Creationism law verdict queried

Press, 30 December 1985, Page 21

Creationism law verdict queried

NZPA-AP Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Louisiana’s Attorney-Gen-eral says that he will ask the United States Supreme Court to uphold a neverimplemented state law requiring schools that teach evolution to also teach creation science. The fifth United States Circuit Court of Appeal refused, by an 8-7 vote, to rehear the issue.

The majority opinion was that the creation science law promoted religious belief and violated the academic freedom of instructors to teach whatever they liked.

“With the Court divided, 8-7, I feel an obligation to bring this matter before the reme Court of the ted States for its decision,” said the Attorney-

General, Mr William Guste. Louisiana’s creationism law, passed in 1981 but never enforced during court battles, requires that any time the theory of eyolution is taught in a public school creation-science must be given equal time and treatment.

Evolution is the concept that every living thing has been shaped by the forces of natural selection and has developed over millions of years. Creationism holds that man and the world were created in an instant by a supreme being. It is a view that resembles the story of creation in the Bible, although proponents contend that creationism is science, not religion. Louisiana’s law is the only one of its kind in the United States.