Earlier this week, my colleague Casey Luskin reported on the academic freedom bill being considered by the South Dakota legislature. Mr. Luskin had gone to South Dakota to testify in favor of the bill. Unfortunately, as readers of ENV will know, the bill did not pass out of committee.

Mr. Luskin, in his usual thorough and careful manner, reported that

Proponents of the bill who testified included Senator Jeff Monroe (the lead sponsor of the bill), Dr. William Harris (a PhD biochemist who holds a faculty position at the Sanford School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota), Terri Jorgenson (Education Coordinator for Concerned Women for America of South Dakota), and myself (as Research Coordinator at Discovery Institute).

Additionally, Mr. Luskin went into some detail about his own testimony that made clear that the bill was limited in scope and only applied to the teaching of subjects already in the approved curriculum. Since the curriculum includes neither creationism in any sense nor intelligent design, neither of those would have been taught under the proposed law.

In short, nothing in the actual bill or in the testimony could be construed as "anti-science" or attempting to sneak "creationism" in the back door, or anything of the sort. That simple fact, however, doesn’t seem to register in the minds of promoters of Darwinism and scientific materialism.

On the same day that Mr. Luskin gave his report on what happened in South Dakota, our friends at the National Censor for Saving Evolution National Center for Science Education (NCSE) had a brief mention of it in the news section of their website. Under the headline "Antiscience Bill in South Dakota Dies," they wrote:

Identifying "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, [and] human cloning" as scientifically controversial, SB 114 would, in effect, have allowed public school teachers to miseducate their students about science — and would have prevented state and local educational authorities from intervening.

Of course, none of this is true as anyone who read the actual bill or paid attention to the facts would know. But when it comes to defending Darwinian dogma, facts don’t matter.

It is instructive to note how the NCSE presents this story. Besides the misleading headline, they attached the category heading "Anti-Evolution" to the article, meaning that anyone searching under that topic would find this article. Never mind that nothing in the bill was "anti-evolution" or anti-anything for that matter. It was for having students learn to think critically and be able to evaluate scientific evidence for or against relevant theories and hypotheses.

It is also worth noting that in their report on the hearings in South Dakota, the NCSE wrote:

Testifying in support of the bill at the committee hearing were representatives of Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota Family Policy Council, and the Discovery Institute; testifying in opposition were representatives of the state department of education, the South Dakota Education Association, and the Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

In other words, the NCSE wants to give the impression that the only groups in favor of the bill were religious or "antiscience" (in their view!), while all the groups opposed were respected academic organizations. There’s no mention at all of the fact that significant testimony for the bill was given by a respected biochemist who is on faculty at the University of South Dakota, as noted by Mr. Luskin in his report.

So, add the NCSE to the list of misleading news sources on the academic freedom bill in South Dakota. Facts and truth, it seems, are easily tossed aside if they do not serve the agenda.

Image: South Dakota Capitol Building, by Samir Luther [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.