A New York Times op-ed answers that question.

Louisiana’s new anti-evolution law may be challenged in the courts.

The folks at The Corner are having some debate about Louisiana’s Science Education Act.

(Don’t miss tomorrow’s Gadfly, which promises additional opining on this topic.)

Photo by Flickr user jason_coleman.

An article on NRO defends Louisiana’s evolution muddle, a muddle that Governor Bobby Jindal has done much to bring about. The author writes:

Students need to know about the current scientific consensus on a given issue, but they also need to be able to evaluate critically the evidence on which that consensus rests. They need to learn about competing interpretations of the evidence offered by scientists, as well as anomalies that aren’t well explained by existing theories.

Right. Because, you know, 11-year-olds are so capable of critically evaluating advanced scientific minutiae. Because, you know, preteens (or even high-school students, for that matter) are such judicious thinkers, so savvy when separating scientific reasoning from philosophical musing. Because, you know, they should of course be doing all this in their biology classes.

Good news out of Louisiana. Bad news out of Louisiana.

Will it never end?

1. Bills proposed by Florida lawmakers to allow teachers to caveat their teaching of evolution have, for the time being, fizzled out.

2. Cool video on how the eye, that amazing bit of complexity that’s often proffered as proof of intelligent design, likely evolved:

3. And a very funny parody of Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film Expelled:

Ben Stein is really doing himself a disfavor by promoting his new documentary thusly. He’s in cahoots with the Discovery Institute, the not-so-hidden agenda of which is to lend scientific credibility to intelligent design and push it into schools. Woefully, the strategy seems to be working in Florida and Louisiana. That’s bad enough. But the Hitler angle is just too much, and someone needs to tell Stein and his buddies that they’re leaving the realm of the respectable.

I don’t like the way this debate is evolving.

The Discovery Institute’s David Klinghoffer defends the link—made by the new Ben Stein movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—between Nazis and Darwinism. I wish I could write on this with more authority, but the D.C. advanced screening of Expelled was canceled.

I just don’t get it, though. Klinghoffer’s piece points out how Hitler used evolution and Darwinism in his propaganda and his personal thought. But nowhere does Klinghoffer discuss why inclusion of such historical instances is at all appropriate in a film that purports to investigate how evolution is taught in modern-day American science classes.

I think it’s safe to say that Expelled is inaccurately juxtaposing Nazis with those who defend teaching evolution in public schools. The New York Times reviewer wrote that Expelled is “[o]ne of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time,” and I’m inclined to believe her.

The Los Angeles Times featured some debate about Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which seeks to expose how a cult of Darwinism has overtaken our public-school science classes. I like Ben Stein, but I’m pretty skeptical about this film, and the reputable reviews are generally negative. Moreover, it reportedly draws connections between today’s science classes and Nazi Germany, which is bizarre.

I wish I could write something more authoritative, but the people in charge of screening the film in D.C. had to cancel because of sound problems, which indicates either a) that after scanning the list of potential attendees, the promoters decided showing the film would be a bad idea, or b) incompetence. Neither inspires confidence in Expelled’s worth.

The logistical problems with the “Academic Freedom Act,” which is traipsing merrily through the Florida legislature, are legion. The pope’s U.S. visit highlights the logical difficulties that accompany the logistical ones, most prominent among them the continued inability of many to distinguish between the realms of science and religion.

The “intelligent design” proponents (who, by the way, love Florida’s Academic Freedom bill) receive the most press coverage for trying to slip religion and philosophy into science’s corridors. But those on the opposite side, people such as Richard Dawkins, have been just as vocal in their promotion of science as dispositive—i.e., the final, universal theory of all reality. Dawkins, an Oxford scientist, has written that, because of Darwin, religion “is now completely superseded by science.” His notion is true if he’s speaking about, for example, k-12 science standards or science curricula. He wasn’t, though.

Benedict XVI could bring some sanity and clarity to the evolution debate that has so roiled school districts across the United States. To do injustice to his thought by paring it down to its barest form, Benedict (like his predecessor) believes that scientific evidence for evolution is convincing, but that it does not contain the answers to life’s deeper questions. He believes that religion and science are different and separate, and that each can best inform the other when their distinctions are respected.

To bring it back to k-12, science teachers should teach the scientific consensus on evolution without worrying about academic freedom acts that encourage them to muddle the minds of their charges by inserting all types of vague “challenges” to evolutionary theory into their lessons. And science should acknowledge that its impressive discoveries are nonetheless limited, that they do not give us an overarching theory of existence or living.

That such a transparently logical approach is always, it seems, under attack leaves one nonplussed. Perhaps a few papal words on the matter this week would help.