The board's decision created a national panic in academic circles, was condemned by the National Science Teachers Association, was lambasted by many national newspapers and magazines and even denounced by the Governor of Kansas. Two other members to be announced will be joining the panel from the parochial educational system. Why Churches sometimes do not teach their members about the difficulties in translating ancient texts, especially the creation account in Genesis. While evolution is a theory, it is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty.
Facts are the world's data.
Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. The Officers and Council of the Society for the Study of Evolution wish to express their grave concern at the act of the Kansas School Board in discouraging the teaching of evolution and cosmology in the Kansas public school system. The Society is an international organization, based in the United States, whose membership consists of over 3,000 biologists actively studying evolution at major universities and research institutions throughout the world.