Cast your mind back to 1925, well most of you will have to imagine it since you are young whipper snappers. A noteable trial was taking place in Dayton, Tennessee where a one John Scopes was fined $100 for having the audacity to teach the concept of evolution to his science class. Tennessee had, at the time, a law that forbade the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals". Who knows they may still do.

It seems that the concept that we are at one with the animal world and evolved from forms of humans more primative than ourselves and indeed that we share a common ancestory with, most recently, chimpanzees, gorillas and other high order primates is still a very real problem for fundamentalist USA. Patricia Fuller of Atlanta's Cobb County for example firmly holds the opinion that

God created earth and man in his image. Leave this garbage out of the textbooks. I don't want anybody taking care of me in a nursing home some day to think I came from a monkey."

Unfortunately for Ms Fuller antidiscrimination laws prevent nursing homes from being quite so selective of their staff and I would suspect that shortages of qualified staff in this discipline means that nursing homes can't afford to be that fussy anyway.

Dear Patricia is not confining her dogmatic beliefs to her retirement planning however. She has successfully brow beaten the local educational authorities into placing a sticker on their science text books that said

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

She did this on the basis that

It is unconstitutional to teach only evolution. The school board must allow the teaching of both theories of origin.

The fatal flaw in this argument is that creation is not a scientific theory but rather a religious assertion and has no place in a science class. Whilst fully admitting that US constitutional law is not my strong point I seriously suspect that there is no law that is compelling Ms Fuller to send her children to this school or, even if she does, compelling them to take science.

Anyway, there other parents in her neighbourhood who are equally indignant but this time at the presence of the sticker on the text books. Gina Stubbart says

I'm shocked Cobb County is handling it this way. The average person knows evolution is a widely accepted scientific theory.

Widely accepted or otherwise evolution is science. If you don't want to learn about art don't study Art; if you don't want to learn about History don't study History and if you don't like Science don't study Science.

As you can imagine, there is only one place for matters to be settled in the USA and this is in the courts, everyone sueing everyone and why wouldn't you, it is the American way.

(via Guardian)