David Barton: Expert on Black History?

A Huffington Post article reveals that tax records filed by David Barton’s Texas-based organization, WallBuilders Presentations, suggest that the religious right’s favorite propagandist is an expert in African-American history. From the article:

In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Barton’s nonprofit, Wallbuilder Presentations, Inc., justified its tax-exempt status by highlighting among its “accomplishments” a video project “of the moral heritage and political history of African Americans.

It’s a curious claim for the Tea Party favorite, who has twice given speeches in front of white supremacist groups — protesting later that he was ignorant of the groups’ professed racist ideology.

Advertisement

Lobby for Equality

Our friends and partners at Equality Texas have asked us to pass along an invitation to TFN members, and we are more than happy to do so. Equality Texas is hosting a lobby day coming up on Monday, March 7, to push for inclusive policies that protect all children, end discrimination and strengthen relationships.

Here are the details:

Equality Texas Lobby Day: All roads to equality lead to the Texas Capitol

Monday, March 7 (Breakfast and check-in begin at 7:30 a.m.)
Meet at First United Methodist Church Family Life Center (FUMC)
1300 Lavaca Street
Austin, TX. 78701

Registration for Equality Texas Lobby Day is free, but advanced registration is required. A full schedule of activities and registration information can be found here.

And don’t forget, TFN Lobby Day is also only a few weeks away (March 21).

 

(7)  Science concepts. The student knows evolutionary theory is a scientific explanation for the unity and diversity of life. The student is expected to:

(B)  analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record;

Background
This standard was a new addition to the Texas science TEKS in 2009. It originated at the January 22, 2009, state board meeting in an amendment proposed by Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, a self-identified young earth creationist. The original wording of McLeroy’s amendment – approved by the board in January – was as follows:

(B) analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record;

At the March 27, 2009, board meeting, Lawrence Allen, D-Houston, moved to strike this standard entirely. In a final appeal to preserve his proposal, McLeroy stated that the purpose of his standard was to argue against:

“…the idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor by the unguided natural processes.

Despite McLeroy’s protestations, Allen’s amendment to strike the standard prevailed by an 8-7 vote, and it was removed from the standards.

However, another of the board’s anti-evolution members, Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, immediately offered new “compromise” language (that was altered slightly through an amendment proposed by Bob Craig, R-Lubbock). Dunbar’s wording – as amended by Craig – was approved by a vote of 13-2. This compromise language was the final version adopted by the board.

Scientific and Pedagogical Problems with Standard

Language referencing “sudden appearance” appears commonly in – and is closely associated with – the intelligent design movement.¹ The inclusion of the expectation that students “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance … in the fossil record” parallels the major thesis of a book promoting intelligent design/creationism written by five members associated with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture that has been explicitly targeted at biology teachers ². Essentially the book, Exploring Evolution, promotes the hypothesis that the Cambrian Explosion, a geological period about 530 million years ago that revealed a great radiation of new animal body forms in the fossil record, can not be explained by current evolutionary science. The book extends this thesis by requiring that an intelligent, supernatural agent was required to create the new animal body forms. None of these hypotheses are supported by scientific evidence (see below).

The intelligent design/creationism thesis that the Cambrian Explosion occurred too “suddenly” to be explained by modern biological science completely ignores  a number of recent advances made in the science of evolutionary-development that describe how animal bodies are made in a genetically modular way, thereby enabling rapid evolution.³ These intelligent design arguments also ignore many pre-Cambrian organisms that show relatedness to Cambrian organisms (see for example ⁴),  In short, misleading claims about the Cambrian Explosion made in the intelligent design community have been specifically refuted on many detailed grounds and in many different places ^5-7.

This part of TEKS 7B should therefore be deemed as an attempt to open the Texas public school educational system to old, refuted, religiously-based, non-scientific intelligent design arguments. It is an attempt to undermine the strong evidence supporting modern evolutionary theory.

Likewise, the expectation that students analyze and evaluate scientific explanations of “stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record” is another use of language that can be traced to biased publications from anti-evolution, intelligent design/creationism proponents. The word “stasis” is used to describe the observation that fossil forms appear fully formed in the fossil record and remain relatively unchanged for long periods of time. In fact, these types of observations are fully compatible with evolutionary science. What other than fully formed organisms could be fossilized, for example? In addition, species that are well-adapted and exist in relatively stable environments would in many cases have the advantage of superior numbers over any organisms that would try to replace them. The predominant species would then be expected to dominate the fossil record over that period of time where its numbers predominated.

