Seriously? Indiana & New Hampshire Want to Teach Creationism
By Rob Boston
It looks like opponents of creationism are going to have their hands full in 2012. The new year is just a few days old, and already we’ve seen several anti-evolution bills popping up in the states.
In Indiana, state Sen. Dennis Kruse has introduced S.B. 89, a bill that would allow public schools in the state to “require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.”
Kruse has been on this crusade for a number of years and has introduced versions of this bill before. They always died. But Republicans now control the state Senate, and Kruse is chairman of the Senate Education Committee. From this powerful perch, he can agitate for this misguided legislation.
There remains one huge problem with the bill: It is patently unconstitutional. Our good friend Genie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that Kruse's bill would run afoul of Edwards v. Aguillard, a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana law requiring “balanced treatment” between creation science and evolution.
“The law is very, very clear on this,” Scott said. “If this bill is passed, it is going to be challenged, and they will lose. The case law is so strong against them.”
Meanwhile, some New Hampshire legislators have introduced a pair of truly kooky bills. State Rep. Jerry Bergevin’s bill, H.B. 1148, would order the state board of education to “[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”
Bergevin believes that teaching evolution leads to Nazism and school shootings.
“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented,” he said. “It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights…. [W]e should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it... Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.”
A separate New Hampshire bill, H.B. 1457, introduced by Reps. Gary Hopper and John Burt, would mandate that the state board of education “[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes.”
This bill is more of the tiresome “evolution is just a theory” stuff we’ve been seeing out of the creationists for years.
But science marches on, and those who labor to keep our young people in ignorance are powerless to stop it. Inconveniently for them, life forms keep evolving. For example, you might have seen this interesting story about a hybrid shark recently found off the coast of Australia. It is being called an example of evolution in action.
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe our children ought to learn accurate information, not biblical literalism pretending to be science. When we short-change our kids by downplaying instruction about evolution, we’re only hurting them. Unless they go to a Bible school or an institution run by Jerry Falwell’s sons, in college young people will be taught evolution upfront and without apology. They’ll do better in Biology 101 if they get some exposure to the idea in secondary school.
I’m sure we’ll see more dangerous bills like this in other states as the year goes on. Last year, anti-evolution bills were introduced in a spate of states. Thankfully, all were defeated. Advocates of good science education and church-state separation will have to work hard to achieve the same results this year.
Our children deserve nothing less.
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Creationism is not science, but interbreeding between closely related species isn't good proof of evolution, either. This story just isn't news. The world is full of crosses between related species. Coyotes occasionally mate with wolves. Among plants, hybrids (both natural and man-induced) are known by the tens of thousands, and they often have given some survival advantage--the term "hybrid vigor" has been around for over a century. Among birds, it is often difficult to draw a line between two similar types in slightly different geographical areas--are they different species, or variants of a single species? And if they mate, does that make a hybrid? Hybrids are incredibly common. They have been know throughout recorded history--literally through all of human history. So, this is the first time these types of shark have been seen to interbreed. So what? Interbreeding may be one of the many mechanisms of evolution, but it is not evolutionary news, and it is not NEW proof of much of anything.
The interesting part about the hybrid sharks is that they are surviving and thriving. This is called "natural selection" so yes, this is part of evolution and a demonstration of it in action. This is the same sort of demonstration as pesticide resistant insects, drug resistant bacteria, and constantly changing viruses.
Science is often built inductively from evidence. What are you looking for as "proof?"
I don't need more proof--there are dozens of independent lines of evidence for evolution. I just object to the overblown citing of one type of hybrid as evidence of evolution in action, when we have seen thousands--literally thousands--of similar examples before. Ho-hum. Next, someone will spot a creature with feathers flying and be all excited--finally, we have proof that birds fly! Yes, I know. And...?
If I can summarize the intent of your post, you had nothing useful to say and just decided to criticize this example of natural selection in action as "boring?"
It is *EVIDENCE* of the most important mechanism in evolution - natural selection. If these hybrids had not been able to compete within their ecosystem, they would have died off. However, they are thriving and they are genetically unique.
The point of this is to show that new species are constantly emerging and some thrive. This is how evolution occurs... one step at a time. Sometimes it is hybridization, sometimes it is mutation, and sometimes it is biased genetic drift from the natural variations caused by sexual reproduction.
