TWO TEACHERS WALK INTO A BAR (CODE)

Whew!

Yesterday I spent the morning at a 'bar code party' at Bullard wherein I and other teachers commiserated with each other about the highs and lows of our just-completed year of teaching while bar coding textbooks. The district has finally purchased a software program that allows each school site's libraries to handle textbook maintenance, which will save us a great deal of hassle throughout the year....if all the textbooks are properly bar-coded.


Well, that takes some doing, and so our librarian Liz Dodds gave us an inducement to spend part of Friday at her digs, by offering us lunch. Who can pass that up, especially since Liz is so cheerful and tireless in her efforts to support us and the students? So I and two other science types managed to make our way over there, and lend our thews to the cause. This goes against my basic nature, because as the late Steve Gerber once remarked, "when I lend my thews out, they tend to come back damaged."

And it was so. Two hours and nearly 300 Biology texts later (which is only about 40 percent of those books, by the way), I called it quits, in part because I had to get back to working on cleaning out my own classroom. I have until Monday evening, really...gulp! But also, by the time I quit, my arms and lower back were sore from repeatedly lifting, cradling and labeling the texts, then moving stacks aside. Like many texts, the 'Dragonfly' books that we were labeling fit E.O. Wilson's definition of a magnum opus: that, if dropped from third-floor window, could conceivably kill a person if struck in the head.

And, as I worked on them, it occurred to me that Miller and Levine's text was no doubt a bit dangerous in another sense, it that it has repeatedly been the subject of 'sticker shock' and other creationist-motivated shenanigans to undermine the teaching of evolution in the public schools:


















Now, a person might reasonably wonder how often this stuff comes up, or whether it's just southern states in which this silliness goes down, wherein local or state school boards attempt to either water down the definition of science or single out evolution for special attention with respect to its ontological status.

Well, it comes up routinely, throughout the United States. It came up in a very big way recently on the high school campus where I'm employed, over the unanimous objection of our science faculty, in a school district that is not dominated by conservative Christians, in a state that has excellent science standards where evolution is concerned, and in a school community that is committed to offering a high level college prep curriculum, with more students enrolled in AP courses than most other high schools. If it can happen at Bullard High School, it can happen anywhere.

That is doubtless why Ken Miller offers workshops on evolution education to address the misconceptions and (sadly) occasional falsehoods offered by advocates for various strains of creationism. The workshops come with resources, available here. But perhaps the best resource these days for giving a full-blown treatment of evolution as it should be taught in the public schools can be found here, at the University of California Museum of Paleontology's "Understanding Evolution" web site. This site must be effective, inasmuch as they have inspired litigation claiming that the UCMP site violates the Establishment Clause. Timothy Sandefur deconstructs those claims here.

Still, I wonder: suppose Sandefur and UCMP and Ken Miller and the National Center for Science Education are all judged to be wrong by some future court jam-packed with the best legal minds of a conservative bent available? Then, would my usage of Miller's text, not to mention my promotion of it on this blog and bar-coding for district use, wouldn't that make me somehow part of some grand attempt to violate the Establishment Clause? In fact, wouldn't that make science itself as practiced run afoul of the Constitution? I think that it would, if certain types had their way in the courts. Who knew that science could be so....subversive?

QUESTIONS FROM THE GALLERY

About three weeks ago, in response to my rather animated public denunciation of a presentation of Don Patton, some folk who attended Patton's presentations at Bullard High School expressed some interest in learning what the textbooks actually teach where evolution and natural selection are concerned. I promised to answer questions about the text and my curriculum, so you can expect to see many of these posts over the next week or so.

A correspondent, referencing a paper of mine*, writes:

“In the paper you state the general definition of evolution to be "change over time". This sounds to me like any form that changes/mutates (not sure if I'm using the right terms) to another similar form of equal complexity (micro-evolution), i.e., Darwin's finches, as reported by Peter and Rosemary Grant, qualifies under the general definition of evolution. Is there a different definition for the situation where one form, the coelocanth, mutates/changes into a land animal (macro-evolution)? Or is this still under the general definition of evolution?”

