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Wise’s Darwinian Double-Speak

Editor’s Note: This was sent to us from a former Discovery policy analyst.

Martha Wise is a member of the Ohio Board of Education. She cannot stand anything that is not conclusively and absolutely pro-Darwinian in science education. She is also the chief censor of any scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinian theory. Martha helped to oust the Ohio Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan.

Her op-ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer is a wonderful celebration of Orwellian double-speak in the service of Darwin-only science indoctrination: She’s insists she is a creationist, but she opposes creationism. The science standards explicitly disclaim the mandating of ID, but the standards (she claims) mandate ID. In Dover everyone acknowledged they were teaching ID but in OH they are not–except that Martha says that in Ohio they somehow were by stealth, even though the NCSE originally proclaimed victory with the passage of the critical analysis benchmark. “Critical analysis” doesn’t mean “critical analysis.” People with religious motivations are barred from proposing the lesson plan, but Wise’s religious motivations for stopping the lesson plan are in bounds. And feminist philosophers of science count as “evolutionary biologists.”

(See https://evolutionnews.org/2006/02/all_the_news_that_fits_the_nyt.html.)

Also, the public records request by Americans United that she mentions took place a long time ago. If she and the other Darwinists thought there was a snowball’s chance in you-know-where, they would’ve filed a lawsuit way back when. She just banked on scaring the other Board members with an over-expansive extrapolation from Judge Jones’ awful opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Unfortunately she succeeded.

Martha claimed in the March ’04 Board meeting that she opposed the Ohio Critical Analysis of Evolution (purely optional) lesson plan because she said she realized it was religion and that God was giving her the strength to stop it. I’m not kidding. Her performance at that Board meeting was not only silly but one of the most transparently scripted things I had ever seen. When Florida law professor Steven Gey gave his testimony repeating Barbara Forrest talking points, Martha responded “I have ten questions for this witness.” (Most people testifying were asked no questions or one or two at most.) She thought Gey was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Judge that one for yourself: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1864.

The op-ed says she is running for the Ohio Senate. I hope she gets a solid primary challenger. I would like to send a check to her opponent. Attached to my check would be a note asking her opponent, upon election, to propose a Senate resolution calling upon Martha to change her last name to ANYTHING but “Wise.”