Explore Evolution: The Discovery Institute's winsome creationist textbook

A blogger has an interesting report on the event that the Discovery Institute just held for teachers at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles) University in order to promote their newest disguise for creationism, the textbook sneakily entitled “Explore Evolution.”

I’m sure it’s a just coincidence that the very first person to blog this event – this no-way-it’s-creationism-no-sirree event – did it from the Old Earth Creation Homeschool blog and works for the old-earth creationist ministry Reasons to Believe.

Anyway, here’s the interesting bit:

This is intended to be a supplement to a standard biology textbook. It strictly presents the strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary position and allow students to decide for themselves whether neo-Darwinism is, in fact, supported by the scientific record. The book does not promote Intelligent Design in any way, shape or form. However, it is written by leaders in the Intelligent Design movement and they don’t seem to be making any secret about this.

I think I agree at least in principle in what they are trying to do. But I remain skeptical that using such a book won’t cause all kinds of problems for public school teachers. I joked with one of the authors whether a legal retainer was included with the purchase of each book. The media guy from the Discovery Institute who was there assured me that informal curriculum similar to this approach is being used in public schools all over the country without incident. Supposedly, the reason we don’t hear about them is that the media only reports on the controversial situations like Kansas, Ohio, and the Dover disaster a couple years ago.

Gee, that reminds me of the Discovery Institute’s old position which they now deny on “intelligent design.”

In other news, did you know that the Discovery Institute’s Explore Evolution textbook is winsome? (pdf link)