Expelled was the 2008 embarrassment that tried to prove once and for all there was a vast conspiracy to teach evolution while suppressing Intelligent Design and other “explanations” of life on Earth, and putting Hitler in power. Or something like that. The New York Times called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time.”

Narrated and hosted by the riveting Ben Stein, it tanked at the box office, so badly it seems, that its production company, Premise Media, is in bankruptcy court.

According to a document (PDF) filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, on May 31, 2011, the trustee of the bankruptcy estate is seeking to auction “[t]hat certain feature-length motion picture (‘Picture’) ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto.” The auction is scheduled to take place on-line from June 23 to June 28, 2011.

As awful as the movie was, I reckon somebody will probably bid on it. I hope the winner is a film collector, who will stash it in a vault somewhere, and not some Intelligent Design fanboy, who will try to inflict it on us again.

————————–
POSTSCRIPT: Back in 2008, I did a critique of the Expelled teacher’s guide. The National Center for Science Education also has a more elaborate debunking of the movie.

JISHOU, HUNAN — My favorite bloggers have been having a field day with the Republican Senatorial candidate from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell. The woman is a veritable treasure trove of nonsense.

There are two of her gems I can’t help but ridicule.

China has a secret plan to take over the USA. And she knows all about it, because an unnamed non-profit organization gave O’Donnell the complete low down. Apparently, missionaries working with this mysterious group uncovered this top-secret plot.

In the linked AP article, O’Donnell says this:

“A country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible, you think they can be our friend?” she asked. “We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it’s because they’ve got something up their sleeve.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong. China does not force women to have abortions. But abortions are easier to get here than in the USA, so some women may choose to get one. China does saddle couples with financial penalties, threatens them with losing jobs and promotions, and stigmatize them if they have more than one kid, but I know a lot of families who have more than one child even under the one-child policy.

Meanwhile, Bibles are found in libraries and bookstores all over the country. Ditto the Qu’ran. Buying one is not illegal. In fact, the BBC recently had a story about China now encouraging the growth of state-approved Christian churches.

As for her last remark, every country dealing with another has something up its sleeve. China wants the US to continue being its trade partner, and to continue paying interest on the debt China holds. If China is trying to take over the USA by hooking us on cheap consumer goods, well, Christine, we’re already there.

So much for her knowledge of China and foreign relations, now for her deep understanding of evolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB0TLgcNesU

“Evolution is a myth,” O’Donnell said on Bill Maher’s show in 1998. If it weren’t, “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” she added in her defense.

Now, either O’Donnell is completely ignorant about evolution (quite likely) or she’s deliberately playing to the creationist crowd (quite likely, too). Either way, she’s still wrong.

Evolution is not a myth. Adam and Eve are a myth. So is Athena popping full grown (in armor!) out of Zeus’ forehead. And the short explanation for her follow up remark is evolution is happening as we speak, but its pace among mammals is much too slow for us to see. It has taken millions of years for some species to appear, for example.

The longer explanation is more complicated, of course. Present day monkeys and human (and other primates) have a common primate ancestor. Monkeys don’t evolve into humans. We’re in a real way very distant cousins. In addition, species evolve because of ecological niches. Crocodiles and alligators are very ancient species, who fill a particular ecological niche quite successfully. Monkeys are not going to “decide,” Hey, let’s become human!, leave the trees and start carrying briefcases on Main Street. There’s no environmental pressure to make it occur.

On the other hand, there is some pretty compelling evidence that monkeys are running for public office. Just sayin’.

The Charles Darwin Bible is a copy of the New Testament, with annotations referring to Christian and creationist beliefs. It’s the latest attempt by creationists to wiggle their religious non-science into the public schools.

There is also a creationist edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species available. Since the original text of 150 years ago is not copyrighted, evangelist Ray Comfort slapped a 50-page “special introduction” onto the work and is selling it for a mere 99 cents. Comfort’s plan is for fellow believers to hand the bastardized copies of Origin of Species to their teacher and professor friends.

The Charles Darwin Bible is another brainchild of Comfort’s. It’s being distributed by Holman Bible Outreach, which is selling the curiously named book for $3.99 (or $1.75 by the case). Someone ponied up the money to hand a thousand of them out to NEA members.

The NEA is one of two professional organizations that represent public school teachers. Its annual convention began June 26 and runs through Friday.

