Good for the Gander: Scientific Community Right to Promote Candidate for State School Board
Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, 08/17/2006
Aug. 17--Ohioans who are concerned about the quality of their children's
science education have every right to find and promote their own candidates
for the State Board of Education.
After all, that's what creationists, who want the supernatural story of the
creation of the universe inserted into science classes, have been doing for
years.
Scientists and other evolution-backers have formed the political group Help
Ohio Public Education, or HOPE. The leaders are working on convincing former
Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Sawyer of Akron to run against incumbent board member
Deborah Owens Fink in November.
Fink was part of the faction on the state board that supported science
standards last year that looked an awful lot like material distributed by the
Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that aggressively promotes
intelligent design as a "scientific" alternative to the theory of evolution.
In January, Fink and her comrades were inexcusably rude to other board members
and those who came to protest injecting religious ideas into the standards
that guide science education in Ohio.
Sawyer, with his record and name recognition from serving 16 years as a
congressman, would give Fink a run for her money.
Intelligent design is the idea that life is too complex to have developed
without the guidance of some powerful omnipotent designer (read: God).
The latest semantic trick is to advocate for "critical analysis" of evolution
in science classes. It conveys to students the idea that evolution is flawed,
opening the door for competing "theories," one of which is intelligent design.
In February, the State Board of Education wisely voted to drop the critical-
analysis wording from the state science curriculum.
This action reflected the understanding that, by definition, science is a
discipline that limits itself to studying natural phenomena, because
scientific methods offer no way to prove or disprove the existence of
supernatural forces. Though some supporters of creationism and intelligent
design like to portray their opponents as enemies of religion, this is a broad
smear that probably applies only to a few. The vast majority of those who
fight to keep religious ideas out of science classes have no beef with
religion per se; they simply want to ensure that science sticks to what it can
explain by natural causes.
Saving the discussion of intelligent design and creationism for a class such
as social studies, comparative religion or the like is perfectly appropriate.
HOPE deserves the attention of Ohio voters. The group's members include some
of the brightest minds in Ohio, people who are in a position to know the kind
of scientific base students should have before they move onto college and out
into the world, where their understanding of science will play a crucial role
in keeping the nation economically competitive. For example, Lawrence Krauss,
chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, leads the group.
Krauss rightly believes that scientists and the faithful need not be at odds.
In his July 8 column for the British magazine New Scientist, he wrote, "To
counter these threats, we need to argue compellingly that people of faith are
ill-served by ignorance, rather than argue that faith and ignorance are
synonymous."
People with deeply held religious beliefs are welcome on the board. But they
should be people who understand the difference between science and faith and,
therefore, will not try to load the science curriculum with unscientific ideas.