Evolution is one of the fundamental unifying concepts of biology and medicine. It is regrettable that today, 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years after the publication of his The Origin of Species, there are still so many persons who would sacrifice the honest teaching of evolution on the altar of religion.
The notorious 2006 Utah] State Senate Bill 96, "Origins of Life," provides one well-known local example of such religiously motivated legislation. In the form initially passed by the Senate (before ultimately failing in the House), the bill mandated that multiple theories of human origins be taught.
But, as House sponsor James Ferrin later admitted when amending the bill, there are no alternative scientific theories regarding the origins of humans. The only legitimate scientific explanation is that we are descended from other species.
As Brigham Young University faculty member Daniel Fairbanks has written, "d]enying the evidence of evolution, including human evolution, is honest only in ignorance." A legal mandate to teach otherwise is a legal mandate to deceive. Legislation cannot establish the origin of species any more than the infamous 1897 Indiana pi Bill could set the value of pi to equal exactly 3.2.