Posted on 10/13/2009 8:10:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
OReilly told Dawkins
you insist you cant even mention it, that is fascism, sir.
Was he right? Is it constitutional/scientific to insist that only materialistic evolution can be taught?
See: OReilly vs. Atheist Author Richard Dawkins...
(Excerpt) Read more at uncommondescent.com ...
Ping!
I see it as a Constitutional violation. To willfully and thoroughly exclude God is to promote atheism. Atheism is a religion and it has become the official national religion of the government.
That is exactly the way I see it. That’s why I call the evolution-only establishment the “Temple of Darwin.” Thanks for your thoughtful reply—GGG
Based on how this is worded, of course he has the Constitutional right to insist X be taught just as someone on the opposite side has the Constitutional right to insist that Y be taught. Everyone has a right to petition redresses to the government. His insistence, however, doesn't mean he gets his way, just like someone on the opposite side insisting something doesn't mean they get their way. He is just one voice and just like everyone else, he can request his view through the representative process, in this case school boards and other representative bodies that determine textbooks and curriculum.
What a laugh. If the school board approves the teaching of ID or Creation alongside evolution, in marches the communist ACLU, the NCSE, the MSM, and the rest of the evo-fascist attack machine.
The freedom of said petitioning goes both ways. If the school board says only evolution be taught, in marches the Discovery Institute etc. To have the freedom to petition or to organize petitions means freedom for the other side to do such. If your side isn’t winning, you may want to work on better arguments and/or better organizing.
Again, the freedom to petition doesn’t mean you get your way.
Dork-fight. I was rooting for BOR, but he blew it. Dawkins on points.
Evolution is NOT Fascist... but most Evolutionists, especially Richard Dawkins are!
I have a feeling the only reason why you are so nonchalant is because your fellow enemies of freedom are firmly ensconced in the educational establishment, the MSM, and educational establishment.
Enemies of Freedom, how rich, coming from someone who wants to restrict the right of petition. Of course, this follows the old model, if you can’t debate, attack.
Try to keep up...we aren’t allowed to have a debate over origins in the classroom because of jackbooted evos like you. That’s because you and your fellow jackbooted Temple of Darwin fanatics know that if the debate is allowed to happen, we win every time.
Funny, it seems to happen quite often, it is jut when it is presented to boards, often, one side looses the debate and they claim they were 'jackbooted'. If you are 'winning every time' then why are you complaining? If your argument is so strong, it should be pretty obvious what is 'right' and you shouldn't be having the issues you do. Of course, it is always someone else's fault. It isn't fault with your debate, evidence, etc.
Then what’s the problem with the creation and ID points of view being represented?
Why just one?
Why does it have to be an either/or scenario.
I’ll give creationists this over evos any day, as a whole, creationists are fine with creation AND ID AND evolution being taught in public schools, as opposed to the evos who as a whole adamantly reject that option. As a matter of fact, I don’t recall reading any creationist on this forum who insists that evolution not be taught in public schools. And yet the overwhelming majority of evos insist on it being kept out under the guise of either it not being *science* or because it’s *religious*.
I agree with GGG. You appear to be nonchalant about evolution only being taught in the schools because it’s the position you hold, as comes across so clearly from the vast majority of the evos.
Giving Dawkins credit for anything is making your credibility circle the bowl.
That's interesting, I've seen many calls here teaching of evolution should 'be banned from science as it isn't science'.
Well now....what is he so afraid of?
I will pay for his ticket to the Creation Museum...
Fascists, jackbooted evos.
No data to back up your points once again, so out comes the name calling in the first 10 posts.
Why is there so much hate in your and your groupies’ hearts against people who disagree with you?
Would any of you object to Lamarkian evolution, Hindu creation, Hopi creation or UFO seed theories being taught alongside Creation, ID and Evolution?
I already know your answers, so I will try and give you something to think about. Often what we are trying to obtain comes back to haunt us. Is there a standard that you want the schools to uphold when it comes to teaching our children. If so, what is that standard and how should it be determined?
Specifically since it is obvious that schools can’t teach everything, what should be the basis for determining whether Lamarkian evolution, creationism, evolution or UFO seed theory should be taught?
Before this time began, there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. A vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of the night.
A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. He was watched over by the mighty serpent. Everything was so peaceful and silent that Vishnu slept undisturbed by dreams motion. From the depths a humming sound began to tremble, Ohm. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy.
