Posted on 10/13/2009 8:10:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
I think the litmus test for religion & public schools is still based on Supreme Court decisions from the 70’s . . . the lemon codes, I think. Anyone want to help out here?
What religious ideology are “religious people” being coerced into supporting?
If you think that J-C values are foundation of our Constitution, then you are simply being disingenuous. All stable societies have been based on ideas found in J-C values-many before the J-C version of those values. I think you have to admit the force of the Enlightenment ideas in the writing of the Constitution. Did we establish a Constitutional Republic based on religion or on religious tolerance?
I hang out at Free Republic because for the large part people argue ideas instead of mocking, character assassinations found in the leftist media. I hang out at Free Republic because in times like these I'm encouraged to read so many other people think that socialism is evil, that it diminishes individual integrity, and that government is not the answer but an inconvenient necessity of the human condition.
I hang out at Free Republic because I think that individual freedom and political liberty are the foundations of individual integrity and the pursuit of happiness-in any manor I wish to define it, as long as I don't tread on another's own idea of happiness.
I agree the public school system is by and large a disaster. But as of now it’s the system. If you choose not to use it, you shouldn’t get rewarded for not using it.
Do people with no children get a break on their property tax because they have no children using the public school resource?
Example- If you are studying insects, you should know how the Hox genes set the body pattern and how it arose from simpler body patterns so you can know the interrelation of the various genus, species, and families. You should also know that these same genes determine the body pattern in humans.
Another example- the human immune system. If you study it, then you have to learn something about the mouse immune system. Parts that are in the human system are absent or in a more rudimentary state in the mouse You have to know evolution to help you understand how it arose.
Evolution leaves its traces in the DNA.
I studied DNA replication in baker's yeast in grad school. We did it in yeast because they are easy to grow and and get the DNA out of them. Also, some of the corresponding human genes could be placed in yeast and still work fine. The human cell cycle genes were isolated this way. A lot of the active sites in these enzymes (where the actual chemical reactions took place were very conserved through evolution.
If I wasn't taught evolution, this would seem like magic.
Both Nobel Prizes (Medicine and Chemistry)involved an understanding of evolution for the work to be done. They involved telomeres- (at the ends of chromosomes-stops them from unraveling)(Medicine) and ribosomes (the machinery that synthesizes all proteins in all living things)(Chemistry).By looking at the DNA sequences, one can see how the organisms are related and how the DNA sequences changed during evolution.
This is a fair question.
First of all let's establish that both godless and God-centered worldview are based upon **faith** since neither worldview can be proved objectively.
There are many,many very religious scientists who are highly successful. My husband is one along with his M.S and Ph.D. degres in biochemistry, 6 patents, many articles in the leading journals of his field, many lectures worldwide, and long career.
Therefore, having a religious worldview does **not** in any way hinder the practice of science.
My husband and I were educated in Catholic schools ( K-12 and university). At all times science was taught within the framework of a God-centered worldview. As appropriate and within the context of our lessons, it was emphasized that our natural world was a reflection of a **rational** God. The study of science gave us a glimpse into the mind of God. And...Finally, that it was our Christian duty to acquire as much knowledge about God's natural world as possible and to use that knowledge to bless the lives of others.
So?...Can you even begin to imagine this God-centered worldview being woven into the study of science in a government school? However...neglecting it teaches the child to evaluate the world around them in a godless manner. It teaches them to think godlessly. It teaches them to compartmentalize their faith (something our husband and I have **never** done in our work).
Both the godless worldview and the God-centered education philosophy have non-neutral religious, cultural, and political consequences. And...There is absolutely no possible way that any government schools can resolve the conundrum without establishing the religious worldview of one or the other ( godless or God-centered).
There is only one solution: Begin the process of privatizing K-12 education.
Just nevermind it’s been working just fine for evolutionists and liberals for the past 3-4-5 decades?
Then you sorely misjudge the enemy. They are smart and well informed, we are the ones playing catch up.
Indeed evos are silent about the NEA, ACLU and liberals in general hijacking public schools since it’s their ideology that’s “winning” anyway...who cares if schools are utter failures, just so long as liberals including evos, get God out and don’t have their liberal sensibilites threatened or offended in any way.
You seemed to be confused, science is a tool not an ideology. Evo's, physicists and chemists don't have an agenda, per say. Liberals do and they use all the tools at there disposal. If you fundies don't want to use a tool, don't complain when the other side does, it just makes you look stupid, and creating how things appear to be is another tool too.
Ever ask yourself why no high profile liberal supports creationism?
Because they know appearance matters and they don't want to look stupid?
You can't really teach biology without teaching evolution.
You totally evaded the comments about the quality of public education. That was as big a non-answer as any I ever saw.
I don't support tax payer funded public education.
