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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (83654)	7/12/2000 1:10:15 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

not to mention the very creation of life. I think you mean the very origin of life, unless you are assuming what has yet to be demonstrated. The theory of evolution does not pretend to explain the origin of life in its original simplest form. I understand that a number of theories are being advanced to explain this; I don't believe that any particular theory has emerged as a scientific consensus. I don't think anyone can say with any certainty how life originated, but I think we can say with some certainty that the creation story recounted in the bible is totally inconsistent with any available evidence.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (83654)	7/12/2000 4:28:28 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

No doubt someone will. But the problem is that this is a serious conflict. Many scientists of the highest reputation (National Academy of Science, f.i.) are committed to keeping "science" from being contaminated by religion. They are willing to go so far as to impose censorship on school room texts. The Supreme Court has defined creationism as religion, and that means it is not even an option for the public schools. I know of no religious people with rigorous scientific training who assert that the Bible or similar religious materials are derived from objective experiment and analysis subjected to peer review. As a result, it is illegal to represent creationism as "scientific." IMO the religionists are not really interested in introducing the scholarly study of religion into the schools. They are primarily interest in denouncing science. I can't imagine that there would be any real objection to teaching school children of suitable age about religion, including detailed comparative analysis of different religions in an unbiased fashion, sometime around age 16 or 17. Many religious people would object to Jews and Muslims teaching "about" Christianity, Catholics teaching about Protestantism, etc. Teachers would perhaps have be carefully monitored to make sure they did not display prejudice. The problem as I see it is that children are young and impressionable. For thousands of years, teachers of the young has been limited to the uneducated and incompetent. Very few teachers can be trusted to be objective and unbiased. This is also true of college professors, but college students are supposed to be strong enough to resist teacher bias (they aren't). Religious teaching, because of the impossibility of it being unbiased and objective, IMO must be 1) banned altogether from education; or 2) administrered in limited doses to people who knowingly and voluntarily are subjected to its indoctrination. IMO if a citizen insists on religious education in the public schools, he should send his kids to private schools which can be just as bigoted as he is willing to pay for. If a citizen doesn't want to pay for public schools under these conditions, he should engage in civil disobedience and campaign to abolish the public schools. I see nothing in the Federal Constitution that requires states to provide public education. If a state wished to abolish its public schools, I see no legal reason why they should not. Personnally, I would prefer a rich variety of excellent religious schools paid for by believers, and a variety of excellent public schools from which all religious indoctrination was rigidly excluded. I prefer that public schools have a variety of class work examining the historical and cultural role of religion. These would be controversial, of course, but highly desirable. I suspect we'd have to tape everything to protect the teacher and students from unsupported charges.