The Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas State Board of Education has tentatively decided drop its 20-year-old requirement mandating that science teachers address both “strengths and weaknesses” of the scientific theory originated by Charles Darwin in the 19th century, capping a heated debate on the topic.
In Texas, the theory of evolution now has no faults and teachers who know better have no recource but to bite their tongue in the classroom. This falsehood rightly incenses many Americans, for a variety of reasons:
“It’s outrageous that our highest elected education officials voted to silence teachers and students in science class,” said Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the Free Market Foundation. “Despite being overwhelmed by e-mails and phone calls to keep strengths and weaknesses, the divided State Board of Education ignored constituents and sided with a small group of activists.
“This decision shows that science has evolved into a political popularity contest. The truth has been expelled from the science classroom.”
Expelled, indeed. The reasoning from the winning side has but a single, razor-sharp focus – the complete elimination of creationism from the American education system:
Kathy Miller, president of the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network, has argued that the word weaknesses “has become a code word in the culture wars to attack evolution and promote creationism.”
Miller is certainly right in what she says. Evolution’s many weaknesses are exploited in the ongoing battle over what should be taught in America’s schools. However, what’s not said – ever – is that it was the liberal, evolution-only, there-is-no-God side that started the culture wars in the first place. Now, after decades of liberal radicalism on the streets and in the courtrooms, the left frequently attempts to take the legal high ground, as Miller does in this case.
Yet the fact is that the theory of evolution is just that. While that may incense many people on the left and some on the right, the truth is what it is. Darwin’s idea of radical mutation is far, far from proven and the skeletal record is in many ways just that – skeletal.
For pro-evolution advocates to say straight-faced that their idea is the complete definition of a natural law is ludicrous as relates to the origins of life on this planet. Few people question the validity of natural selection to work changes in species over time. It’s readily observable in experiments with fruit flies, in addition to being intellectually obvious. But natural selection has nothing to say about where life came from. Woe to the rare objective scientific researcher who actually cares enough about the truth to consider every possible bit of evidence. That, you must understand, is not allowed.
Expelled, the movie, is an excellent documentary about the scientific censorship that has taken place in this country over the last 50 years in regard to the research, publication, and teaching of intelligent design. I highly recommend it. Save for an unfortunate ramble through the briar patch of Nazism and eugenics, it’s certainly thought provoking and worthy of 90 minutes of your time. If nothing else, an important take-away is that anti-God political forces are actively limiting scientific research and debate in this country using every means, fair and unfair, available to them.
That’s unacceptable. Even if evolutionists turn out to be 100% correct with one of their Darwinistic sub-theories – something that’s highly unlikely – the completely cynical act of using the country’s political and legal processes to stifle scientific research debate and force America’s young people to be educated exclusively in their dogma is anti-America, anti-truth, and anti-rational in the extreme. Science is about seeking the truth. But the left seeks to put blinders on all of us, researchers included.
The irony is, of course, that the new radical liberalism is supposed to be all about individual truths, rights, and freedoms. The truth is that the freedoms the left promises are fantastic chimeras that disappear the moment you use that freedom to disagree with them.
Sadly, the intellectual fascists of the left, who can allow no other views than their own to be put forth, have one another battle in the war for America’s soul.