More Trouble from the Anti-Evolution Crowd

Dover, Pennsylvania joins the ranks of American public school systems teaching anti-evolution nonsense in its high schools:

“The school board has ordered that biology teachers at Dover Area High School make students "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution. Their ninth-grade curriculum now must include the theory of "intelligent design," which posits that life is so complex and elaborate that some greater wisdom has to be behind it."

(http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/30/MNGVNA3PE11.DTL)

The school board claims it’s just offering “intelligent design” as an “alternative,” but as everyone who has followed this intelligent design scheme knows, and as the proponents themselves admit further down in the article, this is just the latest in the Christian Right’s attempt to impose their religious worldview on the public school system.

Patricia Nason at the Institute for Creation Research, the world leader in creation science, said her organization and other activist groups are encouraging people who share conservative religious beliefs to seek positions on local school boards.

"The movement is to get the truth out," Nason said by telephone from El Cajon (San Diego County). "We Christians have as much right to be involved in politics as evolutionists. We've been asleep for two generations, and it's time for us to come back."

Emboldened by their contribution to President Bush's re-election, conservative religious activists are using intelligent design as a new strategy of attacking evolution without mentioning God, Scott said.

"There is a new energy as a result of the last election, and I anticipate an even busier couple of years coming on," Scott said.

She called intelligent design "creationism lite" masquerading as science. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism -- which holds that God created the world about 6,000 years ago -- in public schools on the grounds of separation of church and state.

John West of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the main sponsor and promoter of intelligent design, defended the theory he says addresses "evolution follies."

Look, if Conservative Christians/Fundamentalist Christians/Wingers of whatever stripe want to believe that God created the world in six days 6000 years ago, you know what? That’s their business.

If they want to corrupt our education system, and destroy our system of science, and make our future scientists less competent, well, that’s our problem.

They’re enemies of the truth, these people. And Bushco is their ally.

The article is a good one, btw – extremely thorough, and gives a list of other schools and counties that have jumped on this bandwagon.