People like this make me sad. It gives normal, intelligent Christians a bad name.

I’ve been seeing this slight spin-off of the ‘no true Scotsman’ argument quite a bit in forums writing about this topic. I think it’s important to note that the Texas SBOE board members who are amending the drafts of what historians presented them to the subsequent revisionist garbage were voted into office. The actions these members are currently taken was their primary platform plank along with their wanting to promote anti-science, scientifically illiterate positions as well. They didn’t hide what they were going to do, they instead featured it in their campaigns.

I think if “normal, intelligent Christians” exist (the intelligent aspect), they would be ostracizing these people and their ideas from their faith community. I not only see that happening, but I instead see this movement growing in power as they increase their dominance of the Republican party. Therefore I’d argue that what we are seeing out of these SBOE board members is in fact part of the “norm” of Texas Christianity and perhaps not so different from the norm found in other Bible Belt states.

Know Carl Zimmer has been writing about this too, and it was the subject of a flawed, though still useful, article written by Russell Shorto in The New York Times Magazine a few weeks back. Really wished that the Texas State Board of Education, as it is currently constituted, displayed substantially more sense.

Unfortunately, it seems as though I have to concur with Doug too. We need National Standards not only on science, but regrettably, apparently history too.

Are you calling for purity tests for the money that scientists and the like accept? Because there’s a lot worse than Templeton that regularly funds research and it’s called the normal course of events in science. How about armaments or petroleum geology or any number of other areas of science?

Or is it just that someone might read a bit of the book that is one of the main topics of intersection in the politics of science and society today that is forbidden?

Fundamentalist “christianty” is Mammonism with a veneer of bibliolatry covering reality. It’s got little to nothing to do with either the first or the second testaments.

This situation seems to be too much like Dover. It’s frightening that people can claim themselves as experts in a field without any sort of qualification.

Also, I would like to add that if you become friends with the National Center for Science Education on Facebook they update pretty frequently with interesting topics.

@5 ChrisD
Links fixed, thanks.