Religious Right Watch

"The Missionary Supposition": evolution education doesn't work

In a recent Reports of the National Center for Science Education (PDF), historian Adam Laats, author of Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars (2010), writes about the necessity of science educators to understand Creationist culture.

Americans do not get it. Nearly half of US adults believe that humans were created as is, less than 10,000 years ago (Newport 2012). Those of us who care about evolution education must confront a sobering truth: evolution education does not work. Yet since long before the days of John Scopes, most of us have simply offered more of the same.

Laats says that evolution education fails to convince creationists.

Granted, the special purpose of evolution education is not to convince creationists. Evolution education in general succeed with many students as it should. If a student is objective and intellectually curious, they will learn evolution's principles and contemplate the theory's implications, and perhaps if they do not start down a path towards a profession in the sciences, then they may--more probably--remain curious about the new discoveries and developments in the field as they encounter it in future years through popular science writing and documentaries.

But for this education to be utterly ineffective fro such a huge percentage of Americans is a significant problem.

Laat proposes that evolution science educators need to better understand creationist culture, because evidence of evolution isn't sufficient to convince creationists.

Evolution education should never become an exercise in religious conversion, but it is high time for scientists and teachers to notice that not even religious missionaries engage in the naive and blinkered missionary approach still so common among evolution educators.

In particular, Laat stresses rightly that too many evolution educators assume creationists are ignorant about evolution; in fact, they often are not. They simply reject the evidence.

Read the article here: Reports of the National Center for Science Education (PDF), pages 3–6.

Here's The Simple Reason Why The Religious Right Isn't Finished - Forbes

In other words, while it is losing a big battle (same sex marriage), the Religious Right still hasn’t lost its most important one (abortion) and on a host of other fronts (heterosexual marriage, inequality, criminal justice, religion in the public square), it is having to reconfigure in more productive ways–in ways that are more “seamless garment”, to use a Catholic expression. This is all to the good. Under a microscope, reform can look like defeat. But at the scale of history, things often end up very different.

via www.forbes.com

Creationism in public schools, mapped. Where tax money supports alternatives to evolution.

Thousands of schools in states across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science.

By Chris Kirk

A large, publicly funded charter school system in Texas is teaching creationism to its students, Zack Kopplin recently reported in Slate. Creationist teachers don’t even need to be sneaky about it—the Texas state science education standards, as well as recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, permit public school teachers to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Meanwhile, in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, taxpayer money is funding creationist private schools through state tuition voucher or scholarship programs.

To see the full 50-state map, go to: www.slate.com

via www.blogfordarwin.com

Poll: Republican Belief In Evolution Has Plummeted In Recent Years

Belief in evolution among Republicans has dropped more than 10 percentage points since 2009, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

Pew found that 43 percent of Republicans said they believed humans and other living beings had evolved over time, down from 54 percent in 2009. More (48 percent) said they believed all living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

The percentages for Democrats and independents were considerably more stable: Democratic belief in evolution went from 64 percent in 2009 to 67 percent in 2013; independent belief dipped from 67 percent in 2009 to 65 percent in 2013.

Among all American adults, 60 percent said they believe in evolution, according to Pew, and 33 percent do not.

The poll surveyed 1,983 Americans ages 18 and older from March 21 to April 8.

via talkingpointsmemo.com

There is only one scientific explanation for how species originate. It's called the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It's not a theory in the everyday and conversational sense of the word theory--i.e. a guess--but a theory in the formal scientific meaning of the term: a concept larger than the sum of its parts, one that incorporates various scientific laws, observations, and facts into a more unified whole and that has been verified by subsequent findings and research, like with the germ theory of disease, the theories of special and general relativity, the theory of plate tectonics, and the theory of a heliocentric solar system.

To not "believe" in evolution--as is the case with a shockingly large number of conservative religious adherents in the U.S.A. and majority-Muslim countries--is like not believing that the Earth orbits the sun or not believing in oxygen or x-ray radiation. Especially since the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930's that integrated genetics into evolution, thereby revealing the means of heredity--which is something evolution's main discoverer, Charles Darwin, did not know--evolution has become an increasingly important and dynamic topic of research and tool for understanding how species evolve. To not believe in it is to walk away from a rich and amazing reality about we scientists are discovering more and making interesting refinements and corrections to those discoveries on an daily basis.

Image: click to enlarge - (via Wikipedia) "A highly resolved Tree Of Life, based on completely sequenced genomes."

Blog For Darwin: Popular Science ends reader comments; says practice is bad for science - Yahoo News

In a surprising move, the website for Popular Science announced they are no longer allowing reader comments on their articles. And in a potentially even more controversial move, the site’s online content director boldly explains the decision was reached because of their belief that reader’s comments are actually bad for science.

“A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics,” writes Suzanne LaBarre. “Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to ‘debate’ on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.”

via news.yahoo.com

via www.blogfordarwin.com

Defending Science Education in TX #StandUp4Science with Texas Freedom Network (TFN)

Texas Conservatives Demand Science Textbooks Incorporate 'Creation Science Based On Biblical Principles'.... Brian Tashmanof PFAW's project Right Wing Watch reports that: 

Creationists advising the Texas Education Agency, the state’s board of education, are no longer even trying to hide the fact that they want to insert pseudo-scientific material grounded in religious beliefs into public school science textbooks. Terrence Stutz of the Dallas Morning News reports that evolution detractors appointed to the review boards are urging the textbook publishers to ignore the Supreme Court (along with science) and push Creationism, or be rejected.

