Yes, just when you’d begun to think that mankind had managed to pull itself out of the primordial slime of ignorance and disinformation…well, welcome to Serbia, where ignorance in the service of policy goals is not a crime. It would appears not much has changed since I was there.
It’s difficult to believe that thinking people could just now be coming to the realization the Darwin may actually have been onto something, but then this is Serbia we’re talking about here, which generally seems to be actively trying to drag itself back to the 12th century.
“I have come here to confirm Charles Darwin is still alive,” said deputy education minister Milan Brdar.
His boss, Ljiljana Colic, who had announced the controversial policy, had gone “away on business”, he said.
She had proposed banning the evolution theory this school year, until creationism could be taught alongside.
Both Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the Old Testament view on the beginning of life were equally dogmatic, the minister had said.
Silly me; I’d been thinking that poor Mr. Darwin had been dead and gone lo, these many years. What does the Serbian government know that the rest of us in the “civilized” world don’t?
They agreed to drop the move, Mr Brdar said.
Biologist Nikola Tucic described the original ruling as “outrageous” and said it showed Serbia’s Orthodox Church was interfering in politics.
“We are slowly turning into a theocratic state and in the 21st Century we are going back to the Book of Revelations,” he said.
Hmm…sounds a lot like Alabama, doesn’t it?? Actually, they just might be headed a fair bit farther back than the 12th century. Head for the caves!! Be careful not to drag your knuckles there, people.
