The Indy Star reports that an Intelligent design bill fails to materialize. Back in November, Mary Beth Schneider and Robert King reported that 36 of the 52 Indiana House Republicans sent questionnaires to constituents asking, among other issues, whether intelligent design should be given equal time in science classes.
The November article reported:
Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, said he would file legislation mandating the teaching of intelligent design if no other lawmaker did.
“It’s a passionate issue for me, personally,” Borders said.
The proposal came about a month after Rep. Bosma and other House Members met with Carl Baugh, host of the Trinity Broadcasting Network show “Creationism in the 21st Century.” (The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette provided some information about Baugh including the fact that the museum he founded asserts that man and dinosaur lived contemporaneously.)
The November Indy Star article further reported:
While Republicans are leading the effort to implement intelligent design, some Democrats support it as well.
“Evolution was designed by God,” said Rep. Jerry Denbo, D-French Lick. “I really think that should be taught — that there is a master. We didn’t just come about by accident.”Rep. Tim Harris, R-Marion, also believes evolution and intelligent design should be taught.
“It takes just as much faith to believe in the evolution hypothesis as it does what we are now calling intelligent design,” he said.
Between November and January, two things happened with respect to Intelligent Design. First, the 8 incumbents in Dover, Pennsylvania who forced ID on the school system and who were up for election were swept out of office. Second, a federal judge hearing a case challenging the Dover School Board’s intelligent design curriculum issued a stinging opinion striking down the mandatory teaching of intelligent design as science.
Today, we have the Indy Star article saying that despite the very public Intelligent Design support in November, the promised legislation did not materialize for this session. (Is this the “Dog that didn’t bark?” My Sherlock Holmes is a bit rusty.)
On Tuesday, Borders, who considers much of the theory of evolution to be built on false claims, tried to keep his promise but submitted a bill that didn’t go nearly as far as he had hoped.
Instead, he offered House Bill 1388, which mandates “accuracy in textbooks” but makes no mention of intelligent design.
His about-face, he said, was the result of a Dec. 20 ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania that denounced intelligent design as “relabeled creationism” and a violation of the separation of church and state.
According to the Indy Star sidebar (the LSA website wasn’t immediately available as I was writing this), the text of HB 1388 says:
“In adopting textbooks for each subject . . . the state board shall not adopt a textbook if the state board knows the textbook contains information, descriptions, conclusions, or pictures that are false.”
So, it looks like the Intelligent Design proponents are in full retreat. They’ll be back, of course. They resolutely refuse to recognize that science is a process. Evolution is a theory that adheres to that process. Intelligent Design, creationism, and other beliefs that are anchored in revealed truth as opposed to observed truth simply are not and cannot be science. If believers of ID and creationism would push for a comparative religions class in which their beliefs are included, I’m sure that could be accommodated. But they want to undermine science because science undermines the primacy of religion.
Re: House Bill 1388
Despite the indication that Intelligent Designers are in retreat, make no mistake, House Bill 1388, sponsored by Representative Bruce Borders, is an intelligent design (creationist) bill. Do not be sidetracked by an apparent ludicrous piece of legislation requiring the state board of education to refrain from adopting textbooks that contain “information, descriptions, conclusions, or pictures that are false.†The purpose of this bill is a very serious effort to provide intelligent design with an entryway into Indiana schools via alleged criticisms of evolutionary science.
Intelligent design advocates have long claimed that modern evolutionary biology is false; is based on “fakeryâ€; and, serves only to “indoctrinate†our children. ID proponents look for any opportunity to seed misinformation about evolutionary science. They persist with these arguments despite the fact that evolutionary biology is the fundamental tenet of modern science supported by 150 years of independent data and well earned, worldwide acceptance by thousands of serious scientists in different disciplines. There are continuing daily contributions and tests of evidence to evolutionary science by embryology, evolutionary developmental biology, genomics, paleontology, geology and others. Evolutionary science has hardly been given a “free pass†as Mr. Borders would like us to presume.
