Thoughts in a Haystack

Don John Quixote Calvert rides again!

You may remember Calvert as a lawyer (Oh, Shame!) who was a prominent figure in Kansas "evolution wars" of the 2000s. He was a founder of the Intelligent Design Network that helped, briefly, to make Kansas a laughingstock by removing the word "evolution" from the state standards and by redefining "science" to include supernatural causes.

Now he seems to be behind a lawsuit to prevent Kansas from actually adopting the Common Core State Standards for science Next Generation Science Standards, recently approved by the Kansas State Board of Education (will miracles never cease?).

An anti-evolution group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block Kansas from using new, multistate science standards in its public schools, arguing the guidelines promote atheism and violate students' and parents' religious freedom.

The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007.

The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established. Most board members believed the guidelines will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in science classes to doing hands-on projects and experiments.

Not so, says Calvert!:

"The state's job is simply to say to students, 'How life arises continues to be a scientific mystery and there are competing ideas about it,'" said John Calvert, a Lake Quivira attorney involved in the lawsuit.

Huh? I'd be very surprised if the standards say the origin of life is scientifically settled.

Oh, wait a minute, that's a windmill, isn't it? What he really means is that the diversity of life, particularly how humans originated, is not scientifically settled.

Of course, it is! Common descent is as firmly established scientifically as that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than vice versa.

As Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education, said: "[t]hey're trying to say anything that's not promoting their religion is promoting some other religion."

The lawsuit argues that the new standards will cause Kansas public schools to promote a "non-theistic religious worldview" by allowing only "materialistic" or "atheistic" explanations to scientific questions, particularly about the origins of life and the universe. The suit further argues that state would be "indoctrinating" impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's protections for religious freedom.

Calvert said the new standards are particularly troubling because students would start learning evolutionary concepts in kindergarten.

"By the time you get into the third grade, you learn all the essential elements of Darwinian evolution," Calvert said. "By the time you're in middle school, you're a Darwinist."

No, by the time you're in middle school, you'll (hopefully) be educated in science.

As Judge Overton stated in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, favorably cited by Justice Powell and Justice O'Connor in their concurrence in Edwards v. Aguillard:

[I]t is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause (Citations omitted).

As Steven Case, director of the University of Kansas' science education center, said, previous court rulings suggest that this lawsuit "won't hold up."

"This is about as frivolous as lawsuits get," Case said.

But what fun would it be if John Don Calvert Quixote didn't try?
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Update: The NCSE has a post on this with more good legal references.