There Is No Controversy To Teach!

It’s Darwin’s month, so I’m just going to keep rolling with evolution-related posts for a while.

Yesterday I had a little fun with a frivolous lawsuit filed by some barely literate “former science teacher” challenging the teaching of evolution.  While that was nothing to worry about, this bill introduced into the New Mexico legislature certainly is:

House Bill 302, introduced in the New Mexico House of Representatives on February 1, 2011…is the fifth antievolution bill to be introduced in a state legislature in 2011. …[T]he bill would require teachers to be allowed to inform students “about relevant scientific information regarding either the scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses” pertaining to “controversial” scientific topics; The bill would protect teachers from “reassignment, termination, discipline or other discrimination for doing so.”

In an effort to make sure that no one thinks this is about any kind of RELIGIOUS controversy, the bill also states:

This section only protects the teaching of scientific information and specifically does not protect the promotion of any religion, religious doctrine or religious belief.

…”controversial scientific topic” includes biological origins, biological evolution…and other scientific topics that are often viewed by society as controversial….

But as the Bard once wrote, “There’s the rub.” There is no “scientific information” that calls evolution into question that is not “religious doctrine or religious belief” in disguise.

There simply do not exist any scientific controversies about the fundamentals of the theory of evolution that do not turn on a religious issue.  There are plenty of scientific disagreements about the finer details of the theory, but there is not one single reputable scientist – NOT ONE – who rejects the framework theory of biological evolution.

Groups like Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute would like us to think otherwise.  They also claim that they can “scientifically” prove that Noah’s flood really occurred or that modern humans co-existed with dinosaurs.  But no rational person could mistake that for “scientific information.”