Here’s a description of the CDB:

Released in response to “Darwin Day” on Feb. 12th – observed worldwide by a growing number of people – this publication by best-selling author Ray Comfort is designed to help “pull the plug on the rising tide of atheism.” With both the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in February and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in October, 2009 promises to be a battleground year for evolution – and Christians need to be equipped to refute it.

Countless people have been deceived into dismissing God, believing that evolution is a proven scientific fact and that the Book of Genesis has been shown to be a fable. Even many churches have neglected the truths of Scripture for the claims of fallible man. This book will give Christians an effective tool to share with evolutionists in our schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches–explaining the vital facts about our origins and the truth of our great Creator.

Covers why there is suffering, who made God, the Big Bang, the origin of life, DNA, irreducible complexity, mutations, transitional forms, the Cambrian Explosion, peppered moths, vestigial organs, “mistakes” in the Bible, and more.

Includes:

* Presentation Page
* In-text study notes written for atheists
* Plan of Salvation
* Concise Topical Concordance

Back cover copy:
“Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening a mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” ~ G. K. Chesterton

Darwinian evolution and the biblical account of creation are incompatible. Either God made man in His own image as morally accountable beings, male and female, reproducing after their own kind, or He didn’t. If the theory of evolution is a scientific fact, then the Bible should be discarded as mere mythology. But if the Bible is right, Charles Darwin single-handedly propagated a fantasy that has hoodwinked millions.

Determining which is true could impact your eternity. Take time to examine the evidence to make sure your beliefs – and your future – are based on something solid. This brief publication will help you to consider:

* Charles Darwin’s history and beliefs about God
* Why evolution versus creation is so important
* Evidence for evolution from top scientists
* “Contradictions” in the Book of Genesis
* Evolution’s difficult questions
* How to know God exists
* Commentary by best-selling author Ray Comfort

Reading this compact New Testament with an open heart will help you know for certain whether evolution is true and whether God is real.

Creationists have a particularly narrow interpretation of Scripture. Believers have to take every single word literally, and take the entire Bible in toto that way. They cannot consider Genesis, for example, as allegorical while also accepting 1 Kings as historical. So, in the creationist mind, it’s an either-or thing: either the Bible is all literally true, or none of it is.

[Needless to say, many Christian sects outgrew literalism centuries ago, partly out of necessity. Taking the Song of Songs literally, for example, turns it into an erotic poem. Making the woman a metaphor for belief in God or for the Church makes the poem more religious, however.]

We have these two telltale sentences in the above blurb.

If the theory of evolution is a scientific fact, then the Bible should be discarded as mere mythology. But if the Bible is right, Charles Darwin single-handedly propagated a fantasy that has hoodwinked millions.

False dichotomy. False science.

There are plenty of people, including scientists and the Roman Catholic Church, who can simultaneously accept evolution as valid and still believe in God and read the Bible. Many believers can simultaneously be Christians and accept Genesis as an ancient creation myth or allegory.

Additionally, the blurb reveals a notable lack of understanding (no surprise there!) about how science works.

First of all, evolution is a theory, and technically not a fact. (Actually, it would be more accurate to call it a collection of facts, but that would still miss the boat.) A scientific theory attempts to provide some order on and understanding of a multitude of observations. Scientists constantly test the theory with the observations, including new ones. If it stands the test of time, a theory is considered valid.

Valid does not necessarily mean accurate, or factual, though. All of science is an approximation of “reality.” Theories are constantly being refined as new evidence accumulates; sometimes they are completely discarded in favor of new, more accurate theories. You cannot refine facts. A fact is a fact. It is hard to refine the fact the sun rises in the east. It does or it doesn’t. You can, however, refine the explanation for why the sun rises in the east.

It’s the constant testing of scientific theories that makes the second sentence I highlighted complete nonsense. Darwin could not have possibly “hoodwinked” millions with a “fantasy.” [That prize should go to the creationists, I suggest.] If there was sufficient evidence against his theory, science would have thrown Darwin’s theory of evolution on the dustheap with the phlogiston theory and geocentrism ages ago. But there is no evidence that contradicts evolution. In fact, discoveries since Origin of Species was first published in 1859 have only corroborated Darwin’s theory.

