Posts on Creationism

The New York Times tells how Gov. Bobby Jindal has made Louisiana a hospitable place for school vouchers, tax cuts, creationism and the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian conservative group with ties to James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Rev. Gene Mills, director of the Forum, explains the close relationship: “I believe there are some philosophical principles we share, that naturally put us closer. There are a lot of shared values. We value human life and limited government. There’s a lot of common ground.”

After a month, “Expelled”—the anti-evolution film starring Ben Stein—is fading from the scene with disappointing sales (although associate producer Mark Mathis says he’s pleased). The movie’s efforts to portray Intelligent Design creationism as a valid scientific field being persecuted by the authorities probably never had a chance with academics familiar with these dubious creationist arguments, but then again, it probably wasn’t the movie’s intention to convince scientists that ID was a legitimate scientific theory. Instead, “Expelled” took its battle against evolution to the political arena.

This was apparent in the film’s marketing strategy of reaching out to right-wing media outlets and activists, who embraced the half-baked Darwin-Hitler connection at the center of “Expelled.”

And—regarding the strange subplot of Yoko Ono suing over the film’s use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” without getting the rights—a lawyer for the movie recently argued that the film’s message is pegged toward influencing this year’s presidential election, according to the AP:

A lawyer for the movie's distributors has warned that the litigation could wreck the movie's political message by preventing it from impacting viewers in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential campaign.

While it’s too early to say how creationism will figure into the presidential race, the political impact of “Expelled” can be seen more directly in state legislatures, with a rash of new legislation challenging science education in public high schools. “I think Expelled definitely has played a role,” said ID-advocate Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute.

According to the National Center for Science Education, anti-evolution bills were recently introduced in Florida, Missouri, and Alabama, but the legislative sessions in those states ended before the bills could pass. Versions in South Carolina and Michigan also appear to be stalled for now. But a bill in Louisiana to undermine classroom teaching on the topics of “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” was passed unanimously in the state Senate and has already passed through a committee in the House.

The major claim of “Expelled” is that scientists working to provide some—any—legitimacy to Intelligent Design are facing persecution. The stories told in the movie don’t seem to pan out, but as Stein and company are surely aware, the debate over creationism is not taking place at research universities but at school boards, state legislatures, and public high school science classes. A newly published survey of high school teachers found that 25 percent address creationism or Intelligent Design in the classroom, and 12 percent call creationism a “valid scientific alternative” to evolution. Ben Stein’s rants about Nazis seem unlikely to chance the basic course of scientific inquiry into the natural world, but the legacy of “Expelled” may be bills, like Louisiana’s, to put the supernatural world into the science classroom.

USA Today reports that the $27 million Creation Museum, which Answers in Genesis opened last May in Petersburg, Kentucky, is exceeding its attendance expectations:

Halfway into its first year, it is on the verge of surpassing its projected year-long attendance goal of 250,000. Officials now expect nearly 400,000 people to pass through the doors by year's end.

"It's been a surprise," said spokeswoman Melany Ethridge, who attributed it to the dramatic exhibits and ongoing media interest from Europe and elsewhere.

While much of that attendance is likely comprised of Christian schools and church groups showing support for young-Earth creationism, the museum has also benefited from wide publicity. In May, Answers in Genesis distributed an elaborate press kit, including a “video news release.” VNRs are pre-produced news segments, complete with fake reporters, that many cash-strapped local TV stations will air with little or no editing or attribution.

Also included in the press kit was this sample science video, a recreation of the deluge:

You can hear screams in the background, but we are hopeful that no scientists were actually harmed in the making of that exhibit.

As we noted earlier this month, Ben Stein—of Richard Nixon and “Ferris Bueller” fame—is starring in an anti-evolution documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” While the movie isn’t set to be released until February, scientists are already accusing its producers of dishonesty—and not for claiming that “Intelligent Design” creationism is a valid scientific theory. As various outlets are reporting, several scientists well known for refuting anti-evolution activists say the producers for the film hid their agenda, portraying the project innocently as “Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion” (still listed on the web site of the supposed production company).

