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Sunday, February 6th, 2011

Creationists Have Gotten Clever, But There’s Still No Debate Over Evolution

Author:     STEVEN NEWTON
Source:     The Christian Science Monitor
Publication Date:     19-Jan-11
 Link: Creationists Have Gotten Clever, But There’s Still No Debate Over Evolution
Stephan:   If you think about it, the Evolution/Creationist controversy says a great deal about us as a culture. Although there are creationists in other countries, for most of the world science informs history. The fixation on Biblical literalism is distinctly American. On one side are facts. On the other side a story that is, itself, the amalgamation of other stories. It makes moral principles, and presents a metaphysical view, but it has no space time facts. Creationism is a kind of mind control. It is religion pressuring its believers to chose to be willfully ignorant. A trend that is having a damaging effect on our education system and our scientific research.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — As 2011 gets under way, those who care about the integrity of science education are bracing for the latest round of state legislation aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Every year, a host of these bills are filed across the country. In 2008, one was passed in Louisiana, despite protests from scientists and educators. In Oklahoma, State Senator Josh Brecheen (R) has vowed to introduce a bill in the coming legislative session that requires schools to teach ‘all the facts’ on the so-called fallacies of evolution.

The tactics of creationists have evolved since 1925, when Tennessee’s Butler Act forbade the teaching of evolution, and high school biology teacher John Scopes was put on trial for doing so. (Creationists believe that God created the physical universe and all organisms according to the account in Genesis, denying the evolution of species.)

But creationists’ tactics have also evolved since 2005, when a federal court in Pennsylvania established that teaching intelligent design (ID) in public schools is unconstitutional. The judge in the case ruled, ‘ID is not science’ and derives instead from ‘religious strategies that evolved from earlier forms of creationism.’ (Intelligent design holds that ‘certain features of […]

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