The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has thrown out the trial court decision ruling that evolution disclaimers on science textbooks were unconstitutional. For more information visit Discovery Institute’s Cobb County Trial resource page here. In a unanimous decision the federal three-judge panel –including both Democratic and Republican appointees– stopped short of deciding the constitutionality of the stickers, and instead sent the case back to the trial court judge with instructions to hold more evidentiary hearings on the issue. “This decision is a victory as it throws out the problematic ruling from the trial court,” said Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Discovery Institute. “Essentially, the appellate judges found that some of the findings of the lower court Read More ›

According to a report from the Montreal (CA) Gazette some parents in the Quebec town of Salluit don’t want their children learning about evolution. Alexandre April, who teaches French and physical science to students in Grades 7 and 8, said he was told repeatedly by the principal to stop teaching evolution, for fear of hurting their students’ religious beliefs. I suspect that the parents are more concerned that their students are being taught evolution dogmatically, without any exposure to the science that challenges it. The way to avoid these kind of problems of course is to teach the scientific evidence for evolution, as well as the scientific evidence against it. Were they to teach evolution critically, students would be more Read More ›

Last year a few incautious university administrators (here’s one, here’s another) tried to start an academic shutdown of discussion of intelligent design on college campuses, and especially in college courses. Fortunately, such an obviously unAmerican act as censoring an idea, didn’t really catch fire except with the most strident Darwinistas (and here).