See also The Dallas Morning News article, "Religious conservatives on Texas textbook review panels criticize proposed science books".

A response to this religious-right ploy comes from the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) and its Stand Up for Science Education campaign (the hashtag is #standup4science). TFN explains:

Stand Up for Science is an ongoing TFN campaign uniting parents, educators, scientists and businesspeople in support of sound science education and responsible medical research in Texas. This multi-issue campaign focuses primarily on the issue of teaching evolution and climate change in public school science classes and defending stem cell research in Texas.

You can join our campaign by signing our Stand Up for Science petition. TFN will send e-mail updates to help you know when and how to take action on crucial public policy decisions involving science.

The TFN is live-blogging the hearing; the NCSE is live-tweeting #StandUp4Science also -- check it out.

(Image from TFN's #StandUp4Science Tumblr page.)

Creationism 3.0: Meet Intelligent Design’s Huckster | Science | Religion Dispatches

There's a temptation to review each new book that makes the case for intelligent design by publishing a laundry list of every fact, experiment, subtheory, and interpretation that the author gets wrong. I'll spare you that exercise, partly because it's been done elsewhere, by scientists, and partly because Stephen Meyer, the author of Darwin's Doubt, is not your typical creationist hack. 

Instead, Meyer, who holds a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge, is that odd hybrid: the philosopher-huckster. His arguments are, for the most part, precise, his research is extensive, and many of his points echo those made by leading biologists. Like many other proponents of intelligent design, he's not committed to defending the details of Genesis. He accepts that the world is old, and that evolution does happen—at least in a limited way. As a result, he not only sounds like a scientist, but for much of the book he almost acts like one. 

All of which is to say that a laundry list of errors doesn't get to the meat of Darwin's Doubt. Meyer is the finest kind of huckster: he doesn't tell lies, he merely rearranges truths. Darwin's Doubt is a toxic blend of hasty conclusions, cracked arguments, and terminological confusions. It's also, for those who are keeping count, a New York Times bestseller. More plausible than the arguments of 6,000-year-old-earthers, and much slicker than the earlier, bumbling efforts of intelligent design-ers, creationism 3.0 has arrived. 

via www.religiondispatches.org

It's remarkable that William Paley's "watchmaker" argument, formulated before Darwin published Origin of Species and which concludes that natural processes suggest there's a designer behind them, endures so strongly. The fact is that a designer is not required to explain the origin of species.  As zoologist Richard Dawkins noted, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design...." The universe has its elegant qualities but also its messy ones. There is much about the universe that is harsh, parasitic, inelegant, wasteful, and cruel according to human perception.

Sure, an intelligent designer is one way to explain some of the evidence we see in the fossil record. You can make that case. It just won't be science. Science, after all, isn't a random game of accumulating evidence. It's a very particular method for organizing specific kinds of observations. And when it comes to history, science relies on patterns of cause and effect staying constant across time and space—and not the sudden interpolation of otherwise scientifically unobservable beings. To say otherwise is to ask science to be something it's not. At this point, Meyer could acknowledge that he has strayed beyond the boundaries of the field. Instead, he tries to stretch those boundaries in order to meet what must be, one can only conclude, personal or political needs.

5 Sneaky Ways Fundamentalists Are Trying To Slip Christian Creationism Into America’s Public Schools | Alternet

some public schools in America do all they can to avoid teaching evolution. Thanks to constant pressure from the Religious Right, many public schools are battlegrounds in a culture war that does great damage to our nation’s scientific credibility as creationists work overtime to slip their ideas into the curriculum.

via www.alternet.org

Joseph A. Palermo: The Culture Wars Are Alive and Kickin' (A Disaster for Women and the Environment)

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry, the Religious Right, and their Republican allies, following Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis's courageous filibuster last week, are literally working overtime to criminalize women's reproductive rights. Commentators correctly point out that a state that purports to be so "pro-life" it must kneecap women also happens to be the repository of the most efficient and voluminous state-sanctioned killing machine. There have been 500 executions (and counting) in the Lone Star State since 1982.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Reactions to Exodus Closure: Pro, Con, and Other | Advocate.com

This week’s announcement that the “ex-gay” group Exodus International would shut down and reemerge as a different type of organization is drawing not only denunciation from the religious right and praise from LGBT rights advocates, but admission from some conservative Christians that efforts to change sexual orientation are ineffective.

Not that the latter group is endorsing same-sex relationships. “I do appreciate that Exodus no longer promotes orientation change. Although God does not bless homosexual sex or same-sex romantic relations, heterosexuality should not be the goal,” said author Christopher Yuan, according to Christianity Today. “One weakness of Exodus (whether intentional or unintentional) had been a lack of emphasis upon biblical singleness, resulting in an overemphasis upon heterosexual marriage.” Yuan’s book Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God urges celibacy for anyone not in a heterosexual marriage.

via www.advocate.com