The night had ended, Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu’s navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu’s servant, Brahma. He awaited the Lord’s command.
Vishnu spoke to his servant: ‘It is time to begin.’ Brahma bowed. Vishnu commanded: ‘Create the World.’ A wind swept up the waters. Vishnu and the serpent vanished.
Brahma remained in the lotus flower, floating and tossing on the sea. He lifted up his arms and calmed the wind and the ocean.
Then Brahma split the lotus flower into three. He stretched one part into the heavens. He made another part into the earth. With the third part of the flower he created the skies.
The earth was bare. Brahma set to work. He created grass, flowers, trees and plants of all kinds. To these he gave feeling. Next he created the animals and the insects to live on the land. He made birds and many fish. To all these creatures, he gave the senses of touch and smell. He gave them power to see, hear and move. The world was soon bristling with life and the air was filled with the sounds of Brahma’s creation.
Is this the story of creation that you want to be taught in our schools? I think it is a much better story than the Bible version.
In science classes, we don’t teach the phlogiston theory, geocentric theory and flat Earth belief either. However, it’s common to mention these ideas in the context of the discussing the development of the respective scientific disciplines. Mentioning the “New Earth creationism” in the same context is fine with me. “Once people believed that when we burn things, a substance called phlogiston is released”.
I see government schools as an impossible to resolve conundrum. The only possible constitutional and freedom of conscience solution is to begin moving to a completely private system of K-12 schooling.
With regard to God, there are only two possible choices for any school to make: It must be either God-centered in its worldview or godless. Neither worldview is religious, politically, or culturally neutral in content or consequences.
It is impossible to have a religiously, culturally, and politically neutral school! Therefore...No matter what decisions a government schools will make concerning evolution, materialism, or hundreds of other issues, the government **will** establish the religious, cultural, and political worldview of some while actively undermining the worldview of others.
All government schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination. Please...We must stop trying to reform the impossible. The only solution is to begin moving to a completely private system of education.
This is an important concept to understand. It is impossible to have a religiously, culturally, and politically neutral school.
If our Founding Fathers could have foreseen our system of government run, compulsory attendance, and compulsory funded government schools, they would have included complete separation of state and SCHOOL in the Constitution and all state constitutions.
ALL government schools are a freedom of conscience abomination!
Thanks for the ping!
I don't usually play the "Here's what the Founding Fathers' should have said in the Constitution" game ... but that would have been a good Amendment to the Constitution.
However...I do NOT support using the threat of government police action to force other citizens to pay for my worldview. This is exactly what government supported schools do.
There is really only one solution: We must begin moving to a completely private system of K-12 schooling.
Behind every government school stand armed police ready to sell at auction the property of, or arrest, imprison or even kill ( if sufficiently resistant), any citizen who refuses submit their will and freedom of conscience to the government school.
Then don’t teach anything, evolution included.
Those who need it for their degree can get it at the college level.
I completely agree. At the very least - a comprehensive system of school vouchers or tuition-related tax credits.
Opps. posted a reply meant for another thread.
Oops, I had a reply meant for another thread in the clipboard. I agree with the need for private schools, where kids are taught what their parents wish.
Believe whatever you want, but bring a scientific idea to the party or you don’t get to swim in the ‘scientific process’ pool.
And a voucher system for well preforming schools is a great idea IF the schools included do not have a religious curriculum/agenda.
Please read post #20 and #22.
But...It does seem that the staunchest defenders of evolution are also the firmest supporters of compulsory attendance and compulsion funded government owned and run schools.
The solution to all these curriculum wars ( evolution, materialism and thousands of other issue even things as mundane as phonics or cursive) is complete separation of **SCHOOL** and state!
We must begin privatizing all K-12 education.
IF the schools included do not have a religious curriculum/agenda.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Gee! How broadminded of you! /s
And a voucher system for well preforming schools is a great idea IF the schools included do not have a religious curriculum/agenda.(TooFarGone)
TooFarGone's comment fully exposes the danger of vouchers and tax credits. There is still government involvement and the atheistic Marxist/fascists will do all in their power to use government force against freedom of conscience.
Could tax credits and vouchers be useful in building up a private school infrastructure. Yes, they could but only if it is a means to complete separation of SCHOOL and state.
By the way, TooFarGone, please read posts #20 and #22.
It is impossible to “determine” without crushing the freedom of conscience and First Amendment Rights of our citizens.
