Creationists on the warpath in Kansas

Steve Abrams is chairman of the Kansas State Board of Education. He wrote an oped in the Wichita Eagle to counger some of the criticisms of his board's new standards. I annotate the oped: "


Evolution. Creation. Intelligent design. Is there any truth or facts that can come out of what has been bandied about in the media recently about the Kansas State Board of Education, which I chair?


A good question. Will Abrams tell the truth and give us the facts? I'm open minded, although naturally, I suspect a man who calls Toni Morrison "pornography" won't be.

Some of my critics claim that I inserted the supernatural into the science classroom. Others claim I inserted creation via the back door. The critics also claim that in the scientific community, there is no controversy about evolution.

As do many conservatives, Abrams uses words that can mean what he wishes them to suggest but generally don't.

What is the "scientific community"? Is it, like the much discussed "Muslim community", simply all and any scientists, with the latter defined as broadly as suits? Or is it those actually involved in biology -- the science most closely interested in evolution, expressing their views in the journals that provide the fora for the "community" in this sense?

Well, in the former, there are a very few scientists who have stirred the shit about evolution. Among the latter, there is no controversy.

To suggest that there is would be to suggest that if some whacko with a science degree has a crackpot theory about quantum physics, there is a controversy about quantum physics. One would hardly agitate for that crackpot's ideas to be given equal time in a physics class.

You'd think to listen to creationists that there actually was a raging debate in science about evolution. But there isn't. It's almost universally accepted as a useful theory. It is far better supported than quantum theory.

They then proceed to explain that I ought to understand something about this, because surely I can see that over a period of time, over many generations, a pair of dogs will 'evolve.'


I'm not entirely sure what Abrams is on about. A "pair of dogs" would never evolve, because populations evolve, not individuals, which Abrams would know if he were informed about the theory he is attacking.

It astonishes me that a man this clueless is permitted to decide what children will learn!

But that is one of the reasons that we tried to further define evolution.

What is? That he thinks there is a controversy, or that he thinks a pair of dogs will evolve given time?

We want to differentiate between the genetic capacity in each species genome that permits it to change with the environment as being different from changing to some other creature. In our science curriculum standards, we called this microevolution and macroevolution -- changes within kinds and changing from one kind to another.


Those who follow the creationists and their doings recognise three things from this paragraph: one, the keywords "microevolution" and "macroevolution"; two, the biblical term "kinds", which no biologist uses; and three, a notion of "capacity" to change.

The first is a distinction that IDers stress. Why? Because even creationists have realised that they cannot deny that bacteria evolve to become resistant to antibiotics. "There is no evolution" is
so easily refuted that creationists have shifted the goalposts. Now they agree that there is evolution but claim it cannot involve a change of species. Yes, it is a rather silly claim, depending as it does on an idea that a "species" is something readily fixed and easy to discern. Creationists have this idea because they insist that God created life in "kinds": a set array of types, which cannot change into other types. This is what Genesis says. It actually does not make much sense to discuss evolution divided in this way, unless you are wanting to attack it piecemeal, which is the approach ID takes.

Using the word "kinds" does make claims that Abrams is not interested in introducing the supernatural into science look, erm, disingenuous, let's say. Naughty subeditor who didn't point that out to him! Must be a filthy atheist.

The third is interesting, and Abrams almost sneaks it by. Scientists do not talk about the genome's "capacity to change" because they don't believe that the ability to change is static. So why is he mentioning it? Because ID includes some garbled information theory, with a claim that changes between "kinds" -- whoops! meant species -- are not possible because that would involve creating information. I won't go into the information theory behind it, but basically, information is subject to the law of entropy, and cannot increase in a closed system.

Ah! I hear you say. But a genome is not a closed system. ID spends a lot of effort in vainly trying to prove it is.

There are a few critics who want to present an intellectual argument about why intelligent design should not be included in the science curriculum standards.

A few? There are a huge number of critics, including nearly every scientist who expresses any view on it, who suggest in the strongest terms that it should not be included in the science curriculum, on account of its being a religious explanation of the world.

They claim that ID is not good science. From the aspect that intelligent design is not a full-fledged developed discipline, I would agree.

No, that is not the "aspect" they look at. It's that it's not science at all. It does not represent the scientific method in action. It represents a few creationists trying to chip away at evolution, and a lot of blowhards, such as Abrams, fighting to get the work of the creationists into schoolrooms. Calling it pseudoscience is insulting to respectable bullshit everywhere.

But if they took the time to read the science curriculum standards, they would see that intelligent design is not included.

Yes, you wised up. You know that saying "we want ID in the curriculum" is poison. So you try to get it in the back door.



What's in the standards

The critics claim that we have redefined science to include a back door to biblical creation or the supernatural. From page ix of the standards:

'Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observations, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.'

Why do they think that you are trying to sneak religion in by the back door?

The previous standards said "natural explanations", didn't they, Mr Abrams. And you changed it to "more adequate" to remove the naturalistic bias that is essential to science.

Science does not seek adequate explanations. It seeks testable explanations. It seeks useful explanations, whose use can be demonstrated.

ID is not testable. Its central contention is "life was designed because it looks like it was designed". That and "life was designed because, man, I just don't see *how* it could have evolved". Yeah, well, okay. But "I am ignorant" might be a "more adequate" explanation of why you prefer creationism, but it's not a good explanation of why the earth teems with life.

You see, ID is not an explanation at all. It doesn't explain how life came to be complex. It just says it is. It says, at base, someone made it that way. It doesn't say how. It doesn't say what the consequences of that are.

