[Editor’s Note: Yes, Morbo sort of retired a few weeks ago, but he suggested he might come back on occasion, when he has something to contribute. Thankfully, today is one of those days. Enjoy. -CB]
Guest Post by Morbo
As the Carpetbagger noted recently, a school district in rural California has agreed to drop a course promoting creationism and intelligent design to avoid a lawsuit.
I think officials at the El Tejon Unified School District in Lebec did the right thing, but I have to wonder how the course ever got as far as it did. Teacher Sharon Lemburg based the class on two dozen videos — 23 of which were produced by Christian fundamentalist “creation science” ministries. Lemburg also told the Mountain Enterprise, a local newspaper, “I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach.”
In an effort to save the course, Lemburg later dropped some of the videos and added some DVDs promoting “intelligent design.” That didn’t help.
Lemburg claimed her course would look at “both sides” of the alleged controversy over evolution but admitted she had no pro-evolution speakers lined up. Her original syllabus did propose one, however: a gentleman named “Francis Krich.” Lemburg later conceded this was a misspelling of Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist who, along with James Watson, discovered the double helix structure of DNA.
It is true that Crick, a native of the United Kingdom, lived and taught in Southern California. Given his stature in this field, I think it’s unlikely Crick would have taken time out to speak to 15 kids in a small-town California high school. But even if he were willing, there is still one problem: Crick died in July of 2004.
But maybe that’s not such a problem after all.
Consider this: Three days after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III struck down the teaching of “intelligent design” in Dover, Pa., Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemist who backs ID, appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity and Colmes” and presented some interesting new ideas.
Behe was challenged by co-host Alan Colmes to explain why ID is not a religious concept. Colmes asked him who or what the “designer” could be if not God.
Behe conceded that, as a Catholic, he believes the designer is God, but he insisted there are other candidates. When Colmes asked him to name these other options, Behe replied, “Well, you know, other things that would strike us as, you know, pretty exotic, you know — space aliens or time travelers or something strange.”
I think you can see where I’m going with this: Behe’s time traveling buddies go back in time, pick up Francis Crick and take him to the Lebec class for an afternoon session. Crick instructs the kids about what evolution really is. Once Crick is done, he’ll have to go back to Heaven/Hell/the moldy ground or wherever he ended up. I’m sure Crick still has much to teach us, but the fact is, letting him run around in the present too long threatens the time/space continuum. No one wants that.
I’m sure Behe would agree.