Posted on 06/01/2008 12:55:21 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The real problem with Darwinism in the public school classroom is that it is often taught in an atheist way. Textbooks by biologists like William Provine and Richard Dawkins routinely assert that evolution has done away with the need for God. The claim is that chance and natural selection have demonstrated that we can have design--or the appearance of design--without a designer. In this sense Darwinism becomes propaganda for atheism.
Typically evangelical Christians seek to counter this atheism by trying to expose the flaws in the Darwinian account of evolution. This explains the appeal of "creation science" and the "intelligent design" (ID) movement. These critiques, however, have not made any headway in the scientific community and they have also failed whenever they have been tried in the courts. Fortunately there is a better way.
Consider this: the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits public schools from teaching or promoting atheism in any way. How do I know this? Well, the religion clauses of the First Amendment protect the "free exercise" of religion and at the same time forbid the "establishment" of religion. Courts have routinely held that the free exercise clause protects not only religious beliefs but also the absence of religious beliefs. If you are fired from your government job because you are an atheist, your First Amendment rights have been violated. In other words, the term "religion" means not only "religion" but also "atheism."
Yet if the free exercise clause defines religion in a way that includes atheism, then the no-establishment clause must define religion in the same way. So the agencies of government are prohibited from "establishing" not only religion but also atheism. This means that just as a public school teacher cannot advocate Christianity or hand out Bibles to his students, so too public school textbooks and science teachers cannot advocate atheism.
I'd like to see Christian legal groups suing school districts for promoting atheism in the biology classroom. No need to produce creationist or ID critiques of Darwinism. All that is necessary is to parade the atheist claims that have made their way into the biology textbooks and biology lectures. The issue isn't the scientific inadequacy of evolution but the way in which it is being used to undermine religious belief and promote unbelief. If the case can be made that atheism is being advocated in any way, then the textbooks would have to be rewritten and classroom presentations changed to remove the offending material. Schools would be on notice that they cannot use scientific facts to draw metaphysical conclusions in favor of atheism.
In this way Darwinism in the public schools would no longer be a threat to religion in general or Christianity in particular.
"...atheists and agnostics are not only claiming but enjoying higher rights and greater privileges in this land than Christians; that is, they are able to propagate their views at public expense while Christianity must be taught at the expense of Christians. Whenever Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, desire to present to students their interpretation of Christianity they build their own colleges with their own money, employ their own teachers, and give to the school a name which indicates what is being taught... The question in dispute is whether atheists and agnostics have a right to teach irreligion in public schools--whether teachers drawing salaries from the public treasury shall be permitted to undermine belief in God, the Bible, and Christ by teaching not scientific truth but unproven and unsupported guesses which cannot be true unless the Bible is false.""If the Bible cannot be defended in these schools it should not be attacked, either directly of under the guise of philosophy or science. The neutrality which we now have is often but a sham; it carefully excludes the Christian religion but permits the use of the schoolrooms for the destruction of faith and for the teaching of materialistic doctrines."
The logical conclusion is that the existence of government schools funded by the Feds is itself a violation of the First Amendment.
Schools by nature can not be separated from religion.
Chesterton said it best when he stated that,”Education is violence.” It is a provocative and interesting slant on a seemingly uncontroversial topic. It is impossible to teach without dogma. The modern educators pretend not to employ dogma as if theirs is not a religion. I recently attended a Masters/ PHD graduation at a University at which a Graduate made a speech and confidently stated that, “What makes us human is imagination.” Many of the graduates laughed at his remarks now that they had finished they could afford to be honest. And that sums up higher education in these United States.
When teachers get persecuted for just mentioning ID, I can’t help but wonder: Is evolution atheism in disguise?
ML/NJ
It addresses this very problem
“Yet if the free exercise clause defines religion in a way that includes atheism, then the no-establishment clause must define religion in the same way. So the agencies of government are prohibited from “establishing” not only religion but also atheism. This means that just as a public school teacher cannot advocate Christianity or hand out Bibles to his students, so too public school textbooks and science teachers cannot advocate atheism.”
I saw the movie, Expelled, and loved it. Glad it’s still in the theaters, and hope more folks will see it.
This trailer from the movie, shows ID scientists who were “expelled.”
