5 States Gunning to Make Their Kids As Scientifically Illiterate As Possible by Teaching Creationist B.S. | Alternet

In the US however, the battle to bring creationism and intelligent design into the classroom is alive and well. Ever since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in which the teaching of evolution was found to be a violation of Tennessee law, banning the teaching of human evolution in any publicly funded school.

The battle finally came to a head in 1987 when the Supreme Court heard Edwards v. Aguillard, in which Don Aguilard took the state of Louisiana to court over a law that required that creationism be taught in public schools.

The case, which made it all the way to the Supreme Court dealt a massive blow to the religious right when the court ruled that teaching creationism in publicly funded schools was unconstitutional because the original law was specifically intended to promote a particular religion.

A similar blow was dealt decades later when in 2005 when a US District Court ruled that intelligent design was not scientific and even encompassed creationism and teaching either to be unconstitutional.

So one would think that since both creation myths that are endorsed by the religious right have been struck down in the highest courts in the country that this debate would be settled. How one earth could we still be fighting the creationist proponents when they have been dealt solid deathblows?

According to the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization that tracks anti-science bills around the US that deal with evolution and global warming, almost every southern and bible-belt state in the US has at the very least attempted to pass education bills that either remove evolution from the curriculum or make it legal for teachers to offer alternative theories to human origins.

The states fighting to pass these laws are predictable if you pay attention to any national politics, the more red a state votes, the more it fights to remove science education from its schools or at the very least, replace science classes with a form of Bible study.

So what states and bills have been the worst to science education? Here are five examples of states either enacted or relentlessly fighting to pass anti-evolution and or anti-science bills to change their educational standards to appease the Christian Right.

5 States Gunning to Make Their Kids As Scientifically Illiterate As Possible by Teaching Creationist B.S. | Alternet