Texas science ed. officer forced to resign by Bushie hack for promoting evolution
I just listened to this segment from last week's NPR Science Friday, about a Texas state science education officer who was forced to resign by a Bush appointee who was upset because the officer had forwarded an email advertising a speech by a Creationism critic to a couple of small mailing lists. It made me bonkers. This hard-working woman, a science education devotee, had her career ruined by a political hack looking to sneak Creationism into the schools as junk science.
The education official responsible for the science curriculum in the state of Texas resigned last month saying she was forced to step down after being reprimanded for informing colleagues of a talk on the conflict over the teaching of evolution. Christine Castillo Comer, former Director of Science in the curriculum division of the Texas Education Agency, forwarded several colleagues an email notice of a upcoming talk by Barbara Forrest, co-author of the book "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design." Castillo Comer's supervisor said the email was grounds for termination as the 'FYI' email "implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."Link
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Not a good sign when an educational agency must remain neutral on teaching freaking _science_.
Is it possible to get more cynical over the Bush thugs? Just when I think not, something like this comes down.
Here is the link to the book mentioned in the story:
http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com/
How are people "forced to resign"? For me it would be a matter of honor to refuse to quit and force them to fire me.
Bush Admin's science agenda: see "Flintstones"
We can all be as flippant as we want about this but the truth is that the ultra-right/anti-freedom bunch have/are winning. We are well and thoroughly hosed. If we don't start removing these people from EVERY level of govt. today there really is no hope. Happy freaking monday.
The primates who continue to back creationism/ID/whatever other name they attempt to disguise it with next week constitute prima facie evidence that the forces of natural selection still have considerable work to do.
I went to public schools in a state with the lowest education rank in the nation: Mississippi.
As a father-to-be now living in Texas, I'm wondering if my child would get a better education back in MS.
If there is one thing the current Texas government will listen to, it is big business. Corporations, consider this news before you decide to locate in Texas.
"How are people "forced to resign"? For me it would be a matter of honor to refuse to quit and force them to fire me."
In many jobs, being fired means a loss of bonuses, unused vacation days, and reduction or loss of pension. For someone working in the public sector, the loss or reduction of pension could be financially crippling.
I recommend a visit to the panda's thumb or pharyngula for any creationists/IDiots who want to prattle about teaching the controversy or lie about evolution being "unproven".
Ken:
Don't forget that Darwinian evolution describes species emerging over thousands of years, so it would be impossible for a new species to completely emerge through evolution since "Darwinism/Evolution was first discussed".
However, there are many many cases of species evolving. For example, many diseases have evolved to become antibiotic resistant due to natural selection (those not antibiotic resistant died out).
On a larger scale, the Peppered Moth changed from light colored to dark colored between the late 19th and early 20th century in response to the industrial revolution causing trees light colored tree lichen to die off, making it hard for a light colored moth to camouflage itself. The American Blue Mussel has evolved to have a thicker shell since the Asian shore crab invaded the east coast and started killing the mussels off in the late 80s. The crickets in Kauai have evolved since the late 90s to have wings that cannot make a "chirp" sound after a parasitic fly invaded that targeted crickets by sound.
Don't "believe" in evolution?
Feel free to help yourself to last year's flu vaccine, then.
For the last freaking time, the "Theory" in Theory of Evolution does NOT mean that it's still just a suggestion that someone came up with, and that there is no evidence. If you say that, you really have no idea how scientific theories work.
It's more like Musical Theory. You believe in that, don't you?
AGOODSANDWICH, can we assume you support the unproven, atheistic so-called "Theory of Gravitation" over the Revealed Truth of "Intelligent Falling"?
Don't let the sun set on you in Texas, boy!
Ideas don't change, people do.
I think Texas needs to instate an anti-ignorance policy.
Wing Commander 2's classic introduction cutscene comes to mind: "I'm not guilty, sir. I won't sign it!"
How long is it going to take before the fundies are the ones running the public schools and all the secular humanists start homeschooling?
@#8 Ken Bines said:By law, state education officials must remain neutral on this topic, and the educators email sent from her official email account for a critical speaker on this topic most likely *was* grounds for termination.
