The proud state of Virgina, home of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and numerous other Founders, which in 1786 passed The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, has the honor of leading the nation again — in Dark Ages legislative activity.
They’re the first state in the US to propose a creationism bill for 2014. In fact, since we began doing this in 2008, there has never been such a bill in Virginia. The only time we’ve ever reported any creationist nonsense in that state was back in 2010 — Creationism in Lynchburg Virginia’s City Council Race. (Brent Robertson, the openly creationist candidate, wasn’t elected.)
Alas for the Old Dominion, we saw this headline at the website of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE): Antiscience bill introduced in Virginia. They tell us:
House Bill 207, prefiled in the Virginia House of Delegates on December 27, 2013, and referred to the Committee on Education, is the first antiscience bill of 2014. The sponsor (or “chief patron”) of the bill is Richard P. “Dickie” Bell (R-District 20).
We’ll look at the bill in a moment, but first — who is Dickie Bell? Wikipedia has a brief entry for him. They say his district “includes parts of Augusta, Highland, and Rockingham counties, and the city of Staunton, where Bell resides.” He’s been a member of the Virginia House of Delegates since 2009, winning the first time when he was 63 years old. Here’s his biographical page at the legislature’s website. He’s a teacher, who did graduate work in Special Education. He’s also a deacon at Memorial Baptist Church, where he’s a Sunday school teacher.
Okay, let’s look at his bill. It would add a section to the Virginia Code to be titled “Instruction in science,” which would say as follows (with our bold font to emphasize some familiar phrases):
A. The Board and each local school board, division superintendent, and school board employee shall create an environment in public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about scientific controversies in science classes.
B. The Board and each local school board, division superintendent, and school board employee shall assist teachers to find effective ways to present scientific controversies in science classes.
C. Neither the Board nor any local school board, division superintendent, or school board employee shall prohibit any public elementary or secondary school teacher from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in science classes.
D. Nothing in this section shall be construed to promote or discriminate against any religious or nonreligious doctrine, promote or discriminate against a particular set of religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, or promote or discriminate against religion or nonreligion.
Does any of that look familiar? Sure it does. It’s based on the anti-science, anti-evolution, pro-creationism Academic Freedom Act promoted by the Discoveroids — who are described in the Cast of Characters section of our Intro page. We’ve already critiqued their model bill here: Curmudgeon’s Guide to “Academic Freedom” Laws. In that same post we also recommended countermeasures.
Nothing’s happened with Dickie Bell’s bill, because the legislature convened today, 08 January. They have a target adjournment date of 08 March. Here’s a link where you can track the status of the bill. It doesn’t seem to have any co-sponsors — at least not yet. But we shall see what develops there.
This thing hasn’t attracted much news coverage, but NCSE mentioned this at the website of television station WHSV in Richmond: Bill In the Works To Protect Teachers When Discussing Creation and Evolution. That article quotes Dickie Bell:
“The teacher needs to be more than a policeman to stop conversation, to stop dialogue because maybe it went into an area where somebody doesn’t share the belief system. It’s okay. We’re not asking everyone to believe the same thing, we’re asking for teachers to be protected when they allow discussions about different opinions to take place,” said Bell, “I can tell you, as a former teacher, I know the free exchange of ideas in a classroom setting can be very educational and informative when you allow kids to develop their own ideas and beliefs.”
Bell said the bill will likely get its first subcommittee hearing next week and he is optimistic it will pass.
And so, dear reader, the new year begins in earnest. The creationism lobby is a live and well, and they’ve found a useful idiot in Virginia.
Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
I agree that this is clearly religiously motivated, and that those are weasel phrases often used by pro-creationist bills. But looking at the actual text of the bill as quoted by the NCSE, and not the subtext, I struggle to find a problem with it. Developing critical thinking skills? That’s what kids should learn in school. Discuss scientific controversies? Well, evolution isn’t scientifically controversial, so no problem there.
I know what Dickie wants this bill to do, but I actually can’t see that it would do anything much.
“I know what Dickie wants this bill to do, but I actually can’t see that it would do anything much.”
Yeah, it wouldn’t do much except allow teachers to slip creationist pseudoscience in under the rubric of “scientific controversies”,
“strengths and weaknesses,” and “critical thinking.” This is weapons-grade stupidity in action.
