Those of us who have been in the front lines of the fight to keep fundamentalism from poisoning science education in Texas have long known Dan McLeroy, recently appointed by our Ken-doll governor Rick Perry to head the Texas State Board of Education, has been a Christian Right tool. (And only in a state where the governor is himself a Christian Right tool could an uneducated — in science, that is — person be appointed to head the Board of Education!)
Now, with a hat tip to the Texas Observer blog, McLeroy's real agenda is right out in the open for everyone else to see. It must be humiliating for the ID movement, every time they try to repeat their nonsense that ID really-honesty-truly-no-really-we-swear has nothing to do with promoting religion, to have a creationist then come out and proudly proclaim that yes ma'am, it shore is! Humiliating for them — hilarious for us.
The Observer has unearthed (now this is journalism, people!) a recording of McLeroy addressing a sermon to his church, Grace Bible Church in College Station, on the subject of ID and evolution. The real battle, evidently, is against liberalism and naturalism. McLeroy sees ID as this glorious "big tent" that brings together religious pseudoscience of all stripes to unite against evil liberal naturalistic...uh...all that stuff. I can imagine the flacks at the Discovery Institute groaning over this one:
"Why is Intelligent Design the big tent? Because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of Intelligent Design.”
I especially love this passage from the Observer article.
McLeroy counsels fellow travelers to publicly battle evolution on the merits. “We must know our subject — facts and evidence are crucial,” he said in his sermon. But he acknowledges that this strategy has proven an utter failure.
Well, duh. 'Cos ya know, before you can present facts and evidence, you gotta have some!
We have allies at UT:
ReplyDeletehttp://sarkar.typepad.com/sarkarlab/
I keep waiting for ID research to being. Please promise to post an update as soon as they have a paper published in a professional, scientific, peer-reviewed journal, talking about their evidence.
ReplyDeleteOnce they get going on their research--maybe they'll create a better foundation for their idea than, "We don't believe in evolution...and we can't imagine any other naturalistic explanation...so it must be a being that can just do this sort of stuff--but we've no idea how."
Yep - this is so nice. And luckily for me, I sign my contract Monday to teach biology in Waco. By the Spring, I should have my full certification, so I will be good to help fight this idiots attempts to dumb down our standards (which come up for review next year, IIRC). Should be fun.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if they want us to teach ID, I have no problems showing how vacuous and unscientific it is.
Zed, we saw Dr. Sarkar participate in a debate a few years back. Here's the report I wrote up on the ACA site..
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