It sounds to me like they are not asking them to teach creationism only to present evolutionary theory in an unbiased fashion. These are the things with some type of evidence and these are the things that are only hypothesis' (lack of supporting evidence) That seems fair to me.
Evolution has no less evidence and no fewer gaps/inconsistencies than Gravity or various other scientific theories/. But Religious groups think it should be singled out for special criticism so that they can open up the door for ID/Creationsim. I have a problem with that. If they want to criticize it, do it on sundays. Otherwise, unless you can come up with a more viable scientific theory, stay away.
I disagree with that. If I drop an apple it falls to the ground. We don't know all the details behind gravity but we do know that gravity existis. We can observe it and test it. There are parts of the evolutionary theory that we can observe and test (change w/in a species) but there are other parts that there are no observations or tests to validate (so therefore in reality is just a hypothesis). The hypothesis that all things evolved from a single source has not been validated by experimentation or observation. It is not fair to compare evolution with gravity. I'm not saying they shouldn't teach it, just explain that there are some gaps.
I suspect that this is a extremely small point in the larger context of what topics these biology text books cover. For one group to protest vehemently the wording wrt this small point may indicate a "hidden" agenda. IMO the protesting group should be ecstatic that history text books don't mention the lack of historic record on the founder of their religion and let sleeping dogs lie.
But you're wrong. Your example about the apple is the classic example of Newtonian physics and is based on a Newtonian conception of an absolute universe. However, the Newtonian universe was shown to be not entirely accurate with the advent of Relativity and the Einsteinien universe. Despite this, millions of high school physics students every year still learn about things in Newtonian terms and learn the same formulas that Newton taught (as the differences in the results between the two is insignificant in most cases). However, you don't see cosmologists and quantum physicists protesting this, or whining about how f = m*a should contain an Einsteinien disclaimer. Why? Because they don't have the same agenda that ID/Creationists do, to exploit the negative. Big deal. We can't observe or test the Big Bang theory either, we can only observe its aftereffects, just like evolution. However, is the religious right complaining about that? No, probably because it is reconcilable, in the abstract if not scientifically, with the biblical idea of God creating something out of nothing Somebody else cited this earlier in this thread. I still don't understand. This is the theory of evolution? I looked it up in and it came up with the followng definition: "In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next." - Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974 Now, where does that say that "all things evolved from a single source " Theories on the origin of the first "living" organisms vary wildly. I would be HIGHLY surprised to see a textbook that states that one of any number of proposed theories has been proven. Even if it DID say this, how is this incompatible with Intelligent Design at all? Why not? Just because you personally have an easier time observing the effects of gravity and you can't go to the galapagos island and observe finches ? I'm going to let you in on a little secret, gravity as a theory has all kinds of crazy holes that somebody like B-Bob could do a much better job explaining than me. That's fine; EVERY branch of science has gaps at a certain level, I don't oppose them being taught. But why should evolution have its gaps highlighted in a manner that other scientific theories do not, just to assuage the wishes of the creationists?
