“DarkSyde,” a participant in the The Daily Kos blog, has a lot to say about Bristol-area teacher Larry Booher, who has been asked to put a halt to teaching creationism in high school biology class. Booher, a highly popular teacher, apparently, has been giving students the option to read the book, Creation Battles Evolution, a voluntary, extra credit assignment.
The Daily Kos item strikes me two ways. On the one hand, creationism is not science and should not be taught in a biology class, even as voluntary extra credit. If a student inquires about creationism, I suppose, it would be OK for Booher to suggest a book. But the book should not be a formal part of the curriculum.
(A quick aside to fundamentalist readers who are bound to take issue with me: Evolution is not “just a theory” — it’s a body of science that is so well integrated into other scientific disciplines, from geology to astronomy, molecular biology to genetics, that to describe it as “unproven” is to say that the entire edifice of 21st century science is unproven. That’s not to say there aren’t major unsolved questions regarding how evolution works — just as there are major unsolved questions in astrophysics. But those unsolved questions don’t begin to dismantle the larger body of knowledge confirming the reality of evolution.)
On the other hand, DarkSyde does hyperventilate about the meaning of the Bristol incident. Says the Kos: “This sort of blatant disregard of the Constitution indicates that we are indeed headed – if not into an overt theocracy right now – into a climate which makes theocratic abuses by government officials (like public high school biology teachers) seem reasonable to the majority of folks in our country.”
Get over it, DarkSyde! Mr. Booher has been teaching creationism for 15 years. Was America a theocracy 15 years ago? And, oh, by the way, he’s been told to stop teaching creationism. Secular humanists are extirpating expressions of religion from the public schools, even in culturally conservative areas like Bristol, a whole lot faster than the fundamentalists can inject it back in. Speaking as a Darwinist, and not a religious person at all, I see no signs of “theocracy” at all. You guys are totally hallucinating.
(Thanks to blogger Jesse Stark for pointing out this story.)
