Injecting religion into the science curricula of public schools is often a hidden goal of state legislation addressing the teaching of evolution.
Zachary Zavislak (photograph); Kursten Bracchi (styling)

Key Concepts

• Creationists continue to agitate against the teaching of evolution in public schools, adapting their tactics to match the roadblocks they encounter.
• Past strategies have included portraying creationism as a credible alternative to
  evolution and disguising it under the name “intelligent design.”
• Other tactics misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial and pretend that advocates for teaching creationism are defending academic freedom.

Professors routinely give advice to students but usually while their charges are still in school. Arthur Landy, a distinguished professor of molecular and cell biology and biochemistry at Brown University, recently decided, however, that he had to remind a former premed student of his that “without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn’t make sense.”

The sentiment was not original with Landy, of course. Thirty-six years ago geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, a major contributor to the foundations of modern evolutionary theory, famously told the readers of The American Biology Teacher that “nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.” Back then, Dobzhansky was encouraging biology teachers to present evolution to their pupils in spite of religiously motivated opposition. Now, however, Landy was addressing Bobby Jindal—the governor of the state of Louisiana—on whose desk the latest antievolution bill, the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, was sitting, awaiting his signature.

   
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