From the New York Times:

If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.” …

Walt Ruloff, a producer and partner in Premise Media [producer of “Expelled”], also denied that there was any deception. Mr. Ruloff said in a telephone interview that Rampant Films [which approached the scientists as producers of “Crossroads”] was a Premise subsidiary, and that the movie’s title was changed on the advice of marketing experts, something he said was routine in filmmaking. …

Another scientist who was, P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, said the film’s producers had misrepresented its purpose, but said he would have agreed to an interview anyway. But, he said in a posting on The Panda’s Thumb Web site, he would have made a “more aggressive” attack on the claims of the movie.

As for Stein, who rails in the movie against the scientific establishment’s supposed unsavory suppression of creationism, he claims innocence, adding that if he had his druthers, the movie would be called “From Darwin to Hitler”—an homage, perhaps, to the late televangelist D. James Kennedy.

Over the weekend, the New Orleans Times-Picayune revealed that a federal spending bill contains a substantial sum of money budgeted for the Louisiana Family Forum, apparently for the purpose of combating the teaching of evolution and global warming in public schools. The earmark, inserted by Republican Sen. David Vitter, provides $100,000 to the group for the purpose of “develop[ing] a plan to promote better science education,” but as the newspaper points out, LFF has been a leading advocate of creationism in the state:

The group's stated mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." Until recently, its Web site contained a "battle plan to combat evolution," which called the theory a "dangerous" concept that "has no place in the classroom." The document was removed after a reporter's inquiry. …

In 2002, the Louisiana Family Forum unsuccessfully sought to persuade the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to insert a five-paragraph disclaimer in all of its science texts challenging the natural science view that life came about by accident and has evolved through the process of natural selection.

The group notched a victory last year when the Ouachita School Board adopted a policy that, without mentioning the Bible or creationism, gave teachers leeway to introduce other views besides those contained in traditional science texts.

LFF, a “family policy council” affiliated with Focus on the Family, was founded in 1999 by Tony Perkins, before he became president of the Family Research Council and gained national prominence.

Vitter defended the earmark as an “important program” that “helps supplement and support educators and school systems that would like to offer all of the explanations in the study of controversial science topics such as global warming and the life sciences.”

The money in the earmark will pay for a report suggesting "improvements" in science education in Louisiana, the development and distribution of educational materials and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Ouachita Parish School Board's 2006 policy that opened the door to biblically inspired teachings in science classes.

Vitter made news this summer when phone records from the “D.C. Madam” showed him to be a customer of a prostitution ring while he served in Congress. While Rev. Gene Mills, director of Louisiana Family Forum, said the $100,000 earmark is “a bit of a surprise,” it’s hard not to notice that Mills has been one of the few voices coming to Vitter's defense. In this interview, which LFF posted online two weeks, ago, Mills claimed that comparisons with this summer’s other Republican senator involved in a sex scandal—Idaho’s Larry Craig, who was caught in a bathroom solicitation sting—were a matter of the media doing “what it can to smear any of the family values guys.”

Ben Stein, the Nixon speechwriter immortalized by his acting role as a boring schoolteacher in the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” is returning to movie academia in a documentary about “Intelligent Design” creationism. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” sets out to expose what Stein calls “widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms” in the form of the general rejection of ID—an outgrowth of creation science based on the premise that life is so complex it must have been created by God directly rather than through an evolutionary process—as a valid scientific theory.

“Expelled” paints ID advocates as the “rebels” of a “new scientific movement” doing battle against atheists and a world without morality. Like an earlier video produced by the late D. James Kennedy, “Expelled” attempts to link Darwin’s theory of evolution with Hitler and Nazi Germany; the film will feature shots of concentration camps to make that point.

While “Expelled” isn’t likely to advance acceptance of “scientific” study of the supernatural or move ID from the scholarly fringe, it will probably find a welcome audience among anti-evolution activists who look to ID as a back-door way to put creationism back in schools. The marketer who helped make “The Passion of the Christ” a blockbuster by promoting directly through churches is hoping to work the same magic on “Expelled,” so the film’s makers can hope for a constituency reenergized to engage the political debate, if not the scientific debate. That, after all, is the point of ID.

In his latest column, Chuck Norris launches into a familiar gripe of the Right, warning parents that college campuses today into hotbeds of “liberal bias” and “indoctrination.” One example employed by the Right is the recent failure of an Iowa State professor to be granted tenure, supposedly due to his advocacy of “Intelligent Design” creationism. (That’s leaving aside a more obvious explanation: Perhaps if he spent more time on astronomy than creationism, he would have been able to bring in more outside grant money.)