Well one of the problems with that is the fact that it's her Job to be aware of these events and to share these events with other members of the Administration. If you would like to gain a better understanding of the facts behind this case visit this website http://www.texscience.org/reviews/tea-science-director-resigns.htm
In short...
The real reason she was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science standards–the science TEKS–were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year. Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to require instead that biology instructors “Teach the Controversy” about the “weaknesses” of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and -created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn’t exist within legitimate science. There are no scientific weaknesses with biological evolution as the natural process is understood by scientists. At the level at which it is taught in high school, evolutionary biology has no weaknesses, gaps, or problems. Therefore, it is duplicitous to pretend such “weaknesses” and “controversy” exist.
Don
Ken Hansen (#8),
First, I heard this piece too, and I'd have to go back and confirm this, but I believe she said explicitly that she did NOT sent it from her work email.
Second, Darwin's theory of evolution has survived, and been enriched by, 150 years of the most contentious testing imaginable. For example, when Watson and Crick discovered DNA in the 1950s--100 years after Darwin!--genetics did not disprove, but rather explained, how evolution worked. To doubt it by saying it has not been "proved" displays your ignorance of even the basic elements of the theory, and of the meaning of the term "theory."
If you missed it, I recommend the recent Nova special Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial which documents the recent landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, in which parents sued a Pennsylvania school board for trying to sneak intelligent design into the curriculum. It's an excellent primer on the so-called "debate", and describes how the parents' attorneys proved that not only is evolution abundantly supported by the facts, but that ID is junk science promoted by Christian fundamentalists with a creationist agenda.
Incidentally, the judge eloquently and thoroughly rejected the school board's entire case, and all of the school board members who were for the intelligent design side were voted out of office in the next election. So there's that.
"Chris Comer was accused in the Nov 5 Memo of forwarding an email announcement of a presentation on science in violation of the policy to "not communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency in any way that might compromise the transparency and/or integrity of the upcoming TEKS development and revision process." It is highly tendentious to interpret forwarding an email message from a group that "opposes teaching creationism in public education" to be a violation of this policy only because a staff member used her TEA email account, and also that this "implies endorsement" of the speaker and the speaker's position "on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral." This is a serious misinterpretation: by no means would simply forwarding an announcement of a science talk from a third party constitute TEA "endorsement" of evolution over Creationism or anything else"
SOP for creationists, though. As long as you ignore all the scientific evidence -- or prevent people from being exposed to it -- then you can successfully attack it. But if you actually urge people to go hear or read about evolution, well, that gets harder and harder to maintain.
my favorite creationist bullshit is the 'kinds' excuse for how noah pulled off his ark.
obviously he didn't have room for all the animals on earth, so for example, he took two felines with him, and when they landed, those felines branched out and turned into every feline species on the planet.
yes. In an effort to disprove evolution, people who take the bible literally use a bullshit version of evolution that works in thousands of years instead of millions.
Ken Hanson: you are totally right that moths changing colors does not prove macro-evolution, but it also does not prove that God created the Earth 5000 years ago. The nature of macro-evolution is such that we can not observe it happening in real time. In the same way, we can not observe a star as it ages and changes, but we can still come to some reliable conclusions as to how they do change as they age.
The fundamental flaw with Intelligent Design is that when it sees an incomplete set of evidence, it makes a non sequitur conclusion: the universe must have been made by God/Pixies/some other supernatural source. It's not science, no matter how its proponents color it.
I find it terrifying that any School Board would seriously consider teaching it in a classroom as a real possibility. Let alone that a School Board would come to tactics like this.
Ken - you obviously haven't lived in Texas, because if you did you'd know that, in many parts of the state, the "fundies" control local education.
And, most of you are probably not aware: Texas is the largest state which approves all textbooks on a statewide level.
Why is this important?
The approval comes from the elected State Board of Education, and for many, many years a small minority of religious fundamentalists in the state have maintained a presence on the board. They also maintain a steadfast opposition to any textbook content that conflicts with their narrow worldview (the example I remember best is their opposition to a picture of a woman holding a briefcase).
Anyway, because textbook publishers generally won't make editions specific to each state, they wait for Texas to make their approvals, and then they print books en masse for use nationwide. Thus, a small number of religious zealots in Texas control the contents of textbooks used across the nation.
