Creationists usually believe that an intelligent designer has set the universe and all that is within it in motion, thereby invalidating the claims of evolution and refuting the possibility that humans are in any way evolved from apes, among other standard tenets of evolutionary theory.

The last time this debate took place in Kansas, the political forces at play were strong enough to get creationism back on the school curriculum, but the pendulum has once again swung in the other direction, with the Kansas Board of Education deciding science and evolution were back on the educational menu.

According to the Associated Press, “The board yesterday removed language suggesting that key evolutionary concepts -- such as a common origin for all life on earth and change in species creating new ones -- were controversial and being challenged by new research. Also approved was a new definition of science, specifically limiting it to the search for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe”.

Jack Krebs, a math and technology teacher, who is also the president of the Kansas Citizens for Science, and helped to write the new guidelines told AP that “Those standards represent mainstream scientific consensus about both what science is and what evolution is.

Reuters have also published a detailed look at the history of the educational conflict.

You could pray for the madness to end, but I’ll bet you a roomful of test tubes that we haven’t seen the end of this battle just yet.
{moscomment}