Louisiana condemns Darwin
2001-05-04 16:41:13+00 by
Dan Lyke
2 comments
A those wacky... well... what the hell category does Louisiana fall into anyway? Louisiana legislature passes resolution condemning Darwin:
"Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all
instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently superior to others," reads the Legislature's statement, which was approved 9-5 by the state's House Education Committee.
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#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:38+00 by:
other_todd
Sigh. As an ex-Louisianian, I know that fifty people will now send me this Salon link (maybe they already have and I just haven't gotten around to reading it). It seems like Louisiana is one of the last safe scapegoats for ridicule in the country, and I don't like it.
To me, the key paragraph of the Salon article is that several other states - including some Northern ones - are trying similarly ridiculous runarounds to avoid having to teach evolution. The threat of creationism is not confined to Louisiana, nor even to the South. But do people write articles ridiculing those nutcases in Montana? They do not.
Mind you, my home state IS nuts. But I think it gets disproportionate abuse.
Darwin, although brilliant, was a man of his time and probably was fairly racist. But teaching evolution - and just as importantly though not mentioned by Salon, teaching the germane history so we can understand what made Darwin tick - is ultimately the best weapon AGAINST racism. Once again the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.
But Louisiana is far from the only state trying to drain the tub.
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:38+00 by:
Dan Lyke
I think that when Kansas was doing similarly stupid things, Kansas got a lot of crap. It's not that Louisiana's getting singled out, it's that it happens to be doing something stupid right now; I think you're just more sensitive to it 'cause the name leaps out from the noise.
And I also agree that Darwin gets a lot of credit, but the theories he popularized have evolved quite a bit since then, and this is the classic "let's misinterpret someone whose ideas are ancient and try to paint current science with that brush" bait and switch that we're so used to seeing from the religious wackos.