Now, science teachers should be aware of such nuances, or at least I hope they are. (There is evidence to the contrary, I am sorry to say.) Whether teachers of other subjects are similarly aware of how science works is more doubtful. So, handing them copies of a New Testament with creationist folderol inside might sufficiently confuse some NEA members into wondering whether creationism might actually be true, or at least be a decent “competitor” for the theory of evolution. That’s the foot in the door that the creationists want. Introduce doubt in the scientific explanations, then replace doubt with religious certainty.

Mwua-hahahahaha!

Incidentally, the creationists use “evolution” as a catch-all phrase for any science that contradicts Genesis. So, to them, most of geology, paleontology, astronomy and cosmology are bogus, too, since all four also suggest the universe and the Earth are billions of years old, and constantly changing, not a few thousand years old and essentially static (except for occasional divine temper tantrums).

Handing out these “Bibles” is a clever ruse, but ruses are essentially dishonest behavior. I guess I missed those lessons that taught Christians it is OK to trick people into Christianity.

The creationist outfit, Bridge Logos Foundation, of Alachua, Florida, has published an abridged 150th anniversary edition of Origin of Species, complete with a 50-page introduction calling into question practically every conclusion Darwin makes in the rest of the book. Living Waters Publications, is peddling the book as a way to undermine the teaching of evolution in schools and universities.

Both organizations are masterminded by Ray Comfort, a noted anti-evolution, fundamentalist writer.

Here is the squib describing the book:

This special 280-page edition not only contains an abridged Origin of Species but also has a 50-page Introduction that reveals the dangerous fruit of evolution, Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his disdain for women. It counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe—scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler. It has many original graphics and (as it says on the back cover) is designed for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions. The back cover lists the above information as well as saying the book contains “Information on Intelligent Design vs Evolution.” We want to get one million copies into the hands of students and professors in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Let’s see if they try to ban Darwin’s Origin of Species. That would be interesting.

The front cover of the book is suitably nondescript, camouflaging the creationist nonsense contained in the introduction, which Comfort himself wrote. The unwary would never suspect the book is actually anti-Darwin.

Isn’t there a commandment about not bearing false witness?

The introduction (available here) starts off innocently enough with a straightforward and — as near as I can tell — unbiased biography of Darwin. A timeline marks the important events of his life.

Then the introduction devolves into creationist mumbo-jumbo, some of which Comfort has recycled from his blog posts and other screeds, as I discovered using SeeSources.com,. Here is an example, about the synthesis of DNA (which, I might add, Darwin knew nothing about 150 years ago).

Consider for a moment whether you could ever believe this publication happened by accident. Here’s the argument: there was nothing. Then paper appeared, and ink fell from nowhere onto the flat sheets and shaped itself into perfectly formed letters of the English alphabet. Initially, the letters said something like this: “fgsn&k cn1clxc dumbh cckvkduh vstupidm ncncx.” As you can see, random letters rarely produce words that make sense. But in time, mindless chance formed them into the order of meaningful words with spaces between them. Periods, commas, capitals, italics, quotes, paragraphs, margins, etc., also came into being in the correct placements. The sentences then grouped themselves to relate to each other, giving them coherence. Page numbers fell in sequence at the right places, and headers, footers, and footnotes appeared from nowhere on the pages, matching the portions of text to which they related. The paper trimmed itself and bound itself into a Bible. The ink for the cover fell from different directions, being careful not to incorrectly mingle with the other colors, forming itself into the graphics and title. There are multiple copies of this publication, so it then developed the ability to replicate itself thousands of times over. With this thought in mind, notice that in the following description of DNA, it is likened to a book:

If you think of your genome (all of your chromosomes) as the book that makes you, then the genes are the words that make up the story. … The letters that make up the words are called DNA bases, and there are only four of them: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (t). It’s hard to believe that an alphabet with only four letters can make something as wonderful and complex as a person!

The quote about the four DNA bases, incidentally, used to be on the GlaxoSmithKline website, and is archived here. It was clearly intended for children, and simplifies genetics using terms children can understand: letters, words, books.

Comfort’s feeble attempt to show how DNA could not have possibly developed without Divine Guidance is likewise childish. DNA did not just appear — poof! — one sunny day billions of years ago. It took at least millions of years for DNA to develop from simpler molecules, and the processes by which it developed were not random, as creationists love to allege. There is nothing random about chemical bonding; some elements prefer other elements, kinda like people.

