Kansas Outlaws Evolution

[Airman1270 0]

...spending federal money to teach religion in schools is unconstitutional...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Fine. Get the federal money out of the equation. There are numerous reasons to return the school system to local control, reasons that have nothing to do with the origin-of-life discussion.

I sure wish you'd be as passionate about federal money being used to impose things which contradict MY values and priorities.

Jon

[billvon 2,434]

>First, teaching "religion" is NOT unconstitutional.

Correct. Passing a law to spend federal money to teach one religion in public schools IS, however, unconstitutional. You may recognize this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

In other words, it's illegal to legislate concerning one branch of religion. It is not illegal to legislate concerning ALL forms of religion. In that vein, if a public school wanted to teach several creation myths in a religion course, there are no prohibitions against that.

But that, of course, would not accomplish fundamentalist christian goals, so there's no advocacy of that.

>More to the point, teaching about creation is not, in and of
>itself, "religion."

Agreed. However, teaching the christian creation myth (or the Islam myth, or the Norse myth) IS teaching religion.

>The real issue here is that you do not want your children to be
> exposed to both sides of the debate, period.

There are many sides of the debate in science, and good science courses teach several of them. The RNA-world hypothesis, DNA-first, the Miller-Urey experiment (why it is or isn't valid) etc. "God did it" is not one side of the scientific debate, any more than "Snoopy founded America" is one side of a history course.

There are many sides of the debate in RELIGION. I have absolutely no problem with my kids being taught various creation myths in a class on religious history.

[billvon 2,434]

>There are numerous reasons to return the school system to local control.

As long as you could ensure a similar level of funding, I'd go with that.

>I sure wish you'd be as passionate about federal money being used
>to impose things which contradict MY values and priorities.

Like what? If you have a values-based objection to science, then lobby to remove science from school education. It's a more defensible position.

[NCclimber 0]

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>First, teaching "religion" is NOT unconstitutional.

Correct. Passing a law to spend federal money to teach one religion in public schools IS, however, unconstitutional. You may recognize this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

In other words, it's illegal to legislate concerning one branch of religion.

In other words - the Founding Fathers were opposed to a national religion... that might require mandatory church attendance... which was fairly common before we told England to piss off.

Funny how that has come to mean manger scenes are prohibited on community property or traditional Christmas plays in elementary schools are a form of federal religious indoctrination. Silly.

[billvon 2,434]

>the Founding Fathers were opposed to a national religion... that
> might require mandatory church attendance... which was fairly
> common before we told England to piss off.

Right. They made it pretty clear that the US was not founded on religion.

>Funny how that has come to mean manger scenes are prohibited on
>community property or traditional Christmas plays in elementary
>schools are a form of federal religious indoctrination. Silly.

I agree about the manger thing. A good compromise, adopted by many towns, is that you can display anything you want on a given corner (i.e. manger scenes, or a menorah, or a statue of Vishnu if you want) or nothing (i.e. they don't want _anything_ on that section of their land.) That seems pretty fair. In my home town in NY they'd have a manger scene and a menorah next to each other.

Same thing in school plays. When I went to schools we'd alternate between jewish and christian themed holiday celebrations. Seemed to work OK. Nowadays you might have some muslim or hindu celebrations in there too. As long as you're not supporting one religion over the other - no problem.

[SpeedRacer 1]

Interesting thing: I went to public school during the 70s in 4th 5th & 6th grade. We lived in a neighborhood that was mostly Christians and Jews.

In music class sometimes we would sing songs of a religious bent. Some Christian, some Jewish songs as well. I came from a Catholic household, but neither I nor my family had any problems with the fact that we sometimes sang Jewish songs (The Dreidel song or Hava Nageelah) in music class. And again, this was in a public school.

I wonder if that still happens.

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[Amazon 7]

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The real issue here is that you do not want your children to be exposed to both sides of the debate, period. You can't explain why, so you hide behind this "separation of church & state" fabrication.

NOPE.. wrong...

My son got biblical training in church and in Sunday School and at home....

He got his science in public schools up thru and including college. Its a good balance.. more people should try it.. rather than falling back on just creationism...like my cousin did with his children.. who are ... just like him..dumb as dirt and proud of it...all that homeschooling prepared his children to live in an interesting 19th century world... that no longer exists.

[jakee 1,259]

Hey Jon,

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More to the point, teaching about creation is not, in and of itself, "religion." The fact that a piece of information happens to be in agreement with certain "religious" teachings is not reason enough to demand it be censored. If this were the case, it would be unconstitutional to teach kids they should not lie, cheat, steal, or mistreat their fellow man. After all, these teachings find their roots in Judeo-Christian Biblical philosophy.

First, biblical philosophy goes back 2/3k years (NT/OT), many cultures had prohibitions on those behaviours prior to that time. Hell, several city states in Greece even had radical democracy before Judeism began to spread further than Israel.

Secondly, as to the non-religionism of creation, here are a few quotes from Phillip Johnson, the founder of ID. ID is the theory specifically designed to bring creationism into the school environment.

"I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call The Wedge, which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science." ..."Now the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, well, where might you get the truth?" ..."I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves."

"What I am not doing is bringing the Bible into the university and saying, "We should believe this." Bringing the Bible into question works very well when you are talking to a Bible-believing audience. But it is a disastrous thing to do when you are talking, as I am constantly, to a world of people for whom the fact that something is in the Bible is a reason for not believing it." ... "You see, if they thought they had good evidence for something, and then they saw it in the Bible, they would begin to doubt. That is what has to be kept out of the argument if you are going to do what I to do, which is to focus on the defects in their [the evolutionist's] case—the bad logic, the bad science, the bad reasoning, and the bad evidence."

"We are taking an intuition most people have (the belief in God) and making it a scientific and academic enterprise. We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator."

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[NCclimber 0]

When evolution is outlawed...





only outlaws will evolve.





That's a fact!

[billvon 2,434]

>only outlaws will evolve.

You rebel you!

[Andy9o8 0]

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When evolution is outlawed...
only outlaws will evolve.

Hey, that's pretty good. I'm gonna put it in my "plagiarized stuff" file.

[NCclimber 0]

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>only outlaws will evolve.

You rebel you!

Look away, Dixie Land.