We can only hope that the rest of the country follows the University of California’s lead here (via the Panda’s Thumb):
It appears that yet another creationism-related lawsuit is in the works. This time, the venue is in California, and it is the Creationists who are doing the suing. Apparently, the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murietta are no longer satisfied with being able to teach their students creationism instead of real biology. Now, they also want to make sure that their students will not have to suffer the consequences of this decision, and they are suing for that “right”.
The University of California System, quite reasonably, requires that the students that they accept have a certain educational background. Several courses, including biology, offered by Calvary Chapel were determined to be insufficient to meet the UC standards. According to the LA Times article cited above, UC directed Calvary Chapel to instead, “submit for UC approval a secular science curriculum with a text and course outline that addresses course content/knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community.” Typically, the creationists don’t see this as a university excercising it’s duty to ensure that its students are properly prepared for admission. Instead, they see it as yet more evidence of the anti-Christian “bias” that they see anytime they do not get things their own way.
Students who have received creationist narratives as a substitute for science are not academically prepared for the admission to a university. That seems like an eminently reasonable position to me. Maybe those of us who work in the academy should start taking a look at similar actions.
The Utah Board of Education steps up to the plate as well, calling ID the pseudo-scientific bullshit it is:
As a fundamental scientific concept, evolution is a necessary part of science classroom instruction, and it will continue to be taught and progressively refined as a key scientific principle,” the 1 1/2-page document states.
“Teachers should respect and be nonjudgmental about (student) beliefs, and teachers should help students understand that science is an essential way of knowing. Teachers should encourage students to discuss any seeming conflicts with their parents or religious leaders.”
The document also defines the weight of theory in scientific context, cites evidence that the universe and life have changed over time, and notes other ways people glean understanding, such as historical analysis, art, religion and philosophy, which rely upon “other ways of knowing, such as emotion and faith.
“While these ways of understanding and creating meaning are important to individuals and society, they are not amenable to scientific investigation and thus not appropriate for inclusion in the science curriculum,” the document states.
The whole “controversy” over Creationism/Intelligent Design really has very little to do with science, even though science has been drawn into it. The real story is a group of feable-minded people who claim that the creation myth of a nomadic tribe who lived thousands of years ago must be taken as the actual Truth of what happened or all of reality will collapse. They attribute any and every disagreement to disagreement with that position. I disagree with that position, but that’s not why I know (I don’t believe it, I know it) evolution occured (and continues to occur). I disagree with their position because of the evidence of evolution (as well as the evidence of civilizations existing prior to the “date” of creation). I reject their position not out of some animosity, but because of the evidence. (The animosity comes from what they’re trying to do.)
The folks pushing this tripe have been incredibly effective in their publicity. They’ve managed to take a point of scientific consensue and create a political controversy. In their reality, everything flows from political position. Here’s something I wrote along these lines a few months ago:
The partisan political framing of academic knowledge production is highly problematic, especially for many of us in the social sciences and humanities. Some of the foundational principles of sociology make us particularly good targets. For instance, our emphasis on inequalities flowing from social causes based in power relationships isn’t exactly amenable to a perspective that proposes atomistic individuals who “make it” or fail to based on sheer willpower and effort. Our emphasis that the meaning of any action is contextual and not inherent doesn’t sit well with moral absolutists. The call of one of our discipline’s founders, Max Weber, to maintain a “respect for inconvenient facts” is one the wingnuts willingly ignore. I wouldn’t say that sociology is “liberal” so much as I would say that the ontological assumptions upon which sociology rest have political implications. If you want to study asocial actors making rational choices, study economics or law at the University of Chicago.
Anyone who cares about knowledge should be outraged by the attacks on evolution. Those of us who work in the academy, even if far afield of the biological sciences, has cause for concern. The ontological underpinnings of all of our disciplines are to be tossed aside in favor of liberal/conservative positions on any issue. Questions of methodology become useful only insofar as they uphold a conservative orthodoxy. Epistemology is to be tossed out the window. In their world, only ideology matters.
[Crossposted at CultureKitchen]