The preceding argument against unguided synthesis of DNA, incidentally, is word-for-word copied from one of Comfort’s own blog posts.

Then Comfort babbles on about the supposed lack of “transitional fossils” showing the evolution of reptiles into birds, for example. He ignores legitimate transitional fossils, of which there are many, focusing only on the fake ones, of which there are few.

Creationists love to “quotemine,” to pull quotes from pro-evolution sources and use them out of context to support anti-evolution arguments. For example, Comfort pulls a “quote” by Washington Post writer Boyce Rensberger that appears to refute the fossil evidence for the evolution of the horse.

The quote from the introduction:

The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed, fox-sized creatures, living nearly 50 million years ago, to today’s much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown. (emphasis added by Comfort)

In fact, Rensberger was reporting on a four-day conference on evolution in Chicago, and was merely summarizing (not very clearly) a scholarly discussion of punctuated equilibria. Creationists repeat Rensberger over and over again out of context, as TalkOrigins.org describes here.

Rensberger, incidentally, in one of his own articles clearly states there is sufficient fossil evidence for the gradual evolution of the horse.

A little further on (p. 31), we have this rant sermonette:

If you find it hard to believe that there was an Intelligent Designer, give this some thought. Man, with all his genius, can’t make a grain of sand from nothing. He can’t make a rock, a leaf, a flower, a living singing bird, a croaking frog, or even a grain of dead sand, from nothing. We can recreate, but we can’t create anything material from nothing, living or dead. Not a thing. Did you realize that if we could simply make one blade of grass without using existing materials, we could solve the world’s hunger problem? If we could make a blade of grass, we could then create a lot more grass, feed the green material through a machine that does what the common cow does, and have pure white full cream milk, then smooth cream, delicious yoghurt, tasty cheese, and smooth butter. But we can’t make even one blade of grass from nothing, let alone giving it the ability to reproduce after its own kind, as regular grass does. We have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating. If that’s true, how intellectually dishonest is it to say that this entire incredible creation in which we live, came into existence with no Intelligent Designer? Still, if you are set on believing that some sort of unknown creative force (made up of chaos and probability) brought all this incredible order into being, you will stay with that belief. You will also be offended by the simplicity of Genesis — that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and everything therein. You will also more than likely have a problem with where Cain obtained his wife. But I may have an answer that you could be willing to believe? How about he randomly mutated into a woman, split, and married her?

Or how about this explanation? The story of Cain is myth, not history, and his wife probably came from some other group of people with a different God and creation myth. And what the f*** does Cain’s wife have to do with Darwin’s Origin of Species, anyway?

Around page 33, Comfort veers into crazyland by alleging Adolf Hitler was a “student” of Darwin, repeating the creationist conflation of social darwinism and evolution. The intro includes several quotes from Mein Kampf relating to Hitler’s misappropriation of evolutionary principles to societal rules and politics.

The intro ends with a long discussion of sin, death, the afterlife and the best religion to choose if you want a happy eternity after leaving this mortal plane. Predictably, Comfort appeals to the reader to become Christians. In a science book. Sneaky, huh?

By the way, I saw no citations in the introduction from “Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler,” as promised in the squib. Only Einstein is actually quoted; the others are merely mentioned as believers in a Creator.

My hope is that any teacher receiving this book as a gift from some well-meaning Creationist friend will rip out the 50-page special introduction, and keep the rest, which I assume (not having seen it) is just an abridgment of Darwin’s work. Or better yet, throw out the whole thing and buy a real copy of Origin of Species. This edition is nothing more than a dishonest effort to sneak religion into science classrooms (yet again) by someone who has no understanding of science, evolution or for that matter decency.

Thus, I found this comment by a Kentucky State Department of Education official particularly disturbing. [From the Louisville Courier-Journal]

Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Lisa Gross said nothing in state law would bar public schools from visiting, if it were part of “a lesson” on “how some perceived the world’s beginnings.”

Kentucky does not require the teaching of evolution or creationism (or even science at all) in private schools. And public-school science teachers aren’t prohibited from mentioning creationism, but lessons often include concepts behind evolution, Gross said.

Maybe Ms. Gross was tiptoeing around the religious bias of Kentucky’s bureaucrats, legislators and population. Maybe she has never been to the Creation Museum. Maybe she is just plain stupid. Whatever the case, there should be no reason to bring any public school group to the museum, unless that purpose is to indoctrinate the students in an overtly religious world view.

