Evolution Activists Organize to Combat Pseudoscience in Public Schools
Washington Watch, August 2003
Robert E. Gropp
As threats to evolution education continue to spread state by state across the United States, evolution advocates are beginning to organize. More than 50 science education advocates, clergy, educators, scientists, and representatives of national organizations recently attended an "activists' summit" convened by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)—a nonprofit organization that defends the teaching of evolution—and the University of California Museum of Paleontology. The summit gave defenders of evolution education an opportunity to share information and develop strategies to ensure that state and local areas include evolution in public science courses and state science standards. Barbara Forrest, associate professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and summit participant, said the meeting was important because it showed that "a very diverse group of people"—hitherto neither as well organized nor as well funded as antivolution advocates—"recognize the threat to public education" posed by proponents of intelligent design (ID).
Skip Evans, NCSE's network project director, agreed that the summit had symbolic value in countering the recent "political successes antievolution forces have achieved by advocating intelligent design rather than the discredited traditional creationism." The ID theory holds that life is too complex to have evolved without the direction of a purposeful and intelligent creator. Its proponents hope to win over moderate religious groups, elected officials, and other audiences by presenting what they call scientific "evidence" against the theory of evolution by natural selection. And indeed, they have drawn support from some people—including some elected officials—who otherwise might not actively oppose the theory of evolution.
The objectives of ID leaders would appear to go beyond the refutation of evolution. In a January 2003 interview on American Family Radio, Phillip Johnson, an ID proponent and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute (a Seattle-based organization that actively promotes ID), stated, "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
Despite such admissions that religion is the driver of ID theory, the word seems not to have reached some elected spokespersons for ID. In March 2002, US senator Rick Santorum (R–PA) said, "Proponents of intelligent design are not trying to teach religion via science, but are trying to establish the validity of their theory as a scientific alternative to Darwinism." Santorum has proven to be a strong ally of the ID movement, offering an amendment to the "no child left behind" education bill in 2001 that, education advocates contend, was designed to discourage the teaching of evolution. Leading advocates for ID have taken credit for drafting the amendment.
Many evolution activists believe that Sen. Santorum's advocacy of ID and various state and local ID initiatives across the country are proof that citizens and scientists must work together to defend the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Antievolution initiatives have been proposed in just over half a dozen states this year. These proposals have been defeated, narrowly in some cases, by local and state coalitions of clergy, educators, scientists, parents, and political leaders who are concerned about the quality of their children's education, the impact of weak science standards on future economic development, and the national perception of their community.
Many of those at the activists' summit have formed coalitions modeled after Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS), a group that came into being when the Kansas State Board of Education decided in 1999 to drop key aspects of the theory of evolution from state science standards. One of the primary benefits of the summit was to give participants the chance to learn what has worked in other parts of the country—in Kansas, for example, KCFS spearheaded a movement that returned evolution to school science standards in 2001. According to Forrest, "Part of accomplishing goals successfully is knowing whom to call. We now know people to whom we can offer help and others from whom we can request it."
Joe D. McInerney, who represented the American Society for Human Genetics at the summit, commends summit planners for involving professional societies. McInerney believes "scientists should be willing, even eager, to counter efforts to constrain the teaching of evolution theory." Summit participants encouraged scientists to communicate the nature of science and the scientific community's lack of acceptance of ID to the public and to elected officials. Similarly, scientists expressed a need for politically savvy activists to alert them to antievolution initiatives that casual observers might not recognize because of carefully circumlocutory language.
Evolution and state science standards are issues that affect everyone, as the diversity of citizens and disciplines represented at the summit demonstrates. The summit also demonstrates, Forrest believes, that the community is up to the challenge of countering antievolution efforts.
Robert E. Gropp (e-mail: rgropp@aibs.org) is the senior public policy representative for AIBS.
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