The Texas State Board of Education is holding hearings right now on their science standards, and by all reports it is an embarrassment to the state: on the one side, we have the educated teachers and scientists, and on the other, a coterie of ignorant ideologues. Martin has been attending the meetings (it doesn’t sound like much fun), and he cuts to the heart of the creationist strategy:

This cannot be understated: Just as the anti-gay contingent of the Christian right sells its opposition to gay marriage as a “defense” of “traditional” marriage that can in no way be compared to opposition to interracial marriage or anything of that sort, so too are the creationists now abandoning the overt, lawsuit-bait language of “intelligent design” for “academic freedom” language that makes them seem like the ones encouraging students to use their minds to think about and evaluate ideas that are presented to them in class on their merits. Conversely, the pro-science side wants to shut this kind of inquiry down, and just require students to be obedient little sponges soaking up whatever the textbooks say.

Why this is a misrepresentation and gross misunderstanding of the opposition to such terms as “strengths and weaknesses” was, to his credit, appropriately explained by Texas Citizens for Science spokesman Steve Schafersman.

I suppose you could argue that “strengths and weaknesses” is a smart slogan to deploy when the evolution side has all the strengths, and the creationist side has nothing but weaknesses. It’s a way to pretend that they’ve earned a place in the curriculum, because the bad science is currently underrepresented…if you think the role of science education is to toss every failed idea in history at students.

A survey of scientists in Texas reveals that the vast majority reject all versions of creationism — only 2% give it any respect at all. This is in Texas, the state with Don McLeroy, creationist dentist, running the educational show. There is some dissonance there.

What about that 2%? The survey explains those:

What can we say about the small minority of Texas science faculty (2%) who evidence some measure of support for intelligent design/creationism? (For purposes of this analysis, intelligent design/creationist supporters are all respondents who indicated either “Modern evolutionary biology is right about the common ancestry of all extant organisms, but it is necessary to supplement it by invoking periodic intervention by an intelligent designer” or “Modern evolutionary biology is mostly wrong. Life arose through multiple creation events by an intelligent designer, although evolution by natural selection played a limited role.”)

The educational profile of this group is revealing. Ten supporters of intelligent design/creationism responded to the question, “Have you taught a course that included a substantial block of material on human evolution?”. Of the ten, seven persons replied “no,” as compared to three who replied “yes.” So we readily see that most intelligent design supporters identified in this survey do not teach courses that address evolution. Even more strikingly, no person in the subsample of those supporting intelligent design reported teaching graduate students about human evolution within the past five years. (Another way of phrasing this last point is to say that there was no person out of the total sample of 464 respondents who said they both supported intelligent design and had taught graduate students within the past five years.) We are therefore safe in concluding that the already thin support for teaching intelligent design vanishes to essentially zero when looking at established Texas biology and biological anthropology faculty who teach at the graduate level.

Heh. Bill Dembski = “essentially zero”.

What I suspect is the most popular Intelligent Design site on the net (which is not saying much at all), uncommondescent.com, is getting a bit of a shake-up. Bill Dembski is stepping away from it, DaveScot is no longer a moderator, they’re adding paypal donation buttons…well, OK. I’m feeling ho-hum about it all. Once upon a time, I’d check in weekly to see what flavor of nonsense they were promoting, but increasingly I’ve found that I simply don’t care what the kooks were saying. It’s become a nice self-constructed ghetto for the irrelevant lunatics, with the virtue that I can easily ignore them. The changes will, I think, make them even more boring.

You can enter a drawing for — this is really going to thrill you all — a copy of Expelled! Please do enter, I’d like to see someone rational win it, so they can use it as a coaster or something.

I’ll try to find a better contest next time. Anyone know of any drawings for a handful of dung?

Here’s a fun account of a four-way debate on Intelligent Design in Fort Worth, Texas. Actually, it sounds like it was more of a two-way, with Lawrence Krauss, who is very, very good, speaking on the side of science, against David Berlinski, who is very, very supercilious (that word always comes up when Berlinski’s name is mentioned) speaking on the side of … well, it’s not clear. He doesn’t really have any pro-ID arguments, but mainly seems to be on the side of cashing checks from the Discovery Institute.

You know the debate went well when creationists have temper tantrums afterwards.

She’ll be back: watch this mob of blinkered Republicans gush over Sarah Palin, especially Pat Buchanan, who makes up ‘facts’ as he goes along. The Republicans are accused of being a party that celebrates ignorance, Buchanan is asked if he accepts evolution, and he blithely confirms the accusation by repeating the notorious query of Soapy Sam Wilberforce.

I’ve heard a few times now the idea that the Republican Party has become the Know-Nothing Party. It’s entirely true.

I just got some email that surprised me. It was from Kate Fisher, the marketing director of KKMS radio, a Christian talk radio station I’ve dealt with before. They had a request.

I am with AM980 KKMS, a Christian Teaching & Talk radio station in the Twin Cities. We would like to do a creation debate in mid-January. I am writing today to check on your interest level in participating in something like this and if you are, what your availability and honorarium is.

I didn’t have any problem making a decision on that, and immediately sent my reply.

You know, I had a debate on your station last January — in which I exposed the creationist on the other side as an ignorant fool. The response from your station was then to give the ignorant fool an hour to babble unopposed the next week. I’ll add that you also abruptly changed the topic of the debate an hour before I went on, at the request of my opponent, an unforgivable and sleazy tactic. I do not trust you at all, and I think you would abuse my participation to promote the lies of the creationist position.

So, no, you could not get me to play your game for any amount of money. I have no respect at all for “Christian Teaching & Talk radio”, thanks to your disreputable actions.

I am, however, impressed with the level of shameless gall you have to ask me again.

I was a little bit tempted to put one pinky to a corner of my mouth and say, “My honorarium will be…one MILLION dollars.” I resisted.

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Kate Fisher just replied.

My sincerest apologies as I wasn’t aware that this was what happened. I was simply given your name as a good debater and asked to contact you about doing an event with us.

Thanks for letting me know what happened.

Now I feel a little guilty about lighting into her. But only a little.

Poor little Ken Ham gets no respect. He sets up this fancy museum, he keeps pushing his silly ideas, and what happens? Smart people like Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, calls him a moron. Deservedly.

I don’t need to say much, though. The scathing excoriation of Ham has already been done:

You said that unicorns are real. You claim that the Beowulf story is evidence of human cohabitation with dinosaurs. You say that sometimes religious genocide is OK. You think that the government is training people to talk to aliens. You believe that evolution is a random process, a process of blind chance, which is just factually wrong. You target children because they can’t defend themselves and trust you (talk about a cowardly act). You believe if a 2-year old understands it, it must be cutting edge science. You believe that observation and measurement cannot trump “common sense.” You believe you do the type of science that you need faith to understand instead of, you know, understanding to understand. You believe…whatever the fuck this is. You employ the nanny-nanny boo-boo defense. Your ilk do not even try to publish outside of their little circle, and you set up a bogus journal to pretend that you were scholars, THEREBY AVOIDING THE DEBATE YOU CLAIM TO CRAVE. You stare at evolution, describe evolution, and then say, “It’s not evolution.”

And yet you wonder why someone with an education and responsibilities and a reputation would not talk to you? Despite this record of shame (I could have gone on and on just looking at my website alone), you have the balls to claim that you won something by [being] so catastrophically ignorant as to be not worth speaking to?

KEN, WE ARE TIRED OF TRYING TO TALK TO YOU. WE HAVE MOVED ON TO RIDICULE. THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE, YOU PIG-IGNORANT SLAVE.

I think Ham needs to put up another self-pitying post for each of the insults in there.