And it's ... Bob!
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.
Only theory? You mean we're not teaching gravitational theory, atomic theory or any other theories in schools?
There is only one God but you can believe what you want. That doesn't change the truth.
Yeah, but they're only theories. [Reaching for stickers ...]
>> Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state
There is no such thing as "constitutionally required separation of church and state". The author must be referring to the usurpation of power by the Supreme Court that declared the separation of church and state to be unconstitutional.
In any case, since the author is ignorant of the constitution, there is no need to read further.
The discussion here involves evolution. Why is it so difficult to focus on one subject at a time? If you want to argue other scientific theories, then that's fine. But the original article involved evolution.
Now isn't tha a little closer to the truth?
Truth doesn't change. Theories change.
Amazing! These folks still have their own teeth?
"the fact that if the solar system was anywhere near as old as some claim--our sun would have been so much larger--its gravitational pull would have been so much higher--that the innermost planets by now would have spiraled into it by now...."
Fact? Your physics doesn't work.
Just think how thick textbooks are going to be when we have a sticker for every theory.
Not to mention how much fun all books will be when every statement has to be sourced.
Political Correctness as practiced by conservatives.
Amen.
You ignore the obvious benefits. When those stickers are in place, there will be no more teen pregnancy, no more crime, no more racism, no more war ... It's going to be wonderful!
You have it backwards. The discussion is about stickers and warnings. The question is why is evolution being singled out. It is no more nor less a theory than relativity. The facts being taught about biology are no more simplified than the facts being taught about chemical bonds. If fact there is probably less high school biology to unlearn in college than there is high school chemistry to unlearn.
If it must be unlearned, why is it taught?
Fusion. Thanks for the refresher. Additional comments follow.
I said no other theories regarding origin of life were being taught. You have a way of projecting what you assume people are saying instead of just reading what is there.
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