There are at least three potential pitfalls here, and none of them are religious in origin.

PITFALL #1: WHAT EVOLVES?

First of all, it is not an individual’s form that changes, as the brief ‘the coelocanth...changes into a land animal” would suggest. Rather, it is the frequency of alleles within a population that changes. Individuals don’t evolve; populations do, and it is truly amazing how many educated people routinely confuse changes in an individual’s form during its life (development) with changes in a population’s genetic makeup (evolution).

This is a prevalent misconception that works much mischief. For example, in the rather disappointingly-staged Ivan Reitman ‘comedy’ Evolution (it’s not all that funny, either), a whole batch of organisms changes right before our eyes, supposedly morphing in the span of a few hours from simple to complex life forms.



Similarly, as part of the Pokemon craze that peaked a few years back, a character such as ‘Pikachu’ is said to ‘evolve’ into ‘Raichu’—and pretty much instantly! The popular culture, in other words, routinely confuses evolution with metamorphosis, an amazing distortion when you think about it, but one that it is routinely accepted by both proponents and detractors of evolution alike. It’s difficult for me to overstate how much harm is done by this trope. It would be like a physics teacher having to explain, on a daily basis, that gravity is not magnetism, and it could only prosper if there was widespread ignorance about one or the other.


PITFALL #2: DOES EVOLUTION IMPLY COMPLEXITY?

“This sounds to me like any form that changes/mutates (not sure if I'm using the right terms) to another similar form of equal complexity (micro-evolution)...”

The notion of complexity is almost always misleading when considering individual cases of evolution. In the first place, what measure of complexity would you use? In the second place, regardless of which metric chosen, there is no reason to assume that evolution necessarily promotes any particular outcome where complexity is concerned.

True, populations may acquire adaptations rendering their members more fit in a given environment, but does that make the population as a whole more complex than the ancestral population from which it sprang? By no means. The ancestral population might’ve been exquisitely well-adapted to its past environment, much more so than the newly tinkered-with daughter population which is but recently responding to environmental change. In and of itself, evolution does not imply complexity.
In fact, in and of itself, evolution does not even imply speciation (the production of new species)! Evolution is best thought of as a tree with many nodes, rather than a 'ladder of progress' leading ever-upward.

The truth is that biologists don't use the terms ‘micro-evolution’ and ‘macro-evolution’ all that much, and when we do, we don’t use them in the way that the professional creationists do. The latter typically use ‘micro-evolution’ to describe the undeniable genetic changes that occur within populations, but ‘macro-evolution’ to refer to speciation events, which they seem eager to deny.

Now, this leads to an entire can of worms which is in fact religiously motivated, so I will save discussion of the alleged ‘micro/macro’ distinction for another time, but the key point is that, being undirected, evolution itself can not be said to promote complexity, nor necessarily to be in any way progressive.

PITFALL #3: IS THERE A ‘BAIT-AND-SWITCH’?

Is there a different definition for the situation where one form, the coelocanth, mutates/changes into a land animal (macro-evolution)? Or is this still under the general definition of evolution?”

A minor quibble: coelocanths and other crossoptygerian fish are not believed to be ancestral to land animals. But, yes, whether we are talking about changes that occur in a single generation or changes that accrue over many generations, we are still talking about a ‘change over time’ in a population of organisms. Unlike the people in Darwin’s day, we now know that what changes is the frequency of alleles in a population, and so the more precise genetic definition of evolution is still in play, as well.

But, at this point, an unbiased observer might not only wonder when one definition might be preferred over another, they would also wonder if there might be times when one definition is intended, and the other inferred? Or, even more sinisterly, if there might be times where evidence for one definition is misrepresented as evidence for the other—a ‘bait-and-switch’?

Many creationists are convinced that the latter is the case, because there is direct experimental evidence for the latter in contemporary populations, but none (for obvious reasons) from populations past. These creationists often adopt the pose of scientific purist, as if they have discovered some horrible methodological flaw in evolutionary biology, as if (gasp!) drawing inferences was inherently unscientific. They would have you believe that ‘microevolution’ (which they accept) is an example of proven‘operational science’ whereas ‘macroevolution’ is unproven ‘origins science.’

