Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

NABT trolling for controversy

William Dembski
October 27, 2005
Education, Evolution
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Dear Colleagues:

NABT has recently received several requests from the media (including CNN television and the Baltimore Sun newspaper) to interview teachers who have been pressured by parents, principals, school boards, etc. either to soften or eliminate the teaching of evolution or to include intelligent design into their curricula. If you have had this experience and would be willing to talk to the press, please reply with your contact information and a brief description of your situation.

Thank you very much for your help. NABT is in the process of building a “press corps” to meet the media, and we appreciate your early willingness to step up to represent the association and the profession.

Regards,

Wayne W. Carley, Ph.D., CAE
Executive Director
National Association of Biology Teachers
12030 Sunrise Valley Dr Suite 110
Reston VA 20191-3409
703.264.9696 (Phone) 703.264.7778 (Fax)
www.nabt.org

Comments
I have to wonder what does it mean to be "pressured" in this context? This sounds to me very much like the language of a witchhunt. I can easily imagine some biology teacher, eager for a little publicity, reporting feeling "pressured" about ID merely because some parent might have asked the teacher about it in a parent-teacher conference. Pressure could mean that the teacher or school was the target of an organized campaign by some group of parents to toss Darwin out the door OR it could mean the teacher getting some direct questions in the context of a private parent-teacher conference, where the parent has no intention of taking on the system, but merely wants to find out what the teacher thinks. God forbid that a parent might want to know where a teacher stands on some important issue that is likely to come up in a class that their child is taking. And what will the NABT do with this information? Will the parents who ask the questions be "outed" in some way and find their private remarks to a teacher made public? Will the student whose parents have the audacity to question the teacher be "black listed"? I smell a BIG, HAIRY, WET, SEWER RAT with this one!DonaldM
October 28, 2005
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btw. the very top of the index page for this biologist group has updates from dover which linkes to livescience.com which is FILLED with misinformation and outright lies. http://livescience.com/othernews/051025_dover_update.html the pages first link area reads:
"An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution This Trojan Horse for Creationism has become very popular. But who is being duped? And what does it all mean for morality?"
when you click that link, you get this load of psuedoscience garbage:
"Perhaps most troubling of all, Darwin's theory of evolution tells us that life existed for billions of years before us, that humans are not the products of special creation and that life has no inherent meaning or purpose. For Americans who view evolution as inconsistent with their intuitions or beliefs about life and how it began, Creationism has always been a seductive alternative. Creationism's latest embodiment is intelligent design (ID), a conjecture that certain features of the natural world are so intricate and so perfectly tuned for life that they could only have been designed by a Supreme Being."
this claim is a horrible case of nonsense that has no place in science: that humans are not the products of special creation and that life has no inherent meaning or purpose science could NEVER tackle such a statement, because its a philosophical question. how on earth could you observe or test such a claim?!?! this is just disgusting. again, i see one side spreading lies and baseless attacks, while the other side merely wants people to have the option to speak the theory without being sued.jboze3131
October 28, 2005
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sounds like this group is trying to turn science into politics. theyll claim that "true science" is being thrown out the door and that "true" scientists are victims of this insidious plot. cant wait! stories of teachers who have been PRESSURED into teaching ID? when did mainstream science become so close minded? forget THAT idea, i dont even want to HEAR about it. i thought science was the search for truth. guess some people think they have a monopoly on truth and proclaim anything else is unworthy of even discussion. heaven forbid kids learn about the issues and get different ideas- such an idea would just scar the poor souls, im sure. keep your minds closed kids- we know the truth and well preach it till were hoarse.jboze3131
October 28, 2005
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