Please read post #20 and #22. These posts explain why this is so.
The only possible solution that respects our First Amendment Rights, an inalienable right bequeath by God ( or part of the human condition, if one is atheist), is to have complete separation of SCHOOL and state!
The solution is to move to a completely private system of K-12 education.
However...It does seem that those who support evolution are the biggest defenders of compulsory attendance, compulsory funded, police enforce, government owned and run, K-12 schools. ( Gee! I wonder why that is?)
Why? The First Amendment is misrepresented by the Left, for the purpose of maintaining the monopoly for indoctrinating the young generation. The Amendment states that the government cannot impose religion on the people. But the second part of the Amendment expressly reads that the gov't cannot interfere with the free exercise of religious beliefs either. Excluding religious schools violates the second clause of the I Amendment. At the same time, making religious schools eligible does not violate the first clause, because vouchers recipients are not forced to send their kids to religious schools.
Ignorance isn't an answer either.
I think you are right.
However...It does seem that those who support evolution are the biggest defenders of compulsory attendance, compulsory funded, police enforce, government owned and run, K-12 schools. ( Gee! I wonder why that is?)
My observation has been that the vast majority of people support compulsory public education.
Yet the vouchers/credits are the necessary milestone. The government has created a class of people dependent (or believing that they are dependent) on government services. If we propose a fully private system, we will expose ourselves to the populist argument that we "only care for the rich people". Of course, it's nonsense, but we can't respond to such argument with patiently teaching the basics of economy - it would be impractical.
Vouchers/credits is a good enough solution, providing that the system is universal and the parents can choose whatever schools they want. And it's a "marketable" idea, allowing us to counter the Left's populism with the following reasoning: With the vouchers, the good, private schools will become affordable. Not only the elites will be able to send their kids to safe schools, where they can excel academically. Inner city people or rural folks deserve good education too!
It is likely impossible to move directly to a completely private system. I support vouchers and tax credits if they can be used to do two things:
1) build a private school infrastructure.
In my county their are **no** private schools. Why would their be? The government is running a price-fixed monopoly that is giving education away for the price of “free”. If private CEOs colluded like this they would soon be in prison, but somehow it is morally and ethically OK for the government to destroy the private school market. ( Go figure! Geeze!)
2)If vouchers and tax credits can gradually be reduced so that parents take on the full responsibility of educating their own children, then I would support this. Ideally vouchers or tax credits would be used only for the poorest, and in a completely ideal world, charity would educate the poor.
Unfortunately we see what Pell Grants and government subsidized students loans have done to college and university tuition. It hasn't made the cost of college cheaper. Every time Pell Grants or student loans are increased the colleges and universities raise their tuition. And...Colleges and universities have powerful lobbyists to promote their interests. We would likely see the same phenomena if we had universal vouchers and tax credits for K-12 education.
Yes, of course they do! Why wouldn't they?
Just by attending school, children learn every day that government can and will take money from their neighbor to pay for a service that their parents want for **free**! This is a **daily** object lesson in, and direct experience with, socialism! And...Their teachers continually teach them that it is their “right” to have a taxpayer paid education, and teach them the lie that government education is neutral.
The last states enacted government school laws in the early 1900s. My mother is 96. There were still states in this nation who did **not** have state wide compulsory schools at the time my parents were born. So,...This idea of government schools really isn't that old. However, there are very few people alive today who can remember a time without government schools.
Even staunch conservatives are utterly incapable of imagining a world without government schools, believe government schools existed since the day Columbus discovered America, believe government schools can be reformed, and simply do not understand that **all** government schools promote a non-neutral religious worldview of some kind.
But...To get back to the theme of the thread:
The atheistic liberal/Marxists are the strongest defenders of government schools ( and this includes the atheistic materialistic evolutionists). Of course they do! The government schools are using other people's money to indoctrinate our nation's children in their their annointed religious worldview.
Schools are putting out myriads of kids who can’t read and write as it is.
Not teaching them something that is covered in a few days of one year of high school biology is not *ignorance*.
There’s plenty more science that can fill in that gap that they NEED to know.
Focusing that time on the actual use and application of the scientific method would be a good start.
Right now, the ToE is being used primarily as an indoctrination tool for the secular humanist ideology.
Where are the demands from the evos that science not be abused and misused to promote political agendas or religious ideologies?
I thought so.
