[escepticos] Ley creacionista de Louisiana

[arteaga@...>]

        Hola, resulta que en una lista de correo privada hemos tenido
una mini-charla sobre el creacionismo, y he mandado este resumen. Lo
mismo alguien aqui lo encuentra interesante.

	Santi



> Lo de la ley de Misuri es algo reciente?

	Como no estaba muy seguro me he puesto a buscar en la web.

	La ley fue aprobada por el estado de Louisiana (no Missouri, como
dije yo equivocadamente) en 1981, y decia que si una escuela ensen~aba 
"evolution-science" entonces tambien debia "provide balanced treatment" de 
algo que llaman "creation-science" (?). Una interpretacion que yo he oido 
de "balanced treatment" consistia en igual cantidad de tiempo de clase 
dedicado a ambas. Notareis que esta ley daba tres alternativas: o evitar el 
tema, o exponer la version de la Biblia, o exponer las dos versiones.

	"...the term "creation-science," as used in the Louisiana law, is 
commonly understood to refer to a movement of Christian fundamentalists 
based upon an extremely literal interpretation of the Bible. 
Creation-scientists do not merely insist that life was created; they insist 
that the job was completed in six days no more than ten thousand years ago, 
and that all evolution since that time has involved trivial modifications 
rather than basic changes."

	Lo que yo no sabia (o no recordaba) es que la U.S. Supreme Court se 
cepillo esa "Creation Law" el 19 de junio de 1987; mas en concreto, lo que 
dijo el tribunal supremo es que alla cada profesor, es decir, que ni Big 
Bang, ni creacion, ni los dos, sino lo que le guste a cada cual; que es 
inconstitucional hacer leyes en ese sentido, asi que las quitan.

	O sea, que esa ley lleva un an~o sin estar en efecto... lo que yo 
encuentro gracioso es que estuviese en efecto durante 16 an~os antes de 
que se decidiese que era inconstitucional. Y es que los fundamentalistas 
cristianos se mueven y tienen cierto poder; nosotros pensamos que estas 
interpretaciones literales de la Biblia son una cosa del pasado, pero ya
veis que no del todo.

	Tambien hay que decir que muchisima gente (casi todo el mundo)
no se tomo esta ley en serio; de hecho, en 
http://www.christiandigest.com/darwin.htm   se dice que nunca entro en 
efecto porque un "juez federal"  (habria habido alguna denuncia por ahi) 
dijo que era inconstitucional; pero el caso es que la primera decision al 
respecto del tribunal supremo fue una votacion 7 contra 2 en 1987 (seis 
an~os despues de que la ley fuese aceptada por Louisiana) ratificando la
sentencia de ese juez. La declaracion de inconstitucionalidad es lo que
ocurrio en 1997.

	En fin, que ni tanto ni tan poco.

	Tambien he encontrado algo sobre la famosisima ley de los 1920's,
que explica la evolucion (je) historica hacia la ley de Louisiana:


The legend tells of religious fanatics who invade a school classroom to 
persecute an inoffensive science teacher, and of a heroic defense lawyer 
who symbolizes reason itself in its endless battle against superstition. 

As with many legendary incidents the historical record is more complex. 
The Tennessee legislature had passed as a symbolic measure a statute 
prohibiting the teaching of evolution, which the governor signed only 
with the explicit understanding that the ban would not be enforced. 
Opponents of the law (and some people who just wanted to put Dayton, 
Tennessee, on the map) engineered a test case. A former substitute 
teacher named Scopes, who wasn't sure whether he had ever actually taught 
evolution, volunteered to be the defendant. 

[...]

The Scopes defense team was led by the famous criminal lawyer and agnostic 
lecturer Clarence Darrow. Darrow maneuvered Bryan into taking the stand as 
an expert witness on the Bible and humiliated him in a devastating 
cross-examination. Having achieved his main purpose, Darrow admitted that 
his client had violated the statute and invited the jury to convict. The 
trial thus ended in a conviction and a nominal fine of $ 100. On appeal, 
the Tennessee supreme court threw out the fine on a technicality but held 
the statute constitutional. From a legal standpoint the outcome was 
inconclusive, but as presented to the world by the sarcastic journalist 
H. L. Mencken, and later by Broadway and Hollywood, the " monkey trial" 
was a public relations triumph for Darwinism. 

The scientific establishment was not exactly covering itself with glory at 
the time, however. Although he did not appear at the trial, the principal 
spokesman for evolution during the 1920s was Henry Fairfield Osborn, 
Director of the American Museum of Natural History. Osborn relied heavily 
upon the notorious PiItdown Man fossil, now known to be a fraud, and he was 
delighted to confirm the discovery of a supposedly pre-human fossil tooth 
by the paleontologist Harold Cooke in Bryan's home state of Nebraska. 
Thereafter Osborn prominently featured "Nebraska Man" (scientific 
designation: Hesperopithecus haroldcookii) in his antifundamentalist 
newspaper articles and radio broadcasts, until the tooth was discovered to 
be from a peccary, a kind of pig. If Osborn had been cross-examined by a 
lawyer as clever as Clarence Darrow, and satirized by a columnist as 
ruthless as H. L. Mencken, he would have looked as silly as Bryan. 

The anti-evolution statutes of the 1920s were not enforced, but textbook 
publishers tended to say as little as possible about evolution to avoid
controversy The Supreme Court eventually held the statutes 
unconstitutional in 1968, but by then the fundamentalists had changed their
objective. Creation research institutes were founded, and books began to 
appear which attacked the orthodox interpretation of the scientific
evidence and argued that the geological and fossil record could be 
harmonized with the Biblical account. None of this literature was taken
seriously by the scientific establishment or the mass media, but the 
creation-scientists themselves became increasingly confident that they
had a scientific case to make. 

They also began to see that it was possible to turn the principles of 
liberal constitutional law to their advantage by claiming a right to debate
evolutionists on equal terms in school science classes. Their goal was no 
longer to suppress the teaching of evolution, but to get a fair hearing
for their own viewpoint. If there is a case to be made for both sides of a 
scientific controversy, why should public school students, for example,
hear only one side? Creation-scientists emphasized that they wanted to 
present only the scientific arguments in the schools; the Bible itself
was not to be taught. 


	...y asi es como surgio la otra de Louisiana en los 80: en nombre 
de la honestidad cientifica, si ensen~as la "teoria cientifica" de la 
evolucion, entonces tambien debes ensen~ar la "teoria cientifica" del 
creacionismo. A que es divertido este cambio de perspectiva?  Detalles en   
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-170.htm  y 
http://www.christiandigest.com/darwin.htm  .