Skeptic's Corner

By Jim Bechtel
REASON, www.reason.ws

We could never have suspected what was about to happen ...Alerted by newspaper stories and a letter from Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education, five members of REASON set out for Lincoln on June 11^th to put in our two cents worth at the Board of Education hearings about Board member Kathy Wilmot’s goal of including creationism in science classes (“alternate theories of human origin”) and her insistence that evolution is “just a theory.” We were armed with our bible (a 3-centimeter thick compilation of critical articles analyzing creationism), and also with a copy of the strange February 9 letter of the Deputy Attorney General Steve Grasz, which says teaching evolutionary biology unconstitutionally inhibits religion (!).

As we headed down the Interstate in Larry’s big red Volvo, I started reminiscing about my Catholic schooling, and, one thing leading to another, I got carried away and began confessing to all sorts of juvenile delinquency, the kind that results from acquiring copies of the school keys and raiding the school labs at night to resupply our home chemistry sets --but that’s another story.

None of us noticed the patch of glowing green fog lurking under an overpass until we were right on top of it, and then it was too late to do anything about it. It sparkled like the cloud in the movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Kevin said “hold your breath!” and we did, and we passed through it with no apparent ill effect. But when we got to the State Office Building, and the hearings began, we quickly realized that something was incredibly wrong! (We later surmised that we had passed through some kind of warp in the fabric of the space-time continuum, and were in an alternate universe, a parallel Nebraska!)

At first, everything seemed normal. The main hearing room was full so they had us sit in Conference Room A, with some other overflow folks, and follow the proceedings on closed-circuit television. A woman next to me clutched a copy of Coming Home, by James Dobson, and kept an eye on her two little kids, busy with their coloring books. She looked rather like a 1950’s sitcom homemaker. That’s it! June Cleaver, the Beaver’s mom. Her Dobson book told me that she was there for the “other side,” and sure enough, when a UNL geologist pleaded that we owe our children the best science education and should teach simply what science has verified, the June Cleaver grimaced, and her little girl looked up anxiously at her mother for cues on how to respond. They shook their heads in pity for the poor geologist.

From their reaction to the next speaker he must have been the kids’ daddy, the woman’s husband. I think he said he was a pediatrician from the Meyer Rehabilitation Institute. He said our public educational system was being used to “proselytize” our children into believing in the unproven dogma of heliocentrism. I did a double-take. Heliocentrism? That the Earth is a planet circling the sun? He’s against that? I hurriedly consulted in whispers with Jim and Gary on either side of me. They’d heard the same thing. The pediatrician went on: He had a scientific background himself and was no dummy. He considered it unscientific and intolerant for astronomers, geologists and geographers to insist that the world was a globe and that it moved around the sun. There were other explanations for the so-called “evidence” of the heliocentric theory, and children should be taught these alternative theories, about the earth being flat and unmoving, in their science classes. To limit them to just the one controversial theory deprives the children of “the sense of wonder that comes from knowing the Earth is the center of the Universe.”Let us not enshrine just one viewpoint. That’s unfair, he pleaded. Gary and Jim and I looked at each other: What th’? What’s going on here? That sparkly green cloud! We’ve passed into the Twilight Zone!

The next speaker was a cheerful, heavy-set, elderly Native American woman, a science teacher. Ms. Griffin treated the Board members like students, and delivered a peppy lecture. Scientists start by admitting they know nothing, she said. They are the most humble of people. But what they do know is how to learn. How to learn from nature. “Nature is a teaching machine,” she said, quoting Nobelist Steven Weinberg. She plopped a heavy book on the hearing table to demonstrate the phenomenon of gravity. She dropped books of different weights. She handed a book to a Board member and had him drop it from different heights. We can form a hypothesis about what we observe, she explained patiently, and we can test it. This testing is the crucial difference between science and religion.

Her personal religious beliefs, she said, are untestable, resting on faith, and not facts of science resting on evidence. She plopped the book down again. With enough observation and thought, we end up with the “theory” of gravity. Now, the man on the street generally misunderstands the word “theory.” A theory is an explanation, she said, an explanation that makes sense out of observed facts. The germ theory explains disease, evolution makes sense out of the observed facts of biology, atomic theory enables us to understand physics, and so forth.
These theories are not controversial, she said, no one tries to insert religious preconceptions into these fields, why do it with geography and astronomy? Her own Native American religious traditions have something to say about the shape of the world, the Four Corners from which the Four Winds and Four Seasons come, and she cherishes these beliefs, they are her personal, private treasure, BUT (she looked Kathy Wilmot in the eye) her science classroom was NOT the place for religious beliefs, her own or those of anyone else! Larry and Kevin and the rest of us exchanged smiles. Great presentation!

The smiles didn’t last. Mr. Holzkopf was the next speaker. A distinguished looking gentleman in suit and tie, with a neatly trimmed gray beard, he used his allotted time to go straight to the Bible. No beating around the bush: Modern geographers and astronomers were clearly wrong because they contradict the Word of God. “If God cannot be taken literally when He speaks of the ‘rising of the sun,’ how can he be taken literally when He speaks of ‘the rising of the Son?’ “ Therefore Daniel 4:10-11, Joshua 10:12-14, Psalms 104:5 and the other passages all mean just exactly what they say; the Earth is flat and does not move. Apparent evidence to the contrary can be explained away by the effect of the Coriolis and centrifugal forces, he said. Many scientists have doubts about the accepted mainstream theory. In the nineteenth century the eminent physicist Ernst Mach proved mathematically that there can be no observable difference between heliocentrism and geocentrism. The speed of light is an apparent effect caused by the rotation of the “firmament’ 3,000 miles overhead, which is composed of grains packed 4 times 10 to the 93^rd grams per cc. The sun and moon are 32 miles across, and are part of the firmament.