Again, we can discuss the particulars of that distinction at a later date. The point I just want to address is that some creationists imply that biologists are either playing a ‘shell game’ with the word ‘evolution’ in order to deceive the faithful, or that evolutionary biologists are inattentive to important distinctions where that word is concerned. In other words, we’re either lying or blind, which is not a terribly helpful stance.

For my part, I am sure that much of the problem here lies not with the science, but with how the science is presented in the popular culture. My curriculum tries to address that by being very intentional. The first definition is used when presenting the historical context in which Darwin first developed his theory, and when I give it I tell students they will eventually be responsible for a second definition which was developed in part to test the original theory. Later on, when I give the second definition, I remind students of the earlier definition and point out that what makes a theory scientific is that it can be modified or rejected in the light of new data, and that includes how words are defined.

That’s not ‘bait-and-switch.’ That’s the way science works. After all, Aristotle thought there were two forces in the universe: ‘gravity’ (the tendency of heavy objects to fall) and ‘levity’ (the tendency of light objects to rise). No contemporary physicist would be accused of ‘bait-and-switch’ just because they didn’t use Aristotle’s definition of gravity.

* I'm going to put this paper on the Net as a PDF file later this week.

UPDATE: The paper, "Show Me A Walking Fish and We'll Talk", is now available as a PDF file here. However, I should note that there is a misleading passage at the end that implies that crossoptygerian fish like coelocanths are ancestral to modern tetrapods. This is probably not the case! Rather, coelocanths and other creatures show transitional features such as choane which are believed to be derived from a common ancestor to other transitional forms, such as Tiktaalik.

GOOD GRIEF?

I haven't posted for several days. I put a lot of energy into attending creationist presentations last week, and by Friday I was mentally and emotionally spent, alternating between genuine sorrow and disgust. One particular anecdote at the expense of a great scientist's reputation provoked me in particular, and so I found myself in the unpopular position of angrily denouncing the speaker in the final Q and A.

I am still sufficiently angry about that bit of business that I'm not going to post about it yet. If there is any upside to such a thing, it is that some people stuck around for an hour after the presentation was over to ask me questions about my motives and my beliefs---holding my feet to the fire, as it were. More than one of these people admitted that they did not want to defend the smear tactics of the speaker, expressing puzzlement as to why such an argument should be used at all. If I had to speculate, I would imagine it was to impeach the possible motives of any and all passionate advocates for evolution---including yours truly.

But enough about other people's failings. People make mistakes, and they sometimes use rotten arguments, for rotten reasons, but at the end of the day everyone, including me, has to remember that we're dealing with fallible human beings and not indulge ourselves in hatred. If there is to be any positive outcome where science education is concerned, it will come when people like me do a better job of communicating with others. I didn't meet my own expectations where this event is concerned, and I am grateful for the correspondence I've had privately with some who attended, because it's given me an opportunity to learn from my mistakes. Those of you who've sent me emails know who you are. We may not agree on the particulars where evolution is concerned, but I count our mutual willingness to engage each other as people as a greater victory---and I give you folk the credit for it.

There will be more on this and related matters as I have time to sift through my notes, process the various video that was taken and respond to questions. Thanks to everyone on each side who took the time to not only attend, but to critically engage the material.

PATTON ON RADIOMETRIC DATING

A video of most of the first part of Don Patton's first lecture at Bullard High School can be found here. Don spends the bulk of the video cherry-picking divergent predictions from radiometric dating, most of them unsourced in the presentation. Some of the observations are not even pertinent to the reliability of the method, or even misrepresentative. At one point he complains that potassium-argon dating of Mt. St. Helens ash eleven years after the 1980 eruption yielded a range of values from about 0.5 to 3 million years, ignoring the fact that potassium-40's half-life is 1.3 billion years, which is to say about eight orders of magnitude greater than the time scale he wishes to measure. This is like taking the blunt end of a meter stick and using it to estimate the diameter of an atom.

