Scrape off those stickers! AP reports that a judge has ruled that those goofy "Evolution is just a theory" stickers must be taken off of textbooks in Georgia. Now, how about those "Continental drift is just a theory" stickers on the geology textbooks?
The stickers are absurd in that it presumes an incorrect meaning and status of the word "theory".
This is the real problem to me. I would hope that anybody reading a well-informed book about such subjects would revise their notion on "theory", if they had held the more popular notion that "theory" merely suggests an explanation of phenomenon and in no way means scientific "fact"
If there is to be a sticker let it explain what "theory" itself means. People need education, not beliefs thrust on to them.
Mr. Sylva is correct. Some of my Cobb County neighbors don't know because they don't want to know. You can take it to the bank that the Bible literalists look at this as a temporary setback and you haven't heard the last from them, yet. Their attitude is, "a loud argument beats the facts any time!"
I don't have as much of a problem with the stickers as scientifically incorrect textbooks. Any kid with more than a room temperature IQ will see the sticker message as bogus. An textbook based on quackery like ID or incorrect science is much more difficult to deal with...
I disagree that intelligent people will always see through such things. When everyone around you is utterly convinced of something, it is *extremely* difficult to have contradictory beliefs--and worse yet, beliefs that those around you think make you immoral. I have a friend here at Stanford who is above average even for a student here, who was a Creationist until quite recently. It is very important that we take such pressures in education seriously, even if it seems like no one could possibly believe them.
(Sorry about the invalid email address, I hate spambots)