If a high school teacher, having done a LOT of preparation, intended to use the museum as an example of propaganda or dogmatic religious instruction, then perhaps such a field trip would be worthwhile. I am just not sure how many teachers have the time and inclination to undertake such a lesson, though.

The Creation Museum is more than an “alternative science” museum. Sure, it contradicts the scientific conclusions of evolution, the Big Bang, paleontology and geology. Sure, students need to know some people do not accept those scientific theories as valid. But public school students do not need to visit a heavy-handed monument to religious indoctrination, for that it what is.

The Creation Museum is basically a church school. Public schools have no business taking students to church for religious lessons.

Now, at this point I need to be honest and say that I have not visited the Creation Museum. I am on the other side of the (spherical, not flat) world in an officially atheist nation. My evidence for my arguments is second-hand: photographs taken by visitors to the museum, news articles, and reviews of it, both positive and negative.

First, a little background info. The mastermind behind the Creation Museum is Ken Ham, a transplanted Australian who believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. He is a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). So, when it says in Genesis that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, YECs take it as a matter of their faith that it literally happened that way.

Concomitant with that belief is the understanding that the world is really only a few thousand years old, courtesy of counting back through all those “begats.” In the YEC chronology, God created Adam and Eve about 6,000 years ago. Noah built the Ark for the Great Flood around the year 2348 BC. All present animal species, geological formations and human dispersion happened after that time.

Layered on top of this belief in a young Earth is a peculiarly narrow Calvinistic theology that teaches how God deals with his Creation and why He occasionally gets pissed at it. The museum calls the major events in Earth’s history the “Seven C’s of God’s Eternal Plan.”

One section of the museum illustrates (at times graphically) the Seven C’s, and that is where most of the religious instruction is. Another section depicts detailed representations of dinosaurs. Judging from the photos I’ve seen, the models are actually really quite excellent.

Here are the Seven C’s:
Creation
Corruption
Catastrophe
Confusion
Christ
Cross
Consummation

Catchy, huh?

Creation, of course, is described in Genesis 1. “In the beginning — in six, 24-hour days — God made a perfect creation (~4000 BC),” the museum display states.

Now, “perfect creation” here has a special, narrow meaning. In this version of YEC belief, God created a world in which there was no death, destruction or corruption. Carnivorism did not exist, because God gave plants — “green herb” (Genesis 1:30) — for all his creatures to eat. Adam, Eve and all the critters — including the dinosaurs, who co-existed with humans until the Flood — were essentially immortal.

As part of his role as First Man, Adam got to name the critters. The museum teaches that these critters were not necessarily the ones we have now, but were separate “kinds” that developed into the related species of recent history. Thus, Adam named one kind, say, dog, and that dog-kind developed into domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes and other canids. In a few thousand years.

Museum display:

What did they look like?
Creation biologists believe that God put the potential for a lot of variety in each created kind. With so much variety to choose from, we don’t know exactly what the original representatives looked like. Some of the possibilities are displayed in this scene.”

Then, Adam fucked things up, by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and then lying about it. (Strangely, Eve’s role in the Fall never seems to come up in the museum’s “historical” accounts.) God got a little peeved, and threw everyone out of Eden. To make things worse, God canceled the whole immortality plan, introduced death and corruption, and told the carnivores, “Go, attack the herbivores, be fruitful and multiply.”

Rejection of God’s World led to CORRUPTION
The first man, Adam, disobeyed the Creator, bringing death and corruption into the creation. His disobedience explains the catastrophes, disease, suffering and death in the present world. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” Romans 5:12

Poor Adam. He really gets dumped on here. He fathers the human race, names all the animals, discovers the difference between good and evil, then gets blamed for every single bad thing for the last 6000 years.

Other displays gloss on the change in Creation after the Fall. Now humans and animals can be poisoned or get ill. Since the carnivores are now eating flesh again and attacking each other, animals are dying, which means the survivors have to procreate more to keep the population going. All that procreation apparently leads to … evolution, otherwise known (incorrectly) as “the survival of the fittest.” So, according to the YEC worldview, evolution is yet another example of the Corruption of God’s Perfect Creation.

