It isn’t just the New York Times that ignores the facts when reporting about the debate over how to teach evolution. Not to be outdone by its competitor the Washington Post catches up today with an ill-informed opinion piece (Evolving Toward a Compromise) that yet again completely misreports what is going on in the upcoming review of Texas’ state science standards.

A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution in the state’s science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class.

First, there is no such proposal. The Texas state science standards currently state:

The student uses critical thinking and scientific problem solving to make informed decisions. The student is expected to:
(A) analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information;

As we’ve already pointed out, no one is considering a proposal to add “strengths and weaknesses” language. It’s already in there, and has been since the late 1980s. It’s the Darwinists who are trying to remove the language.
The authors don’t get that point, like they don’t get much else about evolutionary theory and how it is taught, and go to make a laughable presumption.

We presume that the Texas challenge will be found to violate the Constitution and that scientists will never accept the watering down of evolutionary concepts in the classroom.

Well, since the language has survived twenty plus years in the state’s science standards it doesn’t look like it is violating anything. Except the Darwinist’s dogmatic insistence that no one question Darwinian evolution, or mention any of its weaknesses.