ID advocates want to attack “errors†in science textbooks they claim are the “icons†of evolutionary biology (e.g., the tree of life; Darwin’s finches; fossil record gaps, Haeckel’s drawings) in order to make way for the intelligent design creed. Their first step is to arrange for legislative support, not scientific support, for attacking these alleged errors. Once they have obtained legislative “proof†that “many of the things that have been used to support macroevolution have proven to be lies…,†they then believe they are in a position to boost their creationist alternative. There is no better day for ID proponents than to find “unashamed creationists†legislators who will unquestionably support this strategy with legislation such as House Bill 1388. ID followers are clearly forced to pursue a legislative rather than scientific route because their criticisms of evolutionary processes are scientifically inert and have repeatedly been refuted by competent scientists. If ID followers want to seriously question modern evolutionary biology, let them do so in the scientific arena of peer review, serious science publication, and true discovery. Mr. Borders appears to believe that his legislation is the proper forum to challenge and “remove†what he perceives to be “lies†in evolutionary thinking. His legislative ideas regarding this subject are not original but have apparently been telegraphed to him by ideologues of the Intelligent Design Network. His absurd comment, for example, that “both evolution and creation are religious beliefs because they each have unknowns and each require faith†is taken directly from the ID strategy playbook
ID is a pseudoscience that has been unable to garner scientific support for legitimate inclusion in science curriculum or in peer reviewed scientific publications. Despite ID proclamations that they deserve a position of respect in the American scientific mainstream, they have produced not a bit of scientific data, much less challenge the extensive database of modern evolutionary theory. ID cannot be advanced in any fashion common to accepted scientific avenues and relies on “backdoor†approaches (textbook stickers; warning statements; legislative mandates; school board loading; under-informed public; lies and fabrications) to argue for its inclusion in valuable science instruction time. In fact, the originator of ID (attorney Phillip Johnson) admitted, “This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science…It’s about religion and philosophy.â€
The 5 year ID plan to discredit evolutionary theory relies in part upon their self-named “Wedge†strategy to convince the public and politicians that Darwinian science is flawed; that modern science values and is fearful of the ID position; and that ID suffers from a conspiracy to quieten their new science . The Pennsylvania Federal Court saw through this ruse and, with a great amount of objective review of ID’s claimed status as a “scientific alternative†to Darwinian evolutionary biology, ruled ID is not science and “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.â€
Legislators who buy “teach the controversy†tactic that allows ID into the classroom will have the impact of shoving the fight over ID down to the local school board level where the cost of legal contests will have to be supported. There will clearly be other court battles over ID (see California El Tejon Unified School District case). Indiana does not have to enter this legal fray. ID proponents who put demands on legislators to mandate ID in the curriculum or to limit evolutionary theory are in fact asking them to now perpetuate educational fraud upon the state’s taxpayers and children. The idea that there is controversy over the central tenets of evolutionary science or that it is based upon “fakery†is a fabrication offered as the wedge to enter the public awareness and the American classroom. It is critical that our children learn that science proceeds in a careful and replicable manner, rooted in an atmosphere of peer review and not in breakfast meetings with legislators; in stealthy riders on other important pieces of legislation (Santorum amendment); or in brightly colored, scientifically obscure and vacuous brochures.
Mr. Borders owes no apologies for his creationist beliefs. These are his beliefs. He will, however, owe the children and taxpayers of Indiana an apology for pursuing shallow legislation that promotes misinformation, bad science, and potentially unconstitutional activities in our classrooms. He should know that recently, the Fordham Instistute, reviewed Indiana’s science standards and gave us a very good report on our handling of evolution in the science classroom. Why would the legislature decide to intercede when we have a model of scientific curriculum standards in place now? Mr. Borders will do the citizens of Indiana a favor by asking his ID friends to take their ideas to the proper forum of scientific peer review; leave our classroom treatment of evolution education alone; and preserve valuable legislative time for more important matters. Please do not let the Indiana House of Representatives return to the days of “Indiana Pi†legislation.
Editor
Indianapolis Star
House Bill 1388, sponsored by Representative Bruce Borders, is an invitation to return to the days of “Indiana Piâ€. Attempts to define science via legislative action has a fortunately short but embarrassing history in Indiana. In 1897, the Indiana House of Representatives voted 67-0 to define pi as 3.2. No one in the House spoke against the bill or the misguided science it represented. The Representatives who spoke for it admitted their ignorance of the merits of the bill but passed it anyway. Fortunately, the bill died in the Senate.
Mr. Border has proposed an apparent ludicrous piece of legislation requiring the state board of education to refrain from adopting textbooks that contain “information, descriptions, conclusions, or pictures that are false.†The purpose of this bill is a very serious effort to provide intelligent design with an entryway into Indiana schools via alleged criticisms of evolutionary science. ID advocates want to attack “errors†in science textbooks they claim are the “icons†of evolutionary biology (e.g., the tree of life; Darwin’s finches; fossil record gaps, Haeckel’s drawings) in order to make way for the intelligent design creed. . ID cannot be advanced in any fashion common to accepted scientific avenues and relies on such “backdoor†approaches (textbook stickers; warning statements; legislative mandates; school board loading; under-informed public; evolutionary errors tactic; lies and fabrications) to argue for its inclusion in valuable science instruction time.
Mr. Borders owes no apologies for his creationist beliefs. These are his beliefs. He will, however, owe the children and taxpayers of Indiana an apology for pursuing shallow legislation that promotes misinformation, bad science, and potentially unconstitutional activities in our classrooms.