Word: creationists
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Gould, a student of the history of science, sees the creationist resurgence as a continuation of long-standing historical trends rather than an alarming, new development. Sitting amidst the clutter in his cavernous office at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he says, "Creationism has always been around. It's only coming up now because with Reagan's politics and the general turn to the right, what was right-wing nuttiness ten years ago is now, if not central, at least acceptable...
Gould has been active in the anti-creationist movement for years--making speeches, writing letters and articles and testifying--and remains confident that the courts will strike down any laws that require "equal time" for the teaching of the Biblical interpretation of human development in public schools. Of recently passed laws in Arkansas and Louisiana, Gould says, "Everybody's virtually convinced that the laws will not stand up--I can't imagine even the Burger court, for all its nonsense on other matters, not finding the laws blatantly unconstitutional...
Gould says it's not hard to trace the change in creationist tactics that have brought the movement its current success. "Several (pro-creationist) bills were declared un- constitutional in the mid-seventies, so the creationists had to change their tactics. They're still what they always were--namely, pushing fundamentalist Christianity--but they realize the courts won't let them do that anymore. So now thay have this bogus argument: they say it has nothing to do with religion, that creationism isn't Christian, that it'a just a scientific alternative...
...does the creationist upsurge bother him, coming as it does just as his career in evolution is flourishing? "It bothers me," he says, "but for all its latching on the rhetoric of equal time, it's basically an old-fashioned, anti-intellectual attack against toleration, and an attempt to impose dogma on the schools. The only way it hurts my career is that it takes up too much damn time--people always asking you to write articles and be on the radio and t.v., and I don't learn anything by doing that. You don't learn anything by fighting...
...science teachers now must teach creationism as well as evolution, which version of creationist dogma do they offer -Christian, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or polytheism? Religion-based versions of creation should be given in a religion course, not in a science class...