In “Intelligent Design Making Headway into Texas Public Schools”, Eryn Sun reports at Christian Post (May. 13 2011): Reading the following, I am not sure that’s good news:
The Texas Education Agency has released all of the projected Web-based materials from publishers on their website, with one of the submissions already culling controversy for its purported slant towards creationism and intelligent design.Belonging to a previously unknown company based in New Mexico, International Databases LLC, the International Business Times reported that it was operated and run by one man, President Stephen O. Sample.
Little is known about the owner, besides that he is said to have a degree in evolutionary biology and has taught at the high school and junior college levels for 15 years, according to IBT.
His proposed submission consists of eight modules covering the current issues in biology and ecology, most of the material reported to be “well within the mainstream scientific consensus.”
But two of the modules which deal with the origin of life, is drawing criticism from groups like the Texas Freedom Network and the National Center for Science Education, for its “null hypothesis” which places intelligent design as the default position.
Surely, this course is unlikely to be adopted, except as a deliberate setup for a lawsuit to entrench Darwinism. (Don’t laugh; that’s precisely what the famous Scopes Trial was in 1925 in Tennessee. Scopes had agreed among friends in a soda fountain to be the one prosecuted, and it’s not clear he ever did teach evolution; he was filling in for the regular teacher prepping the kids for exams.)
Stephen Sample is entirely correct in thinking that origin of life studies today are a conceptual shambles. Theory is beyond far-fetched, and new discoveries generally refute each other.
That’s not anybody’s fault, to be sure but – as I have asked before, why inflict it on the school system?
It would be best to just say that “researchers differ as to how exactly life originated, but let’s look at the characteristics by which we recognize a life form.” (PowerPoint starts.)
Alternatively, we could present origin of life to a high-functioning senior class as one of the “historic deadlocks in science.” But why bother?