The Mote and the Beam

I came across a rather humorous exchange today while I was listening to a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on iTunes U from the Aurora Forum at Stanford University. Their topic of conversation was science education, meaning, of course, the teaching of evolution.

The exchange was a real hoot in light of recent complaints in America about scientists being fired for being sympathetic to and/or tolerant of the ideas of intelligent design.

Krauss said that something scary happening in America was that some teachers are feeling intimidated not to talk about the theory of evolution. He said that his daughter's biology teacher would apologize to the students whenever he talked about evolution.

Dawkins replied, "That's a major evil. What are we going to do about it? It's terrible. That's absolutely terrible that teachers are being intimidated." Then he asked the audience if there were any teachers there who had been intimidated not to talk about evolution. At least one person raised his or her hand and said that he or she was intimidated by parents to not teach evolution.

"Well, you know what . . ." Krauss said (talking like I tend to do with so many "um"s and pauses and digressions that nobody knows what he is or I am trying to say). "It's even more . . . What happened in Texas. So the school board official recommended that there was an event on evolution. A bunch of interesting speakers. And the school official sent out the notice that this was happening. And she got fired. Because she didn't present the other . . . you know, she didn't talk about the other side. Can you believe that? But that's the kind of intimidation that actually happens. And it's really scary."