[I am not entirely sure how sex figures into all this exegesis. Genesis says nothing about Adam and Eve getting it on while still in Eden, or the other critters, for that matter. Being ashamed of their nakedness after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve apparently did not wonder what those body parts were for beforehand. Sex is apparently part of the Corruption after the Fall. So, Adam did something good, after all.]

The museum interrupts its train of thought here to explain briefly where Cain found a wife to continue the human race. Well, he married his sister. OK? Now, let’s move on.

Those troublesome humans still were disobedient, per the explanations in Genesis, so God once again got a tad annoyed and decided to start over again. First, he told Noah to build a big Ark, and load two of every kind on board. Then, God flooded the Earth, literally wiping it clean, around 2348 BC.

For the YEC worldview, the Flood is a convenient, if scientifically inappropriate explanation for fossils and the extinction of the dinosaurs. The dino displays, for example, place the geological epochs (Jurassic and Cretaceous, for example), which are normally separated by millions of years, all around 2348 BC.

Moreover, for young Earth creationism, the kinds that disembarked from the Ark are the progenitors of the species we see today. The museum uses the metaphor of a “tree” to depict evolutionary development from a single organism (a gross oversimplification) and the “orchard” to depict concurrent evolution of the post-Deluge “kinds.”

According to the museum, the Flood also accelerated geologic and climatic changes, putting environmental pressures on organisms. Since God imbued critters with the ability to adapt rapidly, there was more variety in organisms after the Flood than before. One display discusses the changes in North America and uses the development of the equid-kind from Eohippus, a forest dweller, to the modern horse, a grassland dweller, as an example of adaptation.

Organisms change rapidly as the earth changes.”
As North America cooled and dried following the flood:
- larger species replaced smaller species
- grass eating species replaced leaf-eating species
- swift species of the open plain replaced slower species
Present changes are too small and too slow to explain these differences, suggesting God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.”

Using the horse as an example of evolution among North American animals is a bit strange, since paleontologists have concluded the horse became extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago. It was introduced back into the wild after the Europeans brought Old World horses with them only a few hundred years ago.

But I am trying to complicate this very simple picture. So sorry. Moving on …

Another major catastrophe (not mentioned in the Bible, but still part of the museum’s displays) is the Ice Age, referring to the most recent one that ended (scientifically speaking) about 10,000 years ago. According to the museum’s displays, the Ice Age happened a short while after the Flood, maybe around 2100 – 2050 BC. Now I see a major problem with this idea. If the last major Ice Age occurred around 2100 BC, wouldn’t the major civilizations existing then noticed it was kinda cold out? The Sumerians, for one, left written records dating back to 3500 BC. The Jews (you know, the authors of the Old Testament) would have noticed something, too. Ancient civilizations knew something of the lands to the north, and glaciation in Europe and northern Asian would have cooled things off further south. Why does the Bible omit mention of a major climatic shift?

Back to the Seven C’s. CONFUSION: God was not quite done with his unruly children, who had the gall to try building a tower to Heaven. He cursed them with different languages, leading to the dispersal of humans around the world. [Linguists disagree with this notion, by the way. Languages evolve much as organisms do.]

Up to this point of the Seven C’s, the museum mixes religion and science, with religion getting the upper hand. Now it’s time to play Christianity’s wild card, Jesus, to introduce the final three C’s.

CHRIST
The Creator became a man, our relative — a member of the human race. His name was Jesus of Nazareth, who obeyed God in everything, unlike the first man, Adam.

CROSS
The Answer of God’s Word
The penalty for mankind’s disobedience was death. Jesus, the Messiah, died on a cross to pay that penalty. He rose from the dead, providing life for all who trust in Him.”

CONSUMMATION
The Fulfillment of God’s Word
One day the Creator will remake His creation. He will cast out death and the disobedient, and dwell eternally with all those who trust in Him. Earth will be restored to a perfect place — as it was before sin.

Tell me, if you can, how any education official can justify bringing science students to a museum that panders specifically to a religious audience, with an overtly Christian message? For that matter, how could any science teacher use the museum as a teaching tool, since it and YEC in general is so overtly anti-science? (I haven’t discussed the anti-science slant of the museum. It could make for another lengthy post.)

Sadly, the museum is amazingly successful. According to the Courier-Journal, the museum has brought in $7 million in revenues last year, and brought $20 million in revenues to the local community. Since it opened two years ago, the museum has had 720,000 visitors, including many, many schoolchildren, including public school kids.