BULLARD FACULTY SPEAK

This doesn't surprise me in the least. These are my colleagues, and I work with them every day, after all. Today, I asked another colleague to circulate a position statement for my fellow science teachers this morning during state testing (my colleague is a 'rover' who doesn't have a class of his own to cover).

Here is the statement:

FROM: Bullard Science Teachers
TO: The Community

On three successive evenings, beginning at 7:00 PM, (Wednesday through Friday), the Bullard Cafeteria will host a series of presentations by Don Patton, a Young Earth Creationist who will attempt to present ‘evidence’ for a young* Earth, and against the fossil record, the geological time scale, radioactive dating and other items which are an accepted part of the California State Science Standards.

We want to make sure that members of the Bullard community know the following:

• The Science Department was not consulted, nor do the undersigned approve of this event, which runs contrary to what we are supposed to teach and which could lead to the false impression that science teachers who teach the state standards are engaged in deception.

• The content of Patton’s presentation would violate the Establishment Clause if it was presented in a classroom to students during normal school hours, or if it was advertised to students on campus. For this reason alone, no faculty member within a classroom setting can endorse the presentation, or recommend that students attend.

• Without regard for that, however, the group in question has followed district policy in arranging to use our facilities, and they have every right under the law to do so. We encourage those who attend to exercise their right to free speech, and to respect the rights of others. Civility in public debate is a core value that complements the critical thinking skills needed to evaluate claims.

* = typically, 10,000 years or less

Every member of the science faculty signed. A copy of this signed statement will be made available to those who attend Don Patton's talks at Bullard. This says nothing one way or another about the merit of his claims, but it says volumes about the circumstances under which these presentations take place. Our department is united. I am grateful to have such colleagues.

****************UPDATE******************

I read a paraphrase of the above statement during the first Q and A of Don Patton's first talk at Bullard. To my astonishment, an obviously-aroused Patton vigorously objected to the idea that his presentations violated the Establishment Clause. I'm afraid I was so startled by this turn that I even raised my voice to object. I was concerned that Patton might even attempt to argue that I or my other colleagues at Bullard could do the same thing and what litigation-inviting impression that might leave in the minds of the local civil libertarian.

Anyway, Patton launched into a Power Point-aided defense of his interpretation of the law, which hung its hat heavily on minority opinions by Justices Scalia and Renquist in the 1987 Louisiana case (Edwards vs. Aguilard) that ruled that a state law proscribing 'equal time' for evolution and 'creation science' was a violation of the Establishment Clause. Apparently, in addition to being an alternative geologist, Patton is also an alternative legal theorist. I would describe Patton's take on the law to be earnest, but not particularly sound. In conversations after the talk, he averred he had given similar talks in public school classrooms without complaint and I responded ironically that he was braver man than I was.

Why? Because he advertised his lecture series as providing evidence for a Creator, and describes what he is presenting as 'creation science', but then (so far) plays coy about the Creator's identity within the actual presentation. He may think he's on the right side of the law, but the fact is, he's not. Playing 'bait-and-switch' at the school site doesn't eliminate the religious nature of his speech, as the discovery phase of the recent Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision shows. I wouldn't touch his arguments in an actual public school classroom with a fishing pole, even if I was a young-earther, because I'm pretty sure some savvy Bullard kid would tell their parents that teacher ain't teachin'....he's preachin' !

PATTON PENDING

Since it seems likely that I will post frequently on my interactions with young earth creationist Don Patton, I have decided to create a category 'Patton Pending' so that anyone who wants to can just quickly find all the posts related to Patton's visit, Patton's claims, Patton's choice of venue, etc.

And why 'pending', other than to be cutesy and halfway-memorable? Well, just that it often happens that when questions are asked, we are told that the answer is coming. And then we wait...and wait....and....

You get the idea.

TWEAKING THE POWER POINTS

As mentioned, I didn't get to hear the first half of Don Patton's first presentation. The second half had some familiar arguments, which I summarize. My comments are in italics.


