Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial. That case was the most famous challenge to the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States. Our country has advanced since 1925. We are in the age of genomics, where the DNA of many species is rapidly being sequenced, revealing the secrets of how life evolves at the molecular level. Gene-editing tools like CRISPR are being used to cure people of sickle cell anemia and other diseases with gene therapy.
However, the United States remains woefully behind many other countries in the public’s understanding of evolution. New scientific tools like CRISPR need an informed public to understand, accept or reject some uses of these tools (e.g., the creation of “designer” babies by genetic modification of human embryos).
One way to obstruct the public’s scientific understanding of life on Earth and its evolution over nearly 4 billion years is to challenge it with alternative nonscientific viewpoints. The Louisiana law forcing classrooms in public schools to post the Ten Commandments can be seen as one way to intrude on the separation of church and state enshrined in our Constitution. Laws like these, based on forcing the promotion of particular religious views, are set up to erode the First Amendment and can ultimately be used to corrode the teaching of science in public schools.
Louisiana already has a law, misleadingly named the Louisiana Science Education Act, that allows public school teachers to provide alternative nonscientific explanations to scientific topics deemed controversial. These laws aim to weaken the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and with that diminishing power should come the expectation of additional intrusions on the teaching of science in public science classrooms.
PROSANTA CHAKRABARTY
Baton Rouge
This post was originally published on here
