Anti-Evolution Migrates North
Anti-evolution madness has migrated north for the summer. I initially read about this latest school board fiasco, which is unfolding in Maine, here. John Pieret followed up on it here and the Associated Press has picked up on it:
WATERVILLE (AP) — The decades-old controversy over the teaching of evolution in public schools is resurfacing in Somerset County.
A director of SAD 59 in the Madison area is urging the board to drop evolution from high school science curriculums on grounds that it’s an unprovable theory that shouldn’t be taught as fact.
Matthew Linkletter of Athens says neither evolution nor creationism belongs in a science curriculum.
David Connerty-Marin of the state Department of Education disagrees, saying that evolution is based on proven science and its teaching in science classes is mandated by the Maine Learning Results program.
SAD 59 directors will take up Linkletter’s arguments when they meet May 19.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Is anyone else getting as weary as I am of this continual bickering over evolution? It’s bad enough that it goes on in churches, town halls and movie theatres; it’s worse when it keeps popping up in our schools.
Do the people who sit on these school boards live in caves and get all of their education from Archie Comics? Probably not: Archie is too recent a vintage for them. When I read stuff like this, again and again and again, I feel like I’m trapped in a nasty reincarnation of Groundhog Day! The Scopes trial occurred over 80 years ago, people. Get over it!
If I were a thoroughly selfish creep (which, according to cretinists and IDiots, I should be), I might say something like, “Let them teach their kids rubbish. My kids will be better educated than theirs and, consequently, get better jobs. Tough luck, suckers! Thanks for playing the Game of Life!” But, I’m neither completely selfish nor totally creepy, so I actually care that all children should have access to good education. Obviously, they benefit from those opportunities and, as they contribute to society, the rest of us benefit too. That’s why stories like this are so infuriating. Bad education hurts everybody.
Another Maine newspaper offers this account:
MADISON — Neither creationism nor evolution belongs in a high-school science curriculum, a School Administrative District 59 director believes.
Matthew Linkletter of Athens says that both are merely theories that represent “personal beliefs and world views,” rather than proven science. Linkletter suggested during last week’s SAD 59 board meeting that the board discuss evolution, the “Big Bang Theory” and other studies he believes should be deleted from the curriculum.
The school board tabled action on the science curriculum at the April 28 meeting, and will reconsider the issue when it meets at 7 p.m. May 19.
Linkletter, a Christian, said there is no way to prove either evolution or creationism.
“You can’t show, observe or prove it,” Linkletter said of the belief systems. “It’s something you have to believe by faith. It doesn’t meet the criteria of science.
“If it’s not scientifically verifiable, then maybe we should leave it out of the science classes. When you make a statement that’s not backed by facts and just represents a world view, then it has no place.”
Linkletter said he wants the best science for SAD 59 students, who should “be armed with the truth.” They should be able to explain the origins of life according to evolution if it is taught in the schools, he said.
“Nobody has the answer to the origins of life. It’s a philosophical question.”
High-school science teacher Jessica Ward disagrees.
“The empirical proof of evolution is in the study of genetics and how genes relate between organisms,” said Ward, who teaches advanced-placement senior biology, senior anatomy/physiology and 10th-grade biology. She said evolution is proven, as an empirical matter of science, through studies of the human genome.
“My personal, as well as the National Science Teachers position, is that you can’t teach genetics or ecology without evolution.
“The basis for it is the theory of evolution.”
Ward noted that the Maine Learning Results mandates instruction in the theory of evolution. Schools would not be accredited without it, she said.
An effort to remove the theory of evolution from a high-school curriculum actually won temporary approval from the Kansas Board of Education, Ward noted.
In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. Two years later, however, the Kansas board repealed the ruling.
SAD 59 Board Chairman Norman Luce said that a high-school science curriculum might not be the correct forum for the study of evolution.
A philosophy class might be a better fit, the Starks resident said.
“It’s OK to have it somewhere, but it depends on how much time they’re spending on it in the sciences curriculum,” Luce said. “I don’t care if everybody else in the country uses it. Science is about proving things. (Linkletter) has a good point.”
Luce added that he is not necessarily opposed to the study of evolution, but is not sure how much time should be devoted to it.
Why in the world do Matthew Linkletter and Norman Luce believe that they are even minimally qualified to sit on a school board? It’s painfully obvious that neither of them knows anything at all about either science or philosophy! Furthermore, it’s utterly foolish to contemplate defying the state curriculum standards. If they push forward with this foolhardy idea, the children will pay dearly for the stupidity of the parents (well, that’s biblical anyway, so, in a sad sort of way, they may gain some affirmation of their faith). The fact that Linkletter and Luce are both (presumably) high school graduates (at least) may say all that needs to be said about the state of American education.
I can only hope that the majority of residents in Somerset County disagree with Luce and Linkletter. Therefore, I’ll close with a few words of advice for them: unless you want to become the next Dover, you’d better storm next week’s school board meeting and kill this idea dead in its tracks. If you don’t, you and your children will be paying for it for years to come.
