Newsflash: Evolution Deemed Controversial in Alabama
November 11th, 2005 by Michael PeacockThis appeared in my morning paper - and was apparently an AP story:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The [Alabama] state school board voted unanimously Thursday to keep a disclaimer in biology textbooks that describes evolution as “a controversial theory” after no one in the audience disputed the label, which has generated heated debate in the past.
The board, in its vote to accept a committee’s recommendations of science textbooks, agreed to continue carrying the disclaimer, which calls evolution “controversial” in the first paragraph and adds in the second that any statement about the origin of life is “not fact.”
Just in case you were wondering, Evolution is highly controversial in Alabama. Not so much that it’s a scientific theory that is widely accepted by the scientific community, but because it presents an alrternative explanation to the origin of species that is accepted as an article of faith by many in the religious community. Further, in case you were wondering, Alabama is a pretty religiously active state. We’ve got God battling the Devil in the sky or something, saints and angels flying about doing whatever saints and angels are supposed to do, images of the crucifix appearing in piles of hurricane debris, and the only school board in the country that insists that evolution is controversial.
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