{"id":4450,"date":"2011-03-31T04:12:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T11:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4450"},"modified":"2011-03-31T04:12:58","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T11:12:58","slug":"making-monkeys-of-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/making-monkeys-of-tennessee\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Monkeys of Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

It could be that the ghosts of William Jennings Bryant and Clarence Darrow will be polishing their legal skills to so battle once again, if Tennessee Republicans have their way.  They are trying to evade the First Amendment prohibition of taxpayer support for religious doctrine to push creationism into the schools while discrediting evolution.  Although it is not creationism, there is one alternative to evolution that is credible.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"31evol\"Eighty six years after the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial<\/font><\/a> opened Tennessee classrooms to the teaching of evolution, the state House is trying to slam the door shut again. Tennessee\u2019s House Education Committee approved a bill Tuesday in the name of \u201cacademic freedom,\u201d but in reality, it is a thinly veiled attempt to curtail the teaching of evolution. House Speaker Emeritus Jimmy Naifeh (D) has even taken to calling it \u201cthe monkey bill<\/font><\/a>.\u201d From the bill\u2019s summary<\/font><\/a>:<\/font><\/p>\n

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and <\/font>scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming.<\/strong><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Should this bill pass, Tennessee teachers will have official sanction to teach about evolutionary \u201ccontroversies\u201d that simply do not exist. Furthermore, it will allow teachers to teach<\/font><\/a> pseudo-scientific ideas \u2014 such as creationism or intelligent design \u2014 as legitimate scientific theories comparable to evolution\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

In the interest of full disclosure, as a deist, I believe that God had a hand in creation, but that his role was that of the author of the natural laws which produce what sometimes passes as intelligent life on this planet.  I have a right to my beliefs.  I do not have a right to insist that taxpayers fund the propagation of my beliefs, and neither do the pseudo-Christian followers of Republican Supply-side Jesus.<\/font><\/p>\n

However, as I stated above, there is evidence for an alternate theory.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"31devolution\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It could be that the ghosts of William Jennings Bryant and Clarence Darrow will be polishing their legal skills to so battle once again, if Tennessee Republicans have their way.  They are trying to evade the First Amendment prohibition of taxpayer support for religious doctrine to push creationism into the schools while discrediting evolution.  Although […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}