I recognized the pattern: Psuedoscience, empty jargon imitating real science. But Holzkopf’s impressive voice captivated some of the listeners, undoubtedly. He intoned: “This and other research by the Universal Zetetic Society of America and Great Britain is unfairly suppressed by the priesthood of heliocentric science. I urge the members of the State Board of Education to study the works of Alexander Dowie, 1888, Wilber Glen Voliva, 1942, and of Samuel and Lillian Shenton of England, 1971. Zetetic comes from Zeto, to seek and search out, to prove, as contrasted to the theoretic confabulations of these geologists and astronomers and so-called geographers,” as he swung his arm at the packed chairs around him. “This information should be made available to our children so that they can choose freely for themselves between the alternative explanations about the shape of the Earth; the atheistic theory that it is round, which excludes God from the classroom and leads to immorality and social decay, or the truth of flatness, derived from the Creator Himself!” June Cleaver and her kids beamed with pleasure, and Kathy Wilmot looked triumphant.

But the next speakers launched a counterattack. Two Unitarian ministers, one retired and one active, spoke in turn. Rev. Knapp made the point that there is a solid consensus in the scientific community on heliocentrism, it’s the only game in town,but on the other hand there are very many alternative religious views on the nature of the Earth and the Heavens; how could any agreement ever be reached on whose to include in our geography and astronomy classes? And Rev. Benner stressed the separation of Church and State--to require the teaching of geocentrism alongside mainstream heliocentrism would give an unfair State-supported advantage to one particular sect, the Flat-Earther advocates of geocentrism. More members of the academic community, primarily from UNL, also testified against injecting religious views into science classes.

We members of REASON thought they did a great job, but we’re rationalists, after all, always ready to look at the evidence and listen to reason. Other folks obviously seemed to be having trouble shaking the spell of Mr.Holzkopf’s oratory. I thought: For crissake, surely we aren’t going to witness a couple of the Board members plunging us back into the Dark Ages! This can’t really be happening. Scientists don’t believe the world is roughly spherical just because they’re evil or stupid. They didn’t just make it up. I wanted to yell “what about photos from satellites?” What about the shadow of the Earth on the moon in an eclipse? What about a ship coming over the horizon? What about the observable, testable facts of the natural world around us? What about EVIDENCE? Doesn’t it count? Yes, I realize the June Cleavers are hurting, they’re on the losing side, they fear for their way of life. But in their desperation they become dangerous when they reach out to impose on the rest of us their particular irrational beliefs. Stay out of my brain. Learn to read the evidence of the world around you. But this was not a debate that would be won on empirical grounds. The Basic Law of the Human Mind is: People Believe What They Want to Believe.

Whatever makes them feel good, whatever simplistic nonsense they’ve swallowed, following it is easier than the labor of thinking, the hard work of painstaking science. So science has to be corrupted to accommodate their religious prejudices, the Flat and Unmoving Earth will have to be taught, somehow, ignoring the real evidence, maybe even fabricating what’s needed to appease a couple ignorant Board members. This is how they win their argument, I thought, by force, by passing laws, by voting without bothering to learn. And this anti-learning stance is going to pass for “education.”

Well, of course, I needn’t have gotten bitter, it didn’t go that far. The next several speakers patiently continued to lay out strong arguments for evidence-based science. A Flat-Earther said they just wanted their children to be taught to question things. Susan, the president of the State Science Teachers group, answered that the current State standards already require that. (I’d have added that questioning is the essence of science. What can’t be questioned? Divine inspiration.)

The testimony ended and the Board began to deliberate. Kathy Wilmot apparently hadn’t heard a word. She said we must not allow “fear and paranoia” (from scientists?) to “rob” our children of exposure to more viewpoints. But she settled for recommending a task force to continue looking into the matter. This aroused Board member Stephen Scheer into pointing out that they had spent enough time on it, they had heard from the knowledgeable experts, and they should simply endorse letting the science teachers teach science--and only science—in their classrooms. In the end, his common sense carried the day.

On our way back to Omaha, Kevin pronounced it an “effortless victory.” We hadn’t had to testify, thank goodness, having prepared for the wrong debate. We passed back through the sparkly green cloud into our own world, where something very, very similar had taken place that same day. For the next week, the Public Pulse was filled with letters praising Kathy Wilmot and her two supporters on the Board for their courageous stand. (Welcome back to the real world!)

Readers who are now thoroughly confused as a result of this column or who have a poor grip on reality may want to join the Flat Earth Society at Box 2533, Lancaster, CA 93534, att’n: Charles Johnson. (The poor guy’s house burned down, and at last report he’s operating out of a shack. True story.) Others, who clearly understood the moral of our fable and enjoy using the old gray matter, may prefer to come to a meeting of REASON, held every first and third Saturday at 2:00 PM at the Main Library, downtown.