There is an old marketing adage that “sex sells.” Maybe religion sells, too.

A couple of weeks ago, the shining star of Minnesota Republican dumbness, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, expounded on the House floor that there was no need to tax and cap CO2 emissions, because CO2 is a safe and natural gas. Humans exhale it every day, after all, she said.

Now, the Mr. Big of the the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, has repeated the same meme on his ridiculously popular radio show.

WTF?

Sure, we exhale CO2, for a good reason. Our bodies can’t use it! It’s basic biology: breath air in, extract the oxygen, expel what our bodies don’t need. I learned this in elementary school, for pete’s sake! I thought everyone did.

Logically speaking (I know, I know, considering who I am highlighting here, I am asking way too much) … Logically speaking, any idiot, if he or she took time to consider the question, would realize if humans (and other animals) could use CO2 we would NOT exhale it. Our bodies would keep it.

It’s not even a question of oxygen starvation. If the CO2 levels in a closed system are too high, the CO2 inhibits oxygen usage, and people suffocate to death. That was one of the problems the astronauts on the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft faced years ago; there was plenty of O2 on board, but rising levels of CO2 threatened to slowly kill them. Once they jerryrigged CO2 scrubbers, the men were able to recover from near unconsciousness.

Misunderstanding the dangers of breathing CO2 is only one level of stupidity offered by Bachmann and Limbaugh. The other, much bigger issue is that they are both unwittingly — or deliberately — diverting debate from the real problem created by rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere: the greenhouse effect. Too much CO2 in the air won’t suffocate us, a la Apollo 13; it will slowly raise average global temperatures, melting the ice packs, raising water levels, flooding coastal areas, disrupting agriculture.

Oh, I forget. The other rightwing meme is that humans don’t cause global warming.

After all, if Rush says so, it must be true.

So, when the Texas BOE met in March to discuss controversial changes to the state’s proposed science standards, science educators all over the USA were worried. Would the BOE, chaired by an unapologetic creationist, introduce language into the standards to allow the teaching of creationism and and its clone, Intelligent Design, in the Texas schools?

To do so would be seriously damage science education in the Texas public schools. It would also likely influence textbook publishers’ treatment of evolution in biology texts, thereby affecting schools all over the USA.

The Texas BOE is nearly evenly composed of creationists and more sensible members, so the results were by no means predictable. In the end, the original changes, as proposed by the openly anti-evolution chairman and board members, were rejected. Instead, the BOE passed more coyly worded standards that still could be used to introduce pseudo-science and religion into Texas classrooms, but did not exactly trample science teaching.

Whether the new standards will induce textbook publishers to edit their books to make them more palatable to Texas remains to be seen.

A lot of bloggers have capably covered the Texas fracas already, so I will not go into the details here. Rather, I’d rather provide some background as an interested observer.

Textbooks
Right off, I want to reveal some personal bias. I hate most school textbooks. Invariably, they are written by committees of authors, who have to write to specific age-appropriate reading levels, include spiffy graphics and photos, chop the material into tiny, easily digestible chunks, and satisfy the requirements of 50 different state boards or departments of education. The result is a sometimes confusing, often dull piece of work that sucks the life out of any subject. For that reason, I avoided using high school physics texts as a teacher, sticking to college texts. As a one-man department at an independent school, I could manage that. Results may vary elsewhere.

Textbook publishing for the public schools is a major industry, now dominated by only a handful of large publishers. They tend to swing in the direction of the most populous states, Texas, California and New York, since those states will buy the most textbooks in any given replacement cycle. If Texas, for example, wants students to study the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolutionary theory, as was originally proposed, then publishers will try to add such material to their texts in an effort to close a deal with Texas. All other states will see identically worded texts. [It's inefficient and costly to publish 50 different versions of the same text, after all.]

The next textbook buying cycle in Texas is 2012, by the way. Real soon.

Science courses in US public schools are typically survey courses, by subject. At the high school level, that means a biology text one year, a chemistry text another year, etc. Middle school texts might be life science, earth science, environmental science and physical science.

Given the nature of the beast, and the typical school term of 180 days, any particular topic in a given field of study gets only cursory examination in most school texts.

