Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Lauri Lebo has an article at Religion Dispatches about the latest attempts in various states to pass "academic freedom" -- i.e. anti-evolution, pro-creationism -- bills. Some of the bills are still using the old-fashioned language of demanding equal time, like a bill in Mississippi:
This month, Mississippi lawmakers introduced in the House the first anti-evolution bill of 2010. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Gary Chism, and which has been referred to the House Education Committee, would require lesson plans on evolution to have "proportionately equal instruction from educational materials that present scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution."
Of course, there aren't any "scientifically sound" argument against evolution, but the creationists have gone to a great deal of trouble to play pretend. And Chism makes no bones about being a creationist:
Chism, unsuccessfully sponsored similar anti-evolution legislation in 2009. According to the National Center for Science Education, Chism told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal last year, "Either you believe in the Genesis story, or you believe that a fish walked on the ground," and adding, "All these molecules didn't come into existence by themselves."
Other bills use the slightly outdated "strengths and weaknesses" language:
A day after the Mississippi bill was introduced, Missouri lawmakers introduced their own version in the House on Jan. 13, which includes the required teaching of "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. The bill says:"Teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution."
Translation: Teachers will be permitted to introduce creationist materials that pretend to be legitimate scientific critiques of evolution into their classrooms.
Politics
Comments
I was wondering how long before Mississippi jumped on this bandwagon. I'm actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Or maybe I just didn't realize it hadn't happened yet. I went to a small private school with "Christian values," so they had carte blanche with their biology classes, and went so far as to show a Kent Hovind video to us.
Posted by: Scott | February 2, 2010 9:15 AM
I read "proportionately equal" to mean an amount of time proportionate to the amount of "scientifically sound arguments" on each side. In which case the schools are, we hope, already complying fully by giving creationism no time at all.
Posted by: James Hanley | February 2, 2010 9:19 AM
My home state of Missouri also has a dumbing-down of the public about evolution bill. Every year one gets brought up and so far they've all failed. I have my letter to my representative ready and will blast it out to her and a number of others when the bill gets put on the schedule for a hearing. It's been read twice so far in the house, but isn't scheduled for any follow up just yet. Hopefully reason will prevail and this one will be shot down as well.
Posted by: MartyM | February 2, 2010 9:22 AM
Headlines mentioning "Academic Freedom" legislation always make me think that the story will involve David Horowitz's crusade.
Posted by: jws | February 2, 2010 9:27 AM
Religious education in the public schools. We don't need our kids to be any dumber. If you want morons for kids, send them to a parochial school and leave public education alone. They not only risk the quality of the education the kids get but they waste huge sums of money on legal challenges.
Mississippi's educational goals: We want to be at the bottom!
Missouri's educational goals: Challenge Mississippi!
Posted by: MikeMa | February 2, 2010 9:38 AM
My way of handling it. State the principal of uniformitarinism at the beginning, i.e. there are no super-natural interventions in the world in the model of the world we are building. If you want to believe there are that is fine, but its not in our model. You may build your own model but we will discuss and use our model in this class. Science is all about models and biology is building a model of the world. Others may assume supernatural intervention but that is not the model of the world we are building.
Posted by: Lyle | February 2, 2010 9:39 AM
If this passes, then we might as well bring in alernative theories about the Holocaust. They aren't as crazy as you think. After all, at least three presidents (Franjo Tudjman of Croatia) and Abbas(Palestinian Authority) and the Iranian jackass whose name can I not spell and will not look up are support them. Plus, I can find numerous records in the State Department, OSS, and US Army files at the National Archives casting doubt on the Holocaust. Sure, they're from 1941-4, the time before we liberated the camps, tried the Nazis, and hundreds of memoirs and oral histories were produced by those who survived, were involved, or just witnessed it.
But why limit craziness to science?
Posted by: History Punk | February 2, 2010 9:44 AM
I find it amjusing that these 'academic freedom' endeavors are coming from the people who previously had banned the teaching of evolution.
Posted by: Rob Jase | February 2, 2010 9:46 AM
@ MikeMa #5:
awesome!
you wanna ridicule these types, but they're just so dangerous. This dumbing down is ...
well, let's bet which month this year Brawndo takes over the FDA...
