Francis Beckwith, Associate Professor of Church-State Studies at Baylor University, owner of a ".com" homepage (!), and a frequent poster boy for the Discovery [sic] Institute, is the "new face" of the Intelligent Design scam run by the Institute. Quite presentable, he almost sounds reasonable, though he turns out to be as big a liar as "John West, PhD", albiet a bit more subtle. (West's PhD, by the way, is in poli sci, from the Straussian Claremont Graduate School!)
Professor Beckwith writes to a Texas newspaper as follows:
"In his letter to the editor Thursday, Oak H. DeBerg made the completely audacious claim that those who testified at the July 9 State Board of Education hearings on behalf of textbook accuracy in the biological sciences were pushing 'a conservative religious view . . . at the expense of good science.'
"Because I am one of those who testified, I can assure you that DeBerg is making this up out of whole cloth.
"In my testimony I offered the uncontroversial suggestion that textbooks that address the topic of evolution offer to their readers, the state's students, accurate portrayals of current scientific data as well as thoughtful questions that have been raised against the Darwinian paradigm by credentialed scholars whose works have been published by university press monographs and in peer-reviewed periodicals.
"As I have pointed out in my latest monograph, ''Law, Darwinism & Public Education'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) and three recent law review articles, in Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, and San Diego Law Review, offering arguments critical of Darwinism, or even scientific alternatives to it, in a public school science classroom is not religious as long as the lesson plans rely exclusively on publicly accessible, or secular, reasons."
Let's run through the lies, bald-faced and otherwise, one by one:
There is nothing "audacious" about pointing out what is obvious to everyone who isn't a pathological liar, namely, that this entire debate (here in Texas) is being driven by a hardcore minority of right-wing Christian fundamentalists--this is indisputably true with respect to the State Board of Education, where the primary champions of the Intelligent Design scam are members of the Texas Taliban. But Professor Beckwith is entitled to his rhetorical stage-setting, so let's move on...
It is, indeed, an "uncontroversial suggestion" that science textbooks for school children offer "accurate portrayals of current scientific data," but that of course isn't the suggestion and it isn't what textbook publishers are doing in response to naked political pressure. The actual suggestion is, e.g., that publishers of science textbooks plant in the heads of schoolchildren--not scientists, not philosophers--the idea that there are scientific problems with Darwin's theory of evolution. This is what Holt, Rinehart has agreed to do, even going so far as to suggest to students that they search the Internet--"the bullshit and nonsense superhighway"--for critiques of evolution.
But Beckwith continues, and here the real lying starts: for it is very controversial to suggest that science textbooks--not sociology textbooks, not religion textbooks--should include "thoughtful questions that have been raised against the Darwinian paradigm by credentialed scholars whose works have been published by university press monographs and in peer-reviewed periodicals."
Something's missing here, isn't it? I'm a credentialed scholar, whose work has "been published by university press monographs and in peer-reviewed periodicals" (indeed, much better ones than Professors Beckwith and West, but let's not get picky). So I am going to demand that my thoughtful views be well-represented in the state's textbooks on biology and physics.
Hmmm?
There's a problem here that Professor Beckwith has politely (and no doubt intentionally) elided: none of my "thoughtful" views on scientific questions are in peer-reviewed science journals and none of my credentials are scientific credentials. And now it turns out I have something in common with the Intelligent Design scam artists: for Professors Beckwith and West have no scientific credentials and have no publications in peer-refereed science journals. Indeed, as is well-known, but is cleverly obscured by Professor Beckwith's posturing, there are no publications in peer-refereed science journals supporting Intelligent Design. None.
But this already concedes too much, for surely it is sheer madness to suggest that any view defended in a peer-refereed science publication should be represented in a textbook for schoolchildren!
Absolutely: assign that peer-refereed article in a class for graduate students. But a textbook for schoolchildren ought to reflect the best, current understanding of its subject-matter, as determined by the consensus among experts. And here's the embarrassing fact, that the lying liars keep dodging: the overwhelming consensus among credentialed experts and those who publish in journals refereed by their scientific peers is that Darwin's theory of evolution is true, and the criticisms are without merit. Full stop.
As to Professor Beckwith's publications (with a 5th-rate press, and second- and third-tier law reviews, all edited by students, not faculty by the way), it's hard to know what point he's trying to make: teaching scientific critiques of Darwinism (or any other theory) is of course permissible in a science classroom in the public schools (e.g., one could clearly teach the famous Gould/Lewontin critique of radical adaptationism). But none of these critiques call in to question Darwin's theory of evolution, as Professor Beckwith must surely know. The problem is that the critiques that Beckwith & company are really pushing have not survived scientific scrutiny. So Professor Beckwith's bland statement of the law, while unnuanced, is also irrelevant to the case at hand. The problem at hand is exactly the one Mr. DeBerg "audaciously" identified: the Texas Taliban are pushing their religious agenda, and smiling con men like Beckwith and West are helping them.
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