The Daily Scoop will delve into a controversial area today. Spurred by the direction a recent discussion took and coupled with the discovery of the article here examining some intersections of religion, policy and science, the debate between Theory of Evolution and creationism will be the theme today. The article here gives some insight into the recent Tennessee bill that was seen by many as an open door to bring intelligent design (or creationism) into the classroom, to be taught along side scientific theory. The author provides some good insight into the minds of the legislators who presented the bill and their astonishment over the controversy it created. It’s well worth reading along with the linked companion article it refers to at the beginning. The second part of today’s Daily Scoop is a video about a landmark court case in Dover, Pennsylvania involving the teaching of intelligent design in the high school there.
From the Economist:
MY COLLEAGUE wrote a characteristically thoughtful post on the non-binarism of scientific and faith-based belief systems. As it happens, my piece in this week’s paper is about Tennessee’s newly enacted law protecting teachers “from discipline for teaching scientific subjects in an objective manner”. I spent a large part of last week discussing this bill with scientists and civil-libertarians, many of whom see the bill as a Trojan horse for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design; with the bill’s supporters in Tennessee’s legislature, who seem genuinely amazed that the bill has stirred controversy; and with a representative from the Discovery Institute, whence the bill’s inspiration came. In this battle generally—that is, in the battle over whether humans evolved through natural selection or were created ex nihilo by God a few millennia back, and in the battle over whether the latter theory has a place in science classrooms—I side with the first camp.
But I found it difficult not to feel a measure of sympathy for the bill’s sponsors, Representative Bill Dunn and Senator Bo Watson, both of whom seemed genuinely surprised by the furore it had caused.