UPDATE: I neglected mentioning that Spanish Inquisitor also wrote a post about this situation. Sorry for the oversight, SI.
– the chaplain
It’s so sad and infuriating isn’t it. We wouldn’t dream of having parents telling doctors or lawyers how to practise their profession – yet everybody seems to think they are an expert on education.
I was reading recently about the spread of creationism in Europe. In America it appears to be the fundamentalist Christians, but in Europe it appears that the thrust and the money is coming from Islam. It looks like this one is going to run and run …
THE BIGGER PICTURE IN THE DEBATE ON DARWINISM IS NOT INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
The reason is elementary: the Discovery Institute and other ID proponents leave out the Triune God, Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Hence, Richard Dawkins can make the case for “aliens” seeding the earth.
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Ha! I feel bad for Maine, that’s so sad to here. Do creationists keep forgetting that science is a class in school and religion is a class in church (and possibly an elective in college)? I’d welcome ID or creation in schools if they actually went through the process of rigorous peer-review within the academic community or showed some (just some) evidence for their claims.
But I guess they keep trying to skip these processes (that scientific theories endure to get into classrooms) and just go straight into the textbooks…
“Neither creationism nor evolution belongs in a high-school science curriculum”
??? Nice try…
@ cdavidparsons
That’s exactly the kind of rubbish that our beloved Chaplain wants to stop dead it its tracks! (As do I.) Didn’t you even READ her post?
Meanwile, there are several creative ways out there to fight back against this encroaching lack of science. My favorite can be found at http://www.venganza.org. (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) This started as a protest against the Kansas School Board’s attempt to include “Intelligent Design” in their science curriculum. Bobby Henderson wrote the school board a letter insisting that if ID was to be taught in the public schools, then ALL competing theories must be taught. He went on to explain his theory that the earth was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, that the FSM changes your experimental results to make it LOOK like he is not there, and that Global Warming is being caused by the declining numbers of Pirates in the world. (He did a very good job of making it as ridiculous as possible.) None of this can be conclusively proved to be false, so he insists that it deserves equal time with any other alternate theory.
This has since blossomed into something much bigger. There is a website, a published Gospel, and you can even get decals for your car! Pastafarian groups are popping up on campuses, and every time a school board announces plans to include ID they are barraged with e-mails insisting that the FSM theory of “Unintelligent Design” be included as well. At least one school board (Polk County, Florida) has dropped their efforts after the press got wind of the flood of demands that came in.
Check out the website and read the “Open letter”. It’s a hoot. If we can’t fight them with reason, satire’s a pretty good weapon too!
May you be touched by his Noodly Appendage.
RAmen!
This is not your parent’s science book filled with distortions of the truth, called “quantum mysticism.”
Odd, I have heard some of the idiot arguments this “book” seems to imply explain things and “quantum mysticism” seems to be **precisely** the kind of crap its pulling out of the authors ass. Real science takes “all” information and then looks for the best explanation. Books like this take what they want to be true, then look for the most useful evidence from *some* science to fit it, then ignore everything that contradicts that, **including** the words of the fracking people that did the science they bend into a pretzel to support their “theory”. Its the same shit that the DI and ID try, the only difference being the dishonesty of DI in attempting to claim, while in practice doing the exact opposite, that “God” isn’t the only answer. I.e., they are marginally better liars than you, given that they at least try to pretend that they are trying to present a non-religious view that doesn’t *require* some insane, made up, not quite 2,000 year old, fairy tale, which glued itself to an older 10,000 year old fairy tale, to be true. They do an incompetent and incomprehensibly bad job of it, in that they can’t go five minutes lying about their goals without slipping on a banana peel and giving away the entire game they are playing, but they at least try. Your book doesn’t even bother, it just jumps, whole cloth, into shear unmitigated bullshit, which tries to claim Biblical parity with science, even while half the shit it claims supports it is, if anything, a ***better*** fit with some things out of Buddhism (like the big bang) and other religions, all of which think Jesus and your god are made up things, which don’t and never did exist.
Hell, at least on Pagan legend I read a while back described the creation of the universe thus: “And so the Goddess, floating in an endless sea of nothing, grew lonely. In that loneliness she extruded a piece of herself and gave it new life, only it was male, unlike her, and raced off away from her. Thus was ‘our’ universe formed.” I.e., you had one eternal universe, which “gave birth to” a new universe, which, for all practical purposes, was also a God itself. Still pure BS, but its hardly a) Biblical, b) Jesus, c) dumber than the explanations people try to “bend” science to fit, and d) its actually a close parallel to some multi-universe theories of the formation of ours, while your’s ***isn’t***. So, your’s is right why? Oh, right, because you believe in the Christian God and its impossible for you to be fracking *wrong*, despite the millions of times people just like you have been wrong about every Biblical proclamation from the shape of the earth (a flat disc) to the origin and cause of mental illness (demon possession)…
Fact is, if I *had* to pick some religion to “fit” science to, Christianity would be the **last** one I would look at for having anything close to a reasonable fit what the actual evidence suggests happened, with regard to “anything”.
