Creationism in Texas Could Go Extinct on Election Day
Teaching creationism in Texas public schools may become illegal next year.
In September, a group of educators chosen by the Texas Education Agency to streamline the state’s science curriculum standards removed portions of four passages that contained creationist language. The new standards must still be approved by the Texas State Board of Education where creationists are fighting to reverse the changes. The board members, unlike the education agency staff, are elected officials. That means the fate of creationism in Texas could be determined on Election Day.
If the decision stands, it would be a major blow to political creationism and the first time in a decade for any state’s creationism policy to be overturned.
Written in 2009, Texas’s creationist standards include a requirement for students to learn “all sides” of scientific theories like evolution and to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.” They also call for students to analyze the “sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.”
Complexity of the cell is a stand in for irreducible complexity, the creationist belief that the structure and function of cell components (and pieces of other larger body parts) are too interdependent to have formed through evolution, piece by piece over many generations. Instead, creationists posit that cells were created fully formed and all at once, by God.
Sudden appearance is a reference to the Cambrian Explosion, a period beginning around 550 million years ago. Over the next 20 million years, a large number of animal phyla appeared in the fossil record. This is unusually rapid evolution, and because the term explosion mirrors creation, it has become go-to evidence for creationists claiming that God made animals.
These standards are scientifically inaccurate and the Texas Education Agency panel wasn’t afraid to say so.
“Evidence does not have sides,” it declared as it voted 6-2 to remove the creationist passages.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/creationism-in-texas-could-go-extinct-on-election-day/ar-AAjD7M4?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp
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