"Intelligent Design" course...

at Southern Evangelical Seminary requires that students troll the web and write posts defending intelligent design (ID) as the course requirements show:

AP410 This is the undegrad [sic] course. You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling [sic] 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).

AP510 This is the masters course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God -- for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling [sic] 3,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).

Emphasis in bold print is mine. The good news is that this is likely not an accredited institution of higher education.

Voting with your feet...

can be an effective strategy. The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is boycotting the city of New Orleans as a site for their annual conference in 2011. This response is due to the state having recently passed legislation allowing for so-called "intelligent design" to be taught in science classes. Here's the letter from the organization's president to Governor Jindal.

Bye bye, Louisiana. Rock on, nerdy biologists.

See my earlier related post.

Evolution disclaimer proposed...

in biology/geology textbooks by State Representative Gary Chism in Mississippi. Get this:

The State Board of Education shall require every textbook that includes the teaching of evolution in its contents to include the following language on the inside front cover of the textbook:

"The word 'theory' has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind."

Here's the link to the proposed bill (in pdf format.) And just last week Louisiana approves new pro-intelligent design rules for teachers.

Sheesh. And we wonder why science education in the US is in decline.