Cincinnati Enquirer

Editorial Page

April 16, 1998

"Panel urges schools to teach evoluton"

Some creationism holdouts still exist

By Robert Greene, The Associated Press

The Cincinnati Enquirer April 10, 1998

WASHINGTON - Evolution should be taught in public schools as "the most important concept to modern biology," a panel of scientists said Thursday in response to efforts to keep the subject out of the classroom.
"There is no debate within the scientific community over whether evolution has occurred, and there is no evidence that evolution has not occurred," the National Academy of Sciences said in a guidebook intended for teachers, parents, school administrators and policy makers.
It says that understanding evolutionary change is essential to understanding vital processes, such as how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.
Evolution still causes trouble for teachers and school officials more than 70 years after John Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law against teaching it and more than a decade after the Supreme Court ruled that public schools cannot teach that God created the universe.
"Many students receive little or no exposure to the most important concept in modern biology," said the guidebook.

An indication of the subject’s sensitivity: The Arizona Board of Education kept the word "evolution" out of its 1996 science standards, although they specify that students learn "how organisms change over time in terms of biological adaptation and genetics."

Scientists protested the omission, and a committee will study the question this year.
The North Carolina House passed a bill last year requiring that evolution be presented as a theory, no fact. And a Christian publisher in Richardson, Texas, Jon Buell, says he’s been getting plenty of orders for a biology textbook, Of Pandas and People, presenting the view that the world is the way it is by design - a term that critics say is a code for creationism.

Moreover, a number of university scholars, including law professor Phillip E. Johnson of the University of California at Berkeley and biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University, have published books and articles challenging evolution. They suggest that life, from cells on up, is too complex to have evolved.

"Our contention is that there is reasonable evidence of intelligent design," said Raymond G. Bohlin, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology and heads the Prove Ministries, Based in Richardson, Texas.