the comments are the best part…
The Texas State Board of Education has long been in the crosshairs of many editorial cartoonists, scientists and science bloggers for its anti-evolution antics. Finally, two state legislators have decided to speak out against the school board’s actions and do what politicians do best. Ridicule based on statistics. After committing $3 billion for projects that are supposed to make Texas the nation’s leader in medical research, how can the state justify not teaching kids science, especially when half as many middle school graduates in the state were judged to be proficient in science as students in states with which they’ll have to compete for jobs? To put it bluntly, the SBOE is setting these kids up for failure.
But hold on, the article is just half the fun. What Rodney Ellis and Patrick Rose try to convey has been said many times before. Scientific research creates jobs, the fruits of scientific research create new ideas and generate more jobs when experimental becomes practical. To make it all happen, you need scientists who understand the basics of evolution rather than study watered down biology with a heavy dose of theology. Nothing new here. When you browse through the comments opposing the teaching of evolution however, we find some interesting connections and interesting factoids. First, a scary note from Jimmyk5:
The same people and organizations that have been against the SBOE for years are also strong advocates for teaching kids how to have gay sex, kill babies, anti-free enterprise and so on.
Wow, just wow. Is there anything anything else he wants to attach to that? I mean that’s a rather impressive piece of libel worthy of Ben Stein’s now infamous comparisons of scientists to Nazis and ruminations on how science makes you kill people. We’ve got homophobia, infanticide, red baiting and mentions that there’s more to it than that! I was taught evolution. I’m sure that my biology teachers trying to give us lessons on proper techniques for gay sex would be quite the memorable anecdote to tell my parents. “Hey mom, dad, you’ll never believe what Mr. Smith did with a banana, an apple and a can of lube in class today!”
I also don’t remember anything about the idea that free market capitalism was evil in a science class either or a guide to killing babies in our study guides for the final exam. Again, one would think it’s something I’d recall. Now, at this point, you might be wondering what the “and so on” might be? Well, Jimmyk5 leaves us a clue when he identifies himself to be an editor from a very sordid group known as EducationNews. His fellow editor, Donna Garner, sent a hysterical letter to the SBOE in which she proclaimed that Jeffrey Dahmer was an atheist and hence, didn’t have any morals or feel any remorse for his actions. She also goes out of her way to shout from the rooftops that Dahmer “believed in evolution.”
And of course, like with all politicking creationists, Garner’s crack at defining evolution shows her compete and utter lack of understanding of the theory or of the word theory. Her point is simple. Teaching kids about evolution might turn them into atheists and since atheists are evil, they’ll do horrible things without remorse. Makes perfect sense. So what are we to expect from Jimmy Kilpatrick of the very same organization which thinks that such hysterical appeals to raw emotion are valid arguments against teaching kids actual science in school?
Then, there’s the fascinating example of another oft invoked creationist tactic. Random quotes from random, important sounding people to make their point seem legitimate. Right, because as we were all taught in science class, personal opinion and random quotations is where all the real science gets done, peer review be damned. So here’s a ditty from TigerDog:
Dr. Murray Eden of MIT said in “Mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution” said it would take billions of times the alleged 4.6 billion year age of the earth for this kind of macro evolution to occur.
Really? And how pray tell were those numbers derived? Is there a paper? A study? An article on some website perhaps? There was a Dr. Murray Eden who tried to publish some mathematical refutation to random origins of life in the MIT Press. His math was sloppy and arbitrary and his paper was dissected and vanished into obscurity, the obscurity from which creationists like to pull papers to gain a momentary illusion of scientific factuality for their beliefs. And the paper itself is now about half a century old so TigerDog has thrown out not only a woefully incorrect assertion, but a woefully outdated one as well. But it makes a good creationist sound byte so it should be good enough to work, right?
This is why I like to pay attention to comments on such topics. You never know what can crawl out of the woodwork when people’s beliefs are challenged. In this case we have irrational fear of science coupled with a heavy dose of random quotes of questionable origin.
