Read these two articles for Wed May 13

Louisiana gov. signs controversial education bill
Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:33pm EDT Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page[-] Text [+]

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law a bill that critics say could allow for the teaching of "creationism" alongside evolution in public schools.

Jindal, a conservative Christian who has been touted by pundits as a potential vice presidential running mate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, signed the legislation earlier this week.

The law will allow schools if they choose to use "supplemental materials" when discussing evolution but does not specify what the materials would be.

It states that authorities "shall allow ... open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning."

It also says that it "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion."

Jindal's office declined on Friday to comment. The bill was backed by the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian group, and the Discovery Institute, which promotes the theory of "intelligent design" -- a theory that maintains that the complexity of life points to a grand designer.

"Intelligent design is currently not in the Louisiana state science standards and so could not be taught. But this allows scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory to be taught," said John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Critics say intelligent design is biblical creation theory by another name and that the new legislation is an attempt to water down instruction about evolution.

"Louisiana has a long and unfortunate history of trying to substitute dogma for science in ... classrooms," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, an executive director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious liberty watchdog.

The group says similar legislation has been attempted previously in other states such South Carolina, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri and Florida. Similar battles have also taken places at the school board level in Kansas.

The teaching of evolution -- the basis of modern biology rooted in 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection -- has become one of the leading battlefields in the America's "culture wars."

Many U.S. conservative Christians reject evolution and believe in the biblical story of creation. A nationwide survey conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 45 percent of U.S. adults did not think evolution was the best explanation for the origins of human life.



Evidence and Evolution: A Controversial Theory— Rob Bartlett
THE IMPORTANCE OF evolutionary theory for biology can hardly be overstated. An oft-quoted remark by the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky captures this: "Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." The applications of genetics—the foundation of evolutionary theory—are widespread and profound in technology as well as basic biology.

One of the reasons that governments and private industry were willing to sink billions of dollars into sequencing the human genome—then mice, fruit flies, roundworms and other organisms—is that they expect to get big profits from comparing the DNA (basic genetic material) from genes in different species. One benefit comes from identifying mutated forms of genes responsible for diseases or associated with higher risks of developing diseases, and potentially the development of drug treatments for them.

Yet any casual reader of newspapers cannot fail to have noticed a steady stream of articles dealing with evolution—not articles detailing the research of scientists studying aspects of the history of life, but cases where local or state boards of education or legislators introduce challenges to the central paradigm in biology of evolution, in the name of "teaching the controversy" or allowing the "evidence contradicting evolution." The recent case most in the news is that of Dover, PA, whose school board was sued by parents who opposed the introduction of Intelligent Design (ID) into their curriculum. Specifically the board required that teachers read a statement asserting that "because Darwin's theory is a theory it continues to be tested"…and "is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence." It then introduces Intelligent Design as an alternative explanation to evolution.

In late December (after the voters in Dover had kicked the "Intelligent Design" proponents off the school board), the judge hearing the case made a sweeping ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, labeling ID not scientific but merely a mutation of "scientific creationism" and thus religious in essence, violating the separation of church and state. The 139-page opinion declined to rule narrowly, and instead was a historical listing of both the legal antecedents of this case and a detailed refutation of the scientific claims of ID.

Not surprisingly, proponents of ID like the Discovery Institute's associate director, Dr. John West, decried the decision saying that "Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur." Allusions to activist judges are somewhat ironic in this case as the judge is a Republican, appointed by President Bush.

Although this ruling is nothing new, but merely affirms similar rulings of the past, it is clear that the "controversy" over evolution will not go away. During 2005 there were dozens of other instances where legislators introduced bills supporting the teaching of ID, or where state boards of educations changed their standards to weaken the teaching of evolution, despite widespread unanimity in the scientific community that support the primacy of evolution as a unifying theory in biology.

While much of this legislation is introduced with little chance of it being enacted into law, in some places, like Kansas and Ohio, state boards of education have changed their state science standards to introduce "controversy" over the theory of evolution or allow teaching of "alternative theories" to evolution such as ID.

Even a state like Illinois, which has a standard that reads "Describe processes by which organisms change over time using evidence from comparative anatomy and physiology, embryology, the fossil record, genetics and biochemistry," the "process,"—evolution—is not named. This could be attributed to either caution or cowardice, but in any case it highlights the chilling effect of opposition to evolution.