Hawks on Bush on Evolution

President Bush has been pilloried in the press recently for suggesting that the controversy over Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools with all sides being fairly presented. John Hawks [who is an evolutionary scientist] looks at what Bush actually said, rather than what the press reported he said, and then produces the sanest and most reasonable commentary I have yet seen on the issue. In the process he takes on the excesses of the blogosphere, the woeful state of science reportage, the arrogance of the scientific establishment, and much more.

Samples:

Make no mistake; I study evolution every day. I see no value in any other way of understanding human origins. But consider the post at Pharyngula, which was endorsed in Newsweek this week as a valuable source for its critique of intelligent design:

Oh, yeah, and we also have to work to make sure that every goddamned Republican in our capitols is out on their ear in the next couple of election cycles. The root of our problem is that the know-nothings and lunatics are in power, and are trying to wreck anything that does not pander to their ideology -- and science opposes the Republican agenda.

This is what I said in May:

If scientists sincerely want to affect the science standards in public schools across this nation in the next several years, they are going to have to find more persuasive ways to communicate their values. The more scientists sound off like Democratic flaks, the more scientific positions will be confused with partisan ones.

I want to improve the teaching of evolution. Taking an adversarial position toward religious viewpoints or political parties is not the way to make education better.

....

I'm not here to defend Bush. He may have an anti-science agenda, for all I know. But his remarks aren't evidence of it. To the contrary, most Americans find them eminently reasonable.

Bush is hardly pandering to the right wing with this position. He has staked out a position that a large majority of Americans share -- from both parties. If voters decided the presidency on this single issue, it would be madness for any candidate to side with the evolutionists.

....

People can judge science by its record, at least as far as they know it. Science put people on the moon. It thinks that some dinosaurs had feathers. It has found the full sequence of the human genome, but hasn't yet found much to do with it. Last week, it told us that echinacea would prevent cold; this week it tells us all those echinacea supplements are worthless. It tells us that saturated fat will kill us, but our uncles ate four eggs and bacon for breakfast every day and lived to be 93. And so on. Scientists say a lot of things they can't prove, and a lot of those things turn out to be wrong.

People who think intelligent design should be heard have a healthy dose of doubt in their minds. They doubt that science can provide all the answers. They doubt that their deep faith is misguided. And they increasingly doubt that scientists are telling the whole truth.

The task of science education should be to explain scientific failures as well as successes, by explaining how science leads to changes in ideas. Right now, science education does a really bad job of this.

So people turn to common sense. Common sense expects fairness.

There is much, much more -- all of it well informed and quite sensible.

Read the whole thing here. It's long, but well worth your time.