Equal time for Quatzequatl

A number of skirmishes are erupting in Florida over that State's science standards, as elected local school board officials again parade their profound ignorance of biology. The State department of education is in the process of revising its approach to evolution, and the neanderthals are up in arms.

Incensed that the State standards might correctly present evolution as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology [which] is supported in multiple forms of scientific evidence,” a unanimous gaggle of Taylor County yokels has resolved to revise the foregoing "so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed."

The State standards, according to these yokels, must be presented "through a fair and balanced approach, an approach that does not unfairly exclude other theories as to the creation of the universe."

Evolution has nothing to do with either "how the universe was formed" or "the creation of the universe." It deals with phenomena occurring after the inception of life on Earth, however that came about. Biology is the study of life; that's what the word means.

Evolution, the yokels contend, must "not [be] presented as fact, but as one of several theories." Except it is a fact. What sort of people demand that facts be presented as something other than facts? Morans, that's who. Go USA, indeed.

Unfortunately, the local press isn't faring much better. Writing in the Miami Herald this morning, a scribe reports and opines upon the shenanigans at a Taylor County school board meeting as follows:

Boca Raton physician Tom Hall warned of the legal costs incurred by a quixotic, unconstitutional attempt by the Dover, Penn., School Board to teach faith-based Intelligent Design. But a Miami paramedic warned that taking God out of the classroom has led to immorality and violence. He related the beating death last week of a toddler by a 12-year-old in Lauderhill to the teaching of evolution. An unfathomable leap in logic on one side of the divide. An understandable leap of faith on the other.

Buh? Which is which? It's hardly unfathomable that Florida will become the latest venue for litigation should these yokels prevail. It's guaranteed. And it's not understandable that teaching biology caused a baby murder. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Or was attributing the baby murder to science class an unfathomable leap in logic? If so, then I agree, insofar as it relates to any form of logic whatsoever. But that leaves the prediction of the inevitable lawsuits a "leap of faith." Hardly. Furthermore, it's neither unfathomable nor a leap of faith to predict that the creationists will lose. They always do. And rightly so, albeit generally at great expense to taxpayers. However, I'm not complaining about attorneys' fees.

The writer continues:

Some who doubted Darwin suggested a populist solution. Teach all theories of creation. Let the kids decide. As if biology were as speculative as philosophy.

Interestingly, "speculative" was amended to "subjective," after I left this comment: "'As speculative as religion,' you mean. Logic, for example, is not speculative." But philosophy isn't necessarily subjective either. Logic, which undergirds both philosophy and science, has rules that are practically laws of physics.

But I don't disagree with the writer's insinuation that a "populist" approach to teaching science is an absurdity. Whether it's "let the kids decide" or "let the elected creationist yokels decide," the outcome is identical: institutionalized ignorance. In fact, children have more sense than creationist school board members.

On the other hand, maybe it's time that the ACLU, the NCSE, and others held off being concerned about science standards in one of these outback communities, and allow the latter to go ahead and teach all "theories" of creation in their biology classes. Now that would be entertaining as all hell.

Ann Coulter's Gormless

Yesterday I had the distinctly unpleasant misfortune of catching a few moments of one Ms. Ann Coulter yelping at a Fox News Network hair helmet (John Gibson [link NSFW!!!1] I think it was), babbling something about Mike Huckabee, and how he is the liberals' favorite Evangelical Christian or some such similarly supercilious assclownery.

It was alleged that Ann Coulter wrote a book, a full third of which dealt with questions of biological evolution. I recall hearing something about this. And I recall hearing that Ann Coulter had enlisted the likes of William Dembski and Michael Behe, the numeri uno e due crackpots of the so-called “intelligent design movement” to tutor her in the discipline.

So I was a bit surprised yesterday to hear Ann Coulter aver that nobody had even addressed the “arguments” she'd made with respect to biological evolution in said tome. “Godless,” I think it was called. Or maybe “Slander” (which always struck me as more of an FDA warning label than the actual title of the book). Anyway ...

Now I know that the Milwaukee Public Library maintains electronic records of my borrowings, and I'd sooner have the federales find the Unabomber Manifesto, the Qur'an, and The Anarchist's Cookbook therein or, for that matter, my mother discover a CD-R loaded with bukkake .mpegs after my death than anyone unearth evidence that I'd actually cracked the spine of an Ann Coulter product.

Sure enough, a stout yeoman by the name of James Downard had already done the heavy lifting, and the results of his considerable labors are published in three lengthy parts at TalkReason.org:

Secondary Addiction: Part 1
Secondary Addiction: Part 2
Secondary Addiction: Part 3

Nope, nobody had ever even addressed her “arguments.” If anyone has a set of cojones so risibly colossal as to get all up on national teevee and make that statement, it's Ann Coulter.

Downard's verdict:

Her sashay into matters scientific delightfully illustrates a common theme in sloppy thinking. Coulter is a secondary citation addict [and she is a lawyer, may gog help us all].

Like a scholarly lemming, she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true. It never once occurs to her that she might find it prudent to check on the reliability of those sources before accompanying them off the cliff, either by investigating critical takes on those sources, or by actually inspecting the original technical literature directly.

Downard does both, and the results are enlightening and frequently hilarious, as all the finest creationist smackdowns are.