Then by that reasoning, you are advocating ignorance because by teaching evolution, there is something else in Biology that they are neglecting.
Biology doesn't make any sense except in the concept of evolution. A proper education isn't to try and provide all knowledge, rather it is to teach them how to learn for themselves by giving them the basics. Evolution is a basic for biology, in the same way that learning the alphabet is a basic for reading or numbers are a basis for equations.
Wanting my money back if I opt out of some service is not a reward. It's a refund, and obtaining such refund would be completely just.
"Do people with no children get a break on their property tax because they have no children using the public school resource?"
They should get such break.
Now, to sum up my participation in this discussion. There are two interwoven aspects here.
1. It is totalitarian to force people to accept either an atheist or religious curriculum. The best solution (from the point of view of individual freedom) is to let people teach their kids, at their schools, whatever they want. Private education serves this purpose, and tuition-related tax breaks facilitate this model of education. If certain people want their kids to learn idiocy, so be it. Actually, don't you find it strange that the proponents of "diversity" are so rigid when it comes to diverse views, incompatible with their own?
2. I must state, however, that the "young Earth creationism" is not a scientifically valid view. While I recognize the right of people to teach their children that the Earth was created in 6 days, 6,000 years ago, I must also warn that certain occupations require understanding evolutionism. Creationists should be aware that their educational choice may later compromise their kids' chances to choose careers associated with biomedical research, for example.
I think Agamemnon's tagline addresses such utter absurd nonsense.
May I use your post on Facebook? If so do you want it credited to you and Free republic? A high school student interviewed us today about prayer in school etc. The first question was “do you think prayer should have been taken out of schools?” My answer was that I don’t think government should be involved in education. I would like the “interviewer” to read your post.
Very well said. I am glad we agree on something in some approximation. ;)
That is not science, it is god of the gaps. As a scientists and a Christian my assumption must be, when doing science, that God made a seamless universe that runs by the laws the HE set down.
Many quite correctly point out that the view of God that created an ordered universe is one of the reasons that both Jewish and Christian societies have been such fertile grounds for scientific progress, and that indeed much of the scientific progress of the last century has been by those of either Jewish or Christian faith, or of that culture.
Incompetent design replaces the God of the ordered universe with a “designer” who is like a guy with a leaky roof in a rainstorm running around putting up buckets and patching up holes.
Oh, I think scientists THEMSELVES have more than proven that the science, such as biomedical research, can get along just fine without evolution.
www.dissentfromdarwin.org
Meanwhile, we have evidence that education, indeed society in general, suffers when people demand not to be offended by a Judeo-Christian God to the point He’s removed from any and all public school discussion, religious displays in town squares, crosses too offensive in cemeteries and have to be therefore removed (never thought I’d see moonbat liberals become this unhinged, but here we are!!!!!!) etc. etc. etc.
btw...when they come for the crosses in Arlington, like the movie says, ‘there will be blood’.
“When you can give me credible, real, scientific proof of ID or creationism, then it can be taught in science class.
This means well detailed , reproducible experiments”
The same can be said of evolution. Neither can be proven or disproven scientifically because they are historical. No one was there to observe what happened in the past. All we have now is evidence in the present and our worldview colors how we see the evidence.
” Stop putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting what I said.”
Afraid he is violating your patent?
Again - Science isn’t a religion and you repeating endlessly that it is will not change that.
“I agree the public school system is by and large a disaster. But as of now it’s the system. If you choose not to use it, you shouldn’t get rewarded for not using it.
Do people with no children get a break on their property tax because they have no children using the public school resource?”
LOL, I can’t believe you actually typed THAT on FR. THAT is the whole point. Why should we pay so YOUR kids can go to school for free? That is socialism.
“Creationists should be aware that their educational choice may later compromise their kids’ chances to choose careers associated with biomedical research, for example”
Who gave you the idea that creationists don’t teach their children the mechanics of evolution? My children know what evolution is and how is supposed to work. And what jobs would that be, by the way?
Atheism is not an established religion, no. But it is a BELIEF system. It believes there is no God. An atheist cannot know this for certain unless he or she was in fact God. Catch 22.
Wow...just because your mind is so infinitesimally small doesn’t mean God’s design is “incompetent”, it (still) only means you don’t understand what you observe.
And I hate to break it to you dreamer, but man just never will fully understand.
You liberals just don’t get to be as smart or as competent as God.
Normal people rightly recognize design and intelligence in God’s creation.
And there’s simply no compatability with Christianity and the liberal loon versions of science with the central idea that God or His design is “incompetent”, let alone all we know is just here by sheer happenstance, without design, purpose or intelligence.
And how utterly un-AMERICAN to demand that He be kept out of science class/His very own creation. Again, He’s much greater than science, not the other way around. Re-read my tagline.
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