Harsanyi Endorses Tax-Funded Creationism

I was surprised to read that David Harsanyi, the (usually) free market writer for the Denver Post, endorsed the teaching of creationism in tax-funded schools. He writes:

Why are so many allegedly tolerant and science-loving Americans aghast at the notion that their beliefs will be scrutinized in schools? ...

The most sensible solution, of course, would be to permit parents a choice so that they can send their kids to a school that caters to any brand of nonsense they desire -- outside of three core subjects.

The left will never allow any genuine choice in our school systems. So it seems highly disagreeable and political to trap kids in public schools and, at the same time, decide where schools fall on controversial issues.

Hold on there a minute, partner. Parents are already "permitted" to send their children to private schools, including ones that teach creationism. The problem is that parents who send their children to private schools are also forced to continue to subsidize tax-funded schools that they don't use. But notice that Harsanyi does not condemn the forcible collection of wealth to fund political schools. Instead, he longs for "genuine choice in our school systems" -- by which I take it that he means "genuine choice" funded by forcible wealth transfers. If we want genuine choice, then people must be permitted to decide which schools -- if any -- they wish to fund.

Obviously on a free market politicians would properly have nothing to say about what schools teach. But tax-funded schools, as part of the government, must preserve the separation of church and state. Parents who send their children to tax-funded schools are welcome to teach their children creationism at home and at church. But don't use my tax dollars to fund religious nonsense.

Will Texas Endorse Creationism?

Fox reports:

A Texas legislator is waging a war of biblical proportions against the science and education communities in the Lone Star State as he fights for a bill that would allow a private school that teaches creationism to grant a Master of Science degree in the subject.

State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposed House Bill 2800 when he learned that The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a private institution that specializes in the education and research of biblical creationism, was not able to receive a certificate of authority from Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board to grant Master of Science degrees.

Berman's bill would allow private, non-profit educational institutions to be exempt from the board's authority.

The bill presents a dilemma. The Texas board has a responsibility to ensure the legitimacy of degrees. Yet the government plays no proper role in either encouraging or discouraging religion or any religious doctrine.

The problem here is that the state legislature has absolutely no businesses endorsing, sanctioning, or funding any educational program. What the legislature funds, it necessarily monitors and directs. By getting involved in education, the government has automatically set itself up us an arbiter of intellectual disputes, including religious ones.

It is wrong for the Texas legislature to endorse the pseudo-science of Creationism. But it is also wrong for the Texas legislature to inhibit it. The only real solution is for government to stay out of education altogether. Until then, such conflicts will inevitably and routinely arise.

Let schools certify their degrees by whatever (nonfraudulent) means they wish -- and let their students pay the price if they offer ridiculous degrees and fail to earn reputable certification.

Muslim Creationists

Reuters reports (via Little Green Footballs via Jim M.):

Unknown outside Muslim circles two years ago, Adnan Oktar -- the 52-year-old Turk behind the pseudonym Harun Yahya -- caught the attention of scientists and teachers in Europe and North America by mass-mailing them his 768-page “Atlas of Creation”. His lavishly illustrated book preaches a Muslim version of creationism, the view scientists usually hear from Christian fundamentalists who say God created all life on earth just as it is today and oppose the teaching of Darwin's evolution theory.

Obviously I'm not going to spend the time to acquire this book and evaluate its particular claims. All creationist claims proceed down a similar path. Here I point out merely that creationism depends on supernaturalism.

But this does point out a difficulty with using creationism to promote a particular sect: all religious sects believe in creationism. Creationism invokes some designer, but is this designer a god of the Greeks, other pagans, the Muslims, the Christians, or the deists? As a tool of propaganda, creationism works only with those predisposed to believe the particular faith of the creationist. I somehow doubt that American Christian creationists would appreciate the use of Oktar's book in a class that taught "intelligent design."

Ben Stein's Expelled

I sort of like actor Ben Stein, but I think he's taken on more than he can handle with a new documentary that he co-wrote called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Judging from the preview available at the film's web page, the documentary is a rather silly defense of "intelligent design," the fancy name for dressed-up creationism.

In a "gotcha" moment, Stein gets "new atheist" Richard Dawkins to admit that he doesn't know how life began. Well, so what? "I don't know how life began, therefore, God, QED." Scientists have been able to determine much of the evolutionary course of life on earth from the fossil record and other evidence. But there is simply no such evidence remaining of the first forms of life, so far as anyone knows. Even if scientists someday manage to create conditions in which life emerges from non-life, that won't prove conclusively that life on earth actually began in just that way. Besides, Christians would merely push God into the new gap: "But who set in motion those original conditions?"

A lack of knowledge does not justify an arbitrary assertion. At one point, people didn't know what caused lightening. "I don't know what causes lightening, therefore, God, QED." (Greg Perkins also uses the lightening example.) Before genetic science, people didn't know the mechanism by which evolution worked. At the dawn of humanity, people knew practically nothing. But the fact that knowledge is necessarily limited does not mean that knowledge is flawed or useless, nor does it justify arbitrary leaps beyond knowledge. And arbitrary claims about God also happen to involve logical absurdities and metaphysical impossibilities.

If Matt Barber's rah-rah review is correct, Dawkins himself entertains the arbitrary:

In one segment, he sits down with Stein for a heart-to-heart. After dancing around several pointed questions about how life began, Dawkins finds himself at a logical impasse with no surplus of sci-fi rhetoric. He's finally forced to concede that, indeed, an intelligent being may have created life on earth. However, that being could not have been “God,” but rather, it must have been some organic, alien life form. Of course, that alien life form has to have been a product of “Darwinian evolution.”

I have not yet heard the discussion in context. However, Dawkins seems to allow for arbitrary claims. That said, there is an appropriate use of the "alien" example, which is to point out that the advocates of "intelligent design" have a particularly supernatural designer in mind.

Barber also repeats the by-now standard ad hominem attack against atheists:

They don't want to upset the morally relative applecart, which is loosely held together by the notion that we're all just a bunch of monkeys with an instinctive, biological excuse for all our behavioral choices. To them, life's a whole lot easier under the theory of evolution. Without a sovereign Creator to answer to, we get to scoot along and party hearty, free from accountability.

The irony is that Barber's intellectually-dishonest attack occurs in his essay claiming that Christians are persecuted. Barber is simply fibbing when he claims that all atheists are relativists and/or determinists who, in effect, reject God because they want to party.

I call on responsible Christians to discourage the sort of bigoted nonsense that Barber displays here.

Various criticisms of Expelled have sprung up. One web page is devoted to criticizing the film; it also contains a list of publications about it. Colorado Confidential hosts a number of articles about the film. Chris Heard points out that various Christians accept evolution as fact. Ad Hoc blogs about the film.

The upshot is that Christians devoted to creationism will view the film with a sense of validation. The rest of us will soon forget about it.