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As I was listening online to last week’s Texas State Board of Education hearings, two comments by Board members stuck with me. The TSBE was in its final deliberations on science standards and liberal Republican Pat Hardy delivered an encomium to “experts.”

She went on about how if you get sick and require the medical knowledge of an expert in the field, why then you’d better go to that expert and follow his advice! She pleaded with other Board members to listen to the “experts” on evolution, which would mean voting to accept the “expert” view that there’s no debate on evolution worthy of being shared with high school biology students.

The same day, Board member Don McLeroy, who was on the dissenting side from majority “expert” opinion, delivered a stirring rebuttal. With marked irony, he asked what right he had, as a mere dentist by profession, to doubt the experts? In fact, despite being “only” a dentist, he took the view that as a citizen and an elected school board legislator, he had the right to think for himself. Indeed he had the responsibility. That was the case even if it meant, after study and reflection, rejecting what many experts say.

Then again, you don’t have to look too hard for genuine credentialed experts on the Darwin-doubting side — quite a number of those testified before the TSBE. Yet it remains true that the skeptics on evolution represent a minority academic view.

As the world now knows, the TSBE ultimately voted with McLeroy and against the majority of experts, adopting science standards that specify the precise headings under which Darwinian theory most urgently needs to be questioned — or, in the Board’s preferred language, “analyzed and evaluated.”

To follow the experts unthinkingly is simply the prestige path for most people. Such docility also explains the resistance of certain constituencies, from whom you’d expert better, to thinking fresh thoughts about Darwinian evolution.

In all the excitement of the debate over Texas science standards last week, one thing was made eminently clear: generally speaking, there is one side of this debate that focuses on the science at hand, and another side that keeps bringing up religion. Contrary to the stereotype (but not the actual experience of those who care to see things as they actually are), it’s the Darwinists in this debate who keep wanting to talk about religion. People who question Darwin’s theory want to talk about the scientific evidence for and against it, as John West explains in The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog: Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried Read More ›

From my Discovery Blog

The New York Times got the preview story wrong, and the Washington Post editorial writer probably was too rushed to question the charges of “creationism” coming from the National Center for Science Education, the Darwin-only lobby. So this week’s important decisions by the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) on how to teach evolution were predicated in the media by the big question of whether teachers should provide both “strengths and weaknesses” of Darwin’s theory. Those words might sound benign, readers were told, but they really are “code words” (take the press’ word for it) for creationism and religion.

Although incorrect at points, the Wall Street Journal’s article on the new Texas science standards is more accurate than some of the local reporting. The key thing the Journal gets right is that the Board definitely opened the door to critically analyzing evolution in the classroom. Unfortunately, the article omits or mangles a lot of the details. For one thing, the article doesn’t mention the new critical inquiry standard requiring students to “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations…including examining all sides of scientific evidence… so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.” The story also garbles things when it states that “the board voted down curriculum standards questioning the evolutionary principle that all life on Earth is descended from Read More ›

Unlike the slipshod Dallas Morning News article, the initial Associated Press report on the new Texas science standards acknowledges the “compromise” language requiring scientific critiques adopted by the Board and even quotes some of it: The curriculum will require that students “in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations … including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.” Although the AP story is clearly slanted toward the evolution lobby (and contains the obligatory inaccurate comments about intelligent design), it doesn’t suppress the basic facts about what the Board did.

One has to wonder whether the Dallas Morning News reporter even attended today’s meeting of the Texas State Board of Education. It’s hard to tell from the garbled account the paper just published, which pretty much claims that the evolution dogmatists won everything. Of course, the truth is almost exactly the opposite. The article is a classic example of either sloppy or selective reporting. For example, the piece talks about the removal of the “strengths and weaknesses provision” from the Texas science standards, but neglects to mention the adoption of even stronger language that requires students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence”! The article likewise talks about the removal of Chairman Don McElroy’s extra provisions on common Read More ›

In a huge victory for those who favor teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution, Texas today moved to the head of the class by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence” and specifically requiring students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations. “Texas has sent a clear message that evolution should be taught as a scientific theory open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned,” said Dr. John West, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute. “Contrary to the claims of the evolution lobby, absolutely nothing the Board did promotes ‘creationism’ or religion in the classroom. Groups that assert otherwise Read More ›

Chances are you have heard the story of Phineas Gage at some point. Most of us get it in our General Psychology courses in high school and college, the story of a man who had a horrible accident and was never the same again — sort of like Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry, but the other way around.

The idea this anecdote supposedly supports is that personality = the brain, as evidenced by changes to the brain (like a spike through the head) that cause changes in personality. Pretty straightforward stuff. There’s only one problem.

It’s not true. Denyse O’Leary explains at Uncommon Descent:

The Texas Board of Education has finished the tweaking of its revised science standards for today. Unfortunately, an effort to reinstate the “strengths and weaknesses” language again failed on a vote of 7-7. Board member Bob Craig, one of the Republicans who has led opposition to the “strengths and weaknesses” language, offered an ambiguous and watered-down “compromise” that called for teachers to discuss “what is not fully understood so as to encourage critical thinking.” Although rejected by the full Board, Craig’s so-called compromise was supported by fellow Republicans Pat Hardy (Fort Worth) and Geraldine Miller (Dallas), both of whom have also crusaded against the “strengths and weaknesses” language and supported the Darwin-only crowd pretty much down the line. In defense Read More ›