The people of Texas will once again bring the issue of evolution in the textbooks to a debate and a vote, and it is expected to be close.

In the past, the code that Texas’ science curriculum went by required “students to critique all scientific theories, exploring ‘the strengths and weaknesses’ of each.” Since then, the creationist in Texas have changed their gameplan to be one of only examining the strengths and weaknesses in evolution as they see it. No longer are scientists being forced to defend against young-Earth theories and floods creating the Grand Canyon, but now they are bombarded with “strengths and weaknesses” that are being created as quickly as they can be dismissed.

The difference this year is that the panel that revises the curriculum decided to possibly drop the strengths and weaknesses phrase and instead use the phrase “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

While teaching intelligent design and creationism are federally banned in the classrooms, the creationists and intelligent design supporters have changed their gameplan to only focus on trying to discredit evolution, hoping that will lead to inevitably getting acceptance for their religious beliefs.

The vote is expected to be close with the addition of seven social conservatives to the board in recent years, as well as the chairman of the board being a young-Earth believer.

It really is a scary thing when a chairman of a state’s school board can believe that the Earth itself is just a few thousand years old and he can keep his position. The state of Texas should be ashamed of themselves that the most powerful voice in their education system, a dentist, contradicts 100 percent of the world’s geologists, biologists and generally people with any formal education in the sciences. Perhaps this is why Texas ranks numbers 49 and 46 in SAT reading and math, respectively.

This debate needs to end once and for all. Scientists need to speak louder, and if necessary, more forcefully to get their point across. The average American still thinks that modern theories of evolution are as simple as “fish turned into ape, ape turned into man” and all of it is unchanged since Darwin’s days.

Science needs to fight back. Educate people, even if they are already adults. Most people don’t know the difference between the word ‘theory’ in conversation as opposed to in science.

When it comes to things like evolution and global warming, politics needs to stay away. The whole theory of evolution is getting the spin treatment that a Supreme Court decision will get, and that’s not fair to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to finding the facts. A dentist in Texas shouldn’t have the power to tell the next generation that he doesn’t think their life’s work is accurate because it goes against his gut feeling and a 2,000 year old book.

Global warming should not be a mulit-billion dollar industry. It should be about science. If a theory as young as global warming has so much evidence pointing to two distinctly different conclusions, then no significant action should be forced. Politics needs to take a step back and let the scientists figure out the science. The only people that are qualified to make decisions about science education are scientists. No one else. A dentist who believes that the Earth is a recent geologic event should not be dictating the future of your child’s science education.

And if you think this is just those in Texas that have to worry about it, you’re wrong. Texas is the nation’s biggest buyer of textbooks, so what they say ends up in the majority of textbooks around the nation. The makers of the books don’t want to make multiple versions of their books, so your child will likely end up being forced to learn what the dentists of Texas deem is the truth about science.

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