Cobb County, Ga., has already been at the center of some major church-state legal battles in recent years, but it appears it’s going to enjoy the spotlight once again.
In 2002, the county adopted a new policy whereby public school administrators would add stickers — the county calls them “disclaimers”; I call “warning labels” — to all biology textbooks. What did these stickers want to warn students about? What else? Evolutionary biology.
Specifically, the label warns students that “this textbooks contains material on evolution.” It then seeks to remind students that “evolution is a theory, not a fact.”
At the time it was considered, more than 100 university professors from across Georgia contacted board members to oppose the policy. The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s preeminent research body that was chartered by Congress to advise the federal government on scientific matters, also urged the board to reject the proposal. Naturally, Cobb County officials passed it unanimously.
Several local parents sued and county attorneys tried to have the case thrown out. Yesterday a federal judge denied the county’s motion and said the suit can go to trial.
A federal judge in Atlanta has kept alive a lawsuit that seeks to have Cobb County remove disclaimers about evolution from its textbooks.
In an important decision in the 2-year-old case, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper found the issue should go to trial, expected sometime later this year.
“We’re very excited about this,” said attorney Michael Manely, who represents Jeffrey Selman and five other Cobb parents who sued the system in August 2002 after the stickers were placed in the science books. Their lawsuit contends that the placement of the stickers restricts the teaching of evolution, promotes and requires the teaching of creationism and discriminates against particular religions.
While the county had argued that the warning labels had nothing to do with promoting religion, the judge rejected the argument.
Cooper noted that while the sticker does not remind students that they have the right to maintain beliefs taught by their parents and has no biblical reference, the sticker encourages students to consider alternatives other than evolution. “Indeed, most of the board members concurred that they wanted students to consider other alternatives,” Cooper wrote in finding the sticker could have the effect of advancing or inhibiting religion.
Cooper also found that “the practical effect of students being encouraged to consider and discuss alternatives to evolution could implicate excessive entanglement concerns.”
And as long as I’m on the subject, I’d like to take a moment to debunk this “theory, not fact” approach. Actually, I’ll let the National Academy of Sciences do it for me.
Is evolution a fact or a theory?
The theory of evolution explains how life on earth has changed. In scientific terms, “theory” does not mean “guess” or “hunch” as it does in everyday usage. Scientific theories are explanations of natural phenomena built up logically from testable observations and hypotheses. Biological evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations about the living world.
Scientists most often use the word “fact” to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.
Why isn’t evolution called a law?
Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur.
Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science.
I’ll let you know what happens in the trial.