Message to New York Times Editorial Page: Hire a Fact-Checker
Over the weekend, the New York Times editorial page showed yet again how pro-Darwin ideology trumps the facts when it comes to the major media's coverage of the evolution debate. On Saturday, the Times' editorial page warned readers ominously:
The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow.
The Times apparently hasn't been paying attention to Texas during the past decade, because (as we pointed out last week) the "strengths and weaknesses" language the Times' editorialists so fear has been part of the Texas science standards since at least 1998! In short, the Texas State Board of Education isn't considering whether to add "strengths and weaknesses" language; it's the Darwinists who are trying to remove the language that has been in the Texas science standards for a decade.
As for whether "other states are likely to follow" Texas's example: the Times' editorial writers clearly haven't been paying attention to what has been happening in those other states over the last decade. Six states already call for the critical analysis of evolution in their science standards—Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Alabama, and Missouri. Contrary to the Chicken Littles at the Times, the sky hasn't fallen in any of them.
The Times' editorial writers also engage in collective wish-fulfillment by asserting that "the courts have consistently banned [intelligent design] from science classrooms." Really?
Last time I checked only one court (a federal district court in Pennsylvania) had banned intelligent design from science classrooms, and that highly controversial ruling was never appealed so it has no binding force anywhere else. This lone ruling is now transformed by the Times' into multiple rulings by unnamed courts everywhere.
Of course, the underlying theme of the Times' editorial is that there are no scientific weaknesses of Darwinian evolution, and that anyone who says otherwise must be promoting "creationism." As readers' of this blog know, that claim is just as much bunk as the other errors in the Times’ editorial.