Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Advocates of creationism (aka cretins) have tried to use the public schools to teach their religious beliefs in place of the science of evolution. They have failed in both high profie court cases and school board elections. The next front in the culture wars might be at the university level. The U. S. Department of Education has issued a list of subjects eligible for grants and evolution is left off the list:

Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages.

That absence apparently indicates that students in the evolutionary sciences do not qualify for the grants, and some observers are wondering whether the omission was deliberate.

The question arises at a time when evolution has become a political hot potato at all levels of education. While the theory of evolution has overwhelming support from scientists, some conservative Christian groups argue for alternative explanations of the origins of life, including “intelligent design,” which holds that an intelligent agent guided the creation of life.

Update: The New York Times has more information. Supposedly this was a mistake and evolution would be restored to the list, but as of publication of the article it had not been restored.

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