Darwin was a plagiarist, including stealing from his grandfather Erasmus.

Even if true (what's the evidence?), hardly relevant to the question of whether Darwin's theory is widely-accepted, and why.

No speciation has ever been observed.

Simply false. Speciation events have been seen in the lab and in nature. Google 'Evolution Canyon' for a zillion PNAS articles on recent work.

Species can't even be defined. Don prefers the Biblical 'baramin', or kinds.

When asked, Don couldn't define 'kind' either. The observation that species can't be tied up neatly with a single 'one-size-fits-all' definition is actually evidence for not only evolution, but processes other than natural selection.


Evolutionists are stumped and have admitted that microevolution ('variation within a kind' or 'horizontal variation') can't, on its own, produce macroevolution.

As a student said in the Q-and-A time, Patton is apparently ignoring lines of evidence for processes that either supplement or compete with standard microevolution, processes which also lead to evolution. One of those lines of evidence (Hox genes) is even in the high school texts. Also, left unchallenged was the assumption that if one naturalistic account (microevolution alone) is unsatisfactory, then the only other explanation left standing would be an account of supernatural creation. This assumption is false.

Neither Darwin's finches or the peppered moth prove anything. The finches are still finches and the moths were glued to the trees for photographs.

There was a curious failure on Patton's part to note that, in fact, both the finch and moth populations in question changed genetically, and that the shift in frequency of versions of genes (alleles) is the very definition of evolution. There is a sad history here, in that both sides are often guilty of conflating different meanings of the word 'evolution', sometimes intentionally, some times not....which leads to the charge, from each side, that the other is practicing 'bait-and-switch', and some times that is true, and some times, not.

Anyway, there was more, but I feel exhausted. Here's the most amusing bit from the first night.

As with many creationists, there was 'quote mining', in which various quotes 20-30 years ago to that effect are adduced from famous evolutionary biologists, all with the idea of showing that evolution is supposedly a 'theory in crisis.' The quoted included Jerry Coyne, Stephen Jay Gould, Theodosius Dobzhansky. . . and . . . Francisco Ayala.

When Ayala's name came up, Patton used an image, of this particular gentleman:



When this happened, I did a double-take. I'm thinking, "Whaaaaat? Who is this guy? Wow, he's really, really old, etc." After a few moments of blinking, I realized that this image couldn't possibly be that of the Ayala I knew, based on my recollection of what Ayala looks like, and the fact that Ayala is still teaching. I apprised Patton of that fact during the Q and A, and he allowed as he always appreciated correction of mistakes. (I mentally noted that if Jerry Coyne had been present to hear himself quote-mined, he would've done a lot more than 'correct' him)

Anyway, this is probably just an amusing mistake that reveals a lack of familiarity with the actual community of evolutionary biologists. For the record, this venerable specimen is not the Francisco Ayala, the well-known evolutionary biologist (and former Catholic priest) who studied under Dobzhansky and now teaches at UC Irvine. Instead, it's a well-known Granadan novelist of the same name, who just last year turned 101. An accomplished fellow, and a survivor, but no biologist. No, the guy Patton meant to feature in his Power Point is this fella:



See the resemblance? I guess I have to be grateful. At least Patton didn't take a page from Ben Stein's playbook, and illustrate a slide labeled 'Darwin' with Uncle Adolf, or Papa Joe.

RADIO RADIO

I attended the first night of Don Patton's lecture series---eventually. More on that later.

Before I could catch the first part, however, I found myself on the receiving end of a determined remote tongue thrashing on the part of KMJ 580 talk radio host Inga Barks.

Like many of KMJ's regular hosts, and in fact like much of Fresno County, Inga leans to the right. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: you can't trust the other side of the aisle, and such, but really, does this platinum mother of three look completely unreasonable? I think not, but you could've been excused for thinking otherwise listening to her stump speech against a nameless 'Bullard science teacher'. She had apparently had Patton on her show and talked up the notion that folk at the university or at my high school were attempting to torpedo his appearance. And she began reading right from my blog, quoting part of the post entitled 'Mayday!', and she wasn't happy.

