Posted on 09/09/2007 8:50:09 PM PDT by monomaniac
By John-Henry Westen and Elizabeth O'Brien
TORONTO, September 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Conservative Leader John Tory's election promise to give public funding to faith-based schools began to unravel at the seams yesterday as he spoke about evolution in the classroom.
Asked by a radio interviewer if creation would be permitted to be taught in the classroom, Tory replied, "The Christian-based school would have to teach the Ontario curriculum, which of course has a different explanation. It's still called the theory of evolution, but they teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they could also mention to children the fact that there are other theories out there that are part of some Christian beliefs."
Just after the interview, the Conservative Party issued a clarification on the remarks noting that any teaching of creation, presumably including scientific evidence for it, is not permitted in science class.
The John Tory Campaign made the following clarification: "1.) The Ontario curriculum does not allow for creationism (or any other religious theory) to be taught in science classes in Ontario's public schools. 2.) Mr. Tory clearly stated that any school to be included in the proposal must teach the Ontario curriculum. 3.) Mr. Tory's proposal would allow creationism to be discussed only as part of religious studies programming, as is now the practice in Ontario's publicly-funded Catholic schools."
Progressive Conservative leader John Tory and Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty have taken opposing sides on the issue of private school funding. Though opposed, the proposals of both politicians are seen by some seasoned political observers as unsatisfactory and potentially harmful to the religious freedom of religiously-based schools, public and private alike.
At present Ontario is one of the only provinces where parents who wish to educate their children in faith-based schools, other than Catholic, must pay public education taxes and receive no benefit for their children from those mandatory tax payments. The province pays for the costs of education in both the public school system and the Catholic separate system.
Tory intends to change the situation of private faith-based education funding by pumping up to $400 million into all faith-based schools within the province, including those that have hitherto provided their own funding.
Private schools that are not faith-based will receive no benefit, a major difference from the previous simple tax credit plan for families attending all independent schools that was implemented by former Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
In order to receive the money, however, privately run schools would have to teach the Ontario curriculum, follow standardized testing and have accredited teachers. While it would be optional at first, Tory's proposed solution could eventually force all schools to comply with the Ontario curriculum sections that mandate such things as acceptance of feminism and homosexuality, graphic sex education, teaching of evolution as complete fact and other problematic topics for those from religions of traditional moral, family and other core principles.
While faith-based private schools in Ontario were supportive of the previous Conservative Party plan to offer tax credits to families that chose private schooling, the current plan is worrisome to some. Some private school officials see Tory's plan as a first step to forcing all private schools to absorb the full secular curriculum and hire only government certified and indoctrinated teachers, as is the case in Quebec.
In Quebec last year the government threatened to shut down private Christian schools unless they accepted the province's required teaching on evolution and sex-education (See http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06102404.html ).
Dalton McGuinty, on the other hand, says he wants to leave the situation stand as it is. As he told a conference of municipal delegates, "You don't improve a community's schools, you don't build community when you take half a billion (dollars) out of publicly funded schools to fund private religious schools as the Conservatives are promising to do."
Commenting on the situation, John Pacheco, political activist and former Director of Finance of a private Catholic school told LifeSiteNews.com, "Once the Catholic school system accepted money, it made it easier for secular ideology to creep into the schools. As soon as we allow the government to dictate what curriculum to use, they can withdraw funding if we don't meet the standards."
Pacheco, who is also running in the upcoming provincial election in Ottawa West Nepean, will be highlighting the Family Coalition Party's voucher system proposal as an alternative to John Tory's plan. Under the FCP plan the parents' education tax dollars would follow their child to the school of their choice, which would include homeschooling.
Lets test them ALL including macroevolution, creation, id, hindi EMPIRICALLY, that would be a better idea..
So what he's saying is, he's not really conservative.
They are not scientific theories under the definitions used in science. Here is a definition of "theory" from a NASA website:
Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]
The goal of creation "science" was never research and discovery. Its goal was proselytizing, a way to get religion back into the classrooms.
I would respect you more, if you were honest and just admit that you don’t believe that creation science holds up under the weight of emirical evidence (though I would argue othewise..), rather than relying on the trite and frankly old darwinist idea that creation “science” isn’t really scientificly based..
Creation "science" has been determined to be religion by the U.S. Supreme Court (the Edwards decision).
