I’m posting the following report for Casey Luskin, who is currently in Texas at the expert hearing before the Texas State Board of Education.
AUSTIN, TX—The NCSE and their friends at the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) are here in Texas and they have one main argument. Or maybe two. The first argument basically says this: Don’t listen to any of these guys because they’re creationists. Creationists. Creationists. Creationists.
Creationists. Did I mention that they’re just creationists?
The logical fallacies and falsehoods in this short sound-byte argument are legion. They include: motive-mongering, false premise, the genetic fallacy, and perhaps most of all hypocrisy.
As Meyer testified, he fully accepts a billions of years old earth. He doesn’t fit Eugenie Scott’s “creationist” mold.
Moreover, as Meyer testified, this motive-mongering distracts from the evidence, and a really fascinating scientific debate. I would add that Eugenie’s obsession with her opponents’ alleged religious beliefs is hypocrisy: After all, she’s a signer of the Third Humanist Manifesto. But Steve Meyer had more integrity and better arguments to say than to stand up and say “Don’t listen to Eugenie Scott because she’s a Secular Humanist, Secular Humanist, Secular Humanist.” In fact, Meyer’s exact words in his written testimony for such persons was, “if some scientists make the theory of evolution into a religion or worldview, I have no problem with that. That is their right.”
Instead of motive-mongering, Dr. Meyer annihilated Eugenie’s and the TFN’s other main argument, which could, if it were true, actually hold rhetorical validity: It’s their facade that neo-Darwinian evolution has no scientific weaknesses. It’s a pretty easy argument to demolish. Dr. Meyer presented the Texas State Board of Education with four thick binders full of over 100 mainstream scientific articles that express scientific challenges to key aspects of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, especially challenging the arguments used to support it in biology textbooks.
You can always tell the strength of a person’s position based upon the kinds of arguments they make. If the NCSE and TFN’s obsession with the “creationists” and their predictable bluff that neo-Darwinism has no weaknesses has one purpose: to distract people from the scientific evidence. That’s what they want the board to do, so the board will adopt standards that will not inform students about scientific weaknesses in evolution.
Hopefully the Texas State Board of Education will adopt standards that choose truth over distractions, and academic freedom over fear.