"I find it terrifying that any School Board would seriously consider teaching it in a classroom as a real possibility. Let alone that a School Board would come to tactics like this."
You're assuming that all running for school board positions are doing it for education's sake, not for the sake of evangelism/politics.
Upset? Angry? VOTE!
This conversation is getting way out of hand and it is upsetting me. I need to take a moment to pray to the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
Amen Monkeyfez!
(somehow it seems like I've always wanted to say "amen monkeyfez", even if I didn't know it until just now.)
Wow, Texas is a big state in physical area, but it is not representative of the main stream of education in the US. You people are freaking out as if Creationism had some kind of over-arching power against the truth.
I believe in evolution as a process, not as a force. But it is hysterical to say that the Fundies are in control and we are screwed.
The Creationists just want a fair hearing, and in America that's exactly what they should get. The truth will always prevail when all sides are heard. Let's keep the marketplace of ideas open. The only thing that can come from shutting down an ideology is that the prevailing one at the time, in this case Darwinian Evolution, will take a wrong turn that resists correction because it is taboo to question it.
Wake up. Creationist are being shutdown for their ideas at a rate of a thousand to one for every evolutionist who is silenced. And they are being shut down, not by scientific discourse, but rather by an unquestioning, hyper-reactive, culture of sciencism that resembles the Spanish inquisition more than an open marketplace of ideas that it is supposed to aspire to.
Don't believe me? Just read through the posts again and look at the bile being spewn at the Fundies.
Arrrghbob, I suppose people teaching the controversy of atoms are shut down by the "Culture of Sciencism."
You miss the free marketplace of ideas right in front of you. Evolutionary biology is as active an area of research as ever, with real fruit being borne in fighting disease. If you'd like to propose an alternative fundamental dogma of modern biology -- something that doesn't involve nucleic acids and proteins -- you're free to do so. Keep in mind that the metric you'll be judged on is your theory's explanatory and predictive power. The problem with fundies is the theory of "god did it" just doesn't go very far in understanding the world and shaping it.
There's a lot of bullshit in the world today. Here's a sample:
1) Your employer can tell you what to do and say in your free time.
Totally un-American. Please don't give me the free market argument here, because we don't have a free market economy; never have, never will.
2) Your employer can tell you what to e-mail while you're at work.
(What next: if you use our phone system, we have the right to determine what you say on the line? Think about it, instead of just accepting the law because it's the law!)
4) An employee can't express an opinion that contradicts the agency's policies.
I thought that was called free speech. There should be a law guaranteeing the right of employees to express opinions, whether on their own time or at work, that contradicts their employers' position.
Sorry, I know it's hard for you libertarians, free marketeers, and conservatives to swallow, but there should be. IMO.
3) An education agency should be neutral on an education issue.
What can of horse manure is that? That doesn't fly with me, and yes, I understand that taking a stand may mean taking a stand against teaching evolution.
I'm just shooting from the hip here, shooting my mouth off. Please no kill I!
PS: Impeach Bush!
I really don't understand this creationism thing.
Why is creationism the opposite of science? Fine whatever, teach it so people can make up their own mind but I want to know about the creation stories of the Aborigines too, for all we know, they are the ones who are right. (Like Rowan Atkinson as the devil said, sorry the Jews were right)
Why the Christian version of the creation (and don't say Judeo-Christian, they are different)? I want to know about the Bhagavad Gita, or the creation theories of the Amazon Indians, or how about Amaterasu, the Japanese goddess from which the Imperial Family is supposedly descended from. How did Amaterasu and all the other gods bring about evolution? Or Quetzalcoatl? Is the sequoia tree proof as a descendant of Yggrdrasil? How can you see the kra (soul in Akan, Ghana) of the newborn baby and other burning questions.
Why only the Christian version?
The difference between the theory of evolution (which might be thrown out one day like phlogiston) is that people didn't set out to prove their book unlike the creationists.
I'm sorry for you, Americans.
Everybody deserves to be heard, but how long should we keep listening to them?