That fossils of transitional species (those species that are intermediate in characteristics between more widely separated organisms) are rare is a simple logical consequence of the time it takes the transition to occur versus the time of existence of the ancestor and descendent species. If the ancestor and then later the descendent species are well-adapted and are lucky enough to exist in a stable environments, their total time on Earth can be very long. The transitions on the other hand can occur relatively quickly (in geologic time). The chance of finding a fossil of one of the transitional intermediates can therefore be low compared to finding a fossil of the stable ancestor or stable descendent species. Even though transitional fossils are rare and difficult to find, many transitional fossils species have been discovered by paleontologists. The existence of transitional fossils, as well as the general concept which these fossils support — namely the sequential nature of descent from common ancestors — is so greatly supported by real scientific evidence that the vast majority of biological scientists and paleontologists accept these principles as fact.

There is a clear danger that the “stasis, and sequential nature” part of TEKS (7)(B) will be used to introduce discredited, scientifically falsified accounts from intelligent design/creationist publications that species appear in the fossil record without any transitional fossil evidence. Examples of these types of discredited arguments in intelligent design publications include the textbook supplement, Of Pandas and People, which was the book at the center of the Dover trial ⁸, and Icons of Evolution ⁹, which pursues the discredited idea that major phylogenic groups in biology arose without any connection through descent from a common ancestor. In the age of modern biology, the hypotheses that fossil transitions are not evident in the fossil record as presented in “Pandas” and “Icons” has been fully refuted by many legitimate fossil transition discoveries. These real discoveries fully support modern evolutionary theory.

Unfounded doubts about the cornerstone of evolutionary theory, namely descent from common ancestors, introduced into students’ learning expectations via the use of intelligent design/creationism language like “sudden appearance” and “stasis, and sequential nature” have absolutely no place in biology classrooms or biology textbooks in Texas or anywhere else.

1 – http://www.intelligentdesign.org/education.php accessed on February 18, 2011 at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture webpage, “The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Briefing Packet for Educators” – see, for example, page 15.

2- See Discovery Institute website, http://www.exploreevolution.com/who_is_this_for.php (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

3- Carroll, S.B. 2005 Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo-Devo, Norton and Co. New York

4- Derek E. G. Briggs and Richard A. Fortey, 2005 “Wonderful strife: systematics, stem groups, and the phylogenetic signal of the Cambrian radiation” Paleobiology 31:94-112

5- A detailed analysis of fallacious “sudden appearance” arguments from the National Center for Science Education, http://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/sudden-appearance (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

6- A paleontologist’s response to fallacious intelligent design arguments about the Cambrian Explosion, http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/a-paleobiologists-response-to-darwins-dilemma/ (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

7- A listing of problems with intelligent design/creationism’s claims about the Cambrian Explosion and other assertions, http://faculty.smu.edu/jwise/big_problems_with_intelligent_design.htm (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

8- For a critique of the anti-evolutionary theory, pro-intelligent design Of Pandas and People’s treatment of the fossil record, see the National Center for Science Education http://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/excursion-chapter-4-fossil-record (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

9- For a critique of creationist-intelligent design Icons of Evolution, see the National Center for Science Education, http://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/icons-evolution (accessed Feb. 18, 2011).

How Publishers Can Responsibly Address Standard

To meet this new standard, publishers need not and should not introduce creationist arguments, as they do not meet the requirement that students analyze and evaluate “scientific explanations.”

 

One way for publishers to satisfy this new standard is to include a discussion of evidence for and against the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This idea, first proposed by evolutionary biologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in 1972¹, is a scientific explanation for long periods of no evolution (stasis) followed by the sudden appearance of new organisms in the fossil record.

 

Punctuated equilibrium proposes that major evolutionary change occurs when new species arise and that, between these speciation events, many organisms undergo little change.  Evolutionary biologists have long debated whether evidence supports or refutes the theory of punctuated equilibrium.  The fossil record of some organisms does indeed suggest a pattern of stasis followed by bursts of rapid evolution² but this pattern is not seen in other organisms³.  A review of 58 different studies that examined the theory of punctuated equilibrium across a range of organisms and geological periods concluded that sometimes evolution is gradual and sometimes punctuated—neither pattern is characteristic all of evolution⁴.  There is considerable disagreement over what processes are responsible for stasis in evolution⁵.

 

¹ Eldridge, N. and S. J. Gould.  1972.  Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism.  In T. J. M. Schopf, ed.  Models in Paleobiology.  Freeman, Cooper, and Company,San Francisco.

