Evolution vs Creationism

How do you think the philosopher of science will handle this?

Article below taken from the January 2006 issue of Physics Today


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Issues and Events
Evolution Wins in Pennsylvania, Loses in Kansas

A slate of "real-world" candidates swept the intelligent design majority off the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board, while in Kansas antievolutionists not only weakened science standards, but redefined science itself.
January 2006, page 32

A few years ago, registered nurse Bernadette Reinking, weary after three decades of working with physicians and the medical system, retreated into her house in central Pennsylvania to, as she puts it, "raise my grandbabies"—all seven of them. Then, after two years of full-time grandmothering, she said, "I opened my door and found all of this mess."

The mess was the Dover Area School Board, where, according to Reinking, the school board members "were not very kind to people who were offering other opinions." Reinking, whose four children had gone through the Dover school system, decided to run for a seat on the board.

Credit: Ben Sargent
So did Bryan Rehm, a high-school physics teacher who was angered by school board members "calling people names and spouting Bible scripture at people who disagreed with them." Rehm said the school board also stopped funding school field trips, ended student participation in a national robotics competition, and was cutting back on other activities he thought were important.

Although many parents in the school district were concerned about those actions, the issue that crystallized the opposition was a requirement enacted by the board that biology teachers in the school district read a statement to students saying evolution is "not a fact" and that students can learn about other theories, including intelligent design, by reading antievolution material in the school library.

The nine-member board approved the statement over objections from its own scientific standards committee. Rehm and 10 other parents sued, claiming that the requirement was unconstitutional and that intelligent design was actually religious creationism being brought into the classroom. The trial ended on 4 November 2005, and four days later, eight of the nine intelligent design advocates on the school board were defeated by Reinking, Rehm, and six others running as the Dover Cares slate. (Rehm's election by less than 100 votes has since been challenged and a special runoff election was set for 3 January.) The court decision, which turns in part on whether intelligent design is religiously based, was expected in late December or early January.

The defeat of the intelligent design majority on the board was widely reported in the national media as a victory for evolution. The National Center for Science Education, the California-based organization that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools, issued a statement under the headline, "Dover voters choose good science at polls."

Religious conservatives weren't happy. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, reacted to the election by telling the "good citizens of Dover" that "if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city."

The new board took office on 5 December with, Reinking said, "the focus of improving the education of our children. We want them to be able to go out and get good jobs with health insurance. Real-world kinds of things."

While things were good for science advocates in Pennsylvania, they were bad in Kansas. There, the Kansas State Board of Education not only approved a revision of the state's science standards to include criticism of Darwinian evolution, but went a step further and redefined science itself.

The old definition termed science the "human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." The new definition describes science as "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

University of Kansas physicist Adrian Melott, a veteran of the long battle between evolution and creationism in Kansas, said the new definition allows for the possibility of a supernatural explanation in science. Melott said he is dismayed by the resurgence of the creationists on the school board, but not surprised.

"We had the same thing happen six years ago," he said, when creationists organized and won the majority of seats on the state board (see PHYSICS TODAY, November 1999, page 59). They rewrote the science standards, but before they could go into effect, "people woke up and voted them out. Then they promptly went to sleep again and these people took over the board again in 2004."

University of Kansas cosmologist Hume Feldman said he was particularly troubled by "the idea that science can be redefined by this group, most of whom aren't even educators. Their idea, the way they do this, is that they don't insist that intelligent design be taught in the class, but that it be implied. Their focus is on saying evolution is not a fact."

The board is currently rewriting the science standards to reflect the new definition of science, but that task is being made difficult by the refusal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to allow the use of its copyrighted National Science Education Standards. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association have also refused to allow the Kansas board to use their material in writing the new standards.

In an October letter to the Kansas department of education, NAS president Ralph Cicerone wrote, "The revised [Kansas science standard] attempts to portray evolution as a theory in crisis and raises 'controversies' (e.g. the Cambrian explosion) that evolutionary scientists have refuted many times using the available evidence."

Keith Miller, a Kansas State University geologist, said only a couple of the antievolutionist members of the 10-member board have to be defeated in the 2006 election to give the pro-science side a majority, "but it is hard to get people passionate about a school board election." That's made more difficult when creationist advocates equate endorsing science with endorsing atheism, he said. "And we also have to recognize that this is a much longer-term problem. We can't say that if we win the next election, then we don't have to worry any more."