ID Proposal and Responses in Kansas

A group of eight ID/creationists on the Kansas state science standards committee recently submitted a proposal for revisions to the first draft of the standards that are a mishmash of typical claims: science needs to not be limited to natural explanations, “origins science” is different because we can’t really observe the past, common descent and macroevolution are unproven and in doubt, and so on. (The proposal can be found here)

Fortunately, at the science standards meeting last Thursday all but one of the ID proposals were rejected by committee vote (and the one was a reasonable suggestion.) Reporters from all over the state (and from the London Times) were at the meeting: you can read newspaper reports here at the Salina paper, here in Topeka, here from the AP, and here this morning in the London Times.

However, one interesting part of the story has gone unpublicized: committee chairperson Steve Case received responses to the ID proposal from a number of quite respectable and reputable scientists, all of whom gave the committee permission to make their responses public.

Consequently, Kansas Citizens for Science is putting these papers on our website: visit KCFS: Standards 2005 to see reviews by

* Joe Heppert, University of Kansas * Kenneth Miller, Brown University * Robert Dennison, Texas biology teacher * E.O. Wiley, University of Kansas * Taner Edis, Truman State University * Gary Hurd, Ph.D. * Douglas L. Theobald, University of Colorado at Boulder * Scott Brand, University of Alabama at Birmingham * Patricia Princehouse, Case Western Reserve University

I don’t have time to summarize the results here, but this all makes pretty interesting reading - there are some pretty scathing and on-target remarks here. The IDnet’s proposal is quite a bit more thorough and extensive than any of the disclaimers or policies that have been in the news elsewhere recently, and so it provides more specific issues to respond to. Enjoy.