Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.
The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.
If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.
It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].
Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.
Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.
Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.
Everyone be nice.
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I always appreciate it when newspaper writers put a piece of egregious stupidity in their first paragraph as a signal that I don't need to watse my time reading the rest of the piece. Nice of them.
By definition of the term, America can never be a 'third world county'. but I digress
Why are they so against just advising students that evolution is a theory? No one has said Genesis was now their textbook. Why not allow more than one opinion? Isn't science about questioning?
But let us also note the errors are significant UNDERSTATEMENTS.
6 posts in an hour. See what happens to crevo threads when you put restrictions like that on them
When you look at the stated goals of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle based organization promoting ID, a Saudi style theocracy is indeed their goal. Granted, it is a Christian theology, which generally I support. Except not in schools, and not mandated by government. We ended that in the Americas sometime after they chased my ancestors out of Hampton NH in the 1630's because they were Quaker.
The Discovery Institute published on their web site (and has since removed) a strategy they call the "Wedge". It is to promote a non-God "Intellegent Design" to get science to accept the idea that some kind of supernatural exists, despite no evidence for it.
Then the plan is to replace that belief in a generic supernatural with a Christian faith. I don't doubt that since this is specifically directed at government schools, that they fully intend on carrying this over into government mandates as well.
Who knows what would happen after decades of such government sponsord religion? Perhaps a return to government mandated tithes as existed in New England well after the First Amendment (since the First only prevented Congress from establishing a religion, a strict interpretation allows States to do so, and they once did).
Perhaps the Taliban example is a bit strong, because Christianity was never that violent in the Americas. But in England, it certianly was.
It is not a religious dogma. It is science. Creationism is the dogmatic belief.
I am all for vouchers, and Charter schools, as are many pro-evolutionists. The point is irrelevant. They have nothing to do with one another.
My children are in private Christian schools.
I was taught that it was a theory about 45 years ago and as far as I know it is always taught as a theory. Do you have evidence otherwise?
Excellent points - both.
Note the suicide bombers. You can tell anyone anything over and over, and they'll buy it.
I'm just amazed that people seem driven to reject Evolution, when I see no real conflict between it and Genesis. It's all in the interpretation. No two denominations ever agreed on interpreting the Bible, and I guess they never will.
I like the 'be nice' part. But I think you Established Religion true believers protest too much. If you really believed challenges to your doctrine were silly, you wouldn't over-react contstantly and continually. But lets get started; evolution is ridiculous.
Nothing organizes without Mind. Chance DISorganizes.
I think the reason we have to keep repeating it is NOT that the Creationists don't know it, but because many of them don't care. The idea is to discredit evolution. Admitting the difference between theory & hypothesis weakens their goal.
Most poeple are ignorant of the sciences.
"If this style of 'science' ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies."
But this is what was taught for many years during a time when this nation grew to greatness.
Since evolution has been taught, social institutions have been in decline. Though Americans are richer and have less work than ever before, as a whole, we also are more lazy, dissatisfied, selfish, immoral, dishonest and generally uneducated than ever before.
If we do not get back to the underlying moral principles that made us great, our greatness will also become a thing of the past.
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