Category: Culture
Back to School: Do You Know What Your Child Is Learning?
Another school year is set to begin at high schools and colleges where the next round of biology students will be filled with evolutionary misinformation. At the center of this propaganda campaign are the many biology textbooks used to indoctrinate young minds with old dogma. These textbooks contain the latest evolutionary newspeak, but the underlying lies are no different. In their text The Living World (Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008) evolutionary apologists George Johnson and Jonathan Lobos rehearse the usual lies. Students are told that “Microevolution Leads to Macroevolution” with the giraffe’s neck serving as the example of how small change is supposed to accumulate to the large-scale change evolution needs. Of course this is a long-standing, well-known problem for evolution. Mechanisms Read More ›
Nature Immunology Editorial Botches American Law and Science Education
A May, 2010 editorial in Nature Immunology makes it clear that they don’t trust religious persons–even those who are neo-Darwinian evolutionists like Francis Collins–in positions of scientific authority. The editorial (written by the journal’s editors) states: “The openly religious stance of the NIH director [Francis Collins] could have undesirable effects on science education in the United States. … In the introduction and in interviews surrounding [Collins’] book release, he describes his belief in a non-natural, non-measurable, improvable deity that created the universe and its laws with humans as the ultimate aim of its creation. Some might worry that describing scientists as workers toiling to understand the laws and intricacies of this divine creation will create opportunities for creationism adepts.” (“Of Read More ›
NAS’s Draft “Framework for Science Education” Ignores Critical Thinking When Teaching Evolution
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is drafting a “Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards” which contains guidelines and standards on how to teach evolution. As we’ve noted before here on ENV, science education authorities often laud the importance of using critical thinking when teaching science, but then they completely ignore or eschew such educational approaches when it comes to teaching evolution. They single out evolution as the topic where scientific critique or critical analysis is carefully avoided. The NAS’s public preliminary draft “Framework for Science Education” (warning: large 6.8 Mb PDF file) uses exactly this approach. Having perused the proposed draft framework and found some dogmatic statements about evolution, a few noteworthy points emerge. While some of the Read More ›
Free to Think: Caroline Crocker’s New Book Tells Story of Discrimination Against Intelligent Design
While Chris Comer’s lawsuit made a bogus case for discrimination, there are cases documenting genuine discrimination–against scientists who support intelligent design (ID). One of those incidents took place at George Mason University (GMU), where Caroline Crocker was ousted from teaching biology because she challenged to neo-Darwinian evolution and favorably mentioned ID in the classroom. Dr. Crocker later appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but now many more details about Caroline Crocker’s story are revealed in her new autobiographical book, Free to Think: Why Scientific Integrity Matters. Free to Think tells the story of a biology professor who cares deeply about students, received glowing student reviews, wouldn’t compromise her integrity when challenged to disregard anti-cheating rules, and produced high quality curricular Read More ›
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Chris Comer’s Lawsuit Alleging Discrimination Against Evolution
In 2007, Chris Comer was forced to resign from her job at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). She then filed a lawsuit alleging she was forced to “stay neutral on creationism,” and claimed that TEA’s “neutrality” policy violated the First Amendment. We reported last year when Comer lost on summary judgment at the federal district court level. Comer then appealed her case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which filed its ruling on July 2 upholding the district court’s decision and tossing Comer’s case. The Fifth Circuit held, “we find no evidence to support the conclusion that the principal or primary effect of TEA’s policy is one that either advances or inhibits religion, we conclude that the policy does Read More ›