Classroom Evolution's Grass-Roots Defender
Va. Group Sees Threat To Darwinist Teaching
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 20, 2005; Page B04
A grass-roots group troubled by recent Republican triumphs and the influence of the Christian right is fighting back in Northern Virginia by defending the teaching of Darwinian evolution, a battleground in the national culture war.
An e-mail last month seeking support from more than 300 local Democratic campaign volunteers and other potential supporters described efforts across the country to challenge evolutionary theory. It warned against "politically infused theological pseudo-science" and said silence risks undermining Virginia schools and weakening the state's economy.
The e-mail was the first shot from an unlikely group led mostly by Vietnam-era protesters who describe their aim as beating Republicans who oppose teaching evolution at their own organizational game. Based in Northern Virginia, the group says its immediate goal is a Fairfax County School Board endorsement of modern Darwinian theory, which faces attacks in many states by Christian groups and education activists.
The group's bigger dream is a statewide repudiation of intelligent design, a movement positing that life is too complex to spring from chemistry and biology alone. Followers, often asserting that a creator must have guided the origins of earth and man, believe public schools would better serve students by teaching unresolved aspects of evolutionary theory.
From Minnesota to Pennsylvania to Georgia to Texas, critics of modern Darwinism have battled to change textbooks and classroom approaches. Politicians, scientists and faith leaders on both sides have joined in the struggle. At hearings in May, the Kansas Board of Education, which has a conservative majority, supported teaching alternatives to evolution, a theory accepted by the vast majority of the scientific establishment....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071901868.html
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