GROUP SEEKS REPEAL OF CREATIONISM LAW
Author: AP
Date: Tuesday, August 19, 1986
Page: 8
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
WASHINGTON -- Seventy-two American winners of the Nobel Prize in science
urged the Supreme Court yesterday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring
public schools teaching evolution to teach creationism as well. The brief
represents an extraordinary organizational effort by Murray Gell-Mann, a
California Institute of Technology professor, who in 1969 won a Nobel Prize in
physics. Evolution teaches that Earth is billions of years old and that life
forms began developing gradually several million years ago. Creation-science
is linked closely to a literal translation of the biblical book of Genesis.
The Louisiana Legislature in 1981 enacted a law requiring public schools to
''balance" the teaching of evolution with the teaching of creationism. Stephen
J. Gould, professor of paleontology at Harvard University, called
creation-science "just a phony new legal strategy" in an effort to get around
past court rulings banning religious inculcation in public schools.
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