Just look at what a similar bill, using similar creationist/science denial language, did in Louisiana. The boys and girls at the Disco Tute, the posse of Hambeaux’s at AiG, and the clowns at ICR rub their little hands and drool when they see language like that in Dickie’s bill.
Part D of this bill is just a lame attempt to sneak religion in under the radar.
The teacher needs to be more than a policeman to stop conversation…”
He’s absolutely right about that. And that needs to be emphasized at the beginning and end of any critical analysis of anything else he says or implies.
What must come between that beginning and end must be focused like a laser beam on the majority that is neither a committed science denier or anti-science activist, but is often confused and misled. And that is that the anti-evolution activists and their trained parrots are the ones who are hell-bent on stopping conversation in the class. Their little trick is this: replace part of what has earned the right to be taught, with long-refuted misrepresentations of evolution, Then effectively censor the refutations because almost no student or “trained parrot” teacher will think of them, and teachers in-on-the-scam will not mention that they exist. That scam is especially easy to conduct because class time is already severely limited, and if material is taught in the order of: (1) basic facts, (2) misinformation, and (3) refutations of the misinformation, guess what invariably gets omitted?
jonnyscaramanga, you must have missed section C.
These bills are exciting to the DI, but in reality, no teacher has time anymore to teach anything that won’t be on standard exams. These bills, even if passed, will probably not have much practical effect.
Possibly it’s because I’m Dutch, but I’m with Johnny and Ed here. After the Dover-Kitzmiller trial this
“scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories ”
can’t sneak in ID anymore, because that isn’t science.
On a related topic regarding Texas’ textbook broohaha, this is from the American’s United site regarding an interesting film:
https://www.au.org/blogs/in-the-field/orange-county-ca-au-to-host-screening-of-the-revisionaries
mnb0 says: “can’t sneak in ID anymore, because that isn’t science.”
Really? The law encourages discussion of “controversies.” A teacher can’t be punished for such discussions. Why doesn’t the law forthrightly say: “This doesn’t allow creationism or ID”? You know why — because it’s specifically designed to let that stuff into the classroom.
Dickie Bell opines, “I know the free exchange of ideas in a classroom setting can be very educational and informative when you allow kids to develop their own ideas and beliefs.”
All well and good in an English class, say, but not science. The whole idea of teaching science is to help the students understand the nature of reality as it truly is — not how they may erroneously believe it to be.
The only purpose of a bill such as this is to give cover to creationist teachers. Period.
If passed, Dickie Bell’s bill would be the foot in the door allowing school teachers to decide what is and what isn’t science. But it is scientists and the scientific enterprise as a whole that decides that, not school teachers. Ergo, this bill is a sly subterfuge that seeks nothing less than to undermine science and its methods itself, and exactly in the setting (i.e. school) where it is most vulnerable. On those grounds alone, it must be rejected.
On my way to work, I sometimes drive by Mt. Vernon. I’ll listen for any rolling-over-in-the-grave-type sounds coming from within.
Realistically, though, this bill has a snowball’s chance.
His bill sounds impressive, but it’s full of hot air. Just words on paper that will mostly be ignored in practice. Slippery weasel-words designed to help it slither under the science room door.
In a nutshell, all it seems to say is that they want religionists to have equal freedom to air their anti-science arguments in science class on equal footing with real scientific debate under the comically transparent pretense of “critical thinking”.
Creationists talking about critical thinking is a joke in the worst possible taste. To them critical thinking means raising bible arguments to challenge science at every turn – just plain being willfully contrary – not engaging in a rational attempt to genuinely understand anything – simply formulating lame excuses to propagate doubts or reject science.
Religion has no valid place in any scientific controversy or analysis of anything. It never has and never will contribute anything of tangible value to the body of science. Science is limited to the natural world and the supernatural has no relevance. Religion claims to span both domains with absolute authority.
Science doesn’t seek to answer the questions posed by religion, but religion has the audacity to pretend to answer scientific questions with scriptures based on gods that date back to at least the Bronze Age and “scientific” comprehension comparable to Neanderthals (apologies to Neanderthals).
“Realistically, though, this bill has a snowball’s chance.”
That depends on how pandering the Virginia legislature wants to be.
Jay: “In a nutshell, all it seems to say is that they want religionists to have equal freedom to air their anti-science arguments in science class on equal footing with real scientific debate under the comically transparent pretense of ‘critical thinking’.”