What if someone really really believed in the humors : melancholic, choleric etc even though they've been disproven, do we have to listen to them? Do they have to be given an equal time in the lab? They are mentioned briefly as a historical oddity and then WE MOVE ON. Why oh why must we give equal time to Creationism? And what about the theories of chi? or Astrology? Many people believe very strongly in astrology. (Drives me insane. I would like to know how asteroids fit in my horoscope)
In my biology class, we even looked interestingly at morphic fields and then we moved on cause they are unproven.
The thing is I don't think (though I'm not Christian or any religion) is that God and evolution cannot mix. Evolution is just the how, it's not the why. But the how has lots of lots of proof.
I demand the right to be taught the Bhagavad Gita in physics class. It's awesome stuff actually.
Some points:
--Voters can't decide what reality is. They can try, and eventually reality bites them in the ass, likely by retarding progress or sending their society back a few centuries.
--Science is not religion, any more than math is art. Insisting that religion-based "alternatives" to evolution must be offered to science students is as idiotic as insisting we teach math students that 2+2=22, because aesthetically it looks better.
--If someone tells you your beliefs can't be backed up by science, you may be a victim. But not on the scale of a Spanish Inquisition. Here, have a tissue.
--One has faith in, believes in, religion. One does not "believe in" any scientific theory. One looks over the data, and either figures that all is correct or, if there is conflicting data, modifies the theory. Peers then do the same. And repeat.
--Changing the definition of reality-based terms will be one of the ways a free society is destroyed.
Intelligent Design promotes religion in the classroom. End of debate.
Texas Public Schools being recipients of Federal monies are obliged to follow a separation of church and state the keeps religion and religious ideas from being forced onto students.
Worship your god and leave me and mine alone to worship or not as we see fit.
Don
(#38) "Intelligent Design promotes religion in the classroom."
That's right. The question is: do local communities have the right to decide for themselves what they want to teach? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even sure how I feel about that on a knee-jerk level.
Does receiving Federal money mean the Feds can dictate what is taught locally? That's a burning question, IMO.
I've never believed, for example, that because the NEA gives taxpayer funded grants, that the artists recieving them have to tow a Federal line, or one that pleases those taxpayers.
But I too am sick of tired of people trying to shove their religion down my throat. No thank you!
The Supreme Court has already decided that it is unlawful to force a child to sit through religion in the classroom.
So, No the local governments can;t decide that it wants to teach my child all about God.
Freedom of redigion includes freedon from religion/
Don
Donopolis:
You're right, of course. On all counts. Religion is a special issue because of the seperation of church and state.
And Intelligent Design very definitely brings religion into the classroom.
Long live the Sciencism thought police!!
They are alive and well and posting on boingboing.
So I guess when someone asks just to be heard, they are craming their ideas down everyone elses throats, but when we are only given one theory of origins, that is not craming ideas down peoples throats.
"So I guess when someone asks just to be heard, they are craming their ideas down everyone elses throats" (#42)
It's not about Free Speech. It's about the Seperation of Church and State.
Be heard on religion anywhere but the classroom, please. And I promise not to demonstrate for agnosticism or liberalism on Sunday in your church while you're trying to worship.
And it would be irresponsible to teach every crackpot theory of evolution that has been suggested, when the world scientific community has been vetting the current one for at least 100 years and found it to be unimpeachable.
Feel free to advance your own ideas on evolution, and to try to come up with scientific evidence, but please don't try to do it in the classroom, and don't try to pretend that it has any serious, demonstrated validity as against evolution.
PS: please remember that Theory and Hypothosis are not synonymous.
It's not called the Theory of Evolution because it's someone's guess. It's not. It's a self-consistent, demostratablly true set of propositions that have not to date been refuted scientifically.
THAT'S what a scientific theory is. Check a dictionary if you don't believe me.
Well said, Nick.
Scientism,
hmmmm...science class. I am sensing a connection. perhaps when teaching a world religion class that incorporates all world religions, we can bring up creation theory(oops we're not calling it that anymore because it is illegal to teach creationism in class) I mean ID.
Don
No matter how people vote and how much they deserve what they get, no matter how many people get fired or forced to resign, no matter how many Spaghetti Monsters (hail!) or Jeebuses pass the limelight, there is still a dividing line between fact and fiction.
Evolution: fact (or, theory in the scientific sense)
Intelligent Design: fiction
The end.
