The bill purportedly would have protected instructors from punishment or job loss if they presented “scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution.” In fact, it was a ploy to enable suitably minded instructors to teach creationism or ID alongside evolutionary theory. Wording that is almost identical appears on a web page sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a pro-ID “thinktank.”

Full details are at The Panda’s Thumb.

Lest you think the bill might have had merit, allow me to provide a brief introduction to “creation science.” ID is just a variation of creationism, accepting an older age of the universe.

Creationism holds that:

• The account in Genesis is literal and true.
• God created everything in six days, about 6,000 years ago.
• Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all animals were vegetarians, death was non-existent, and predation/parasitism were unnecessary.
• God got pissed at Adam and Eve, and that wily serpent in the Tree, and cursed them with unending toil, mortality, and slithering on the ground. With the Fall, God also rebooted Creation 1.0 to introduce carnivorism, predation, parasitism and all the unhappy biological problems all His creatures now face.
• At this time, dinosaurs and other now-extinct organisms co-existed with humans. (The Fred Flintstone Hypothesis). They were wiped out, and the fossil record created, with the Great Flood that chased Noah, et al., into a big boat. Instead of rebooting Earth, God just wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Creation 2.0
• The organisms now living have always existed in their current forms since Creation 2.0. Evolution does not exist, and Earth’s organisms do not have a common ancestor. It goes without saying that humans and apes are not related at all.

Believe it or not, some teachers in the US have actually managed to teach this nonsense in public schools. Ohio’s John Freshwater is but one notable example.

So, if your legislatures are considering similar “academic freedom” measures, be forewarned. The wolf is wearing sheep’s clothing.

On the face of it, “academic freedom” would sound like a good thing, but in today’s world of newspeak, this kind of “academic freedom” is shorthand for “let’s allow the public schools to teach creationism or Intelligent Design ideas alongside the scientific theories of the Big Bang and evolution.” Similar bills have been proposed in several other — mostly Bible Belt — states, and all have the same chance of success. None — except of course in Louisiana, where one actually passed.

These bills are merely a veiled attempt by Christian kooks to subvert the US Constitution (and proper science education) by suggesting that creationism and ID are really scientific theories, not religious ideas, and therefore should be taught as valid alternatives to evolution. Trouble is, the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that creationism was religious in nature, and cannot be taught in public schools, and in 2005, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that ID was also religious in nature, meaning the Dover, Pennsylvania, school system had violated the Constitution by permitting it to be taught in science classes.

Yet, the kooks persist, in a quixotic attempt to find some state stupid enough to pass so-called “academic freedom” legislation, so like-minded instructors can slip in so-called scientific alternatives to evolution.

Here is the wording of the Iowa bill:

EXPLANATION
4 5 This bill establishes the “Evolution Academic Freedom Act”.
4 6 The bill includes the general assembly’s findings and
4 7 declarations related to its intent to protect the right and
4 8 freedom of public school teachers and public postsecondary
4 9 instructors to objectively present scientific information
4 10 relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding
4 11 biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching
4 12 any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological
4 13 evolution.
4 14 The bill defines “scientific information” to mean germane
4 15 current facts, data, and peer=reviewed research specific to
4 16 the topic of chemical and biological evolution. For
4 17 elementary and secondary schools, the definition is linked to
4 18 the state’s core curriculum for science.
4 19 Pursuant to the bill, the general assembly finds and
4 20 declares that current law does not expressly protect the right
4 21 of instructors to objectively present scientific information;
4 22 that instructors have experienced or feared discipline,
4 23 discrimination, or other adverse consequences as a result of
4 24 presenting the full range of scientific views regarding
4 25 chemical and biological evolution; that existing law does not
4 26 expressly protect students from discrimination due to their
4 27 positions or views regarding biological or chemical evolution;
4 28 and that the topic has generated intense controversy about the
4 29 rights of instructors and students to hold differing views.
4 30 The bill prohibits an instructor from being disciplined,
4 31 denied tenure, terminated, or otherwise discriminated against
4 32 for objectively presenting scientific information relevant to
4 33 the full range of scientific views regarding biological or
4 34 chemical evolution.
4 35 The bill requires students to be evaluated based upon their
5 1 understanding of course materials through standard testing
5 2 procedures. Students shall not be penalized for subscribing
5 3 to a particular position or view regarding biological or
5 4 chemical evolution.

The key words here are “scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding
biological and chemical evolution.” The bill mentions nothing about creationism or ID, but the language contained therein is a dead ringer for similar language proposed by the ID “thinktank,” the Discovery Institute. Here is the wording of a petition on a DI-sponsored website:

“We, the undersigned American citizens, urge the adoption of policies by our nation’s academic institutions to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. Teachers should be protected from being fired, harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for objectively presenting the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory. Students should be protected from being harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for expressing their views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory in an appropriate manner.”

Like the fictional “war on Christmas,” the persecution of Christians who dare challenge the horrible monolith of evolution is a lot of hot air. It’s a meme fostered by the simply awful movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, that essentially bombed in the box office last spring. You can count the number of instructors fired or harassed for teaching creationism/ID on your fingers. In fact, in many cases they lost their jobs for other extenuating circumstances. (See the John Freshwater case for a recent example.)

