South Korea Will Revisit Plan To Nix Evolution References in Textbooks

After reports that South Korean had "surrendered to creationists" by removing references to evolution in several textbooks, openfrog writes with this excerpt from Science Insider that indicates the fight is still in progress: "The South Korean government is poised to appoint a new committee that will revisit a controversial plan to drop two examples of evolutionary theory from high school textbooks. The committee, to be led by insect taxonomist Byoung-Hoon Lee, a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, has been asked to re-evaluate requests from a Korean creationist group to drop references to bird and horse evolution that they argue promote 'atheist materialism.' At the same time, about 50 prominent Korean scientists are preparing to present government officials with a petition, organized by the Korean Association of Biological Sciences, which calls for rejecting the proposed changes. 'When these things are done, I think it will turn out that after all Korean science will not surrender to religion' says Jae Choe, an evolutionary biologist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul who helped organize the petition."

Comments

Re:Wow, atheist materialism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perceiving a link between atheism and materialism - i.e. focus on the material universe rather than on spiritual matters - is not unreasonable. Not that atheists can't be into spiritual stuff (definitively they might believe in anything except gods), but in practice atheism does tend to go hand in hand with materialism.

Re:Wow, atheist materialism?

[Forty Two Tenfold]

This reminds me of another persecuted hegemon, the elephantiasis in the room - the US of A whose freedoms are oh so endangered that it autistically jerks around killing innocent bystanders and calls pointing that out "aiding and abetting" the nameless "terrorists." Seems quite similar to a full-fledged delusion, doesn't it.