Until then, it would be best dropped from the curriculum and would absolutely not hurt any student’s academic career, since it’s not likely that the ToE is being taught correctly to begin with considering the number of misconceptions about it on both sides for all the decades that it has had a monopoly in the public education system.
This country did just fine for centuries in the area of scientific and technological development while creation was taught in schools and evolution not. There has been no detectable improvement in the education levels of the public schools with the introduction of evolution and the elimination of creation. On the contrary, the quality of education has continued to decline steadily.
The two other options, private school and homeschool, do better academically and often, because of the religious nature of the education, teach BOTH creation and evolution and those students consistently score better than their public school counterparts.
There is no evidence whatsoever, that teaching creation, or not teaching evolution will lead to ignorance. Evos simply have NO support for that tired old canard that they trot out every time the subject comes up.
Hello......
It's called the public school system.
Is there something in Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; that you don't get?
Why the litmus test for religion?
What are you doing on FR anyway, noob, promoting that kind of socialist, government control of education?
Religious people pay taxes as much as anyone. Why are you proposing coercing the taxes out of them to support public education which endorses ideology which they don't agree with and then telling them that if they want any different that they have to pay for it out of their own pockets? Why should only non-religious people and institutions get the money coerced from the religious people?
This country was founded on Judeo-Christian values and worked just fine for centuries when Bible reading and prayer were part of the opening of every school day.
Why is that not acceptable any more?
His single-minded insistence that only one point of view his own be presented in the public schools looks, if not necessarily "fascist," then pretty darned totalitarian to me.
Because leftist activists, entrenched in the positions of influence, simply don't (and won't) like it. No point arguing with them, we need a reconquista, and then we can argue among ourselves (at the school board level) if the "young Earth creationism" belongs to science classes, or rather should be taught as religion.
I agree, but the counter argument is that without 'free' education only the rich will get a good education and society would be the poorer for that.
The atheistic liberal/Marxists are the strongest defenders of government schools ( and this includes the atheistic materialistic evolutionists). Of course they do! The government schools are using other people's money to indoctrinate our nation's children in their their annointed religious worldview.
Speaking for myself (I am an atheist) I am a libertarian and do not support public education, neither do my libertarian brethren. Generalizations are hard sometimes.
Vouchers/tuition tax credits nullify this argument.
Foregoing a year of biology produces ignorance of biology.
Focusing that time on the actual use and application of the scientific method would be a good start.
May I recommend that you take your own advice and apply it to creationism?
Where are the demands from the evos that science not be abused and misused to promote political agendas or religious ideologies?
All over the place. Check out Climate Audit or WUWT for two obvious examples.
The two other options, private school and homeschool, do better academically and often, because of the religious nature of the education, teach BOTH creation and evolution and those students consistently score better than their public school counterparts.
Like I said before, you need to refresh yourself on the scientific method. Cherry picking data is dishonest at best. Also teaching 'both' is not equivalent to teaching neither.
There is no evidence whatsoever, that teaching creation, or not teaching evolution will lead to ignorance. Evos simply have NO support for that tired old canard that they trot out every time the subject comes up.
If someone hasn't been exposed to or taught something, they are by definition ignorant.
Don’t you think that’s a red herring? It’s not a question of broadminded, is it? It’s a question of law.
It’s just as unconstitutional to bring in ‘sharia indoctrination’ into the public schools that we pay for, as it is to mandate that I have to pay for (tax incentive or otherwise) you to choose a religious based school.
BTW, where exactly was the ACLU & NOW when they brought sharia/koran indoctrination into the school in the Houston school district? No where-that’s why they are not to be trusted. Ideology over principal & law is a losing bet every time.
Would we really?
How much formal education did Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln have? On average, how much formal education did the Greatest Generation have,their parents, or their grand parents, yet, we enjoy today all that the 20th century invented and built.
And?...How many children are imprisoned in “free” government schools and fail to learn anything at all ( except to be good prisoners of the state)? How many children's lives are utterly ruined because of their government school experiences?
And...I wasn't generalizing. I was specific about my comment. It does seem from these Freeper posts that ( specifically) atheistic liberal/Marxists **are** the strongest defenders of the government schools on these threads. Atheistic libertarians do not in any way fall into the category of liberal/Marxist. Liberal/Marxism is, in my opinion, a religious worldview. Atheistic liberal/Marxism is merely a subset of the general religious worldview of Liberal/Marxism.
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