Florida: The Antievolution Conspiracy
The count of county school boards in Florida adopting antievolution resolutions is now claimed to be at 12. And PZ Myers at Pharyngula notes that the various school boards have been adopting the same resolution.
That, PZ explains, means that there are people working stealthily behind the scenes to bring this about across the state of Florida.
When it comes down to this all going to court, as it looks more like doing all the time, that kind of widespread action involving a large number of people, some of them obviously challenged in the intellectual gifts department, is not going to remain a secret. It will come out… the question is, when? Will it be like the bombshell in the Kitzmiller case where Bill Buckingham and Alan Bonsell had to face up to their inconsistent testimony over the matter of who donated the money to buy 60 copies of “Of Pandas and People”, when the plaintiffs were able to produce a copy of the check Buckingham handed over to Bonsell for that very purpose? Somebody is going to give up the identity of the folks organizing this whole thing, they’ll be subpoenaed to obtain their correspondence on the topic, and I’m predicting that the result will be significant for a court looking into the purpose prong of the Lemon test.
I’m thinking that the ease with which the various school boards got together to pass the same resolution leads to a couple of disturbing conclusions.
If this was organized by some third party, they were able to devote the manpower and time to contact and effectively recruit school boards across the state, implying some major expenditure of resources for this result.
On the other hand, the sloppiness of the resolution text itself doesn’t lend credence to the interference of an organization like the Discovery Institute. It is not quite on board with the current DI-approved label for the same old arguments. But if the text itself was the product of some idiosyncratic individual or small group, that implies that it is an individual or small group that was already in close communication with numerous school boards across the state. That sort of thing would be true for people associated with the Florida state department of education.
I think that it is short odds that the driving force behind the antievolution resolution campaign will turn out to have come from within the Florida department of education.
Callaway?
Wes, thanks for the cool head. To read PZ’s site, you’d think this was a done deal and that Turok, Son Of Stone, was going to replace our freshman biology text.
I had not considered the angle that the truth comes out in the wash, ala Dover. Of course it will. Cheers my friend.
At the moment, it’s all speculation. There will be time, I think, to attach a name, but we are not yet there.
I am confident that a name or names wil be forthcoming, either because of a legal process of discovery, or because the conspirators will wish to take ‘credit’ at some point.
I would think that on at least one of these boards there should exist someone who is appalled at these sorts of back-door shenanigans and is in the know. I think sooner or later that person will come forward and the situation will clarify.
Surely not every school board in every county in Florida is packed chock-a-bloc full with Creationists and their sympathisers.