I’m naturally as pleased as the next geologist (or biologist, or philosopher) to see a strong anti-ID statement from the UK government. But didn’t we sort out this nonsense last year?
Any updates from UK readers would be appreciated.
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Chris, the only ID-related news story I’ve found through the BBC News is Let us test Darwin, teacher says. So this really wasn’t deemed newsworthy.
The Downing Street petitions website has all sorts of weird and wonderful petitions on it. As far as I’m aware a particular timeframe is given, after which the petition closes and some junior lackey from the PM’s staff posts a response.
The UK press only really notices the responses if it’s about something really important that deeply affects our human rights and civil liberties i.e. speed cameras (!).
Usually I will leap on anything related to ID/creationism, but this actually seems like a bit of a “yeah so what” non-story.
It was dealt with to a certain extent last year but this was in response to a particular petition and citizens demanding a more definitive answer in response to certain stories in the press. The brou-ha-ha last year was specifically aimed at certain teaching materials rather than ID/Creationism as a whole.
Here in Scotland I was sent into a rage by a newspaper article just a few weeks back claiming that the Scottish Qualifications Authority was considering moving ID into Science classes! Luckily my MSP is well on board with these issues (he responded to my apoplectic email within 2 hours on a Sunday morning!) and it looks like it was all just a scare story.
I’m really glad to see them unambiguously classify ID as religion though, that’s something they never explicitly came out with before. Mind you, given Labour’s fascination with all things faith-based I don’t know what impact that will have. In the minds of many MPs the new classification probably raises it above the level of science
I’m about to enter training to become a Secondary teacher in Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies (don’t mock me) and I’m looking forward to holding up ID/Creationism/faith in general against rationality, skepticism and the scientific method. Should be fun…