The National Centre for Science Education is an organisation set up to defend the teaching of education in public schools in the USA.  It has attracted a lot of attention because of its involvement in legal issues about science teaching, and controversies about the way that its material implies that the compatibility of science and religion should be actively promoted.  The consensus seems to be that the NCSE is doing good work, but with some debate over its approach.

I am going to propose a different point of view.  What the NCSE is doing is a waste of resources, and may even be actively problematic for the teaching of science and reason.  I have come to this conclusion after reading an excellent post by Russell Blackford about the rather astonishing alliance between the NCSE and the Catholic Church.  What is the point of concentrating on the specific issue of evolution when you are sharing a platform with an organisation that is fundamentally anti-science?  That may be a harsh statement to make, but I believe it is justified.  The Catholic Church doesn't just deal with supposed historical supernaturalism.  It is actively promoting people to sainthood based on reports of recent miracles; it insists that some humans are walking around right now with magic powers. The Church also interferes in matters of science, campaigning against stem cell research, and producing misleading propaganda about the effectiveness of condoms.  The doctrine of the Catholic Church limits the use of reason, claiming that science and reason can only go so far, with revealed spiritual wisdom being more powerful.  What the Catholic Church is after is tamed science and reason, kept within limits, willing to lie down and roll over when the Vatican says so.  That is not the way that science should be taught, and to ally with such an organisation makes a worrying political statement about education.

The other reason I wonder what the point of the NCSE is is because have what seems to be an odd confession to make.  I was never taught evolution at school.  Not directly.  It was pointed out that some organisms were simpler and "more primitive" than others, and the fact of evolution was so obvious that it didn't need to be a subject in its own right.  What I was taught was a scientific way to think, and how to investigate based on reasoning and experimentation.  This meant that evolution, when I found out about it, was an obvious concept, and not something I needed specifically justified.

Why choose a specific battleground between science and religion and struggle furiously (showing little progress) to win that territory while conceding ground to religion on other matters of reason?  Does there even have to be a fight in that area?  What does it achieve?  Perhaps this is picking an unnecessary fight that Creationists want.