Fair Play

Chuck Colson opined concerning fair play in the Kansas evolution controversy.

Americans believe in fair play. If a football or baseball team doesn’t show up, it forfeits the game. If the defense lawyer in a trial puts on no case, the judge is likely to declare a summary judgment to the plaintiff. You play by the rules, or you don’t play.

So why have so many evolutionists apparently decided that the rules don’t apply to them?

This pattern is surfacing once again in Kansas, where you may remember a huge controversy broke out a few years ago, and the evolutionists squashed any other teaching in Kansas.

 

This time the new state board of education is holding hearings to consider revisions that a group of scientists and educators has called for. These would allow Darwin’s theory of evolution to be taught in schools, but they would permit scientific challenges to Darwinism to be taught as well.

The principles espoused by Mr. Colson are good ones. Playing fair in the midst of controversy is a very good principle. Indeed, it is a Christian one. Now for the rest of the story. Keith Miller gave the following explanation for the boycott of the Kansas hearings.

A short explanation for the decision by the scientific community throughout Kansas to not participate in the hearings.

The hearings were set up completely outside of the established process for revising science standards.  The standards revision committee has been working for nearly a year to evaluate and revise the standards.  They have received expert advise and input from both the scientific and science education community throughout the process.  The standards were posted for public and professional input and public forums were held around the state to obtain further input.  Some of the best science teachers in the state were on the standards committee.  When the committee was established the policy was set that any changes to the standards had to be by consensus, or if not, by at least a two thirds majority vote.

The result was an excellent set of revised standards that were submitted to the Board.  At this point the normal procedure would be to send the recommended standards out for external review.  However, the Board majority set them aside and supported another set of revised standards written outside of the process by an 8 member minority of the committee (the "Minority Report").  Those 8 members were all appointed to the committee by the anti-evolution members of the Board.  The Minority Report was written through meetings that were not open meetings and were not conducted through the committee process or in accordance with open meetings law.  The first Minority Report was not submitted through the commissioner's process.  John Calvert founder of the ID Net, who took the lead in writing the minority report and pushing for the hearings, appointed himself and had no official standing.  The Board members who voted for the hearings were the same individuals that had appointed the 8 members to the committee.  The three subcommittee members who are acting as jury for the hearings all hold anti-evolutionary views and publicly stated their support for the minority report before the hearings were ever held.

Thus the reasons that the scientific community has not participated are: 1) that both writing of the Minority Report, and the hearings themselves have occurred in violation of the procedure established for the standards revision, 2) that the scientific and science education community already has had extensive input into the standards and that input has been ignored in favor of the Minority Report, and 3) the hearings were not to inform the Board's decision as the position of the Board members had been publicly stated before the hearings were held.  The scientific community refused to give credibility to this process.

The scientific community in Kansas is now unified and activated in away that I have never seen in the 15 years that I have been here.  Even more so than in 1999 when we went through this before.  There is a growing understanding that the problem we face is a long term one that will require a long term effort at public education about both the nature and limitations of science.  Virtually all the science organizations in the state now recognize how important it is to publicly and clearly reject the false science/faith conflict or warfare view.  The religious community is also becoming activated.  I think that his is one of the very positive outcomes of this mess.  The Kansas scientific community is sending out a very unified voice that evolutionary science is not based on an atheistic or materialistic worldview, and that it is not in any necessary conflict with religious faith.

So, to take Colson's courtroom analogy further what do you do when a side in a conflict cheats? If the other side resigns in protest are they being unfair and do they as a result forfeit any future appeal?