Despite Scopes, Evolution Still on Trial

AP ^ | 7/9/05 | Bill Poovey

[Crackingham]

Jim Sullivan stood outside the Rhea County Courthouse and recalled the carnival-like atmosphere during the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, when the teaching of evolution was put on trial.

"They had fights on all these corners and people all over the place," said Sullivan, 85, who remembers seeing Bible-toting preachers and monkeys on leashes.

As the town prepares for its annual re-enactment of the trial here eight decades later, debate over teaching evolution lives on.

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said it is increasingly difficult to teach American students the basics of evolution.

"We have been facing more anti-evolution activity in the last six months than we have ever faced in a comparable period before," Scott said Friday.

In Kansas, the state school board could change science standards to include criticism of evolution. In Cobb County, Ga., labels describing evolution as a "theory, not a fact" were required in some textbooks before a court overturned the order.

Scott said 31 states this year have had "some kind of incident, such as efforts to get creationism taught or limit teaching of evolution."

[RadioAstronomer]

As a law, it has been modified by relativity, but on a general basis the calculation holds true.

See post 79. :-)

[D-fendr]

Buddhism is 26 centuries old. Is it a religion?

I don't think it is too big a stretch that if you say "there is no such thing as God," or if you say, "nothing transcends material reality," you are making a religious statement.

thanks for your reply.

[Dimensio]

Sounds like the beginnings of another Lady Hope myth.