August 23, 2002

Another evolution ruling

Georgia School Board Requires Balance of Evolution and Bible
This should be titled …“Balance” of Evolution and Bible. The Intelligent Design people have done an excellent job of framing the debate in very reasonable terms: “evolution is a theory, not a fact”, “you ought to be able to open up discussion of creationism”, teachers should teach “all sides of an issue”. This is, of course, anti-science bullshit. This would be one thing to do in a college, where the students are presumably resourceful enough to make up their own minds. Maybe not, though, which is probably why so many people (44 percent, IIRC) believe in creationism. (Update: according to this poll, it’s: 44% strict creationism, 39% God-directed evolution, and 10% non God-directed evolution. Normal poll grains of salt, etc.)

There is tons of material all over the place on this. Good disccusion is in a recent Physics Today series: Part 1 and Part 2, and the Talk.Origins archive is excellent. Pointers from those will probably take you a month to read.

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