(Some of the origins of this theory are religious-supernatural in nature- yet we aren’t testing religion (God): we are testing empirical (or rather forensic) scientifically empirical evidence for/against both macro-evolution and creation theory and intelligent design theory)..
Again, no. Both creation "science" and ID have been determined to be religion by the courts. The whole scheme for the modern version of ID, cooked up following the Edwards decision of the late 1980s is outlined in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy.
So will you argue your point rather than trite adhominim attacks..! ????
If you look back on the post you are responding to you will find I made no personal attacks. There are none in this post either.
If there have been any personal attacks, they have been by you. For example, just above you questioned my honesty.
Use empiricism to test the existence of a creator? Now this I'd like to see.
The problem is this quote from the so-called 'conservative' leader: "The Christian-based school would have to teach the Ontario curriculum"
In other words, private Christian schools would have to teach the same curriculum as the Ontario public schools. Not exactly a conservative position.
Instead, they are lead by leftists who want to dictate to Christian schools what they can teach. (Note this quote in the article from the so-called 'conservative' leader: "The Christian-based school would have to teach the Ontario curriculum".)
No, but obviously we can test the natural world.
Great! Let's just leave religion out of it.
So the Courts (Robed Clergy of sort themselves..some say): it is not science..does that ‘Make it so’-does it make it determine reality (I think it preposterous to think so).
Did the catholic church’s claims in the middle ages that gallileo was a heritic (and hence his empirical evidence that the world revolves around the sun) make it so becuase they were the authority and believed otherwise..?
Then neither does men’s opinions change REALITY in this case either..
You claim that ‘creation science’s’ goal was never empirical study, but was only promotion of ‘religion in the classroom’— not true for a couple of reasons 1) While I can’t speak for ALL students of creation science and its supporters; I can state truely that it would be utterly against a creationists purpose to present to students information that they knowingly believed was false, thereby all but a few fringe probably actually believe the emiricism of creation theory.
2)Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]- Creation theory or hypothesis (frankly that’s semantics) can be tested through studing the emirical evidence, and if new evidence..
3)I doubt many creation theorists would in their own statement describe their scientific study as religious; and even if did; would not focus on that, but on empirical evidence.
3)Maybe I was describing the wrong fallacy when I said adhominim (I am not up on my debate techniques as I should): If I have insulted you: I appologize to you!
That was not my meaning when I wrote about ‘adhominim’; I meant is that your fallacy to claim that a scientific theory (creation and I.D.) are religion, when in fact they NEVER claimed to be testing God’s miraclulous creation, but only to test the empirical evidence for the special creation..
Ok, but that doesn’t mean we can’t test the empirical evidence for creation science and aginst it..and for and against macroevolution...lets take the personal religious bias out here too (and no assume darwinism)..A CLEAN SLATE!
What exactly is it that you would test?
Are you under the impression that these things have not been studied?
Nope; I am just saying the can be tested under light of (empirical) creation science theory!
Well, there is no scientific evidence for a worldwide flood 4500 years ago.
Injecting the supernatural into genetics and the fossil record would by its very nature take away the empiricism of the scientific study of those fields.
Also, you will note that never do any of the creationists on this board, or anywhere else for that matter, present evidence which supports their position. They merely point out areas of disagreement amongst evolutionists. Why do they do this? Because they have nothing else. There is no evidence supporting literal biblical history, only evidence that we haven’t yet figured out exactly how things did happen.
There is scientific evidence (rock strata), which can be examined:
Once again I am NOT trying to inject the -supernatural- inot genetics, or the fossil record, lets start from the beginning and look at this scientific evidence objectively and EMPIRICALLY; what part of empirical don’t you understand?
There is evidence for it, whether your or my interpretations of the evidence matches is another topic..
As for the examples you pointed out (there is -some- empirical evidence for those (all except uniformitarianism, which by today’s is disproven), it all matters (your-everyone’s, mine included,
preconcieved notions).
Of course mankind has not -proven empirically- how “it happened”, but definition the past happened once, and you can not retest it, nor can you infer that macroevolution happened for certain..the best you can ever do is infer (hypothocise) to the best of your ability what happened with the forensic evidence you have!
That is what both creation theory, and macro-evolutionary theory do!!!
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