Evolution battle shifts to Texas....Florida's battle is ongoing. [View All]

[madfloridian]

Even though Florida voted to require the teaching of evolution in science class, the battle is not over. It is still being watered down. The Florida House Speaker has even said he would consider a bill to protect teachers who criticize evolution.

The religious right here is really just getting started on their battle against the state. They don't like to take know for an answer.



So in Texas next week the battle begins. It will be just as intense as Florida, I hear.

From the Wired Science blog:

Evolution on Trial in Texas Board of Education Battle

Evolution and intelligent design are set for a showdown in Texas.

Just weeks after Florida education officials approved an evolution-heavy curriculum over the objections of religious conservatives, two pro-intelligent design candidates will vie for seats on the Texas Board of Education.

The board selects textbooks and decides what Texas children are taught. Later this year, the state will review its science curriculum; observers fear that creationist explanations of life's origins will be presented as scientifically valid alternatives to evolution.

There's ample reason to think intelligent design -- a theory that views so-called irreducible complexities to be proof of divine intervention, and was discredited legally and scientifically two years ago during the Kitzmiller v. Dover case -- could mount a comeback in Texas.

A Texas science education official was forced out last year because she sent an email about a lecture criticizing intelligent design. Are you feeling squirmy and uncomfortable yet? I am. This is just scary to me the hold the religious right has on these two states.

Texas Science Curriculum Director Canned for Mentioning Evolution

A Texas science education official forced to resign in October wasn't -- as her bosses inisted -- fairly punished for insubordination. Her real crime: daring to tell people about a lecture critical of intelligent design.

The Austin-American Statesman reported last week that science curriculum director Chris Comer's ouster followed her circulation of an email announcing an upcoming speech by Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and an expert witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover. That lawsuit was brought in 2005 by Dover, Pennsylvania parents upset with a school board's decision to teach intelligent design -- the belief that some phenomena can only be explained as divinely manufactured -- as a scientific theory comparable to evolution.

A federal judge sided with the parents and legally established intelligent design as religion, not science. But Texas education officials seem to disagree.

Hours after Comer used her work email account to forward the Forrest announcement to friends and a few online communities, Texas Education Agency adviser Lizzette Reynolds emailed Comer's bosses and called for her dismissal. A former legislative adviser to President Bush during his Texas governorship and later a Department of Education appointee, Reynolds wrote, "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor’s Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.”

Education Agency officials mentioned Reynolds' e-mail in their decision to fire Comer.

I thought the decision by the judge in Dover, PA decided this issue once and for all. He said it violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

Have you wondered why Florida and Texas are still two of the battlegrounds in this issue. I have. I think I know why. I believe that George and Jeb have their pawprints all over that situation in both states. They were, so to speak, probably test cases for the intense concentration on electing fundamentalist Christians to the school boards and state education departments.

Just a guess.