Of course it’s about religion. How could it be about anything else?

I’m talking about a push among members of the Texas State Board of Education to ensure that textbooks cover the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolutionary theory. That mandate was already snuck into the state curriculum standards in the late 1980s, but little was done about it “because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution,” according to an article in the New York Times.

Now they may have that power. “Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design,” the Times says, “and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry…”

The board chairman, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and creationist who believes the earth is thousands of years old (and not the billions of years cited by the vast majority of scientists), argues that the case for evolution “is not there.” But he says his rejection of evolution -- and, presumably, his insistence that Texas textbooks point out its “weaknesses” -- is not made on religious grounds.

Not on religious grounds? The Board of Education isn’t going after Germ Theory, or Color Theory, or the Theory of Gravitation -- although, if you look, there are weaknesses in all of these, just as there are in any scientific theory that attempts to explain how the natural world works. The board just happens to have focused on evolution.

The repercussions from this debate won’t end in Texas. Textbook makers routinely defer to the request of their big-state clients so they won’t have to tailor their books to every market. That could be bad news -- not just for schoolchildren in Texas, but for the science literacy of public school students across the United States.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor