ReligionDispatches.org

On the Taylor Trail in Glen Rose, Texas: human footprints among dino tracks?

This fall, the Texas Board of Education will be deliberating the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution and whether the phrase belongs in the state's science curriculum. The results of the board’s decision will have wide repurcussions. The review of the standards is to establish guidelines for textbook publishers, who are watching the process closely.

The board’s chairman Don McLeroy is an avid Young Earth Creationist and believes the world is less than 10,000 years old. Appointed last summer by conservative Governor Rick Perry, McLeroy insists he is only interested in seeing that the best science education standards are adopted. In no way, he has promised, will he push for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. But wary educators believe the state board members may be eyeing an innocuous-sounding phrase buried in the curriculum’s general standards. Steve Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science said that the existing wording “strengths and weaknesses,” which were inserted into the standards during the late '80s to appease creationists, may be exploited in order to insert educational requirements that present evolution as a controversial subject.

Coincidentally, 160 miles north of the Austin conference room where the board will be debating how evolutionary theory should be taught in its public schools, creationists announced this summer that they have discovered proof of man and dinosaur co-existence.

Just outside of Glen Rose, Texas, in a place known as the Paluxy Flats, creationists say they have identified the three-toed footprint of an Acrocanthosaurus, who passed through millions of years ago, perhaps hunting, when this was a much different landscape of tidal flats and marsh.

That in itself is not unusual. Such footprints cover this region. But creationists claim that inside the dinosaur footprint is the unmistakable mark of a human footprint. Carl Baugh, who runs the Creation Evidence Museum, just outside of Glen Rose, said he has analyzed the prints and can vouch for their validity.

It bears noting that Baugh’s past claims have all been thoroughly debunked. Scientists place the age of the Earth at 4.55 billion years, and there is no credible scientific evidence backing up young earth creationism.

But one still has to wonder, with more than a little trepidition, if when McLeroy addresses the weaknesses of evolution, does he means the kind of “evidence” such as what was supposedly unearthed in Glen Rose?

And for those of us watching from Pennsylvania, it appears little has changed.

Four years ago this summer, an event that may sound familiar to those in Texas played out in a small rural community in south-central Pennsylvania. A member of the Dover Area School Board uttered a sentence at a public meeting that would touch off a firestorm of debate in his small community and across the nation.

During a discussion about why the board refused to buy a ninth grade biology textbook which included a section on evolutionary theory, Bill Buckingham set the stage for the first constitutional test of intelligent design—the concept that life’s complexity demands a guiding hand.

“Two thousand years ago, someone died on the cross. Won’t somebody stand up for him?” Buckingham told the head of his science department before a crowd of 100 people. Two local reporters, Joe Maldonado and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb, also in the audience that day, dutifully recorded his comment and the creationist remarks of Buckingham’s fellow board members in the next day’s newspapers.

That a little more than six months later, Buckingham and his fellow board members would deny under oath that he made the statement at the meeting, or that any of them even so much as uttered the word creationism, only sealed their fate for what would come to pass.

Their remarks, and their denial of them, led to a six-week trial in which intelligent design’s creationist roots were laid bare, the lead intelligent design expert admitted that for ID to qualify as science, he would have to redefine science to include astrology, the school board would be investigated for perjury and US Judge John E. Jones III, a George Bush appointee, would issue his landmark ruling in Dec. 2005 that said not only was intelligent design not science, but that “The writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity.”

It became a beautiful victory for those standing up for scientific principles and religious freedom.

Now, the latest attempt to force religion into science class is taking place in Texas. But the Lone Star is not alone. Similar debates are being waged in other states around the country. Stinging over Judge Jones’ decision, members of the Discovery Institute, intelligent design’s chief proponents, had been relatively quiet for two years. But this spring, they returned.

It began with the marketing campaign of the doomed documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which argues that academic freedom is under attack.

The movie stars Ben Stein, the former Nixon speechwriter most famous for his role as the ineffectual teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In Expelled, he says that educators who embrace intelligent design and question evolution are being persecuted for their beliefs.

At the same time, the Discovery and Expelled’s marketing team unveiled a Web site touting suggested legislation to “protect academic freedom” by encouraging the teaching of alternative theories of controversial subjects, such as evolution.

In the scientific community, evolutionary theory is a considered to be the unifying principle of biology. But despite the fact that there is no scientific controversy, lawmakers from several states pushed this sample legislation. In Florida, Missouri, South Carolina and Alabama, the bills failed.

But in June, following overwhelming support in the state House and Senate, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana became the first governor to sign an “academic freedom” bill into law. Observers on both sides of the issue are now waiting for the first school district in the state to adopt a curriculum based on this new language.

Of course, these academic freedom bills, along with the “teach the strengths and weaknesses” wording in Texas are merely a watered-down version of intelligent design—what Judge John E. Jones III, in his ruling anticipated and addressed when he decreed Discovery’s fall back “teach the controversy” strategy was a fraud.

“ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class,” he wrote. “This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the intelligent design movement is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.”

Tags: education, intelligent design

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