Image: Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons
Well, here we go. A petition has been started to urge minority-vice-president-elect Mike Pence to enforce a “nationwide moratorium on the teaching of evolution.”
The petition says that:
It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwinism is an anti-Christian atheistic dogma masquerading as science. According to renown philosopher of science, Professor Michael Ruse, himself an ardent evolutionist, there is no doubt that the theory of evolution represents a philosophical worldview: “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity.”
This is the kind of activism we can expect for the next four years from the Christian Right, especially from the incredibly scientific illiterate ones. (read: all of them.)
States such as Louisiana have already worked at passing laws that allow teachers to challenge the theory of evolution and make students aware of “alternative ‘theories'” such as creationism.
The real irony is that the petition claims that the moratorium will “protect students from indoctrination,” and that they feel the teaching of such a theory not helpful to a K-12 education.
The petitioners are seeking 1,000 signatures and so far don’t have 100. It seems most comments on the page are mocking the petition, so that’s a good sign.
One commenter said:
“Scientists think their [sic] sooo smart with all their ‘degrees’ and ‘theories backed with many independent lines of evidence’,
Kids should not be taught evolution… or cosmology or atomic theory or mathematics or inconvenient history (e.g. slavery and Indians), Basically, keep from them anything that goes against my ideology or makes my brain hurt.
USA USA!”
Another nailed the whole point of the petition by commenting that “If evolution is true, that would mean the bible has significant errors. So we can’t let our children find that out.”
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