Rick Casey, The Houston Chronicle, December 5, 2007
A recent flap at the Texas Education Agency demonstrates why we need to teach history better so we can teach science better.
After nine years as the Texas Education Agency’s science director, Chris Comer resigned after being suspended for appearing to oppose the “intelligent design” theory of the origins of the universe.
TEA officials say other factors were involved in her firing, but e-mails obtained by the Austin American-Statesman make clear that Comer’s scientific orthodoxy and apparent political heresy were a major factor.
Her mortal sin was that in October she sent an e-mail to an Austin online community announcing an upcoming lecture by Barbara Forrest, a Southeast Louisiana University philosophy professor and co-author of Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse.
Forrest is hardly alone in her notion that “intelligent design,” which argues that gaps in evolution theory means that a Creator must be responsible for the universe, is itself the creation of biblical creationists.
Two years ago a federal judge in Pennsylvania, after listening to six weeks of expert testimony and legal arguments, ruled a school board could not require the teaching of “intelligent design,” which he called “creationism relabeled.”
Texas has an ‘Education Agency’ that is more than a Lone Star-drunk cowboy in a room with a Magic 8 Ball? You learn something every day.
Comment by RS Janes — December 8, 2007 @ 2:40 pm