It seems at least one creationist is fighting back – and apparently threatening to use Chuck Norris methods.

An anti-evolution activist who has been targeting biology professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder is implicated in distributing threatening letters two weeks ago, calling teachers of evolution “child molesters” and “terrorists” and repeating the line “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society”:

Last weekend more than a dozen envelopes bearing the image of skull and crossbones and containing letters threatening the lives of CU-Boulder evolutionary biology professors were slipped under the doors of CU-Boulder buildings. …

“EBIO (evolutionary biology) professors are terrorists against America and … intellectual and spiritual child abusers of their young and impressionable students … the EBIO department not only blasphemes God, who is invisible, but it blasphemes His Only Begotten Son and our Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is more unforgivable … for all these reason all God-fearing and Truth-loving persons must say, They must go!”

The evolution blog Panda’s Thumb has more information, including excerpts from the letters.

In last night’s Republican presidential debate, moderators returned to the subject of evolution, pressing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee gave an elegant answer to the inept question -- “I’m not planning on writing the curriculum for an eight-grade science book. I’m asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States,” he said. The idea that the president won't set science curriculum seems to echo the conservative view of federal versus state policymaking authority, but in practice the president may have a role doing just that.

In the midst of a heightened period of debate two years ago over teaching “Intelligent Design” creationism in public school science class, culminating in a federal judge repudiating the Dover, Pennsylvania school board, President Bush spoke out in favor of injecting creationism into curriculum, helping to legitimize ID proponents’ case. “With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase,” said Gary Bauer.

And the president’s role may even extend beyond shaping the terms of debate to setting actual policy. During congressional debate over Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind education plan, among the provisions considered was the so-called Santorum Amendment, containing language designed to make ID an integral part of science standards across the country. Although the amendment was rejected, confusion around the legislation caused many ID supporters (including Santorum) to imply that it was law. At the very least, this shows that a future president could potential be in position to implement an anti-evolution policy for public schools.

As we noted after the last debate, Huckabee expressed support for teaching creationism when governor of Arkansas. Last night, while Huckabee seemed to state that the theory of evolution is incompatible with belief in God, he correctly noted that his personal belief (much less his understanding of science) does not necessarily bear on public policy. But the policy question of whether creationism belongs in public school science class, on the other hand, is very relevant to the job.

(Via Ross Douthat.)

No plans for Memorial Day? The Creation Museum, a $27 million production of Answers in Genesis, is finally opening in northern Kentucky. From the New York Times:

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away. …

[The scene] serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Last year, Answers in Genesis complained that a museum tour of “Lucy,” the remains of a 3-million-year-old human ancestor, was “anti-creationist hype.” The group’s own museum will also feature fossils, but presented as cohabitants of the world of Noah and passengers on his ark.

Oddly enough, the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is opening its own new exhibit on Saturday.  But the museum maintains that the subjects of the “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids” exhibit “are found only in folktales and other stories.”    

Group promotes teaching creationism in public school.

Last Thursday, the American Enterprise Institute hosted a debate on “Darwinism and Conservatism” in which Discovery Institute fellows John West and George Gilder sought to persuade conservatives that the scientific theory of evolution is incompatible with their political ideology, no doubt by attempting to link evolution to eugenics and abortion. That same night, the idea was tested in a more practical theater: the Republican presidential debate. John McCain was asked whether he believes in evolution – his answer, after a pause, was yes. Then the co-moderater asked for a show of hands:

Creationist “scholar” also points to abortion.

Mark your calendars, because on May 5, former child star Kirk Cameron and “best-selling author Ray Comfort” are going to “prove God's existence, absolutely, scientifically, without mentioning the Bible or faith.” Cameron has, like others on the Right, blamed school shootings on the teaching of evolution:

ABC … will host a debate in New York City on May 5, 2007. Moderated by Martin Bashir, the debate will be streamed LIVE on their website and will also be filmed for "Nightline."

Cameron ("Growing Pains" sitcom and Left Behind movies) will speak on what he believes is a major catalyst for atheism: Darwinian evolution. The popular actor stated, "Evolution is unscientific. In reality, it is a blind faith that's preached with religious zeal as the gospel truth. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was once a naïve believer in the theory. The issue of intelligent design is extremely relevant at the moment. Atheism has become very popular in universities--where it's taught that we evolved from animals and that there are no moral absolutes. So we shouldn't be surprised when there are school shootings.”….