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php
The Real Problem?
Proof.
D’Souza is right.
I have been fond of pointing out that the adduction of atheism from Darwinism (accepted both by atheists who think Darwinism ‘proves’ their religious position, and evangelical protestants who want to drive the teaching of evolutionary biology from schools) rests on a false basis: the assumption that a stochatically modeled (or even stochastic) phenomenon is void of intent.
As I have repeatedly pointed out in this forum and elsewhere, this assumption is false: futures markets are best modeled by a stochastic differential equation, and yet, they are established by intentional (presumably intelligent) actors, and their dynamics are caused by the actions of intentional actors. So too, hardened metals and annealed metals are caused proximally by a thermal (actually random!) process, yet their presence in an archeological find is taken as a sign that they are artifacts.
The neo-Darwinian synthesis poses no threat to belief in the God who says ‘My ways are not thy ways’, even if it might pose a threat to the rationalistic Scriptural hermeneutic that assumes the Scriptures were written to be taken at face value as if addressed primarily to post-’Enlightenment’ rationalists.
Yes, but Darwinism is, in its very nature, non-teleological, or rather it is claimed to be so, and this claim is the point of Darwinism. In fact Darwin was enthusiastic about banishing final causes, Payleyism, and any trace of teleology, intentions, etc. from biology. Vernon Kellogg writes:
Darwinism may be defined as a certain rational, causo-mechanical (hence, non-teleologic) explanation of the origin of new species.If this is so, then Darwinism is not compatible with any view about life that embraces teleology. At best a teleologic view of life can be made "compatible" with Darwinism by stipulating that teleology is illusionary. I don't think many Darwinians would willingly delete that "non-teleologic" qualifier -- but what would happen if they did? A most interesting exploration of this theme is found in Argyll's Organic Evolution, which you can download from my FR homepage.
Evolution isn’t atheism in disguise, although many atheists claim evolution has made belief in a Creator God unnecessary. In fact, there are leading biologists who believe in evolution, who are devout Christians. Two well-known examples: Francis Collins, who directed the Human Genome Project and who shared credit for the discovery of the gene for cystic fibrosis, is an evangelical Christian. Kenneth Miller, a Brown University professor and noted textbook author, is Roman Catholic.
You’re obviously tying hard to convince yourself.
Any luck?
"Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. "Northwest Ordinance; July 13, 1787
An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio.
Cordially
1. Atheism is the absence of a religion, not a religion.
2. Evolution is science and does not rely on or promote atheism.
3. The only group of people who have a problem with the overall theory of evolution are Creationists/IDers who are willing to believe ancient Babylonian creation myths without proof, but will not accept any proof for evolution.
4. The First Amendment protects free speech as well as the free exercise of religion. Atheism is protected by both, but not because it is a religion. It is protected as free speech for obvious reasons and is protected under freedom of religion because forbidding atheism would be persecution by the religious in power, hence separation of church and state.
5. Dinesh D'Souza has made a fortune pandering to fundamentalist Christians providing them with talking points that go nowhere but sound as if they do. 6. Equating atheism with religion is part of the Lying for Christ movement that believes that deception is righteous as long as it advances their version of Judeo-Cristian beliefs. These are the people that say that ID isn't just another name for Creationism. They claim to critique evolution theory through science when they are really just trying to create enough confusion in the minds of the semi-literate to be able to force feed them the Biblical creation myth. No serious scientist accepts this myth as a valid scientific theory for the origins of life on earth.
7. The Constitution, while prohibiting the teaching of religion in public schools, also protects these people's right to freely practice their religion. They have churches for this purpose. But like radical homosexuals who aren't content just to engage in their practices, they feel compelled to have their beliefs legitimized by damaging the institutions of our society. After all no one is trying to prevent gays from being gay or Creationist IDers from believing in their myths. It is the radical gays' need to force their agenda on the institutions of society like marriage, and the fundamentalist Christians' need to sneak their religion into educational institutions that is pernicious. Stay in your bath houses and churches and let us get on with improving civilization.
A: Yes.
It is not atheist at all. It is the original sin of disobedience.
"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Gen 3:4
Evolution is merely the name of the process that is part of the lie that the serpent says we will be like God.
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