Violent metaphors

This past week, Houston hosted several major players in both the anti- and pro- evolution camps. The Texas Home School coalition had their annual convention on Aug 1-3, and unfortunately chose to invite Ken Ham as a keynote speaker. Ham has a long history of anti-science, anti-evolution advocacy, including recently criticizing Bill Gates’ “Big History” curriculum for teaching evolution.

In response to Ham’s presence at the convention, several groups, including Houston Atheists, Humanists of Houston and Houston Oasis, organized an “Answers in Science” educational event at the Houston Museum of Natural History.

As I understand it, the idea was originally to provide Ham with an opportunity to debate Dr. PZ Myers, a biology professor from University of Minnesota who is a tireless advocate of science education (if you’re not familiar with his blog Pharyngula, go read it immediately!). Evolutionary biologists seldom waste time directly debating creationists, because it tends to be completely unproductive, so Ham should really have jumped at this chance. Mysteriously, he turned down the challenge and so the event was changed to a public lecture.

Amusingly, Houston creationist Dr. David Shormann was extremely irritated by the event and had a lot to say on the subject in his blog. This is one case where I *will* encourage you to read the comments section, because it provides a fascinating glimpse into the thought processes of creationists. Here’s Dr. Myers’ response to Dr. Shormann’s screed.

Risking Dr. Shormann’s displeasure, my boyfriend and I drove to Houston on Sunday. We went to several of the lectures, including an excellent discussion by Kathy Miller on how science deniers are pushing to influence the Texas state board’s decision on textbook adoption.  I realize that most people who read this probably don’t live in Texas, but if you follow the ongoing battle to get creationism/intelligent design concepts inserted into public school science curricula, you need to pay attention to what happens here. Because of its size, Texas has tremendous influence on textbook publishing for the entire country. It has long been a strategy of creationists to control the board that makes the decisions regarding which textbooks can be adopted by the school system. And because 2013 is the year Texas is slated to purchase new textbooks, it’s a new opportunity for anti-evolution advocates to influence the process. There are really good articles on the subject here and here if you want to learn more about the current state of Texas textbook adoption.

Since several of the subsequent talks were on the basics of geology and evolutionary theory (subjects we’re very familiar with), we snuck out for a bit to enjoy the museum. Many thanks to @allelbows and @ekc for their recommendation–the Houston Museum of Natural History is really wonderful, particularly the spectacular trilobite fossil collection!

Here’s some “triloporn” for you:

Sexy, right????

We made it back in time to hear PZ Myers speak on the “evolution of creationism.” Dr. Myers noted that early attempts to determine the age of the earth, such as Ussher’s chronology were actually not unreasonable approaches given the amount of information available to scholars at the time. As more geological and fossil data emerged, attempts to reconcile a Biblical understanding of the origins of life (i.e. the “gap theory”) still acknowledged the importance of scientific data, and the need to reconcile Biblical narratives with it. Modern-day young earth creationism, which rejects scientific evidence in favor of Biblical literalism, can be traced to the prophetic visions of Ellen White, who claimed that she witnessed the creation of the earth in a vision, which corresponded exactly to the Genesis story. White, her successor George McCready Price, and the Seventh-Day Adventists were marginalized in American society, but their ideas were eventually co-opted into Whitcomb and Morris’ book “The Genesis Flood”, which asserted the primacy of the Bible over geological and biological data, forming the foundation of modern creationist ideas.

Dr. Myers also discussed the false assertion of creationists that science can be divided into two approaches (“observational” and “historical”), which is something I’ll write about another time (this post is too long already!). He was a terrific speaker, and I highly recommend that you try to attend one of his talks if you can.

I’m extremely happy that Ken Ham’s visit became the catalyst for such a wonderful educational event. Pro-science Texans are tough and impressive, and I’m going to do my best to help contribute to their ongoing efforts. If you’d like more information, I strongly urge you to check out the Texas Freedom Network here.

——————————————————————————————–

Additional info on Ellen White and the history of young earth creationism can be found here: http://biologos.org/uploads/static-content/Giberson-scholarly-essay-1.pdf)