Rick Perry

Rick Perry recently had a discussion with a young girl about evolution and creationism. He said something to the effect that evolution was 'just an idea'. He said, " . . . in Texas we teach both. . .isn't that fair?"

No. It's neither true nor fair.

First off Texas recently turned down all additions to their textbooks that dealt with creation 'science' and in fact bolstered the factual and logical deductions of evolution.

Secondly, no it's not fair on two counts.

1. Science is not in the business of presenting every crack-pot idea that comes along (nor is any other discipline come to think of it) but rather the proven theories of science, how they came about (evidence and experiment), and science as a process of gaining truth. We don't (we meaning those of us north of the Mason-Dixon line) don't teach creation 'science' in the same way we don't teach the earth is flat, that gravity is stickiness, or that the universe is steady state and non-changing. We don't because those theories are unworkable, dis-proven, or un-provable.

2. As was decided in Pennsylvania, creation 'science' is just a transparent attempt to sneak Christianity into the public schools. It's faith based plain and simple and therefore has no place in our public schools.

It's sad that now 150 years after Darwin we have to keep beating this drum but beat it we must. Rick Perry is either that deluded by his fundamentalist position or, as I suspect, simply knows that if he says anything to the effect that evolution is 'just an idea' that that turns into significant numbers of votes. Let's not have that work. If your faith (and you are welcome to it) is threatened by well-founded work by decades of honest working scientists then perhaps it is your faith that should be challenged or re-thought and not Darwin.