God v. Darwin, Round 2

As we near the 80th anniversary of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, the right wing continues to wage war on science, with the battleground being the minds of school kids everywhere. In some places it's pretty blunt - in Wisconsin (Wisconsin! holy hell . . .) a local school board has decided to teach creation "science" alongside evolution in biology classes. This flies in the face of not only the very definition of "science," but Supreme Court precedent which says teaching creationism violates the First Amendment separation of church and state. Meanwhile, in a more subtle version of the same debate, a Georgia (now, that's more like it) federal court is getting ready to decide if a local school board can include a disclaimer sticker on the front of its evolution-bearing textbooks. The disclaimer says that evolution is "theory, not fact," which is true as far as it goes, but I'm skeptical of the sticker-pushers' claim that they only want students to "keep an open mind."

Look, I'm all for teaching about different creation myths (and there are some doozies out there)in a comparative religion or sociology class, but the Bible has no place in a science classroom. Period.