's worth of credibility) but he's shown a willingness to stoop to any level if it lands him votes, which is why it's a concern...#: Posted by Jayme Lynn Blaschke on 01/06 at 05:10 PM -
What gets me is he goes and makes this anouncement after Dover, after the ridicule heaped on Kansas, after the smack down that ID has gotten in the last six months, he decides to join the loosing camp. It's like running off to join the Confederacy after Appamaddox.
#: Posted by Keith on 01/06 at 06:01 PM
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"Can any of you ezplain why this whole ID and creationist BS is so strong in the USA and is pretty much a non issue in Canada and Europe (I don't know much about the issue in Asian countries)?"
Pure, concentrated, and outright eliminationist hatred of intellectuals. It's one of the most consistent themes over the past two hundred years. This dovetails perfectly with the freakish and frankly obscene devotion to religion.
So long as intellectuals remained ghettoized in the universities, the US at large was generally willing to tolerate them. This has changed recently.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 06:41 PM -
"a) That life is making decisions and acting on them. At the moment any decision is made it is the result of summing only emotional inputs. We feel our decisons - we don't reason them."
If it's impossible to make a decision based on reason (which is what this implies) then the discussion is self-annihilating. There can be no possible point to it. Those who already agree with you have not come to that decision based on reason, reason could not persuade them otherwise. Those who disagree with you have the same issue.#: Posted by on 01/06 at 06:44 PM -
In terms of overall culture, much of Northern Europe is considerably more secular/rationalist than the US; Southern Europe and Canada, only a little more secular/rationalist than the US. I also haven't seen any evidence that hatred of intellectuals is profoundly more intense in the US than in Canada; the culture of the two countries is not that different.
I think it's more specific and historically contingent than that. Modern Protestant fundamentalism, with its insistence on a literal Genesis and its creepy End Times fixation, is largely a movement of American origin. The Roman Catholic Church is just not particularly into this stuff, nor are the various Protestant churches of Europe.
That doesn't mean that they are necessarily bulwarks of reasoned inquiry. Many of their members believe in myth and miracle to a degree that rivals any American fundamentalist; it's just that their church doesn't specifically have denial of evolution as a doctrinal pillar.#: Posted by Matt McIrvin on 01/06 at 09:44 PM -
To add to the scary nature of this scenario, bear in mind that Texas, as a key market, sets much of the tone for textbooks and curriculum throughout the entire nation. Craziness there tends to spread like flesh-eating bacteria across much of the central and southern US.
Don't Texas and California control the textbook market jointly?#: Posted by Alon Levy on 01/06 at 10:45 PM -
<i>Don't Texas and California control the textbook market jointly? <i>
Yes they do, though jointly may not be the right word since their curricula could hardly be more different. Texas is in some ways more potent because of its adoption procedures. One textbook per subject (grade) is pretty much the rule in Texas (hence the infamous Texas school book depository of history and legend). California is allows greater flexibility for local districts; the state board allows several different books for districts to choose from.
Also not as many states lift big whacking chunks of their standards straight out of California's standards, but a few do lift section of Texan standards to say time and effort (a state like Nebraska is never going to get a textbook that coordinates specifically with its standards, but gets along better if it picks up parts of Texas's standards).#: Posted by on 01/07 at 04:52 AM -
Will the Thomas More Law Center, fresh off their masochistic adventure in Dover, step forward with joy in their hearts and beg, "yes, whip me again, please"?
No, they're busy in Michigan, suing a school district that doesn't allow ID.#: Posted by arensb on 01/07 at 11:45 AM -
The best hope is that Perry will be out of office by 2008 and his replacement will be disinterested in violating biology textbooks -- not to mention science in general -- with this nonsense.
To think I believed I couldn't be more embarrassed to live in Texas. I've now been proven wrong.#: Posted by jason on 01/07 at 02:53 PM