The hardcore creationists claim that speciation is a myth. Here's a testable example in their faces.
You seem to accept evolution, but do you really understand what it is? Your posts here show you that you really don't.
I don't understand what evolution is? Spare me. I finished majors in physics and mathematics, a master's degree in atmospheric physics, am now a physician, and grew up in a family of PhD biologists, having spent my childhood at a biology research station run by my father and grandfather. You fail to grasp my comment in the least. The author of the article (on legislating religious dogma into "science") cites the sharks as if it were some earth-shaking revelation, some NEW proof that the creationists must now refute. It is not new, and creationists will laugh at it, despite its merit. They can look at it and think, "so sharks reproduce--so what? We've known of hybrids for thousands of years." They will easily reject this study, claiming that two "species" capable of producing fertile offspring were never separate species at all, hence no new species was created. There are vastly better examples to prove evolution that are not easily dismissed. Claiming this study as some new proof will accomplish little--it is an example of what the creationists have already rejected. Have you never read their literature? (Yes, it is ignorant, but knowing the opposition is key to overcoming them). It is a disservice to the advancement of science to claim too much from some relatively minor new finding.
I worked in a molecular genetics lab and have graduate degrees in multiples areas of science. So what? I really don't understand why you are quibbling over this example. New hybrid sharks, genetically new species, the new species is surviving, voila! Natural selection at work.
Of course I heave read creationists literature. Creationism falls into a few categories of - the no new species group which means all changes are only adaption within existing species, the old earth crowd where some evolution is possible but only within a "kind," and the ID folks who acknowledge speciation but claim the cambriam explosion established all phyla in single act of creation. There are splits and splinters with things like "special creation" but that's the basics.
My point is that the shark example refutes the claims of the first group of creationists, which are frighteningly common. It won't do squat for the more sophisticated ID crowd who acknowledge and accept hybridization and some limited speciation.
Perhaps I could have been more gracious and clearer in my original post. You and I are agreed, I believe, that there are many different mechanisms of evolution, and that one is interbreeding between similar organisms to arrive at a strain that survives well where neither of the previous versions did. Still, creationists will only laugh at this (perfectly valid) example of sharks. Why? It is not easy to define the term "species," nor do biologists always agree among themselves when two similar organisms are from different species. One of the oldest definitions (which scarcely works at all for plants, with their huge ability to cross-pollinate) is this: two animals are of the same species if they can breed and produce fertile offspring. Creationists will simply dismiss this example, and will tell you that BY DEFINITION (at least, their definition) only one species is involved here. It is an example that will have no influence whatsoever on them, so I won't be wasting my breath by citing this example.
Anyone still believing in creationism should just be summarily deported for being terminally stupid. You could also put in the birthers, flat earthers and the radical wings from both parties and the USA would be much better off.
Religion... Zealously preserving ignorance.
The first amendment works both ways. The anti-science conspiracy christian crowd has the right to be as stupid as they wish and to be as public as they wish with their stupidity. We have the right to call them out and criticize their approach.
We might be better off without them, but the price of freedom is allowing them to have their say. However, they must be able to take the heat that comes with it as well.
Bring on the heat :-)
I am extremely disappointed to see New Hampshire, one of the more secular states, maybe passing an anti-science, anti-evolution bill. I agree with another commentator, the Nazis were not atheists. Hitler all the time talked about his belief in a god, and Mein Kampf (the book he wrote while in prison) is full of those references. Hitler never mentioned Charles Darwin once, which is very strange if Darwin was such a big influence on him. If not for 2000 years of anti-semitism by the Christian churches there would have been no Hitler and Nazis.
Or at least, there wouldn't have been any Nazis who sought out to kill the Jews. INdeed, the father of a wing of German anti-Semitism was Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant church in Germany. His thought and writings allowed a justification of Jews which lasted for centuries.
By the way, evolution isn't godless. Anyone that stupid shouldn't be in any state legislature, let alone a small town city council. Evolution has nothing to do with the concept of a god. It has to do with changes in species over generations and how new species arise through such mechanisms, through natural selection. Again, nothing whatsoever to do with a god. But, if Rick Santorum becomes president, we really might see the teaching of superstittious nonsense in our public schools.
Jerome McCollom