Creationism and ID are religion, folks. In their current forms, they are clearly Christian-inspired. According to the Constitution and all subsequent court interpretations of the same, publicly funded schools cannot teach one particular religion to students. It is a very simple idea, which some legislators are apparently too thick to understand.

Dressing the wolf in sheep’s clothing fools no one, really. Iowa’s scientists are circulating a petition against the bill, which will probably die in committee anyway. Meanwhile, we (actually, you) will get to hear the same tired arguments about evolution, men are not monkeys, the word of God, blah, blah, blah.

It’s a lot of crap, and embarrassing to realize it is coming from the most powerful nation in the world (well, maybe not in economic terms, anymore …).

The movie, which I have not seen, supports the opinion that someone who does not accept the theory of evolution cannot debate or question the theory in the classroom without fear of reprisal. The rights of anti-evolution faculty and students must be protected, the movie’s creators claim.

It’s another version of the “teach the controversy” canard that IDists and creationists have been passing around for the last few years. First, they create a false controversy (many people doubt evolution is valid). Second, they contend that “evolutionists” are forcing this “controversial” theory down students’ throats. Then, they insist that other theories must be given “equal time” somehow in the classroom to give students a full education.

This strategy to introduce ID and creationism in the public school classrooms failed miserably in Dover, Penn., after a federal judge (a Republican appointee) ruled that ID was just another form of creationism, that is, it was religion. Therefore, he said, ID cannot be taught in a public school without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

So now the ID/creationist tactic is to focus on the “academic freedom” to question evolution. The plan is to appeal to the public’s sense of fairness and belief in free speech rather than to concoct a controversy from whole cloth.

I was contemplating today what enforcing this interpretation of “academic freedom” would mean to me as a physics/astronomy/math teacher. I came up with three possible (though I hope unlikely) scenarios.

Physics class
We contrast each year Aristotle’s and Galileo’s explanations of falling bodies. Aristotle, whose “theories” were sacrosanct in Europe for two millennia, held that objects moved according to their nature. For him, the composition of each object was a mixture of the four elements (fire, air, water and earth). Objects that had more earth and water than air and fire naturally fell, whereas objects with more air and fire rose. Therefore, Aristotle claimed, heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones. Since this behavior is what we see, the explanation must be right.

Galileo (and others, to be fair) believed otherwise. In fact, Galileo by careful experimentation and reasoning, showed that all objects would fall with the same acceleration to the ground if air resistance was not important. He derived laws of motion that applied to all objects, no matter their composition.

So, I wondered, what if I had a student who refused to accept Galileo’s reasoning (and for that matter my demonstrations that Galileo was right)? As things stand now, I could tell the student, “OK, you’re entitled to your belief, but for the purposes of this course you have to know and be able to discuss the prevailing scientific explanation of falling bodies. If you cannot, or refuse to learn that explanation, I will need to mark those responses wrong, which will reduce your grade in this course.”

If, on the other hand, the student’s “academic freedom” were protected, I presumably would not be allowed to mark his or her answers wrong. Instead, I would have to accept as a valid answer the Aristotelian explanation for falling objects.

Astronomy class
Aristotle and the Bible both agreed that the Earth is at the center of the universe, and that all objects orbit it. This geocentric view of course has not been widely accepted since the 17th century, but suppose for a moment one of my students was a Biblical literalist and understood the Bible to say that Joshua really did stop the sun in its tracks, as it says in Chapter 10 of the Book of Joshua. Academic freedom of the kind professed by Expelled’s creators would require me to accept the student’s arguments as equally valid as the heliocentric model’s, and perhaps award him or her full credit for any test questions answered in that way.

By the way, if Joshua did stop the Sun, how come no one else noticed?

Math class
Ludicrous example, to be sure, but Indiana did at one point declare by law that pi was exactly equal to 3. So, a student would have the “academic freedom” to use 3 or 22/7 on math homework instead of pushing the pi button on his or her calculator? And if so, I would have to accept those answers as correct?

This version of academic freedom is the stupid, one-size-fits-all kind. It presumes that all arguments and viewpoints are equally valid, even if some are completely unsupported by any available evidence. In that kind of academic environment, no real learning of content would ever happen. Classes would spend their time arguing like medieval scholastics about the quality of each person’s argument, instead of the logical conclusions drawn from scientific evidence.

To put it another way, each field of study has to have standards. For modern biology, one such standard is that any student must understand the theory of evolution and its role in unifying the study of that science. If a student (or professor!) has qualms about the religious connotations of evolution, then they should either get over them or get a different line of work. Suggesting that ID or creationism is equally valid as evolution just because you like ID or creationism more is a specious argument. Standards should not change to please a vocal minority.

Science is not a democracy in which all scientists’ viewpoints are equally valid. Science relies on evidence to support its arguments, models and theories. Evidence is the ultimate authority, not what previous generations have taught or believed. Give us incontrovertible scientific proof (not faith or scriptural quotations or handwaving inferences) that God or an “intelligent designer” made the universe, then maybe we’ll talk. Until then, please, leave us alone, Ben. Stick to acting and economics.