Under these circumstances, treating a complex subject like the theory of evolution is a tough job. While I personally don’t like most school texts, I appreciate the hard work by their authors to serve their profession and subjects well. Most textbook writers and contributors are teachers themselves, or university professors, well versed in their subjects and in proper teaching methods. Their publishers’ bottom lines dictate the final products, not the authors’ own abilities.

So, take a complex subject like evolution, add a dash of “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory (whatever that means), mince it to fit within the parameters of the public school textbook, and the result would likely be a confusing exposition to a reader who might be at once an unmotivated learner and a disinterested student. Only a skillful teacher can pull his or her students out of that mire.

“Strengths and weaknesses”
The creationist/ID camp of the Texas BOE, lead by chairman Don McLeroy, proposed this amendment to the proposed standards: (A) analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information. The board rejected the amendment, 8-7.

At face value, the wording seems pretty harmless, but it was a ploy by creationists and Intelligent Designists to suggest that the theory of evolution has fatal flaws (no God pulling any strings, for example). McLeroy is an unabashed Young Earth Creationist (you know, God created everything in 6 days in 4004 BC), and the wording draws from the pro-ID Discovery Institute’s “wedge document” — a strategic plan to insert creationism/ID “science” into public instruction.

McLeroy and his cohorts also wanted similar treatments of other scientific theories, like the Big Bang and abiogenesis, and global warming. Evolution was just the poster child.

Since the First Amendment prohibits the state (public schools) from teaching religion (Genesis) to students, creationism and ID proponents have had to couch their “theories” carefully as “scientific” alternatives to the theories of evolution, abiogenesis and the Big Bang.

First, they have popularized the meme that evolution is a “theory in crisis.” [It isn't.] Then, they insist that scientists are trying to cover up their imperiled evolutionary theory’s weaknesses. [They aren't, since none exist.] The same scientists want to keep “alternative theories” out of the schools, since wider understanding of creationist and ID principles would further weaken “belief” in evolution. [Wrong again: the alternatives are not science.] Science should entertain all explanations for observed phenomena. [Sure, if they are scientific explanations.] Therefore, schools should “teach the controversy” to give students a more complete science education.

That ploy failed in 2005, when a federal judge (appointed by a Republican president and assumed to be “soft” on ID) categorically outed “teach the controversy” and ID as religious beliefs, not scientific explanations.

Now the creationist/ID camps have fallen back on a secondary ploy, to suggest that students should “critically analyze” the “weaknesses” in their rogue’s gallery of scientific theories. That was the eventual outcome of the Texas BOE’s deliberations.

The final wording of the major amendment was: In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of the scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student. Approved 13-2

Notice the magic words “critique” and “critical thinking” there, implying students can analyze evolution in the same way they can an American novel, or a political movement.

Two specific amendments to the biology standards also passed: Analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil record. Approved 13-2 Anti-evolution types insist there are gaps in the fossil record — no intermediate forms — indicating a weakness in evolutionary theory and evidence for Creation. And, analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell. Approved 13-2 ID proponents harp on the so-called “irreducible complexity” of living organisms as evidence for an intelligent designer.

Under earth sciences, the board also specifically struck an instructional goal that students should learn the universe is 14 billion years old, replacing the wording with current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe. Approved 11-3 Anti-evolutionists usually deny the universe is as old as most scientific estimates hold, though not all them accept a 6,000-year-old age either.

Outcomes
At this point, it’s hard to predict how the new standards will affect instruction in Texas. Asuming the Texas legislature doesn’t get involved somehow, some teachers might use the cleverly worded standards to teach creationism or ID in their classes (which is not to suggest some haven’t already been doing it). Egregious examples will likely end up in court, since it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that creationism and ID are religious ideas and cannot constitutionally be taught in public schools.

The ID camp, of course, is pleased as punch at the final results, since they did not lose categorically. Chairman McLeroy, however, is whining that the new standards are scientifically unsound and ultimately are a disservice to Texas students.

In that, he is ironically correct.

Links:
Minutes of the BOE meeting: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/sboe/summary/2009/March09Summary.pdf

Short article in the Baptist Standard: http://www.baptiststandard.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9355&Itemid=53

From the Skeptic Blog: http://skepticblog.org/2009/04/01/texas-science-standards-wrapup-yup-doomed/

Dallas Morning News report: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-evolution_28tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a87415.html

Salon.com coverage: http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/03/28/texas_evolution_case/