Creationists want your children
Print storyThe Royal Society strikes back
Posted in Science, 21st February 2006 11:59 GMT
The Royal Society has spoken out against the increasingly vocal UK creationism lobby, which it says seems to be gaining a foothold amongst university and college students.
Apparently, “the vast majority” of students at one London sixth-form centre are now fully paid-up members of the Adam and Eve club.
Royal Society vice-president Professor David Read told The Guardian: “Our education system should withstand attempts to withhold or misrepresent this knowledge in order to promote particular beliefs, religious or otherwise.”
Leaflets distributed at London's King's College medical school during Islamic Awareness Week recently denounced evolution, saying God created mankind and everything else in six days. “It's not six Earth days,” explained one unnamed student to the Guardian reporter.
God lives on Venus, perhaps, where a day is 243 Earth days, giving the Almighty about four years - plenty of time.
Geneticist and popular science author Professor Steve Jones will deliver a public lecture at the Royal Society in April entitled: “Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right”.
Professor Jones is quoted in the Guardian piece: "It's a step back from rationality. Irrationality is a very infectious disease, as we see from the United States."
El Reg will be there, of course.®
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Yours truly, angry mob