"Most people equate atheism with intellectualism," Comfort added, "but it's actually an intellectual embarrassment. I am amazed at how many people think that God's existence is a matter of faith. It's not, and I will prove it at the debate - once and for all. This is not a joke. I will present undeniable scientific proof that God exists.

If Cameron and Comfort think that evolution – the basis of much modern science – is unscientific, what kinds of “scientific” arguments are we likely to hear from them?  Maybe something like this, which just happens to be the second most viewed clip on GodTube:

Within 24 hours of a shooting spree that left 33 dead at Virginia Tech, countless right-wing commentators took the opportunity to call for increased access to guns on campus. Some on the Right have also used the tragedy to launch less-expected tirades.

American Family Radio, a part of the American Family Association, read over the air an anonymous e-mail, updated to include this latest tragedy, that blames school shootings on the lack of school prayer and Bible-reading in public schools, on abortion and access to condoms, and on the Lewinsky affair. “We reap what we sow.”

WorldNetDaily.com published an article featuring letters from readers outraged that a Muslim spoke alongside President Bush, Gov. Kaine, and others at Virginia Tech’s convocation after the events: “How are we to know this wasn't a signal to a sleeper cell?”

And AFA’s news website offered the warnings of “a full-time creation evangelist” and apparent kitten-hater, Grady McMurtry of Creation Worldview Ministries, who pinned the blame on evolution:

For years, he says, public schools and universities have taught the theory of evolution as fact, with no opposing viewpoints -- and the result, he contends, is a lack of respect for human life.

Therefore, he asserts, people should not be surprised when mass shootings occur, such as the one on the Blacksburg university campus on Monday. "And at Virginia Tech, what do we have?" he asks rhetorically. "We have a person who, unfortunately, thought that humans had no more value than cats and dogs -- and unfortunately, I think, probably felt the same way about themselves."

The creationist continues explaining his premise. "And so what happens? If we are nothing but thinking animals, [and] if you have excess people, then you can just put them in a bag, throw them in the river the way you would too many kittens or too many puppies."

When Florida televangelist D. James Kennedy asked his viewers to donate towards the production of a TV special on the “harmful effects” of evolution – “everything from the Nazi death camps and attempts to create a super-race to the modern push in many nations for euthanasia” – he warned that “The other side has the entire public school system of America as its platform,” whereas he came armed with only “the national network of television outlets that God has given to us.” While it’s true that most high school science classes stick to scientific curricula on evolution and stay clear of attempts to equate Charles Darwin with Adolph Hitler, the Religious Right’s campaign against the teaching of evolution has its share of recruits across the nation.

After less than two weeks on the job, part-time biology teacher Kris Helphinstine was fired by the Sisters, Oregon school board for drawing his course materials from a far-right creationist website. Echoing Kennedy, Helphinstine’s attempt to “get kids thinking” involved a PowerPoint presentation linking evolutionary science to Planned Parenthood and Nazi Germany. From The Oregonian:

Helphinstine said in retrospect slides of Nazi death camps weren't appropriate for his freshman and sophomore students.

And given a second chance, he said he wouldn't introduce arguments from Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a group building a Creation Museum in Cincinnati dedicated to teaching a Bible-centric view of natural history.

Answers in Genesis is a straightforward advocate of young-earth creationism; the group is building a Creation Museum in northern Kentucky apparently set to open this summer. The group provides quite a few classroom resources for teaching creationism.

This material was apparently the focus of the teacher’s entire tenure at the school:

One parent, John Rahm, said his daughter reported that only "one day of 10" was devoted to the study of evolution, with the rest devoted to devoted to "Intelligent Design" materials.

"The test as well was 90-plus percent ID material," Rahm said.

It could be a coincidence, but Helphinstine, 27, began his new job only a couple weeks after a right-wing conference convened near Portland, around two hours away. Among the presentations at the 2nd Annual Restore America Conference was “Session for teachers, parents and students” on “Upholding a Christian Worldview in Education.” The speaker was Stephen Williams of Prepare the Way Ministries, based in nearby Bend, which is dedicated to “empower[ing] Christians … to uphold a biblical worldview in our schools and society.” Williams is known for suing the school where he taught fifth grade over his use of “supplemental materials” meant to emphasize the idea of America as a Christian nation.