Michael Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England clergyman, agreed to step down from his position with the national academy of science after its officers decided that his comments had damaged its reputation.

His resignation comes after a campaign by senior Royal Society Fellows who were angered by Professor Reiss’s suggestion that science teachers should treat creationist beliefs “not as a misconception but as a world view”.

This from the article Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row.

Seems like an overreaction to me. Does Reiss's resignation under pressure really serve the interest of science? Does it further the interests of a free and open society?

A New York Times editorial entitled Evolution and Texas is a practical illustration of a teflon movement that avoids labels indicating existing political and financial motives. The ousting of Christine Comer sparked the editorial response. Comer's departure is not applauded but neither is the spin attached to the incident. From the linked article:

Is Texas about to become the next state to undermine the teaching of evolution? That is the scary implication of the abrupt ousting of Christine Comer, the state's top expert on science education. Her transgression: forwarding an e-mail message about a talk by a distinguished professor who debunks "intelligent design" and creationism as legitimate alternatives to evolution in the science curriculum.

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We Europeans know that many threats come from America. Our kids get fat because of fast food, and urban myths say that swallowing chewing gum may hurt your stomach "“ to give a few examples. Today some Europeans see a threat coming from the United States that is even more serious than fast food and chewing gum: creationism. Creationism "was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon," according to a 2007 report by the Council of Europe, but "today creationist theories are tending to find their way into Europe." Intelligent design is, according to the committee report, a "form of creationism." As such it could become a "threat to human rights." This sounds really terrifying.

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It would be a sin here at Telic Thoughts to pass up a story about bunnies, animal rights extremists, and teaching the controversy.

Students at the Community Building Children's Center arrived at their downtown preschool Monday morning to discover that their pet rabbit Sugar Bunny had been kidnapped over the weekend. Teachers found anti-circus flyers in his hutch.

"Somebody stoled him," said five-year-old Zion. "I'm sad."

At the bottom of the "anti-cicus flyers" were "PETA and the Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN)."  Thankfully, however, this teacher was able to use this incident to "teach the controversy":

"We talked about how some people have different ideas about animals. Some people don't think they should be in cages," said Peters.

Should it be a surprise to anyone that it took European bureaucrats to come up with an 11,700-word document to say that science is good, creationism is bad, and thus creationism should be kept out of the science classroom?

Not surprisingly, the bureaucrats think ID = creationism (yet complain creationism is contradictory because ID accepts evolution) and represents a threat to democracy:

the Parliamentary Assembly is worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist ideas within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights which are a key concern of the Council of Europe.

Borrowing a page from George Bush's war strategy, the champions for human rights declare a preemptive strike:

Investigation of the creationists' growing influence shows that the arguments between creationism and evolution go well beyond intellectual debate. If we are not careful, the values that are the very essence of the Council of Europe will be under direct threat from creationist fundamentalists. It is part of the role of the Council's parliamentarians to react before it is too late.

Thank goodness they acted before it was "too late," as that ever growing Creationist Threat(iness) is always on the constant march.

But this made me wonder if the Champions for Science and Civilization had written at least 10% the number of words warning about the threat from extreme animal rights groups. After all, it is in a European country where construction workers must hide their identity because they dare build a science lab. So I did some Googling and couldn't find where the Council of Europe has defended science against the animal rights extremists.

But hey, I did find this.

This threaty warning has echoed throughout the anti-ID movement; a deliberate linkage of intelligent design to a fear that America will produce fewer competent scientists and engineers as a belief in intelligent design takes hold. It might even get worse. Civilizations have been known to decline so keep those Visigoth IDists outside the gates.

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This blog entry at Evolution News and Views, Academic Freedom Expelled from Baylor University, updates us on Baylor's policies with regard to Robert Marks. Some adjustments have been made by both sides. The most revealing one, in my view, is shown by this quote from the linked blog:

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A while ago, Chris at Mixing Memory wrote about the tendencies of some anti-ID blogs:

"Post after post on every single piece of nonsense that an IDist puts on the internet, and as they become more obsessed, post after post about what IDists are eating for breakfast, signifies a deep lack of focus and direction, and it's less "pro-science" than it is masturbation."

I see signs that they may be starting to realize this. Myers offers a number of explanations for why UD has low traffic compared to his blog but he neglects one that we at Telic Thoughts have been mentioning for quite some time - ID just isn't that big of a threat.  Not a lot of people know what ID is, not a lot of people talk about ID, not a lot of people accept ID, and the threat ID poses to society is quite minimal.  Because of these things, ID blogs don't get a lot of traffic. 

The problem with some of these anti-ID blogs is that if they do start to realize and (perhaps) curtail their masturbatory tendencies, their own blog traffic may go limp, too.  Check the sidebar at Science Blogs and you will notice that the most active and most emailed posts are quite often about the ID movement (with the other hot topics being religion, politics, and anything else that isn't strictly science). 

Clayton Cramer discusses the likelihood that dominionist Christians are going to take over and institute a theocracy. (HT: Positive Liberty)

If all the "dominionist Christians" in the United States got together and organized a coup d'etat, there wouldn't be enough of them to take over Horseshoe Bend. I'm pretty sure that I've never met one. The only place that I have ever seen a "dominionist Christian" is being interviewed on some Bill Moyers documentary.

Is ID really the threat to science that some make it out to be or are there other factors at work? An article entitled UCF physicist says Hollywood movies hurt students' understanding of science presents another view of the issue.

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