Today in the Dallas Morning News a Q&A with Robert Scott, education commissioner of the Texas Education Agency in Austin regarding the dismissal. He dismisses the reasons mentioned for her dismissal as speculation, but his answer for the last question is quite revealing.
Thank you, agoodsandwich.
(And it would be irresponsible to teach every crackpot theory of evolution that has been suggested, when the world scientific community has been vetting the current one for at least 100 years and found it to be unimpeachable.)
The "current one" and I use that phrase very loosely, has been evolving for all of those 100 years, and is far from being agreed upon among the believers(of sciencism).
But my point is, if it is truly unimpeachable, then it has nothing to fear from a bunch of crackpot fundies.
thnk y'd b hrd prssd t fnd Chrstn scntst wh dsn't blv n vltn.
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Th mn pnt 'd lk t mk s tht rlgn stll hs plc n mny ppl's lvs, nd thr's gd dl mr t t thn hw clsly w'r rltd t strfsh. 'v sn lt f cmmnts n lt f thrds tht sm qck t qt "rlgs" wth "nts" nd ths ds mr hrm t yr css thn gd. Y rn't gng t cnvnc rlgs prsn t stp bng rlgs by cllng hm n dt, bt y mght gt hm mr dply ntrnchd n ppsng y, whch s prbbly nt yr m, t lst nt f y wnt t ctlly mk ny prgrss.
Thank you realcatholicmen.
You said what I wanted to say, and did it better. What these people don't realize is that the fundies are still a fairly large and united group. They are also somewhat disenchanted with the Republicans right now.
If the people posting on these blogs want to make changes in areas like monopolism, net-neutrality, copyright reform, etc., then they should be making friends with the fundies instead of alienating them.
Like I said before, the truth will always win in an open environment. Why not engage the fundies in a spirit of openness, and you may change some of their minds, and get them to join you on some of the issues that are going to be really effecting us and our democracy in the very near future.
"Long live the Sciencism thought police!!
They are alive and well and posting on boingboing.
So I guess when someone asks just to be heard, they are craming their ideas down everyone elses throats, but when we are only given one theory of origins, that is not craming ideas down peoples throats."
Are you familiar with this issue at all? Creationists are not just asking to be heard, they are infiltrating school boards and trying to sneak in fairy tales in the place of science. Go look at aLearnerRather's links in post 21. Or read it from there own mouths
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
This is not an honest scientific debate, it's people with a known agenda trying to sneak religion into the classroom. How many times do Behe and Johnson have to be shot down for sloppy science before we can be done with this issue.
"The "current one" and I use that phrase very loosely, has been evolving for all of those 100 years, and is far from being agreed upon among the believers(of sciencism)."
I don't really think you have a point here, but I'll agree with you here. It's all still science then teach it in science classes. But once it comes to magical sky daddys creating everything it belongs in a religion class, and if it's not a world religion class it belongs in a private school.
A really good way to promote ignorance is whenever we are not sure of something completely is to just say "God did it." That solves everything doesn't it, why look any further. Yes, science gets thing wrong, but this is the important part, when it does get things wrong it corrects itself and moves on. It doesn't resort to a "wedge strategy" to try to prove it's point. I rather have my kids learn science that is later proven wrong then to shut down their minds and say "God did it you don't need to worry about it." If there is a better theory of how we came into existence, future scientists are not going to have the skill sets to find it if they are just told that "God did it." But if evolution is wrong, and there is a better theory, it's not going to come out of the Discovery Institute trying to make science conform to the Bibles dogma.
"But my point is, if it is truly unimpeachable, then it has nothing to fear from a bunch of crackpot fundies."
You can't be serious here, this has to be flamebait.
#49 sez:
[quote]
The "current one" and I use that phrase very loosely, has been evolving for all of those 100 years, and is far from being agreed upon among the believers(of sciencism).
But my point is, if it is truly unimpeachable, then it has nothing to fear from a bunch of crackpot fundies.
[/quote]
Actually neo-Darwinism, or more correctly the modern evolutionary synthesis, was mostly formulated in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a combination of Darwinian evolutionary principles (in particular the theory of natural selection) and Mendelian genetics, which provided a mechanism by which these principles could operate.
