Evolution in schools; legal trap (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, May 30, 2012, 21:52 (4538 days ago) @ David Turell

http://www.swlaw.edu/pdfs/lr/37_1mccreary.pdf
> > > 
> > > Teaching evolution without mentioning God is a form of religion as non-religion
> > 
> > No its not, because science asserts only methodological materialism. Asserting God in any sense takes us beyond materialism, beyond the perview of science.
> 
> Read the considered legal article from southwest law school-I took some time and read about half of it before I gave up, and I still disagree. Methodological materialism is universally agreed upon by anyone who practices science. This goes for Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Hindus alike. -The line I particularly object to: "If 
we restrict ourselves to a narrow interpretation of sharing with students 
only that information that is readily testable and observable, we limit the 
breadth of what we can share with our children"-But science IS exactly "information that is readily testable and observable"-The argument basically says, that by not allowing (religious, therefore not materialistic by defnition) arguments into a materialistic discussion, it therefore supports out and out materialism and only materialism. It doesn't. In fact, that Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly supported the idea that science should be science alone... which is defined as the study of the material world, and that the discussions pertaining to the ethereal are left to... -The home and the Synagogue. -The courts support, in (and only in) the setting of a science classroom, what science says. Which is conservative, and minimally, that all life has a common ancestor. Interpretations are left to the individual. -We've had this talk before--science ceases to work without assertions of materialism. Discussions about the underpinnings of science is the job for philosophy, and alternative theories to evolution can certainly be discussed in a comparative religions class. -^^^Personally I wouldn't have a problem teaching alternative theories because it would give a chance to say, go to the Bible, and categorically demonstrate what material claims it makes are false, therefore making direct attacks on biblical literalism. But in THAT case I also believe that would mean that I'm pushing my views onto kids, and I think that's wrong. You'd agree that most of the people involved in the debate aren't exactly on MY level of ethics. -The battle over "what gets taught in the schools" is an old artifact of the "war" between secular humanism and its religious opponents. By pushing the fight out to the parents, teachers can... *gasp* teach, disallowed from bringing up religion, which really, truly, shouldn't be a topic in a science class. EVER. (Remember, I fully agree and endorse their coexistence! What I'm saying here likely seems otherwise.) The short end of that is, I want my kids learning religion from me, not from school. -I agree with the lawyer and author of the book "Bleached Faith" that discussing "alternative theories" in the classroom in that way does nothing more than relegate God to a second-class engineer, and completely detracts from the fact that God is supposed to be a spiritual focal point for your own moral guidance and personal development.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"