It may be comically transparent to all of us here, but it is not to the great majority, and that includes most of those nonscientists who have no problem with evolution. While you and most others talk about “religionists,” whatever that means, pseudoscience-peddling scam artists and their trained parrots have fooled most people into thinking that they are at least as “fair and open-minded” as we are.
Judge Jones, a GWB-appointed, Republican Christian, had the harshest words ever for those scam artists. And he had the foresight to criticize not just ID, but the more “religion-free” replacement scams that were in the works. But that’s because he took the time to actually hear “both sides” make their case. Of course that in itself is inappropriate for science class public or private, with or without any consideration of the Establishment Clause.
But as we all know, students don’t spend every waking hour in science class. In fact evolution instruction takes up barely 0.1% of their waking hours! They can and do learn any pseudoscientific nonsense on their own time. But that is not good enough for the scam artists. They are hell-bent on doing on censoring much of what little essential basic instruction students get (much less than what they need, but that’s another story), and also censor any refutations that might clear up students’ misconceptions caused by their unearned substitute material.
“All well and good in an English class, say, but not science. The whole idea of teaching science is to help the students understand the nature of reality as it truly is — not how they may erroneously believe it to be.”
This is assuming that our present understandings are absolutely correct and static–but of course they’re not. (Go read Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) This also erroneously assumes that in English literature, meaning and authorial intent are up for grabs–which they’re not.
I can see how this bill might serve as a subterfuge, but it chiefly echoes what is already permissible under most of the Virginia science SOLs–namely, that evidence should be used in justifying arguments, and that explanations ought to be gauged based on the strength of their evidence and the consistency of the reasoning and logic leading to those arguments. I feel like most teachers do this already. Frankly, the goal of this bill is (in letter, if not in spirit) is to teach and model effective dialogue and mutual understanding in areas of uncertainty–something we should all applaud.
What is more of an issue here is epistemology–how we know something and what sorts of knowledge bases we justify as valid. Empiricism has its own sort of epistemology that is not itself unassailable and upon which few people rely in daily life. For example, you cannot prove that you love someone or that love is real, neither that molesting your daughter is categorically and absolutely evil–but no one would deny these things. They’re operating in a different epistemological realm. If we allow for varying ways of knowing and deriving truth, then we also need to accept that controversies will arise in some people where others see no controversies at all.
BTW I am a public high school biology teacher.
“Creationists talking about critical thinking is a joke in the worst possible taste. To them critical thinking means raising bible arguments to challenge science at every turn – just plain being willfully contrary – not engaging in a rational attempt to genuinely understand anything – simply formulating lame excuses to propagate doubts or reject science.
“Religion has no valid place in any scientific controversy or analysis of anything. It never has and never will contribute anything of tangible value to the body of science. Science is limited to the natural world and the supernatural has no relevance. Religion claims to span both domains with absolute authority.”
Just to play devil’s advocate here (or perhaps God’s advocate, hehe), this statement is only true given one’s presuppositions. If, for example, you believe that the Bible (or Qur’an, Tanakh, whatever) actually was produced by divine revelation through men, then it is perfectly valid “critical thinking” to look at our natural world and our experiences through the lens of Holy Scripture and try to interpret our experiences that way.
It’s true that “science” per se is limited to the natural world. But it doesn’t follow that “the supernatural has no relevance.” If divine revelation exists and carries authority to call us to see the world some way, then it has perfect relevance. Also, IF the tangible, natural world exists because of some G/god, or this G/god acts in this world, then again the supernatural has relevance, and religion can span both domains. This is the flaw of arguments such as Gould’s Non-Overlapping Magisterial Authority (NOMA); it assumes functional deism for it to work without disproving theism.
I do, however, sympathize with the sentiments that a lot of religious people (read: conservative Christians) functionally reject many scientific claims without “a rational attempt to genuinely understand anything.” I am sick of anti-Evolution books (and comic books!) that attack awful, twisted caricatures of what Evolution claims (e.g., random mutations leading to order = “I just threw all these Legos in a bowl and out came a castle!) or that humans came from monkeys. Christians and other religious folks should do their best to fairly understand Evolution (global climate change, Big Bang, etc) before evaluating it. And maybe they should spend more time reading their Bibles too.
Drew Hall says:
Multiple epistemologies, polylogism, and alternative realities are not useful in science (that’s putting it gently), and such aberrations are not well-received around here.
All I have to say, is that as a Virginian, I am going to write my state delgate and state senator to encourage them to vote no on this bill.