New Scientist has published a worrying feature focusing on the news that on 28th June, The Science Education Act was passed as law in the State of Louisiana in the US. This piece of legislature now allows teachers in this US state to present non-scientific alternatives to evolution, global warming and cloning — including ideas related to Intelligent Design, the proposition that life is too complicated to have arisen without the help of a supernatural agent.
Opponents fear that Louisiana teachers are now free to present evolution and other targeted topics as matters of debate rather than broadly accepted science, and could have national implications.
The act is designed to slip ID in “through the back door”, says Barbara Forrest, who is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and an expert in the history of creationism, and who has previously argue against pro-ID legislation. She adds that the bill’s language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of “open and objective discussion”, is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial.
• Read the full story on the New Scientist web site
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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I think, in the interests of fairness, if they can include ID in the science textbooks, we should make sure that the theory of evolution gets a fair airing in the bible… you know, for an ‘alternative’ viewpoint.