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VivaciousSub -> RE: Creationism in public schools (10/4/2008 11:46:15 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
What a flashpoint. Jabs thrown back and forth, ill will, anger, quote after quote and link after link... and some of it from the same folks who raced to the offense over book banning in general.
The Bible is a book. Whether you live by it, hate it, could care less, it is a book. Banning or barring it from discussion or debate doesn't make you wise or intellectual. It makes you politically correct in your tolerance, which is essentially, only tolerant of some things and completely intolerant of others. Creationism is part of that book as it is part of many other books written by other ancients. Many of us also live in a country where people identify themselves in the 90-something percentile as Christian. The OP didn't ask if it should be taught, but rather discussed or debated.
The religious right wants it taught as an alternative to science and offers a pseudo-scientific approach to doing so. Some of the questions they raise have merit at a passing glance. Few of them stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever. It is at best, a negative science attuned only to discrediting evolution by poking at perceived holes in the fossil record. That is wrong. It shouldn't be taught.
Some on the left and some self-described intellectuals don't want it in public school forums at all. That too is wrong. Call it a philosophy, faith, call it anything you want, the teachings themselves form the basis for what a rather large portion of many of your neighbors believe, and was the basis for many of the laws we live by. It doesn't equate to sphagetti gods in flying saucers or midnight worships of Mother Moon. Refusing to discuss it at all or allow any debate on it in school doesn't put you any higher on the totem pole than someone who wants any other book banned from such settings. It makes you intolerant. The only saving grace here is that it's politically correct to be intolerant of religious things, well, of Christian things.
The idiocy behind refusing to debate it or discuss it is the idiocy that always comes when people won't talk. It's kind of how you end up with groups of people hating each other because of color, because of beliefs, because they just live in a different place.
It's stupid. I see no reason it can't or shouldn't be debated. Taught? No. Debated? Absolutely.
Wow, StrangerThan. That was an amazing post.
To insist on teaching it is to propagate philosophy and faith as fact. They are not the same and schools would do well to teach that overarching principle. To insist on banning it does a disservice as well by thwarting discussion and debate that leads to introspection, the birth and development of ideas.
Frankly, I cannot imagine that the famed salons of the Renaissance would have chosen either extreme, and some of the brightest minds with the most insistent of personal beliefs still chose to attend, listen and learn much to the benefit of the world.
Let us discuss these things in the light of day so that we may come to understand their value and place in the world.
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