² Jackson, J. B. C. and A. H. Cheetham. 1994. Phylogeny reconstruction and the tempo of speciation in cheilostome Bryozoa.  Paleobiology 20:407-423.

³ Chaline, J. and B. Laurin.  1986. Phyletic gradualism in a European Plio-Pleistocene Mimomys lineage (Arvicolidae, Rodentia).  Paleobiology 12:203-216.

⁴ Erwin, D. H. and R. L. Anstey. 1995.  Speciation in the fossil record.  In D. H. Erwin and R. L. Anstey, ed.  New Approaches to Speciation in the Fossil Record.  Columbia University Press, New York.

⁵Futuyma, D. J.  1987.  On the role of species in anagenesis.  American Naturalist 130:465-473.

Maybe He Wants to Be on the Texas SBOE

Remember the revisionist history that members of the Texas State Board of Education were pushing in the debate over new social studies curriculum standards? This was especially evident in efforts by some board members to whitewash American history when it came to race and civil rights issues. At one point board member Don McLeroy even suggested that women and minorities should thank men and white people for securing their civil and equal rights — as if the decades of struggle to win those rights were just a footnote in history.

Now Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is trying to revise the racist history of White Citizens Councils in the South during the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s Barbour talking about his hometown of Yazoo City, Miss.:

Barton and Civil Rights

In TFN’s 2006 report The Anatomy of Power: The Religious Right and Political Power, we took a hard look at the career of pseudo-scholar David Barton and his efforts to provide a historical justification for making religion the basis for government policy.  Our conclusion:

His main accomplishment (has been) to provide a bridge between the secular and political world  of the Republican Party and the religious world of evangelicals.

Fast forward almost five years to present day, and Barton is now hard at work trying to bridge another gap — this one between the Republican Party and African-American voters. Barton is shopping a revised version of American civil rights history wherein the GOP is the champion of racial equality and Democrats defenders of racism. And guess who’s buying — the man who is preparing to headline a conservative rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech this weekend: Glenn Beck.

But as is always the case with Barton, the story he tells is built on distorted history and half-truths. So says Julie Ingersoll, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida:

Like Barton’s larger revisionist effort to develop and perpetuate the narrative that America is a “Christian nation,” the “Republicans-are-really-the-party-of-racial-equality” narrative is not entirely fictive. Some historical points Barton makes are true; but he and his star pupil Beck manipulate those points along with false historical claims in order to promote their political agenda.

Ingersoll points out that the case for this new right-leaning civil rights narrative is less than persuasive, to say the least. Barton focuses solely on southern congressional Democrats who opposed civil rights until 1964, and apparently has forgotten that a fellow Texan and a Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson, led the successful fight for tough civil rights legislation and enforcement in 1964. Johnson himself predicted correctly that this would lead many Southern Democrats to move to the Republican Party, but Barton also overlooks the subsequent “Southern strategy” used successfully by the Nixon and Reagan campaigns and, to this day, by many Southern politicians to exploit the race issue for their own political gain.

Ingersoll’s entire article on the Beck-Barton partnership is really worth a full read. And here are a few other articles on the controversy swirling around Beck’s attempt to “reclaim the civil rights movement” at this weekend’s rally:

“Glenn Beck’s rally cannot block nation’s path” (Rep. John Lewis in USA Today)

“Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history” (CNN)

“Beck Rallies In Washington Undercut Church-State Separation” (Americans United for Separation of Church and State)

“Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Social Justice Christian” (Rev. Jim Wallis on The Huffington Post)

How Far to the Right Is the Tea Party?

As we have suggested in numerous posts about the Tea Party movement, hardcore Tea Partiers in Texas appear increasingly linked to the religious right. A new survey from the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality also shows that hardcore Tea Partiers in Washington state — identified in the survey as “true believers” who strongly approve of the Tea Party — are significantly more conservative than voters generally. And it’s not that they are more conservative just on issues such as opposing taxes and “big government.” The survey shows that Tea Partiers are just fine with intrusive government so long as government is doing what they want.

13 Years!?

Can you believe it’s been 13 years since Cecile Richards, Ann Richards‘ daughter, started the Texas Freedom Network?

Neither can we.

But it’s true!

For 13 years we’ve been fighting — with your invaluable help — to strengthen our public schools, ensure respect for all faiths and keep the government from infringing on religion and vice versa.

To celebrate, we invite you to our 13th Annual Celebration in Austin — a celebration of freedom and public service.

Get your tickets today. It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make this year.

Can’t wait to see you there!