Evolution
Free Speech
Science Education
The Non-Battle of Orleans
The school board of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, chose to prohibit the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in its schools. The vote was unanimous and the reasons offered were all religious — or, rather, anti-religious. We don’t want that taught in schools. However, no evidence is offered that either creationism or ID actually are taught in Orleans. The rule seems rather to be a sly snub, a way of intimidating teachers from allowing any discussion of Darwin’s theory of evolution to raise scientific criticisms.
The comments following an article on this subject are frustrating to read. On one side you have some angry religious people who think that the Bible should be in the science class. On the other you have angry secularists demanding that it be kept out.
No one attempts to distinguish between young earth creationism, which refers to the six-day Biblical creation account, and ID which refers to scientific evidence for design in nature, but does not propose a specific designer.
And no one says “boo!” about the growing scientific evidence against Darwin’s theory of evolution by random mutation acted upon by natural selection.