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It looks like the Pastafarians might save us from the backward slide
towards the Dark Ages caused by Christian fundamentalists. Who would
have thought the champion of enlightenment and science.
By BILLY TOWNSEND The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 22, 2007
LAKELAND - Public floggings hurt, even when administered by satirical
sacred noodles.
Ask the Polk County School Board. The panel made news last month when
five of its seven members declared a personal belief in the concept of
intelligent design, the religiously based explanation of the
development of life believed in by many Christians.
Four of those five sympathetic board members said they would like to
see intelligent design taught in Polk schools as an alternative to
Darwinian evolution, at a time when new state standards mentioning
evolution by name for the first time are under consideration.
Just like that, it appeared the Darwin wars had found their newest
battlefield.
Yet a few weeks later, the controversy is dying with a whimper.
There's no board support for a challenge to the proposed standards.
Some of the five school board members blame the local newspaper for
trying to start a fight.
"It's not our agenda," said Tim Harris, one of the board members. "My
personal opinion and how I vote don't always jibe."
What happened? You can start with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster.
The satirical religious Web site asserts that an omnipotent, airborne
clump of spaghetti intelligently designed all life with the deft touch
of its "noodly appendage." Adherents call themselves Pastafarians.
They deluged Polk school board members with e-mail demanding equal
time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism's version of intelligent design.
"They've made us the laughingstock of the world," said Margaret
Lofton, a school board member who supports intelligent design. She
dismissed the e-mail as ridiculous and insulting.
That's the point. The Pastafarians are part of an informal online
network that can rain scrutiny and ridicule on school districts
flirting with intelligent design. In Polk County, where leaders are
working hard to start a polytechnic university campus and talk about
attracting high-tech jobs, that's unwelcome attention.
"I imagine the school board was surprised by the speed and volume of
the response," said Bobby Henderson, founder and operator of the
Spaghetti Monster Web site. "They saw it as a local issue, but it
didn't take long for word to spread on the Internet.
"I think all of us have a vested interest in not seeing science
standards lowered - or in this case having the definition of science
changed to allow supernatural theories."
Topic Of Interest
It started innocently enough.
A reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland called school board member Kay
Harris Fields to ask her opinion of the pending state standards.
There's nothing pernicious about that, said The Ledger's longtime
Executive Editor Skip Perez.
"We do what newspapers are supposed to do, report on what our public
officials are thinking about topics of interest," Perez said.
The story quoted Fields as opposing the evolution portion of the new
standards and looking for state Superintendent Gail McKinzie to say
whether there was anything to be done about them locally.
"There needs to be intelligent design as well," Fields said in the
story. "You need to show both sides."
Fields said later, via e-mail, she didn't realize there would be a
story "on the front page of the Ledger indicating that I opposed
evolution."
The newspaper followed up with a second story polling the entire
board.
"And the rest is history," Fields said.
Enter the Pastafarians. And Wired Magazine. And national science blog
Pharyngula. And local bloggers.
This network is now armed with more than just biting humor and active
readership. It has a 2005 federal court ruling from Dover, Pa.,
barring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools there.
Intelligent design "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and
thus religious, antecedents," wrote Judge John E. Jones III in his
opinion.
Wesley R. Elsberry, a Michigan State scientist who was raised and
educated in Lakeland, wrote an open online letter to the school
district, making reference to the Dover case. Elsberry, who studies
the evolution of intelligence in digital organisms akin to computer
viruses, helped prepare a Dover expert witness.
In his Polk letter, Elsberry wrote: "You've been conned. 'Intelligent
design' is a legal sham, a con game, one whose sole purpose is to
insert a narrow sectarian doctrine into public school classrooms."
Echoing Fields' original statement about teaching "both sides,"
Elsberry says intelligent design advocates want to set up a "conflict
model" for judging scientific progress. Under that model, science and
religion often will come into conflict, and to be religious, one must
come down on the side of religion.
That's a false conflict, argues Elsberry, who says he believes in God
and sees no reason why observed science and religion can't co-exist.
Based on the scientific observation, Elsberry believes God employs
evolution and natural selection as the mechanism of developing life.
Polk County is increasingly at odds with itself as it urbanizes and
struggles to decide to which region of Florida it belongs.
One of the few generally unifying ideas, though, is the pursuit of a
new applied science-focused campus of the University of South Florida,
to be located in northeast Lakeland along Interstate 4. It would be
the state's first four-year public polytechnic college. Polk County
and Lakeland city governments each have recently pledged $5 million to
help kick-start the campus, which remains in bureaucratic and fiscal
limbo.
Backers see it as a potential economic engine and keystone of a high-
tech I-4 corridor. They envision creating business incubators and
luring technology companies.