Inga was under the impression that people like me are trying to undermine what students have been taught by their parents. Well, it's understandable why people get this impression. The actual science does appear to contract literal interpretations of some parts of the Bible, as we all know, and some of these claims are near and dear to some folk's hearts. And, in practice, many students (and teachers) fail to think about what constitutes the proper domain of scientific claims. It is bad science to declare, for example, that science can definitively rule out the existence of the supernatural. And, perhaps most importantly, it's immoral to use the bully pulpit of the classroom to push your own metaphysical views on impressionable young people, and quite possibly illegal.

So, anyway, I got on Inga's show, and to her credit, she let me on the air even though I had identified myself as the mystery blogger who drew her ire. I thanked her for allowing me to appear on the program. I gave my name. I asked if I could give the name of my blog on the air. She OK'ed it, so I did. I pointed out that I never advocated denying Patton or Sun Garden Church of Christ use of the facilities, and in fact in my post 'What Should Be Done?' advocated otherwise. I disassociated myself from the tone of some of the comments on my site and made it clear that I myself am a Christian. When I mentioned that I was a Methodist, Bark's quick (joking!) rejoinder was "That's your problem right there!', alluding to the fact that both Bush and Clinton are Methodists. Hey, they are conservative talk radio, after all.

But, you know, when you can take a josh, the frost factor tends to go out the window, and with toned-down rhetoric the two of us had a reasonable exchange. I made the point that what teachers should teach is the state standards, repeated the (factual) claim that Patton's presentations are at odd with the standards, and I challenged her and her audience to check the standards out for themselves.

And, as I put it, if you find any religion in the state standards, you should make it your business to get on a committee and work toward reforming them, because religion shouldn't be in the science standards. But I added: if you don't find anything in there but good science that is the best fit to the available data, then perhaps you should recognize then the idea that 'evolution is a religion' isn't supportable. I was assertive, but pleasant, and I felt it was a productive conversation if for no other reason people know what the truth of the matter is. We science teachers may not think that Patton's appearance on a high school campus is appropriate, but it is lawful and some of us will be there to (lawfully) document the proceedings.

And speaking of documentation and what-not, this song just seems appropriate. "I want to bite the hand that feeds me!"

INTERESTING REASONING

An anonymous commenter has left a detailed justification for the curiosities in Patton's 'CV' on an earlier post. All of the justification apparently proceeds from the source, which is to say Mr. Patton himself.

This is circular reasoning. You can't prove the legitimacy of Mr. Patton's credentials by asking him. You have to provide independent corroboration. Presuming that you are a member of Sun Garden Church of Christ, consider: if you are bringing in a speaker with a controversial message and tying the credibility of your church or school to that speaker's credibility, you should make every effort to confirm their claims in an independently verifiable manner. You guys aren't doing that. You're relying on the guy selling the horse without looking in the horse's mouth.

Notice that Patton's 'explanation' is appealing prejudicially to the idea that there is a conspiracy to keep Christians out of the conversation, particularly YEC. With all due respect, I think this is a terrible argument. I know of no instance in which a graduate student in any science has been denied a Ph.D because of their YEC views, and I know of at least two Ph.D's in paleontontology who earned the same while openly identifying themselves as YEC's.


As an example, consier Dr. Kurt Wise, of whom even the assertive partisan Richard Dawkins has admitted to be 'an honest creationist.' Wise's advisor was Stephen Jay Gould, and Wise's professional credentials are impeccable. Answers in Genesis, the largest YEC group in the United States, has an entire page listing dozens of such scientists and they have a link to a biography of Dr. Wise. All told, that page lists at least twelve Ph.D's in geology, geoscience or paleontology. To the best of my knowledge, these were all legitimately-earned. Further, the original YEC group, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is headed by Dr. John Morris, who earned his Ph.D from Oklahoma State even though his father was Dr. Henry Morris, the founder of ICR and (as the author of The Genesis Flood) for many years the best-known YEC in the United States.

