Creation and evolution in public education

The status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate and conflict in legal, political, and religious circles. Globally, there is a wide variety of views on the topic; in some countries, like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, legislation forbids teachers to discuss either the evidence for evolution or the modern evolutionary synthesis, the explanatory scientific theory of evolution. Most western countries have legislation that mandates only evolutionary biology is to be taught in the appropriate scientific syllabuses.

While many doctrines do not raise theological objections to the modern evolutionary synthesis as an explanation for the present form of life on Earth, various fundamentalist sects, including many churches within Christianity, have objected vehemently. Some adherents are passionately opposed to the consensus view of the scientific community. Rigidly arbitrary interpretations, represented as being the literal meaning of religious texts, is the greatest cause of conflict with evolutionary and cosmological investigations and conclusions.

Internationally, evolution is taught in science courses with limited controversy, with the exception of a few areas of the United States and several Islamic fundamentalist countries. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled the teaching of creationism as science in public schools to be unconstitutional, irrespective of how it may be purveyed in theological or religious instruction. In the United States, intelligent design (ID) has been represented as an alternative explanation to evolution in recent decades, but its "demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions" have been ruled unconstitutional by a lower court.

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