I suppose that if the official White House website has a
President's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives link, I shouldn't be surprised that creationists are gleefully taking advantage of Bush's Nov. 2 win to push their own "church and state are one and the same" agenda.
You might remember the story about the stickers in high school biology texts in Cobb County, Georgia, warning that "evolution is a theory, not a fact".
Well, let's go north to Dover, Pennsylvania, kids, where you can learn all about "intelligent design"...
Read on...
The front page of the 12/26/04 Washington Post has the story:
Evolution Shares a Desk With 'Intelligent Design'
Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I'm 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. "What's wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"
Charles Darwin, squeeze over. The school board in this small town in central Pennsylvania has voted to make the theory of evolution share a seat with another theory: God probably designed us.
If it survives a legal test, this school district of about 2,800 students could become the first in the nation to require that high school science teachers at least mention the "intelligent design" theory. This theory holds that human biology and evolution is so complex as to require the creative hand of an intelligent force.
"The school board has taken the measured step of making students aware that there are other viewpoints on the evolution of species," said Richard Thompson, of the Thomas More Law Center, which represents the board and describes its overall mission as defending "the religious freedom of Christians."
Here's what one parent (and former teacher) has to say:
"It's not science; it's a theocratic idea," Bryan Rehm, a former science teacher in Dover and a father of four. "We don't have enough time for science in the classroom as it is -- this is just inappropriate."
And the bold emphasis in the following is mine:
This is a battle fought in many corners of the nation. In Charles County, school board members recently suggested discarding biology textbooks "biased towards evolution." In Cobb County, in suburban Atlanta, the local school board ordered that stickers be placed inside the front cover of science textbooks stating: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact." State education boards in Ohio and Kansas have wrestled with this issue, as well.
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to settle this question, ruling that Louisiana could not make creationism a part of the science curriculum. The state, Justice William J. Brennan wrote, cannot "restructure the science curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint." (Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, arguing that creationism could be "valuable scientific data that has been censored from the classrooms by an embarrassed scientific establishment.")
Excuse me? Data? WTF?
It's not just that this is "theocratic"; it's the clever use of "intelligent design" instead of "creationism" that bothers me:
Of late, conservative school boards have launched a counteroffensive, often marching under the banner of intelligent design. This theory has lingered on the margins of mainstream scientific discourse with just enough intellectual heft to force its way into some discussions of evolutionary theory.
Oh hell, forget it. Let's just go back to the days when we believed that foul odors and/or God caused bubonic plague:
In a world in which religion and magic provided the explanatory framework for life's mysteries, supernatural forces were blamed. Some suspected miasmas--noxious exhalations of the earth--were responsible. Others blamed the wrath of God, while still others pointed to a malign conjunction of the stars.