Posted by: VikingMoose | February 2, 2010 10:06 AM
I think we should debate the worthiness of distinguishing efforts to restrict science education and promote creationism as science as an insidious form of child abuse. I only recommend consideration of our framing the issue as abuse if we can empirically validate that students who are suppressed from a proper science education coupled to religious indoctrination are not proportionally represented in certain educational and employment areas, e.g., life sciences.
I'm reasonably confident such studies would find such repression and if so, think it's time we more accurately describe what these efforts are - child abuse.
Posted by: Michael Heath | February 2, 2010 10:47 AM
What an idiot! If he wants to see fish walking on the ground, all he has to do is look hard enough at the wildlife movies. There's more than one species alive today that does it.
Posted by: Pen | February 2, 2010 11:05 AM
Sorry MikeMA, they're going to have to work a lot harder to even come close to how hard our legislature is working to make certain that Arizona remains last in education. Sad thing is, they actually established fundamentally sound science standards, it's the utter lack of funding that kills edumacation here in Arizona.
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If they were honest science teachers then your argument would be valid. Unfortunately a large number of them are the Freshwater variety who will push their sectarian myths as valid and viable alternatives to the scientific theory of evolution. Of course this isn't what those who promote this legislation have in mind right? ... Right?
Posted by: dogmeatib | February 2, 2010 11:09 AM
If we teach the "strengths and weaknesses", it must be coupled with a lesson on the false dichotomy fallacy. We need to make it clear to the students that even if evolution by natural selection were proven to be completely false, that says nothing about the validity of any other "theory". Plus, we have to include the "strengths and weaknesses" of all other theories, to be fair and consistent. The theory of gravity has more weaknesses than the theory of evolution by natural selection, so that would get a lot more class time. After all, it's the only force that is only attractive and not repulsive, it seems to work instantaneously (faster than the speed of light), and we still haven't discovered a plausible mechanism for how it works.
Posted by: catgirl | February 2, 2010 11:26 AM
A former student who became a state education person asked me what I would do if "teaching the controversy" was mandated. I explained that I would do my best and reminded her that we always examine the underlying assumptions to see if evidence suggests they are valid, so clearly the evidence for a creator could be examined, and found wanting. This allowed her to go back and say, "see what would happen."
Posted by: DrA | February 2, 2010 11:46 AM
Catgirl,
Couldn't you also make the argument that "strengths and weaknesses" should be taught in social studies classes where the "strengths and weaknesses" of religion could be properly examined as well as the "strengths and weaknesses" of the Bible and Christianity in particular. I bet that would be a popular class if taught accurately and honestly. ;o)
Posted by: dogmeatib | February 2, 2010 11:48 AM
Hmm.... fish walked on the ground, or light preceded the formation of the sun and stars...
If those are the choices, I'll go with fish walked on the ground. As Pen #11 pointed out, some fish *do* walk on the ground.
Posted by: Kathy Orlinsky | February 2, 2010 11:56 AM
dogmeatib,
I actually had the idea to start out with the creationist view, then go through discoveries chronologically, to teach students why we no longer believe in magic. But that might be better suited for a history class. For example, you could teach that we used to believe that the earth was 6,000 years old, until we discovered dating techniques that disagreed with mythical stories. Then we discovered fossils, similarity between organisms, and eventually genetics. We could turn everything around, start with the creationist assumption, and then show the weaknesses of it.
Posted by: catgirl | February 2, 2010 12:02 PM
Dr.A,
Unfortunately, for the most part, this isn't what would happen. First, you have the fact that there are teachers like Freshwater out there who would use this legal opportunity to push their religious beliefs as science. We see already without legal protection, imagine how often you would see it if these "educators" were given even the most flimsy of legal loopholes. Second, many teachers already face accusations of impropriety when such discussions come up and they do present the actual evidence (or lack of evidence) for the religious explanation for life, the universe, etc. I've known teachers who were harassed to the point they left the school/district. I personally have at times been labeled "biased," anti-religious, and the most "evil of all" an "atheist" for not supporting the claim that a religious explanation for life is "just as valid" as the scientific, evidence based academic explanation.
