Yesterday, I asked, surveying the jalapeno-spiked madness around Texas textbooks, “Why not just ban discussions of evolution in textbooks?”:
What if all theories about changes in life forms over time advanced in textbooks had to go by content-based names like genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer, symbiosis, and natural selection? The explanations would have to make way more sense, thus be open to evidence-based objections in given cases.
Maybe the people running around in dinosaur suits shouting about the dark ages would then have to get jobs or read a book or something, I don’t know. Maybe that’s the big problem.
Well, it turns out that one “just-the-facts, ma’am” public medium in Texas actually believed that Texas did ban such discussions! Here’s the screen capture.
It was hastily corrected. Of course it wasn’t true and couldn’t be true. And people wonder why all these media companies are losing money …
Anyway, one observer noted that Zack Kopplin, student crusader for Darwin in Louisiana (now at Rice U), was there:
I also talked to anti-creationist Zack Kopplin, who, like Dr. Lozanne, is a nice person. Zack is a history major from Rice University, which does seem appropriate considering the creation/evolution battle is primarily about interpreting history. Anyways, I tried to get his thoughts on teaching the fundamentals of epigenetics. I told him I was teaching it to my students, and that our company has higher standards for math and science than any state in the nation. Even so, he was not in favor of including epigenetics in the Texas textbooks. He was also unable to give me a reasonable answer and made up a reason to excuse himself.
Well, epigenetics is to Darwin’s darlings what relativity and quantum mechanics are to Newtonian physics, only worse, much worse. Newtonian physics was useful within its scale. Darwin’s magical mechanism of natural selection is more like phlogiston, which supposedly produced fire the way Darwinism supposedly produces mind from mud.
And if nothing really happens that way, what becomes of Darwin’s magical mechanism? It’s phogliston, the substance that need not exist!
Also, it tells you something that people like Zack are thought by many to be some kind of shining hope. In that case, the nineteenth century is just not dead enough yet.