Devious design

Church & State, Nov 2003 by Boston, Rob

In Texas And Other States, The Discovery Institute And Its Allies Are Trying To Sneak Religion Into Public School Science Classes

Texas resident Eddy Parker is not eager for children to learn about evolution in the state's public schools. Charles Darwin's famous theory, he told the Texas Board of Education in September, teaches youngsters that they are no better than vermin.

"In Fort Worth public schools, I learned that all of you are less than human," Parker said. "I was taught that maybe you came from a monkey. all I'm asking this board to do is don't allow people to tamper with children's minds. All of you here are human and a cut above roaches and rats and all such lies."

Parker was one among more than 150 state residents who signed up to address the 15-member board during a public meeting Sept. 10. Over the course of 12 hours, speakers took turns praising evolution or blasting it.

The hearing was yet another round in what has become a perennial Texas battle. Since 1991, when state lawmakers approved legislation mandating that evolution be taught in public schools, angry Religious Right activists have been trying to find ways to work creationism into Lone Star State classrooms. They haven't been terribly successful so far, but this year may be different: The Religious Right is pinning its hopes on "Intelligent Design," (ID) a new form of pseudo-scientific creationism that proponents claim is not based in religion.

The stakes are high - and not just for Texans. This year, the board is considering approving 11 new biology textbooks, at a cost of $30 million. If ID proponents prevail, the repercussions could affect other states. Because Texas is so heavily populated, textbooks used there often end up in other states as well. Decisions made in Austin can easily reverberate around the country. A final vote on the books is expected this month.

The board has been under intense pressure since the biology textbook adoption process began. Given the oard's conservative leanings - several members frequently spout Religious Right doctrines - one might think ID's acceptance in Texas is a done deal.

It's not that simple - mainly because of laws in Texas governing the Board of Education. Weary of constant ideological battles over textbook content, Texas legislators in 1995 curtailed the board's power. Its members can no longer reject textbooks simply because a majority does not like what the books say about a given topic. Rather, the board may turn down books only if they fail to conform to the state curriculum, are poorly manufactured or contain errors.

Evolution opponents, led by the neocreationist Discovery Institute in Seattle, believe this last category gives them the opening they need. The biology books up for adoption, they have argued, fail to present the weaknesses of evolution and thus do contain errors.

Many biologists in the state reject this assertion. "The Discovery Institute is pulling a bait-and-switch con game with the Texas State Board of Education, the press and citizens," Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, told Church & State. "The Institute keeps asking for flaws - weaknesses and criticisms - of Darwinism and Darwinian theory to be presented in the textbooks, but the books already contain this information."

Continued Schafersman, "All the biology books point out that Darwin had no knowledge of modern genetics, and that he was ignorant of evolutionary mechanisms other than random mutations, natural selection, and genetic variability. Research in the 20th century has corrected these defects in his original theory, and modern evolutionary theory is much stronger."

Schafersman and other critics argue that groups like the Discovery Institute merely represent a shift in tactics in the Religious Right's long-running war against the teaching of evolution in public schools.

"There is a clear, well-coordinated effort to undermine the teaching of evolution in Texas classrooms," Samantha Smoot, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, told the Houston Chronicle. "Intelligent design is just creationism dressed up in a laboratory coat."

In many ways, intelligent design is an idea born of necessity. The Supreme Court and lower federal courts have consistently ruled against teaching traditional creationism in public schools, asserting that it is a religious, not scientific idea. (Creationism holds that the earth is only 6,000 years old, insists that God created the world in six literal days and teaches that Old Testament accounts about the creation of the world should be read as literal history.) Intelligent design was created in part to avoid this problem.

Many proponents of intelligent design say they reject the notion of a young earth and refrain from tying their ideas to Biblical literalism. Their main assertion is that life is too complex to have come about through natural processes and thus must have been created by a higher power. Although some are loathe to admit it, the higher power they are referring to can only be God. (Some ID proponents, desperate to find some other explanation so their ideas will not be viewed as religious in nature, have posited intervention by space aliens as an alternative.)