Religious wolf in "voice of reason" sheep's clothing?

According to a New York Times story today, written by Laura Beil, Texas is shaping up to be the new battleground between those who acknowledge the scientific legitimacy and educational necessity of teaching evolution in schools and those who oppose it.

The issue in Texas, though, is a subtle one. No longer are people who are anti-evolution demanding that the words "creator," "creationism," or "intelligent design" be included in state science standards. Now, they want schools to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. It does not have the high drama of the classic movie, Inherit The Wind, but this tactic could turn out to be an effective tool of the anti-evolution movement.

What could be wrong with doing that, you may ask? Isn't that the right and fair thing to do? Like everything else, it depends on what things are defined as "weaknesses" and how that material is presented.

According to the article, "The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse. Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement. “Very often over the last 10 years, we’ve seen antievolution policies in sheep’s clothing,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that is against teaching creationism. The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution."

In Texas, the opponents of evolution are within one vote of capturing a majority on the State School Board, which has the power to mandate a change in how evolution is taught. Dr. McLeroy, the chair of the state board, who does not think that there is any scientific justification for evolution and believes that earth is only several thousand years old, says that the debate is between two systems of science - a creationist one and a naturalist one.

There are problems with that view. First, by definition, a creationist view cannot be science. Science is science because it can be tested and proven right or wrong. Believing in a God-created universe is something that can NOT be tested; it is a matter of faith. Despite the scientific sounding claims proposed by its adherents, creationism is NOT science. Second, the understanding of "a creationist" system of science as it is promoted in the United States by conservative Christians follows one particular understanding of one of the creation stories in the Book of Genesis only. This perspective dismisses all other religious accounts of creation as mythological and not worthy of consideration. It seems to me that this movement ought to hold other religious understandings in the same high regard for consistency sake.

This conflict between science and religion is a long-standing one. For centuries, the church, or some in it, has been quick to condemn scientific advances as heresy, at best. It would be wonderful to think that we had progressed beyond this, but we obviously have not.