Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Retired Science Teacher Seeks to Bar Evolution from Classrooms
(Elena Garcia, Christian Post, January 30, 2011)

A retired science teacher believes the teaching of evolution is "bad science" and has asked a federal court to declare it illegal to teach the subject in public schools.

Tom Ritter, a former physics and chemistry teacher of over 10 years, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against evolution in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the same court that ruled that teaching of intelligent design in public schools is unconstitutional.

Ritter told The Christian Post this week that he didn't pay too much attention to biology before, but now in retirement he saw problems that he couldn't overlook any longer.

"It kind of got to be like picking a scab," he said.

In his one-page brief and one-page suit, Ritter argues that the Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Penn., is an illegal body because it teaches evolution.

A local resident, Ritter wants the district to stop collecting taxes from him until such teaching is halted. This is one scheme in his plan to get rid of public schools altogether, which he considers to be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The suit contends that the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover decision forbids any teaching of evolution that includes a creator. It also argues that evolution is unscientific.

According to Ritter, evolution is unscientific for three reasons: no one has demonstrated that life can be created from non-life; no one has demonstrated that a new "sexual species" can be created; and no one has demonstrated how the human brain evolved from lower forms.

Since evolution is unscientific and teaches the absence of a creator, it is actually teaching atheism, the suit contends. Therefore, teaching evolution should be illegal in public schools because it is a religion.

"Objectively, Atheism is a religion, albeit a silly and unscientific one," the Jan. 18 suit states. "This is like teaching Jesus is Lord."

While Ritter said his court filings are really made for "popular consumption," he does expect to have his day in court.

"I think it will be taken seriously aside from the fact that I know some science," he said.

According to Ritter, evolution is unscientific for three reasons: no one has demonstrated that life can be created from non-life;

. . . no one has demonstrated that a new "sexual species" can be created;

. . . and no one has demonstrated how the human brain evolved from lower forms.

In the case of this gentleman, this is a compelling argument.

It seems likely that he is motivated by a newly found or an increasing devotion to christian doctrine

If he really knew science, he wouldn't be talking about evolution and abiogenesis.

Ill have to skoot around the Reading or Pottsville Pa press to see what happens in this.

Besides, the Socialists had an evolutionary prophet of their own, who
had discredited Manchester as Darwin discredited the Garden of Eden.
Karl Marx had proclaimed in his Communist Manifesto of 1848 (now
enjoying Scriptural authority in Russia) that civilization is an
organism evolving irresistibly by circumstantial selection; and he
published the first volume of his Das Kapital in 1867. The revolt
against anthropomorphic idolatry, which was, as we have seen, the secret
of Darwin's success, had been accompanied by a revolt against the
conventional respectability which covered not only the brigandage and
piracy of the feudal barons, but the hypocrisy, inhumanity, snobbery,
and greed of the bourgeoisie, who were utterly corrupted by an
essentially diabolical identification of success in life with big
profits.

Then there is the farm laborer.
Shakespear's Touchstone, a court-bred fool, was shocked to find in the
shepherd a natural philosopher, and opined that he would be damned for
the part he took in the sexual selection of sheep. As to the production
of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news to your
gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the
survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new
kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism.

That was the secret of Darwin's popularity. He never puzzled anybody. If
very few of us have read The Origin of Species from end to end, it is
not because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case
and are prepared to accept it long before we have come to the end of
the innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly
consists. Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists
on continuing to prove his innocence after he has been acquitted.