'Origins of life' bill moves on to the House

A bill regulating classroom discussions on the origins of life won final Senate approval Monday after being amended in an effort to make it clear that teachers weren't being ordered to deal with the controversial topic.

SB96 is on its way to the House after passing the Senate 16-12, with its sponsor, Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, absent due to a medical condition that landed him in the hospital over the weekend.

Buttars is home from the hospital now but not expected to be back at the Legislature for several days, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said. Valentine declined to provide further details other than that Buttars appeared to be sick late last week.

The amendment to his bill was carried Monday by Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who discussed the change with Buttars at the hospital. Bramble said the new language "makes it clear this is not a mandate that public education teach the theory of life."

But if schools do, Bramble said, teachers must explain there are opposing viewpoints. The amendment was passed on a voice vote after only a few questions. The bill was then given final approval without further debate.

Valentine said the bill just codifies existing practices. "I don't think it has changed anything," the Senate leader said. The change made Monday, he said, accurately reflected Buttars' original intent.

The amendment comes after concerns were raised by educators and others that the bill would have opened the door to inappropriate discussions in the classroom by introducing the origin of life into the curriculum.

While Darwin's theory of evolution is key to the high school biology core curriculum, how life originated is not a part of it. Evolution is considered by educators as a generally accepted theory, while there is no agreement on how life began.

The bill may have had little discussion Monday, but there was plenty of debate before it was given preliminary approval last Friday including a number of references to religious beliefs and science.

Although Buttars had talked at one time of forcing schools to teach so-called "intelligent design" as an alternative to the theory of evolution, the bill did not mention the idea that life is too complex to be explained by Darwin's theory alone.

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