The Pastafarian counter attack is brilliant, I must admit. As the group grows with more and more organizations, it becomes harder to dismiss. It really is genius.
I think it’s much wiser to fight them by going along with their arguments and then claiming Pastafarian creation, Gaia-ism, the Aussie Aborigine creation, Native American creation stories, and so on all get their equal time as well.
I have definitive proof that Matthew Linkletter, as well as QuestForRight and that Parsons person, do not exist. That’s my worldview, so it must be right.
I would like to comment on Jessica Ward’s statement: High-school science teacher Jessica Ward disagrees.
“The empirical proof of evolution is in the study of genetics and how genes relate between organisms,” said Ward, who teaches advanced-placement senior biology, senior anatomy/physiology and 10th-grade biology. She said evolution is proven, as an empirical matter of science, through studies of the human genome.
“My personal, as well as the National Science Teachers position, is that you can’t teach genetics or ecology without evolution.
“The basis for it is the theory of evolution.”
This last statement says that genetics or ecology cannot be taught without evolution and the very next sentence says that the basis is the theory of evolution. Did you get that, the THEORY of evolution. It is interesting that a major law of philosophy is that if your premise is wrong then your conclusions will most likely be wrong. If in the words of Jessica Ward evolution is a theory it is highly unlikely that the conclusions from this premise have proveable results that relate to the premise.
On another side issue is the movie produced by Ben Stein, “Expelled”. Mr. Stein raises some questions about the agreement among the scientific community about the truthfulness of evolution. If the acedemic community is so tolerant why can it not support a healthy debate within its ranks? In an age of tolerance why can’t evolution and Biblical creation be taught side by side? Isn’t one of the goals of education to teach our children to think for themselves? How can they think for themselves if if their choices for discernment are limited by the intolerant promoting tolerance? I believe that Matthew Linkletter is promoting a very logical solution. He seems to be the one with the most integrity in this situation. By the way he was educated in the SAD 59 schools and the University of Maine system. I would be careful in the name calling, you may offend more than you think. It is the sign of a weak argument when you attack the person and not the issue.
Haynie -
Go look up the definition of a scientific theory in a real science book before you come around blithering your ignorance and religious nonsense.
As for Stein and his epic piece of propaganda, note that among scientists there is no debate between evolution and creation nonsense. Creationists and IDist have produced not one bit of evidence to support their hypothesis. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Evolution has hundreds of years of evidence, investigation, facts, and proof. The other guys? Nothing. So there’s no debate because there’s nothing to debate.
Teaching the Bible and evolution side by side is nonsense. They’re not remotely related. One is superstition and fable and at best belongs in a literature class, but certainly not in a science classroom.
Legitimate scientists will always look at legitimate challenges to evolution. And if it is ever successfully challenged by new facts, new knowledge, they’ll be the first to admit it and the first to develop a new hypothesis that works with the facts. Creationists and their ilk try desperately to fit fact to their pet theory, and when it doesn’t work they make things up, they lie, they engage in intellectual dishonesty. That behavior doesn’t belong in any classroom in a modern, civilized society.
Your paragraph following Ms. Ward’s quote is utter nonsense. If you’re going to blather on about philosophy and argument, perhaps you might check out of the library a book on logic – secular logic, not religious bullshit logic – and actually study it. It’s interesting how in your one short post you’ve managed to demonstrate an appalling ignorance of science, logic, argument, evolution, and your complete inability to see through a piece of cheap propaganda like ‘Expelled’.
And yeah, you bet your ass I’m intolerant of clowns like you. No doubt about it.
the world wants to teach tolerance.
of what?
I don’t see any tolerance.
all I see is hate in most of these things I’m reading.
do we want tolerance? or do we TRULY want truth.
there ARE absolutes in TRUTH and LOVE.
God is love. if you don’t believe it and all you want to do is fight and argue about what we are SUPPOSED to be tolerant of, then GET OVER IT!!!!
because God wins in the beginning and the end. NO ONE has a say in it. He will determine this.
So please. just look for yourself at what we want to teach the young generation. God loves us and created us in His image and whether you believe it or not or want to teach it to your kids, that’s your choice in this wonderful country of America!
oh and God bless Matt Linkletter for standing out and Mr. Haynie for standing up. Isn’t this what freedom is?
by the way because my father fought for our country I am pleased I can say these things
praise Jesus for His love and through Him all things that were made are!
jennifer -
We know what you want to teach the young. You want to teach them lies and call it science between prayers for the destruction of evolution science and evidence-based knowledge.
And as for your nonsense about some god deciding everything blah blah blah, and dressing up your nonsense in some faux patriotic drivel, please! Go back to whichever cult you came from and live out your delusions without visiting them on the rest of the world.
You offer nothing but illogic and irrationality and then when someone tells you your beliefs are illogical and irrational you get huffy and talk about intolerance and hatred.
Let me be clear. I despise your kind of non-thought, your religious nonsense, and your rejection of evidence, proof, facts, and science, and I am definitely intolerant of it. Your kind of crap is responsible for more misery and suffering and unnecessary death than anything else. Millions have died because of your insane little fantasies. Nuts to you, lady!