So what was the reaction to news of intelligent design talk?
"I was surprised," said Marshall Goodman, a USF vice president and CEO
of the existing and future Lakeland campuses.
Goodman, who has worked to promote the new campus among Polk's civic,
business and political leaders, stopped short of criticizing local
school board members. Intelligent design, however, merited no such
tact.
"It's not science," Goodman said. "You can't even call it pseudo-
science."
Josh Hallett is a Winter Haven-based online social networking expert
working as director of new media strategies for VOCE communications in
Palo Alto, Calif. The intelligent design dustup and possible
implications for Polk were hot topics on his local blog, Empirical
Polk.
In a post headlined "Say Goodbye To The Tech Sector," Hallett asked
rhetorically: "What site selection consultant is going to recommend
Polk County over, say, Orange or Hillsborough counties when the
external impression of the school board is not that great?"
It's not just traditionally rural Polk facing such questions.
The Pastafarian nation already has turned its attention to urbane
Pinellas County, where a similar majority of school board members came
out in support of intelligent design this week.
What's It Worth?
Whether Polk County suffers from all the talk is hard to say.
Florida is one of only a small handful of states with science
standards that don't prescribe the teaching of evolution by name. The
new standards would change that. State-sanctioned textbooks, however,
already teach and discuss Darwinian evolution, by name and in some
detail.
"Many characteristics of a species are inherited when they pass from
parent to offspring," reads one seventh-grade Life Sciences text.
"Change in these inherited characteristics over time is evolution."
The pro-intelligent design board members say they now recognize that
the new standards are a state issue and there's nothing they can do
about them, even if they'd like to.
Lofton, a former geometry teacher with a master's degree in
mathematics and one of the pro-intelligent design board members, said
she has no interest in engaging with the Pastafarians or anyone else
seeking to discredit intelligent design.
She describes herself as secure in her beliefs. "I'm a Christian. I
personally believe that the Bible is inerrant truth and the word of
God."
With that in mind, is it worth quitting over the forced teaching of
Darwinian evolution as the only scientifically accepted explanation of
the development of life?
Lofton says no. There's been no talk by any other board member of
taking such a stand. In fact, there seems to be great eagerness simply
to return to the day-to-day work of running a school district with
90,000 students.
"My job is about a whole lot more than a handful of standards in
science," Lofton said. "We face issues that make that issue pale in
comparison."
towards the Dark Ages caused by Christian fundamentalists. Who would
have thought the champion of enlightenment and science.
By BILLY TOWNSEND The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 22, 2007
LAKELAND - Public floggings hurt, even when administered by satirical
sacred noodles.
Ask the Polk County School Board. The panel made news last month when
five of its seven members declared a personal belief in the concept of
intelligent design, the religiously based explanation of the
development of life believed in by many Christians.
Four of those five sympathetic board members said they would like to
see intelligent design taught in Polk schools as an alternative to
Darwinian evolution, at a time when new state standards mentioning
evolution by name for the first time are under consideration.
Just like that, it appeared the Darwin wars had found their newest
battlefield.
Yet a few weeks later, the controversy is dying with a whimper.
There's no board support for a challenge to the proposed standards.
Some of the five school board members blame the local newspaper for
trying to start a fight.
"It's not our agenda," said Tim Harris, one of the board members. "My
personal opinion and how I vote don't always jibe."
What happened? You can start with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster.
The satirical religious Web site asserts that an omnipotent, airborne
clump of spaghetti intelligently designed all life with the deft touch
of its "noodly appendage." Adherents call themselves Pastafarians.
They deluged Polk school board members with e-mail demanding equal
time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism's version of intelligent design.
"They've made us the laughingstock of the world," said Margaret
Lofton, a school board member who supports intelligent design. She
dismissed the e-mail as ridiculous and insulting.
That's the point. The Pastafarians are part of an informal online
network that can rain scrutiny and ridicule on school districts
flirting with intelligent design. In Polk County, where leaders are
working hard to start a polytechnic university campus and talk about
attracting high-tech jobs, that's unwelcome attention.
"I imagine the school board was surprised by the speed and volume of
the response," said Bobby Henderson, founder and operator of the
Spaghetti Monster Web site. "They saw it as a local issue, but it
didn't take long for word to spread on the Internet.
"I think all of us have a vested interest in not seeing science
standards lowered - or in this case having the definition of science
changed to allow supernatural theories."
Topic Of Interest
It started innocently enough.
A reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland called school board member Kay
Harris Fields to ask her opinion of the pending state standards.
There's nothing pernicious about that, said The Ledger's longtime
Executive Editor Skip Perez.
"We do what newspapers are supposed to do, report on what our public
officials are thinking about topics of interest," Perez said.
