The Backwards, Anti-Evolution Argument of David Gibbs III
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Fri Jan 18, 2008 at 03:34:44 AM EST
David Gibbs III is general counsel for the Christian Law Association, and was the Florida attorney for the parents of Terri Schiavo - helping to create "Terri's Law" (since ruled unconstitutional) which allowed the Governor to intervene in that case, and urging the US Congress to famously get involved as well. So what's he up to now? After impressing Ed Brayton with his sharp legal mind (if "first class lightweight" was a compliment, anyway...) in a series of dubious cases alleging religious discrimination, Gibbs is now attempting to insert himself into anti-evolution efforts in Florida, where reasonable folks are threatening to replace outdated science standards with a new, responsible set of standards that would prominently include evolution. The St. Petersburg Times reports on Gibbs' argument, which he sent to the Board of Education in the form of a legal memo. Read on...
His firm's strategy? Raise a church-state challenge! (If you can't beat 'em...) David Gibbs says the state of Florida is establishing religion by asserting: "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

According to the SP Times, Gibbs says this raises evolution to the status of religion...

"Making this gigantic jump moves the evolutionary hypothesis from the realm of science into a philosophical faith-based belief system," Gibbs writes in the five-page memo, which he sent to the state Board of Education last month. "It has fallen into the same trap of which science has accused religion. It posits its entire interpretive rationale on something which is unobservable and untested."
Of course, evolution has been extensively tested. The entire field of modern genetics asks questions that might have de-railed evolutionary theory if it hadn't, instead, confirmed the fundamentals of evolution at every step. In fact, has there ever been a scientific theory with so many enemies determined to establish its falsehood as evolution? And yet, no compelling scientific evidence has ever come to light contradicting essential principles of evolution, maybe one of the most heavily scrutinized scientific theories ever. To hold it up for what it is does not make a religion out of it.

The way for states to avoid church-state problems in public schools is to be vigilant in keeping religious doctrine from becoming the voice of the government, through classroom instruction or otherwise. Teaching an established, accepted, time-tested scientific principle does not do that, or come anywhere close. As Florida ACLU attorney Becky Steele put it, "Imagine them arguing that the Establishment Clause would be violated by teaching a calculus class that only expresses the 'worldview' of mathematics without any sense of the divine."

The Florida Board of Education is expected to announce their decision on new science standards February 19.




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