Posted by On Friday, Florida State Senator Ronda Storms introduced an anti-evolution bill to the legislature. She did so quietly, and without fanfare. No press release was issued, and so far the legislation has not received any attention in the press. It also doesn’t seem to have attracted any attention from the Discovery Institute or any of the other major anti-evolution websites, either. That’s actually a bit of a surprise, since the bill in question is remarkably similar to a “Model Academic Freedom Statute” that the Discovery Institute posted on a website that they (and a media company) set up to promote a movie.
This whole thing raises so many issues that it’s hard to decide where to start. There’s the Orwellian language of the act itself. There’s the egregious misunderstanding of the concept of academic freedom that’s contained in the bill. There’s the remarkable similarity between the bill before the Florida legislature and the Discovery Institute’s “model statute.” There’s the narrow focus of the law. There’s the lack of concern shown for “academic freedom” as it relates to anything but teachers and students who want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that evolution’s not a real, solid scientific concept. And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s just no way that I can address all of this in a single post. Fortunately, I’m confident that between the comments section for this post and whatever other bloggers may decide to write on this topic, most of the things I miss will be covered in short order.
Right now, I’m going to focus on the mockery that the circumstances surrounding this bill make of the Discovery Institute’s frequent assertions that religious beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with this sort of thing. (Yes, I know it’s hard to make a mockery of a mockery, but they’ve managed it. Again.)
Let’s start with the very narrow focus of this bill. The bill in question provides “academic freedom” only to K-12th grade teachers and students who want to question evolution. It provides absolutely no protections for anyone who wants to question whether or not e is really equal to mc2. It gives no safe harbor to those who disbelieve PV=nRT. And if you dare to suggest that the mathematical establishment is dogmatically indoctrinating their unsubstantiated belief that the square of the length of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides, you’re not going to get any help from the Florida legislature.
Now, as we all know, evolution gets some religious people – particularly those who come from conservative Christian backgrounds – more worked up than anything else in science. They’ve got no problems with the Ideal Gas Law. They’re more or less cool with Einstein’s Theories. They manage to deal with the the Pythagorean Theorem. But the mere mention of evolution makes their heads explode. This legislation seems intelligently designed to give them a legal opportunity to push their religiously-motivated prejudices onto other students.
But we’re supposed to believe that’s a coincidence.
Then, there’s the bill’s sponsor. The anti-evolution act is not the only bit of pro-religion legislation that Senator Storms has introduced recently. Two weeks ago, she introduced a bill that, if passed, will have Florida issue license plates that say “I Believe”. The proceeds from the sale of those plates will go to a religious group that will use them to “fund the short falls that [faith-based] educational programs experience as a result of their inability to receive public funds.” In the past, she’s acted to strip funding from a Planned Parenthood-run sex education program, and was the driving force behind a Hillsborough County resolution that barred the county from “acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride recognition and events”. She feels that she was “called by God” to her current political position.
But we’re supposed to believe that it’s coincidental that the bill was introduced by someone with a long history of injecting narrow-minded religious bigotry into politics.
Finally, there’s the website that the Discovery Institute and Motive Marketing teamed up to create. Motive Marketing is a firm that has a very, very narrow specialty. They’re all about marketing movies to a Christian audience. They’re the ones who got conservative Christians excited about Passion of the Christ. They did the same for Narnia. They’re trying to do it now for the upcoming Ben Stein anti-evolution hackjob, doing things like putting together private screenings at megachurches for conservative Christian pastors, running “press conferences” where only hand-picked Christian media outlets get to ask questions, and generally conducting themselves with the same dedication to the concept of free and open inquiry seen at the official media outlets of third-rate banana republics. The “model statute” that the Florida bill was cribbed from was first posted on the website that Motive and Discovery set up as part of their marketing effort for the Stein movie.
But that’s a coincidence, too.
Apparently, the Intelligent Design folks think that people should only be looking for evidence of design in nature – and not in their own actions.
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