It’s true: the Minnesota Senate has passed a modification to an education bill that would prohibit the teaching of intelligent design.

16.12 Sec. 4. Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 120B.021, is amended by adding a
16.13 subdivision to read:
16.14 Subd. 2a. Curriculum. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the Department
16.15 of Education, a charter school, and a school district are prohibited from utilizing a
16.16 nonscientifically based curriculum, such as intelligent design, to meet the required science
16.17 academic standards under this section.


This is not a law yet, and I don’t expect it will be. The senate version of the bill has to be reconciled with the house version, and the house version does not include this addendum. It will probably vanish without comment.

I have mixed feelings about it. It’s reasonable to expect that science requirements cannot be met by non-science curricula, and on that principle, the limitation is reasonable. However, I don’t like the idea of politicians with little training in the subject trying to dictate what is and isn’t science. Just say that a course should address the content specified by the state science standards, which were written by a committee of citizen educators and scientists, rather than trying to specify details by way of legal statutes.

Besides, maybe the intelligent design crowd will get off their butts and do experiments and develop evidence that actually makes their wild-ass guess scientific, and then this law would look awfully silly.

(Yeah, I’m smirking cynically and laughing as I write that.)

Sometimes they do tell the truth, but when they do, they just reveal their fallacies.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to come from the article was a quote from Ken Ham, the founder of AiG:

All scientists start with presuppositions. If you’re starting point is ‘we can explain the origin of the universe without the supernatural,’ that’s a bias.

Of course, what that bias is called is “science” and Ham is ag’in it. That he claims he isn’t tells you all anyone needs to know about his version of science and maybe all you need to know about his religion as well.

Someday, I want one of these guys to explain to me how they propose we do supernatural science.

Phillip E. Johnson says, “his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas [Intelligent Design creationism].” Wesley Elsberry has a flock of quotes direct from Johnson that refute that.

If it were someone other than Johnson, I’d say he was just lying…but he’s old, he’s had a serious stroke, so it’s entirely possible he’s merely senile or brain-damaged. No matter what, though, it means you can’t trust Phillip E. Johnson to speak the truth.

Darksyde takes on the teaching of creationism in Missouri…let’s see if readers here are clever enough to see the dishonesty in this quote.

[Mike] Riddle had been invited to Potosi High and John A. Evans Middle School by Randy Davis, superintendent of the Potosi-RIII school district, and his board to discuss science with science students. During an hour-long presentation, Riddle … prodded the students to question established scientific principals and theories and encouraged them to think about a career in science.

Questioning scientific principles and theories is a good thing, and it’s also good to encourage students to study more science, so what’s the problem? The problem is that the speaker is a representative from Answers in Genesis, the young earth creationist organization, and he’s using the language differently than scientists do. When we say we should teach good science, we mean that there should be an emphasis on evidence and rational interpretation of the work. When AiG says “good science,” they mean a kind of Christian apologetics that cherry-picks data to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, that the Earth is 6000 years old. He isn’t urging students to do science, he wants them to get out there and corrupt a process that contradicts his theology.

This is the new way of creationism: embrace the trappings and the language, which have favorable associations to most people, and use them to advance ideas contrary to good science. It’s creationism in a lab coat.

A reader from Kansas sent in another slogan, prominently displayed on a billboard:

TEACH DARWIN HONESTLY!

[Read more…]

I didn’t think of this one, Dustin did—but take a look at this comparison of search volume for “pharyngula” vs. “discovery institute”. There’s perspective for you: one wild-eyed guy with a blog is gaining on a whole gang of creationists with millions of dollars in funding and a machine to churn out press releases.

There’s an idea…to catch up more, maybe I need to call myself the Pharyngula Institute and start faxing press releases to the newspapers.

Check out this amusing discovery on Stochastic—there’s this new tool on Google, Google Trends, that lets you compare the frequency of various searches. A silly creationist got all thrilled because searches for “Intelligent Design” beat searches for “Darwinism”.

You know where this is going. “Darwinism” is a term used by creationists, not scientists or anyone who knows more than diddly-squat about biology. Run a search for evolution, biology, and science vs. creationism and intelligent design, and the insignificance of the creationists becomes obvious. Once again, the designists are caught fudging the data, and once again, we can see the triviality of their games.

Note that “creationism” and “intelligent design” barely rise above the baseline.

As you might guess, though, throw sex into the mix, and the evolution-creation debate shrinks away. A little perspective is always useful!