So really, in the end, I seriously doubt that advocates of legislation of this type are honestly afraid that science teachers will use this as an opportunity to honestly compare and contrast the "two explanations." They believe that the vast majority of the people of their state are religious people exactly like them. They believe that promoting their religion is not just okay, but it is a desired goal of the school system to do so. They believe that atheists and agnostics are a miniscule minority who can be easily silenced by "true Christians," and that even if they aren't the argument against their faith is too "weak" to be taken seriously. At the same time, ironically, they believe that if they don't do this their faith will fail, their believers will be led astray, etc. To be honest it is a rathe bizarre hodgepodge of beliefs, stereotypes, and fears that motivates most of those who are willing to promote religion as science and use their elected positions to force their beliefs on others. Arguing that they would back off for fear that honest discussion of the subject would disprove their myths isn't supported by any evidence I have seen.
Posted by: dogmeatib | February 2, 2010 12:06 PM
Can we lobby for a bill to mandate equal time in churches to challenge their mythologies?
Posted by: TGAP Dad | February 2, 2010 12:13 PM
I would want my representatives to go further, and offer an amendment that "would require lesson plans on THERMODYNAMICS to have "proportionately equal instruction from educational materials that present scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of PHLOGISTON." There.
Coal contains phlogiston, America has so much coal to burn, and it was of course a godless French [Lavoisier] who is now depriving the U.S. even of the knowledge of one of their greatest natural resources. Phlogiston theory is patriotic!
[]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
"The theory holds that all flammable materials contain phlogiston, a substance without color, odor, taste, or mass that is liberated in burning."
Posted by: A | February 2, 2010 12:17 PM
@13 catgirl
My physics knowledge is pretty limited (most comes from my fascination with "The Universe" show on the History Channel), but I thought that gravity does work at the speed of light. Like if the sun instantly disappeared, we would feel the gravitational effects at the same time as the darkness.
Posted by: Jordan G | February 2, 2010 12:50 PM
Re catgirl @ #13
After all, it's the only force that is only attractive and not repulsive, it seems to work instantaneously (faster than the speed of light), and we still haven't discovered a plausible mechanism for how it works.
1. True for electric forces. Not true for the strong and weak forces.
2. Gravitational effects are believed to travel at the speed of light.
Posted by: SLC | February 2, 2010 12:56 PM
Thanks for the update on the speed of gravity. My point still remains. It's ridiculous to deny that gravity exists simple because our theory isn't perfect, and the same goes for evolution.
Posted by: catgirl | February 2, 2010 1:17 PM
catgirl,
Ah, but the bible mentions nothing about gravity or other physical forces. The goatherds were not advanced enough to even begin to understand those facets of knowledge. Human beginnings however, are mentioned and therefore sacrosanct.
Creationists are deluded half-wits. Arguing with them is like taunting good 'ol Pat. Entertaining for a while but pointless in the end.
Posted by: MikeMa | February 2, 2010 1:39 PM
Re: SLC @ #22
Gravitational effects are believed to travel at the speed of light.
Is there any way to even determine the speed of gravitational effects? I've heard gravity described as a warping of "space-time". If the mass is present, then the "space-time" is warped. It doesn't "propagate", does it? Unless that's what gravity waves are? Or, could a fast moving heavy object actually "drag" space-time behind it, like sound waves compressed in front of and dispersed behind an object approaching the speed of sound? Could there be a Doppler shift to gravity? Is that what they're referring to when they discuss spinning neutron stars and black holes?
Curious lay minds want to know. :-)
Posted by: Scott | February 2, 2010 1:59 PM
@25: Awesome questions, Scott. I too would love to learn more about gravity possible alteration of it's effects.
Posted by: trog69 | February 2, 2010 3:49 PM
"chemical evolution"? What the hell is that? How did I get my doctorate in chemistry without knowing about that? Oh that's right, some religious asshat who knows nothing knows better than the experts. Isn't it peculiar how ignorance goes inversely with perceived knowledge? The people who know nothing proclaim to know everything.
Posted by: MadScientist | February 2, 2010 4:47 PM
As I see it, gravitational force is generated by matter. The gravitational field around that matter will remain static as long as the matter remains static. As the movement of matter is governed by relativity, then the movement of the gravitational field would follow the matter at the same sub-light speed.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm only a hobbyist when it comes to physics) but couldn't you only measure the "speed" of gravity by winking matter into existence and measuring how long it would take for the gravitational field to extend around it?
Since we can't simply create or destroy mass, this is impossible to test.
...right?
Posted by: DexX | February 2, 2010 7:02 PM
You can measure the speed of gravity easily. You have a large mass that you move suddenly away from a distant test mass. Measure the time between moving the large mass and the change in force on the test mass. The rest is a mere matter of engineering. (`Mere', as in "It's probably convenient to use a black hole the mass of the Earth for the large mass".)
