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Check this out! After an initial rubber stamp by the Texas Higher Education Board in November 2007, the Institute for Creation Research has been denied accreditation and the ability to grant "master of science" degrees in Texas!! As you may recall I mentioned this situation in a recent post highlighting the hilarious comment cards catalogued at the Texas Memorial Museum evolution exhibit.

As you may have gathered, this is a hot button issue with me (us). I take umbrage both as a scientist (who performs evolution in a test tube nearly every single day to attempt to make better drugs to fight cancer), and as a regular person who benefits from vaccines, and drugs discovered using technology and basic research that relies on evolutionary principles. It is certainly not an anti-religion argument; it is an anti-idiot argument. Science vs. religion is a false dichotomy. Science education in America is bad enough without teachers in the classroom that believe that kangaroos and polar bears lived in Israel 4000 years ago (because they needed to be there for Noah to pick them up) or that coral fossils on Mt Everest are from the great flood and not plate tectonics driving the Himalayas up from an ancient sea bed, or that men and dinosaurs lived together (like in the Flintstones)... the list goes on and on...

I read this hilarious, yet ultimately sad story about people in the Congo believing that sorcerers were stealing their penises, and thought (after my initial laughter) how utterly horrible it was that their beliefs and culture combined with ignorance allows them to think that this could actually happen and then actually kill people accused of this crime. In the case of the young earth creationists it is their beliefs combined with ignorance and stubbornness that motivate them (so in a way they are worse than the people in the Congo story). Evidence to the contrary is all around them, and they choose to put their heads in the ground. Well they can do that if they want, but they should not be able to teach that to students in the state of Texas or any state!... pheww...I will get off my stump now....

Texas science and education can rest easy for a day... but just for a day... they are sure to appeal or take this to the courts... great.