Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Evolution Textbook Sticker

Sticker Shock by Francis Beckwith

This article by Francis Beckwith provides some insight into and critical analysis of the court's decision that the infamous "Evolution Sticker" in textbooks was unconstitutional. In case you haven't run across this sticker, it was placed in some biology text books in a public school system in Georgia and read:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

A couple of Beckwith's comments:

That’s too bad. [The unconstitutional ruling] The issues raised by this case go beyond the value of one little label. While the Cobb County sticker has its problems, what is far more troubling is how the court’s analysis unfairly limits the rights of religious citizens to participate in the political process.

Their real purpose is quite modest (and entirely constitutional): They want public schools to teach the children of their community that it is rationally permissible to entertain doubts that materialism is the whole story of the order and nature of things.

For some more information on the constitutionality of teaching something other than materialistic Darwinism in schools, see this post.

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