Louisiana Passes First Antievolution "Academic Freedom" Law

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of "academic freedom," single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven't made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed. But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

The text of the LSEA suggests that it's intended to foster critical thinking, calling on the state Board of Education to "assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories." Unfortunately, it's remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects "including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

Oddly, the last item on the list is not the subject of any scientific theory; the remainder are notable for being topics that are the focus of frequent political controversies rather than scientific ones.
The opposition

The bill has been opposed by every scientific society that has voiced a position on it, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AAAS CEO Alan Leshner warned that the bill would "unleash an assault against scientific integrity, leaving students confused about science and unprepared to excel in a modern workforce."

Jindal, who was a biology major during his time at Brown University, even received a veto plea from his former genetics professor. "Without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn't make sense," Professor Arthur Landy wrote. "I hope he [Jindal] doesn't do anything that would hold back the next generation of Louisiana's doctors."

Lining up to promote the bill were a coalition of religious organizations and Seattle's pro-Intelligent Design think tank, the Discovery Institute. According to the Louisiana Science Coalition, Discovery fellows helped write the bill and arranged for testimony in its favor in the legislature. The bill itself plays directly into Discovery's strategy, freeing local schools to "use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner."

Discovery, conveniently, has made just such a supplemental text available. As we noted in our earlier analysis, Discovery hopes to use these bills as a way to push its own textbook into the classroom. Having now read the text of the book, it is clear that our earlier analysis was correct; the book badly misrepresents the scientific community's understanding of evolution in order to suggest that the basics of the theory are questioned by biologists. In doing so, it ignores many of the specific questions about evolution that are actively debated by scientists.

Courts in Pennsylvania and Georgia have both ruled that laws which single out evolution serve no secular purpose and are evidence of unconstitutional religious motivations. Those precedents, however, do not apply to Louisiana, and it's possible that the LSEA will either be ruled constitutional or remain in force for years before a court rejects it. That will leave the use of supplemental scientific material to be determined by local school boards in the intervening years and, if boards in Florida are viewed as evidence, they are likely to be spectacularly incapable of judging scientific issues.

As such, most observers are expecting the passage of the LSEA by the state to unleash a series of Dover-style cases, as various local boards attempt to discover the edges of what's constitutionally allowable. The AAAS' Leshner suggested that the bill's passage would "provoke an expensive, divisive legal fight." In vetoing similar legislation in Oklahoma, Governor Brad Henry suggested it would end up "subjecting them [school officials] to an explosion of costly and protracted litigation that would have to be defended at taxpayers' expense." In essence, Jindal is inviting local school boards to partake in that explosion without committing the state to paying the inevitable costs.

In the meantime, the students of the state will be subjected to an "anything goes" approach to science—if it looks scientific to a school board, it can appear in the classroom.

[text from link]

Kinda reminds us of the dark-ages when threat of losing property and of what Lateran IV termed "extermination" was supposed to be sufficient to stifle academic freedom as well as freedom of religion.

Any time the thought police can take you to court because you tell students "A book exists in the library" (antics Darwinist fomented in Dover over the existence of a book in the library) -- you are a long way back down the road toward the dark ages.



Yes but if we allow critical thinking who will be left to fund and listen to the stories being told in darwinism??



What if we just limited it to the areas where massive decades long junk-science frauds have been confirmed over the past 120 years with the latest being in the past 8 years??

But -- I am with you -- it should not be limited to just the junk-science topics being "questioned".



As we learned from the National Academy of Sciences spokes person they have been conducting religious jihad in favor of Darwinism since the 1970's - and as we learned recently the academy is finally staffed at the 99% atheist level and so they are in a good positoin to fight anything that opposes Darwinism both politically and legally instead having to rely on science and data.



Does the modern "workforce" tell stories all day long about birds coming from reptiles?? Somebody needs to get outside more often!

As for students being confused --

Maybe the next post will help "clear their minds".

in Christ,

Bob

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

A 1981 lecture presented at New York City's American Museum of Natural History



Kinda helps us understand why Wernher Von Braun (scientist and former head of Nasa facility in Huntsville Ala) was so adamant in his litter to the California board of education that academic freedom not be shackled in blind service to Darwinism.

in Christ,

Bob