Thank you for confirming what everybody's been saying: those are the same baseless claims creationists have been making for decades; this "new" "include the weaknesses" approach is truly just another attempt to slip the same old nonsense into the science classroom.
You've missed the history of what had been going in the US since the start of the 20th century. The rapid increase in high school attendence in the 1910's led to a lot of parents suddenly getting exposed to the evolution their kids were learning in school. This fuelled the anti-evolution movement of the 1920's which culminated in four states adopting "monkey laws" that would severely punish any teacher who even dared mention evolution in the classroom and with local and national pressure being used to pressure school boards and textbook publishers to exclude evolution from the curriculum and instructional materials.
Then in 1968 the "monkey laws" were struck down because their purpose was solely religious (Epperson vs Arkansas), so the anti-evolution movement came back to life and created "creation science" which took the same old arguments from the 1920's plus some new ones that had been devised in the meantime, scrubbed them superficially of all blatant religious references, and presented them as "scientific evidences" against evolution, thus circumventing the courts by claiming that their objections to evolution were purely scientific and had nothing at all to do with religion -- in other words, they were lying through their teeth. Appealing to fairness and academic freedom they engaged in innumerable local school board campaigns that would go something like (though not necessarily always in this order):
1. Our "scientific evidences" prove evolution to be false, so it should be removed from the curriculum.
Please note that this is their actual goal: the elimination of evolution.
2. When that failed, then they would call for "balanced treatment" and "equal time", such that whenever evolution was being taught, equal time would be required to teach "creation science" in order to provide balanced treatment of the "controversy". Of course, if evolution is not taught, then "creation science" need not be taught.
The clear intent of this was to dissuade teachers from teaching evolution. This was also the approach in the Arkansas and Lousiana "balanced treatment" laws of the early 1980's; in the Arkansas trial one teacher broke into tears when describing how the law was requiring him to lie to his students. That the intent was to eliminate evolution is supported by a letter written by the author of the model bill that those two laws were based on, Paul Ellwanger: "... -- the idea of killing evolution instead of playing these debating games that we've been playing for nigh over a decade already."
3. When that failed, then creationists would ask that the schools at least present the
"negative evidences" against evolution. Of course, if evolution is not taught, then no "negative evidences" need be taught.
Please note that, since "creation science" is nothing but "negative evidences" against evolution, this "compromise" position is precisely the same thing as #2 -- balanced treatment has been described as a book with two chapters: Chapter One is evolution and Chapter Two is everything that's wrong with Chapter One. Please note that this is an example of creationists taking the exact same thing and superficially making it appear different so as to deceive the public.
With the Arkansas and Louisiana laws having been struck down (the Lousiana law made it up the US Supreme Court and lost by 1987), "creation science" could no longer fool the courts, so the creationists needed another subterfuge which they found in "intelligent design". That was struck down recently in Dover, so now the courts are also wise to ID.
Once again, the creationists need a new subterfuge, which is this new "teach the weaknesses" deception. As you have helped to verify.
Edited by dwise1, : cleaned up formatting
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