Posted by: Keith Harwood | February 2, 2010 10:24 PM
I always thought it was odd that the commonly posited God is "omnimax" and the Bible is "the only solid foundation for faith" and yet the combination's weakness is turned out to be linnaean taxonomy, of all things (and more recently comparative genomics). It's like killing a vampire with garlic.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | February 3, 2010 4:39 AM
I don't think it's really a loophole at all. Teaching creationism (including evolution denialism) is a First Amendment violation and no local law can change that.
I understand what you mean, though, and it's important to note that individual teachers and school boards are meant to understand that it is a legal justification for teaching creationism. It's creationists misleading creationists in order to provoke lawsuits. This way they get to use the public coffers to stretch the ACLU's resources.
Posted by: DaveL | February 3, 2010 5:49 AM
Posted by: Rutee | February 3, 2010 9:12 AM
I am not a scientist, so can some scientist out there tell me whether there is any matter of genuine scientific controversy that anyone taking (or, for that matter, teaching) K-12 science could reasonably be expected to understand? I remember from my primary school days in the early 1960's that the Big Bang and Steady-State theories of the universe were still in lively competition among those capable of understanding the issue. We were taught essentially the following: there are two theories, the Big Bang, in which the universe as we know it came to exist in a single cataclysmic event, and the Steady-State, in which the universe as we know it has more or less existed more or less as it now is forever. Scientists haven't yet resolved the issue. End of lesson. Some years later, we learned about a Nobel Prize-winning experiment using radio telescopes that, we were told, settled the issue in favor of the Big Bang. End of second lesson. Is there any genuine scientific controversy now out there about which K-12 students could be taught anything more than what I learned about the Big Bang?
Posted by: CJColucci | February 3, 2010 10:53 AM
CJ,
There are many unanswered areas of study. Probably few 'controversies' if by that you mean areas where mainstream scientists have taken two or more iron-clad yet inconsistent stances on some scientific point.
The Big Bang vs. Steady State 'controversy' is gone. Replaced with arguments over different big bang models which have different explanations on how and how fast it happened. Look up "inflation" if you want to explore this one.
Einstein's cosmological constant appears to be real. Scientists disagree on what it represents.
And cosmologists still haven't figured out the explanation for the universe's 'missing mass' (which could be energy, but colloquially that's what its called).
Gravitational observations appear to be in conflict with QM. No one's sure if this is a real conflict, if the quantization is just smaller than we expect (and thus harder to measure), or if there's some wierd "explanation c" going on like what we found with solar neutrinos.
Chemists are getting pretty good at making larger and larger molecules which still demonstrate QM behavior. At the same time, many systems of small molecules don't. Figuring out exactly when and how 'the rules change' - to the point where we can control it - will probably be a big deal for physics, chemistry, and biology.
In biology the 'RNA world' vs 'DNA world' camps still argue over which came first.
That should get you started. Note this is just my personal view, which is very limited. Some of what I call conflicts may no longer be, and I'm sure I've given a very lopsided view just because my background knowledge is limited mostly to physics and physical chemistry.
If you're interested in more, my suggestion is to pick up Sci Am or some other similar 'science lite' magazine. For the layman these are much more approachable than technical journals, but the articles are often written by the authors of those same journal articles, or someone in the field.
Posted by: eric | February 3, 2010 1:01 PM
Eric:
Thanks, but those controversies seem to me to be the sorts of things that aren't "teachable" to K-12 students in any meaningful way. (My Big Bang/Steady-State example was literally all I was taught in K-12 on the subject, and as much, I think, as I would have been able to understand.) I may be wrong, but I think those kinds of issues, and most issues of genuine scientific controversy, are just too hard, and require too much specialized knowledge, to be taught in anything more than the most superficial way in K-12. Or am I wrong about that?
Posted by: CJColucci | February 3, 2010 3:04 PM
CJColucci you are selling kids short. My son is only in 5th grade, but he has a pretty good grasp of some areas of science for his age. (for instance he can name all the earthe geologic periods and which major fuana groups dominated them) but, then again, he also believes in sasquatch (damn that monster quest).
Anyway, by the time he gets to K9 through K12 (high school) I absolutely expect (and will demand of him and his school) that he have a strong solid grasp of math and science.
Posted by: Chilidog | February 3, 2010 3:34 PM