Where does that say "the field of science is destroyed and the back door opened to bring biblical creation into the science classroom?

Mr Abrams is well aware that it's what it *doesn't* say that matters. It does not say that science requires testable explanations, which are by their nature, natural. (Because to be testable, your explanation must lie within nature. If you don't follow that, I'll explain in the comments, but be warned, I'm going to think you're too stupid to think it through for yourself.)

I note that the standards allow science to consist of "logical argument". Well, you'll be saying, it does, hey? You take what you've observed and you argue from that to a conclusion.

Well, yes and no. But the standards can be read to mean that science is any one of those things and need not be all of them! So just logical argument would do.

ID can be framed as a logical argument. And as at least one of my readers has learned painfully an argument can be logical without actually referring to the real world.

Similarly, if you go to Standard 3, Benchmark 3, Indicators 1-7 (Pages 75-77), which is the heart of the "evolution" area, you can see that intelligent design is not included. But many of our critics already know this.


So let me get this straight. You are not trying to have ID taught because hey, you didn't mention it by name?

Well, let's say that I am an avowed Satanist and I change the standards of your local church so that they no longer read "this church gathers to worship God" but now say "this church gathers to worship God or alternative powerful figures".

Which powerful figures might I mean?

This is not about biblical creation or intelligent design. It is about the last five words of Indicator 7: "scientific criticisms of those explanations."

Would Mr Abrams like to outline for us what "scientific criticisms" of evolution he is aware of?

I will list them for you:








Yes, none. There are no "scientific" criticisms of evolution. There are disagreements within evolution, but no coherent disagreement with it as a theory in the round. Note the difference, which Mr Abrams ignores, between a scientists who criticises evolution and a scientific criticism. They are not the same thing. Einstein opposed nuclear weapons. So he was a scientist who criticised nuclear weapons. But he did not make a scientific criticism of nuclear weaponry.

Don't want criticisms

Evolutionists do not want students to know about or think about scientific criticisms of evolution.

One has to laugh. Science: a battlefield of ideas, where the fittest survives. Religion: ossified dogma that doesn't tolerate dissent.

Evolutionists don't want you to teach your religion in science classes.

You don't even want to teach *all* religious views on evolution. Just your particular branch's.

Evolutionists are the ones minimizing open scientific inquiry from their explanation of the origin of life.

Another creationist misstep. Evolution has nothing at all to say about the origin of life. NOT A THING.

They do not want students to know that peer-reviewed journals, articles and books have scientific criticisms of evolution.

They do not want students to be told that, Mr Abrams, because it absolutely is not true. Only one creationist article has made it into a peer-reviewed journal and that was only because the editor sidestepped the peer review process, to the disgust of his editorial board when they found out.

So instead of participating in the science hearings before a state board subcommittee and presenting testimony about evolution, they stood out in the hall and talked to the media about how the Ph.D. scientists who are presenting testimony about the criticisms "aren't really scientists" and that "they really don't know anything."

Having a PhD in a "science" doesn't actually make you a scientist. In my university, linguistics was considered a "science". It actually transferred from "social sciences" (stop laughing at the back, you chemist types) to "cognitive sciences".

I find the notion that I might be a scientist because I studied terms for the penis in African languages amusing. (Okay, some of linguistics involves scientific methods, but a great deal of it involves the useless blather of most arts subjects.)

Instead of discussing the issues of evolution, noisy critics go into attack mode and do a character assassination of anyone who happens to believe that evolution should actually be subject to critical analysis.

Oh Steve! If you were willing to do a critical analysis, we'd be delighted to hear it. But "life is too complex to have evolved" just doesn't represent "analysis", critical or otherwise.

Criticisms of science from a religious viewpoint are valuable. They certainly have a place. In a philosophy or religious education class. Where they have no place is in a science class.

Superintendents don't care

In spite of the fact that the state board approved science curriculum standards that endorse critical analysis of evolution (supported by unrefuted testimony from many credentialed scientists at the science hearings)

Kof. This is using "unrefuted" in the widest sense.

and do not include intelligent design

Okay. This is what Mr Abrams needs to be asked.

Mr Abrams, can you name three scientists who have made a "critical analysis" of evolution, and can you outline, briefly, what their critique was?

And do it without saying Behe, Dembski, Meyer. Because, remember, you're not doing this to get ID on the curriculum.

and the fact that scientific polls indicate a large percentage of parents do not want evolution taught as dogma in the science classroom

Who gives a fuck what the parents want? The reason we have schooling is to give kids the tools not to end up as dumb as their dumbarse parents.

Okay, okay. Mean. But the truth is that if parents want to teach their kids that God created the world and evolution is the work of Satan, they can do so. At home. But in a classroom, you are supposed to be learning what it is, not what your ma and pa think it ought to be.


what is the response from some of the school superintendents around Kansas?

Fuck you, Jack, one hopes.

They seem to indicate, "We don't care what the state board does, and we don't care what parents want. We are going to continue teaching evolution just as we have been doing."

They think you're a clown and are ignoring you. Thank goodness for sanity in some small corners of Kansas.

But I guess we shouldn't be surprised, because superintendents and local school boards in some districts continue to promulgate pornography as "literature," even though many parents have petitioned the local boards to remove the porn. Obviously, that is a different issue from the science standards, but it still points out the lack of commitment on the part of administration in some districts to allow parents to control the education for their own children.

Oh dear. See, if you think that books that deal with real-life issues such as sex, drugs and rocknroll are pornography, you just don't get to see the pornography I do. Man, if you think Toni Morrison is hardcore, you obviously don't visit the sites I, erm, sorry, yes, whatever, man.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:18 pm