Florida's tussle with evolution parallels problems within Southeast

Charles Darwin wrote his infamous "Origin of Species" in 1859, yet nearly a century and a half later schools in the Southeast "Bible Belt" of the United States are showing slow progress in educating their pupils properly in evolutionary theory.

New York Times journalist Amy Harmon says the Florida Education Department did not mandate high school-level biology courses to teach evolution in its public schools until February 2008. The conundrum lays in evolution's contradiction of a literal translation of the Bible.

"But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith," Harmon says.

This hostility has managed to nearly wipe out evolution education in most Southern public high schools. This story provided by the New York Times illustrates more hindrances Darwin's evolutionary theory has faced throughout the last 150 years.

Even certain 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates lack knowledge in the evolutionary process. Mike Huckabee states in an interview with Bill Maher that he "thought it was utterly silly that a question [on the existence of evolution] was asked in a presidential debate."