Education Icon Education
Evolution Icon Evolution
Free Speech Icon Free Speech

The Real Censorship of Evolution

Darwinist Jerry Coyne decries censorship of evolution in schools in England:

As HuffPo and the British Humanist Association report, a secondary school for Jewish girls in Hackney, a part of London, have blacked out questions about evolution on the important "OCR" exam because such questions supposedly violate the students’ faith…

Curiously, the HuffPo article doesn’t mention that this brand of evolution-censorship is also on tap at a Muslim school in England…

Indeed, in my view, censorship of evolution is to be decried whenever and wherever it occurs. The irony is that the pervasive censorship of evolution in American education — and there is much censorship of evolution in American schools — is being imposed by Darwinist ideologues like Coyne. 

If you are a teacher and you discuss the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory with your students, you are liable to receive a letter from an atheist legal organization such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation demanding that you present only the strengths, not the weaknesses, of neo-Darwinism, with the explicit threat of being dragged into federal court. Censorship doesn’t get more blatant. 

In school district after school district and state after state, Darwinists have gone to court to silence discussion of the strengths and weakness of evolutionary theory in schools. Instead of a genuinely scientific presentation of the theory of evolution and of the evidence for and against it, students too often are only taught a censored creed — the Darwinist creed — and are only presented with the limited evidence for Darwin’s theory, without any of the extensive evidence calling into question Darwin’s explanation for biological complexity and function. 

Yes, let’s decry censorship of evolution in schools. Let us present the science, which means opening discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory, without censorship

I invite Coyne to join me in demanding uncensored teaching of evolution in public schools.

Michael Egnor

Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Michael R. Egnor, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, has served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and is an award-winning brain surgeon. He was named one of New York’s best doctors by the New York Magazine in 2005. He received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His research on hydrocephalus has been published in journals including Journal of Neurosurgery, Pediatrics, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association in the United States and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

Share