Surely, if there is some conspiracy preventing YEC from getting legitimate scientific credentials it is a highly-ineffective one! It is true that YEC's have problems getting ideas from the Bible into the geological literature, for the same reason that Hindus have problems getting Hindu cosmology into the astronomy literature. But this is due to how science is defined, not about who gets to practice science. The evidence doesn't support a claim that YEC's can't earn Ph.D's, and in fact they do.

Thus, I have no problem admitting that there are, in fact, legitimate, intelligent, highly-educated YEC scientists who hold legitimate degrees and who do legitimate science. So far I have seen no independent evidence that would corroborate the claim that Mr. Patton fits in that category, and you should be aware the well-established YEC organizations like AIG and ICR have examined some of the claims made by Patton and Baugh and found them wanting. AIG describes them as one of many bad arguments that creationists should not use , while ICR founder John Morris concludes that in "it would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution. "

Now, I didn't come to those conclusions, nor are these the conclusions of any other scientist who accept an ancient Earth, common descent and evolution. These are the considered opinions of the leadership of the leading young-earth creationist groups in North America. About this fact, there can be doubt, and you can't dismiss this evidence as the product of a worldwide conspiracy of evolutionists. Mr. Patton owes you an explanation of why he and Baugh continue to promote these claims.

Now, you appear predisposed by your worldview to give Mr. Patton the benefit of the doubt and accept what amounts to special pleading on a number of particulars. That's all well and good, but ask yourself this: which is the more extraordinary claim, that one individual might not have legitimate credentials or that there is a worldwide conspiracy of sorts to deny this individual a legitimately-earned credential? The fact is, the latter claim is the more extraordinary claim, and much harder to demonstrate than the former claim is to test. It's much easier to attempt to verify one man's claims about his education. Don't you think you should independently verify that claim first, rather than accept the more extraordinary counter-claim upfront?

So, since you appear to have direct access to Mr. Patton, perhaps you might consider asking him for some independent verification. Sooner or later, someone outside your church is going to ask, and if his answers don't jive with reality, your church is going to look foolish. Instead of winning souls to Christ, you will have brought shame on His church on Earth. Jesus said the truth will make you free, and I urge you to test the spirits, to see whether they are of God, or not. Good luck.

REGRETFULLY...

On the advice of a friend in the legal profession, I've turned on comment moderation. I've had some commenters who have left obscenities or who've attempted to imply that I'm doing things which are illegal in the classroom---which, as far as I'm concerned, is obscene in itself. I've decided the prudent thing to do is to at least screen comments before allowing them, because I have no desire to defend the bad behavior of others.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

There has been much discussion behind the scenes about 'what should be done' regarding the appearance of the YEC Don Patton at my public school site. I am most appreciative of the input and information and I'm sorting through it.

It is important, I think, for all of us to reflect on the above question but recognize that since this is a public space, it is not up to any individual or group to make the determination unilaterally. If appearances like this create (as I believe) potential conflicts between the school's mission and protected speech, the best solution is probably not to repress the speech, but to have policies in place that help the public distinguish between science and non-science, between what the schools actually teach and what others fervently believe as a personal matter.

After all, repression of speech plays into the rhetorical framework of the creationist who believes that they have been prejudicially 'Expelled' from the conversation by some sort of worldwide scientific 'conspiracy.' I personally want to avoid feeding that impression, and so the response that I am recommending is two-pronged:

1) More speech at the event itself from those who work at or who have children attending the school site, respectfully pointing out the incompatibility of YEC views with the state science standards and the potential for mischief posed by having events on public school campuses;

2) Working within the district to provide guidelines for facilities usage that provide more transparency for the public, more accountability on the part of the groups using the facilities, and less vulnerability for the district

Now, I am not attempting to tell other people who are similarly appalled by this event what kinds of questions they should ask! Really, others should feel free to 'fire away!' The First Amendment protects Don Patton's speech, and Sun Garden's speech, and it also protects your speech. If others want to argue with Patton about this or that, I think they should be free to do so. But as a district employee at my own school site, I'm going to focus rather narrowly on questions that are directly tied to the science standards.

