Editorial: Evolution critic sets scope on state

Wednesday, March 1, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

A proposed amendment to the Nevada Constitution would require teachers to instruct students that evolution is a theory flawed by unanswered questions.

According to the Associated Press, the proposal is the subject of a petition filed with the secretary of state's office by Steve Brown, a Las Vegas masonry contractor. Brown must collect 83,184 petition signatures by June 20 to place the proposal on the November ballot. Nevada voters would have to approve the measure this year and again in 2008 to amend the state Constitution.

Brown, a Democrat and member of a nondenominational church, told the AP that he just wants teachers to "start telling the truth about evolution," adding that "evolution has occurred, but parts of it are flat-out unproven theories."

His petition calls for informing students by the end of 10th grade that "although most scientists agree that Darwin's theory of evolution is well supported, a small minority of scientists do not agree." Students also would have to be taught that some scientists believe the theory is "mathematically impossible" and that no fossil of a "missing link" exists.

What's clearly evident, however, is that this proposal amounts to little more than a thinly veiled attempt to create a foothold for intelligent design proponents to teach religion-based theories about human existence in Nevada's public schools. Intelligent design holds that some natural processes are so complex that a higher intelligence must have created them. Nevada now joins a procession of states faced with similar measures.

Utah House members on Monday rejected a bill that would have required public schools to teach that evolution cannot be empirically proven. Ohio Board of Education members last month scuttled a science standard that called for encouraging students to seek evidence debunking evolution. In December a federal judge barred a Dover, Pa., school district's plan to add intelligent design theory to its science curriculum. Voters in that community, a month earlier, ousted the school board members who set the policy. Hopefully, Kansas voters will do the same to state Board of Education members who in November adopted a science curriculum that teaches evolution is a flawed theory.

Intelligent design, creationism, scientific disclaimers - no matter what it is called or how it is packaged, these plans represent the same unacceptable concept of teaching religion in public schools. Religious teachings have value, but they also have proper venues. Those are not inside public schools.