Previous to the MES, there were a large number of now-discredited hypotheses by which evolution was proposed to take place. These were widely argued in their day, but are now mostly of curiousity only to science historians. I think you will find that the MES is now widely accepted as fact in the biological sciences (that is, by those people who study and describe biological systems), and has been for several decades.
As others have already noted, your reference to "believers" of science is an erroneous one. Belief (and the related phenomenon of faith) is dependent on an absence of evidence. One believes in, for example, a Tooth Fairy, and has faith that it will exchange teeth deposited under one's pillow for money, despite the lack of hard, exclusive evidence that fairies of this sort exist. Similarly, one must believe that pursuing the Eight-Fold Path will result in them achieving Enlightenment, as there is no hard, exclusive evidence that this will be so. (I've tried to choose a childhood fantasy and a basic tenet of a widespread modern religion as examples here in order to be nonoffensive, but apologies if I've come across poorly.)
This does not apply to a scientific theory such as the MES. A scientific theory originates as an explanation that is proposed to fit a certain body of evidence. This proposition is then judged against further bodies of evidence and predictions are made from it. Observations that deviate from the original proposition are accounted for by modifying the original proposition, or in extreme cases partial or total abandonment of the proposition. After a proposition has been well-tested by many scientists and has been accepted as fact by them, it is generally referred to as a scientific theory, or a theory for short. However, this is not an idea for which belief plays a role.
Simply because a proposition, or even a theory, is considered an idea that is capable of being changed does not remove its power as a predictive model. Even as a good estimate is suggestive of the actual answer to a question, so a scientific theory that may be changed in the future can give a very good description of events that are observed now. You may wish to think of the MES in its current state as a 'rounded' answer to the question of how the diversity of life we now see (and see in the fossil record) came to be, and further modifications of it will establish an answer of greater precision. Just as Classical Mechanics was modified by the Theory of Relativity to explain observations that deviated from expectations (and remains open to further modification), so the MES remains open to modification from observations to be made at a later date. However, up to this point the MES has proven remarkably accurate, and some of the thousands upon thousands of possible examples of its predictive power are given above.
"Sciencism" is not a word I recognize. Would you care to explain what you mean by it?
As for "crackpot fundies", they have proven themselves capable of doing some rather disagreeable things to those they disagree with. For example, Galileo Galilei was put on trial and threatened with death essentially for suggesting that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth (which incidentally is now widely accepted to be true). I think that the current state of affairs is preferable to those times, and do not wish to see people be threatened with death (or even loss of employment) for proposing things that political appointments find politically unpalatable.
Finally, you make a reference to the MES as an evolving idea. This may in fact be the case, but I would suggest not using the word "evolving" as a synonym for "changing" (and this is something that our culture at large is proving very bad at right now). Although an evolution does connote a change in the thing that is evolving, it also implies that this change is occuring under an evolutionary pressure of some kind, which is not the case in all changing things, and I think may not be appropriate in a context of scientific investigation. At the very least, you may wish to state what sort of pressure you think the MES has been under, as it isn't clear to me what they might be.
I wish all you Sciencismists would stop persecuting ArrrghBob and let him claim to be right even though you think he's wrong. You Sciencismofascists!
(#53) " 'Sciencism' is not a word I recognize. Would you care to explain what you mean by it?"
For Sciencism, read: Secular Humanism. (I'm guessing, here.)
Per Science As Belief:
Sure, I "believe" that if I turn the ignition key in my car, that the engine will turn over.
Can I prove it? Metaphysically, beyond the shadow of a doubt? No, of course not.
Does that mean that my "belief" is equivalent to the belief that there is a God? Of course not.
Why? Because my belief is grounded in science; i.e., in demonstrable, repeatable, empirical experience.
Your belief is founded in faith. And never--I say never--the twain shall meet. They can't meet. They are mutually exclusive categories.
Religions like Catholicism that are based on revelation and faith should reject scientific refutations of their faith. That's what faith is all about. It ain't refutable by reason. They should stick to their guns, even when adherents are defecting by the pewload.
They should not, however, EVER make scientific claims or try to refute science with faith. I would never try to prove there is no God. It's not provable. You can't prove a negative. And as I say, never the twain....