IN WHICH MY PULSE IS REQUICKENED

OK, with respect to the prior post, it turns out that the dog-and-pony show which is Don Patton WILL be at Bullard, after all....only it will not be in the theatre, but in the cafeteria, for three successive evenings, during STAR testing. My administrators, who seem equally appalled and frustrated by the whole thing, told me something different this morning but this seems to be along the lines of wishful thinking. They confirmed that Patton will be here on the 23rd through the 25th.

As one of my senior colleagues at CSU Fresno said in an e-mail, 'the plot thickens'. That colleague also forwarded a rather assertive reply from Sun Garden Church of Christ preacher Randall Jerrell that I won't quote without his permission, but essentially it boils down to the old charge that science educators are close-minded elitists with no stomach for honest debate.

As Mel Blanc once drawled, 'he don't know me very well, do he?'

IN WHICH I BREATHE SLIGHTLY EASIER

OK, with regards to this matter, what I now know:

The church in question WILL be appearing at my campus (Bullard High School).

They will, however, NOT be in the theatre, which was reserved, but in the cafeteria.

My school site administrators are aware of the problem, and are concerned that advertising is going out identifying Bullard as a host site, when the church in question was informed two weeks ago that the Bullard site was not available.

Finally, I have received much information and helpful suggestions from many sources. Much of this help, no doubt, was funneled through a post at PZ Mwahaha's. As always, Professor Myers, thank you for making common cause with me against a common foe. At this point, I think I owe you a couple of pitchers of beer.

*************UPDATE******************

My relaxation seems to be unwarranted. I guess I just wanted it to be untrue, and when administrators said it wouldn't, they were similarly engaging in wishful thinking. It's not a site decision, it's a district decision, so Patton and Company WILL apparently be at Bullard, just not in the cafeteria. See the above post..!

MAYDAY!

Actually, some evenings in April...but seriously, if you know anything about a "Don Patton, Ph.D", then I need to know about it!

Patton is a YEC (Young Earth Creationist) who is apparently an old crony of the Paluxy River hoaxster Carl Baugh, a loathsome character with phony credentials from a diploma mill who has been bilking people with accounts of humans coexisting with dinosaurs, all based on his willful misinterpretations of the fossil record.

Ordinarily, when these types visit my area, I attend, sniff around and ask pointed questions designed to undermine their credibility. In other words, I don't get too upset, but I do stand on principle.

Unfortunately, this time the YEC dog-and-pony show (sponsored by this local church) is apparently going to take place on successive evenings at my high school campus's theatre, right in the middle of our state testing period. The time, in other words, where we are supposed to uphold the mandated State Standards. Here's a sampling of the many standards that this Patton guy will effectively be undermining:

Life Science, 4d) Students know that evidence from geologic layers and radioactive dating indicates Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old and that life on this planet has existed for more than 3 billion years.

Earth Science, 1b) Students know the evidence from Earth and moon rocks indicates that the solar system was formed from a nebular cloud of dust and gas approximately 4.6 billion years ago.

Earth Science, 3) Plate tectonics operating over geologic time has changed the patterns of land, sea, and mountains on Earth's surface

Earth Science, 8b) Students know how the composition of Earth's atmosphere has evolved over geologic time and know the effect of outgassing, the variations of carbon dioxide concentration, and the origin of atmospheric oxygen.

Biology, 8g) Students know how several independent molecular clocks, calibrated against each other and combined with evidence from the fossil record, can help to estimate how long ago various groups of organisms diverged evolutionarily from one another.

To put it bluntly, how in the hell am I supposed to do my job when this church-sponsored pseudoscientist parades onto my public high school campus in the evening, and (in the course of pushing his Young Earth views) basically calls our entire curriculum into question and paints teachers like me as purveyors of falsehoods?

Bottom line....I'm not going to take this lying down. Any of you with any in-depth knowledge of Patton's methods/arguments/agenda/sponsors, etc. please leave me a note in the comments, or else drop me a line privately at:

epigene13@gmail.com

Thanks in advance for supporting real science, and science education.