Increasingly generic language = there is less and less of a fit between Darwin’s followers views and the realities of biology, as known today. So it would not take much to offend them.
From an Ars Technica roundup :
As tracked by the National Center for Science Education, four states are considering a total of five bills; Missouri has the honor of having two bills going at once, while Virginia and Oklahoma have one. The Virginia bill is fairly typical of these. It would prevent local school boards and administrations from punishing teachers who help students “analyze, critique, and review” scientific theories in their classrooms. In the past, these bills have singled out evolution as a topic that’s meant to be critiqued—one Missouri bill still does—but lately that’s often been dropped in favor of generic language like “scientific controversies” (see, for example, the Oklahoma bill).
Based on the evolutionary history of these bills, it’s clear that they were originally intended to encourage teachers who wished to introduce spurious criticisms of evolution, many of which have been published by the creationist and intelligent design movements. However, in an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the bills’ authors have been turning to increasingly generic language.
The thing is, there is so much flimflam going on in science education today that generic language creates lots more opportunities.
No one expects criticism of Darwinism from Darwinists. Especially when they make it so abundantly clear that their theory functions as an unfalsifiable metaphysic for them as well as an organizer for biology class curricula. But anyone surveying actual science literature today will find abundant materials to help students get past “education” to grasp, in some part, the reality: Just a couple that whistled through recently (no time for more):
Paper dates origin of life at 9.7 billion years ago (way before Earth)—only way seen to even try to address complexity issues
Life originated only fifteen million years after the Big Bang? (ditto)
Tree of intelligence now matchsticks?: Plants communicate? (Darwinism hindered serious work on this question.)
Science mag admits, DNA studies shake tree of animal life Deep complexity appeared early, did not evolve by slow Darwinian process that we know of.
Epigenetics: A look at a pioneer and his field The light goes on, and the selfish gene’s corpse is lying there.
And that’s only stuff that whistled past the News desk here in the last few days. There is a world out there, and it isn’t Darwin’s. But it is the world of the cash cow school system: the big three textbook publishers, the teachers’ unions, and the people who locate jails depending on the public school population. So many prudent people just pay their property taxes as a ransom for the right to stay out of the sinkhole—and send their own offspring elsewhere if by any chance they can afford to.
So what Darwin’s friends in the legislature must now do is make laws against uttering or alluding to anything not written in a textbook they approve.
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