thinkevolution.net

The National Association of State Boards of Education is a not-for-profit, Washington DC-based organization which supports the nation’s State Boards of Education by organizing study groups, publishing a quarterly journal and generally making available to policymakers information on education research and analysis. Kenneth Willard, a member of the Kansas School Board who worked to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas schools, is running unopposed in the July election for president-elect.

According to a New York Times article published today, Willard’s opponent backed out of the election for personal reasons and the period for nominations has closed. Proponents of science education in schools hope that someone like Sam Schloemer, a member of the Ohio State Board of Education who has offered to serve as president-elect, may win the seat nonetheless through write-ins.

Each state gets one vote in the upcoming election. Click here to see a list of the chairs of the State Boards of Education, and write to your representative!

In an article in Friday’s New York Times, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “clarifies” his position—which really must be rather uncomfortable—on evolution, which had been reported last week as straddling the precipitous gulf between creationism and science. “Governor Romney believes both science and faith can help inform us about the origins of life in this world,” his campaign announced after Romney did not raise his hand in answer to a May 3 debate question on whether the candidates did not believe in evolution.

But the Times article clears all this ambiguity up:

“I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe,” Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. “And I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”

He was asked: Is that intelligent design?

“I’m not exactly sure what is meant by intelligent design,” he said. “But I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”

Nice to see that Romney is terrified of ID; perhaps the wedge strategy has been sufficiently dulled. I don’t care much for politicians who won’t defend a clear position, though, and I don’t think creationists should either.

But most infuriating of all was the egregious error by Times journalist Michael Luo, who described evolution as comprised of “utterly random, naturalistic processes.” Fact: natural selection, the evolutionary process responsible for adaptation, is a deterministic process, the utter opposite of a random one. This type of error is unacceptable. Better science education in schools!

After the May 5 debate in which three Republican presidential candidates indicated that they do not believe in evolution, I was pointed to this post at Hullabaloo that excerpts quotations from several well-known intellectual conservatives about their stance on evolution. The quotes, some of which demonstrate a level of equivocation that I choose to find heartening, rather than frustrating, were originally published in a New Republic article by Ben Adler.

The New York Times published an article on May 5 discussing whether Darwinism bolsters or undermines the conservative political agenda. The article follows a show-of-hands moment in the May 3 GOP debate, in which the ten Republican candidates were asked if they did not believe in evolution. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado raised their hands.

The traditional (ultra-) conservative perspective has been that evolution is Godless, hence immoral, hence a satantic motivator towards ubiquitous abortions and an eventual global armageddon. However, this article picks up on a trend in conservative politics to promote evolution as an argument for conventionally conservatives ideas, like “traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.” Yikes. (Interesting: a similar argument for evolutionary conservatism by David Brooks and an observation by Michael Shermer about liberal-vs-conservative attitudes towards the biology of sexual orientation neatly fold into this trend.)

Of course, misguided interpretation of evolution—just like misguided interpretation of, say, anything—is dangerous, not to mention exhausting and frustrating. Naturally, it’s not only the pro-evolution politicos who are misinterpreting Darwin’s contribution to our world-view; that position is still securely defended by the anti-evolution crowd. For example: George Gilder, who is associated with the Discovery Institute, criticized the alliance of conservative ideals with evolutionary theory by pointing out that “both Nazism and communism were inspired by Darwinism. Why conservatives should toady to these storm troopers is beyond me.” Double yikes. Can’t we all just agree that “nature is morally neutral” and that it’s the commodification of empirical research for political agendas that’s unethical?