The story quoted Fields as opposing the evolution portion of the new
standards and looking for state Superintendent Gail McKinzie to say
whether there was anything to be done about them locally.
"There needs to be intelligent design as well," Fields said in the
story. "You need to show both sides."
Fields said later, via e-mail, she didn't realize there would be a
story "on the front page of the Ledger indicating that I opposed
evolution."
The newspaper followed up with a second story polling the entire
board.
"And the rest is history," Fields said.
Enter the Pastafarians. And Wired Magazine. And national science blog
Pharyngula. And local bloggers.
This network is now armed with more than just biting humor and active
readership. It has a 2005 federal court ruling from Dover, Pa.,
barring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools there.
Intelligent design "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and
thus religious, antecedents," wrote Judge John E. Jones III in his
opinion.
Wesley R. Elsberry, a Michigan State scientist who was raised and
educated in Lakeland, wrote an open online letter to the school
district, making reference to the Dover case. Elsberry, who studies
the evolution of intelligence in digital organisms akin to computer
viruses, helped prepare a Dover expert witness.
In his Polk letter, Elsberry wrote: "You've been conned. 'Intelligent
design' is a legal sham, a con game, one whose sole purpose is to
insert a narrow sectarian doctrine into public school classrooms."
Echoing Fields' original statement about teaching "both sides,"
Elsberry says intelligent design advocates want to set up a "conflict
model" for judging scientific progress. Under that model, science and
religion often will come into conflict, and to be religious, one must
come down on the side of religion.
That's a false conflict, argues Elsberry, who says he believes in God
and sees no reason why observed science and religion can't co-exist.
Based on the scientific observation, Elsberry believes God employs
evolution and natural selection as the mechanism of developing life.
Polk County is increasingly at odds with itself as it urbanizes and
struggles to decide to which region of Florida it belongs.
One of the few generally unifying ideas, though, is the pursuit of a
new applied science-focused campus of the University of South Florida,
to be located in northeast Lakeland along Interstate 4. It would be
the state's first four-year public polytechnic college. Polk County
and Lakeland city governments each have recently pledged $5 million to
help kick-start the campus, which remains in bureaucratic and fiscal
limbo.
Backers see it as a potential economic engine and keystone of a high-
tech I-4 corridor. They envision creating business incubators and
luring technology companies.
So what was the reaction to news of intelligent design talk?
"I was surprised," said Marshall Goodman, a USF vice president and CEO
of the existing and future Lakeland campuses.
Goodman, who has worked to promote the new campus among Polk's civic,
business and political leaders, stopped short of criticizing local
school board members. Intelligent design, however, merited no such
tact.
"It's not science," Goodman said. "You can't even call it pseudo-
science."
Josh Hallett is a Winter Haven-based online social networking expert
working as director of new media strategies for VOCE communications in
Palo Alto, Calif. The intelligent design dustup and possible
implications for Polk were hot topics on his local blog, Empirical
Polk.
In a post headlined "Say Goodbye To The Tech Sector," Hallett asked
rhetorically: "What site selection consultant is going to recommend
Polk County over, say, Orange or Hillsborough counties when the
external impression of the school board is not that great?"
It's not just traditionally rural Polk facing such questions.
The Pastafarian nation already has turned its attention to urbane
Pinellas County, where a similar majority of school board members came
out in support of intelligent design this week.
What's It Worth?
Whether Polk County suffers from all the talk is hard to say.
Florida is one of only a small handful of states with science
standards that don't prescribe the teaching of evolution by name. The
new standards would change that. State-sanctioned textbooks, however,
already teach and discuss Darwinian evolution, by name and in some
detail.
"Many characteristics of a species are inherited when they pass from
parent to offspring," reads one seventh-grade Life Sciences text.
"Change in these inherited characteristics over time is evolution."
The pro-intelligent design board members say they now recognize that
the new standards are a state issue and there's nothing they can do
about them, even if they'd like to.
Lofton, a former geometry teacher with a master's degree in
mathematics and one of the pro-intelligent design board members, said
she has no interest in engaging with the Pastafarians or anyone else
seeking to discredit intelligent design.
She describes herself as secure in her beliefs. "I'm a Christian. I
personally believe that the Bible is inerrant truth and the word of
God."
With that in mind, is it worth quitting over the forced teaching of
Darwinian evolution as the only scientifically accepted explanation of
the development of life?
Lofton says no. There's been no talk by any other board member of
taking such a stand. In fact, there seems to be great eagerness simply
to return to the day-to-day work of running a school district with
90,000 students.
"My job is about a whole lot more than a handful of standards in
science," Lofton said. "We face issues that make that issue pale in
comparison."
