Posted on 06/22/2015 7:12:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Bibles are firmly rooted in public school science classrooms in Louisiana. The Idaho GOP Central Committee wants to replicate the Pelican State’s educational model.
But nothing worth doing is easy. The experience in Louisiana should show Idaho Republicans, if they really want to put the Bible back in the hands of public school teachers, especially science teachers, they need to be ready for evolutionists and Democrats to push back, and push back hard.
The fight to continue to allow Louisiana teachers to introduce “supplementary materials” into their science classes as part of the discussion of creationism, the Big Bang theory, and climate change is an annual affair.
Louisiana Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D) testified before a Senate Education Committee in 2014 that the state’s Science Education Act pushed their state back into the “Dark Ages” when it was approved in 2008.
“Creationism is being taught in Louisiana public schools and I don’t think it is appropriate that it is taught in science classes,” Peterson said.
She lost that fight. But, Peterson and other Louisiana Democrats are continuing to try to get the Science Education Act repealed in 2015.
Again, it looks like they have no hope. Peterson’s proposal, SB 74 — the Intelligent Outcomes Wanted Act (IOWA) — is stuck in the Senate Education Committee.
The Science Education Act was the first of its kind in the U.S. It permits teachers to bring in material other than the textbooks that have been approved by their school districts to help students “analyze, critique, and review scientific theories.”
“(In reality) I think this law provides an opportunity for creationism to be snuck into science classrooms under the guise of supplemental materials to critique controversial scientific theories such as evolution and climate change,” Peterson added.
However, there are scientists who have supported Louisiana’s Science Education Act. They strongly disagree with Peterson’s assertion that the LSEA is nothing but a loophole through which Christians can slip creationism into public school curriculum.
“The vocal activists who oppose the LSEA are seeking to confuse the issue, since the LSEA is not about creationism. In fact, when a group of Nobel Laureates recently signed a letter calling for the repeal of the LSEA, it is noteworthy that their letter refused to quote from the law itself and instead harped upon the distraction of ‘creationism.’ The truth is that LSEA does not permit teaching for or against any religious viewpoint,” Louisiana College biology professor Wade Warren, Ph.d., said in written testimony submitted to the Louisiana Senate Education Committee in 2011.
“If Darwin were alive today, he would urge us to teach his theory objectively. In Origin of Species, Darwin explained ‘a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question,’” he added.
Warren’s letter was co-signed by 14 fellow scientists, with doctorates.
Some Louisiana teachers don’t see any reason to hide the fact they use the Bible in science classes.
“We will read in Genesis and them [sic] some supplemental material debunking various aspects of evolution from which the students will present,” said Shawna Creamer, a science teacher at Airline High School, in an email to principal Jason Rowland, Slate magazine reported.
This sounds great to Idaho Republicans who want their public school teachers to use Bibles in science classes, too.
It would be a mistake to assume this is the work of a fringe element on the outskirts of mainstream Republican thought patterns in Idaho. No less than the state’s GOP Central Committee approved the “Resolution Supporting Bible Use in Idaho Public Schools” during a weekend meeting in June.
However, its approval came after one of the Republicans raised fears that the Quran might find its way into classrooms, too. So the Idaho GOP Central Committee squashed resolution language that would have allowed students to enroll in Bible classes in public schools.
But the resolution encourages the state Legislature to pass a new law that would allow the Bible to be used in “the study of literature, comparative religion, English and foreign languages, U.S. and world history, comparative government, law, philosophy, ethics, astronomy, biology, geology, world geography, archaeology, music, sociology, and other topics of study where an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.”
The resolution, which was one of only three proposals approved by the Idaho GOP Central Committee at its June meeting, pointed to the Idaho Constitution, which includes the phrase “Almighty God” in its preamble, the Idaho Republican Party Platform that states “We believe the strength of our nation lies with our faith and reliance on God our Creator, the individual and the family…” and congressional approval of the “use of Holy Bibles for use in all schools” in 1782, as justification for allowing Bibles in public schools.
Charlotte Hinson, a fifth-grade teacher in Louisiana who uses the Bible as part of classroom discussions of creationism and evolution, explained her rationale in a much shorter sentence.
Hinson wrote in a newspaper column in her local paper, “God made science.”
What’s the counter argument?
Evolution is so solid it makes everything LOOK like it’s created by a supreme Mind?
It isn't impossible, but I don't think conservatives are up to the task.
Both are theories; neither can be proven either way. They can be considered competing or related theories, the kids should be allowed all the info so they can make up their own minds. This, however is something libs cannot allow as most of their ideas don’t hold water. If kids learn to think about things they will reject liberalism.
At some point, you have to ask THE question -
what is the ultimate source of truth?
Is it humanity’s ability to fathom nature?
Is there any “truth” derived this way that hasn’t fallen short or been wrong?
Cholesterol anyone?
Maybe Charlotte could have her class do a project on the scientific identification of witches. You can't kill them until you know who they are.
I hear that a lot of government schools down south allow prayer in school and even public prayer. Good for them. I wish more would do it. Make the ACLU sue the town. They don’t have an unlimited supply of money.
Let the ACLU win the judgement, even...
just don’t even bother to show up and get a summary judgment against you,
and don’t comply.
Louisiana is on the verge of a STATEWIDE school voucher program, perhaps the BIGGEST national news story of the year --certainly the biggest unreported story.
Witches are an odd lot. They claim to have certain powers that they deny having when dragged into court.
I worked with a witch one time. She threatened another employee with a hex. He complained to management and hilarity ensued. Management couldn’t dismiss the accusation because of diversity measures. The witch had to admit that hexes weren’t real so it wasn’t an actual threat.
Yup. This isn't hard. What are they going to do, arrest the teachers for praying? Go for it. That will be a great PR move.
Only schools with a black majority. They have gospel choirs at predominately black high schools.
Local magistrates (sheriffs) need to be elected who will defy rulings and legislation that is abhorrent to the liberty of the people of their county.
If a bunch of citizens defy laws, they just get arrested and rounded up.
But when local magistrates defy laws or protect those who do, then the fedgov’s got a real big problem.
The best thing about this approach is that the Sheriff is elected by a small local constituency.
As an evangelical Christian, I don’t know that I want non-Christian teachers presenting their opinion on the Bible in classes. However, I definitely think that both the strengths and the weaknesses of naturalistic evolution should be presented. That’s just good science. Once students see the gaping holes in naturalistic evolution, the facts will speak for themselves and they will be much more open to listening to an alternative viewpoint that should be presented at their churches.
Wasn’t aware of that. Thanks.
Right here is the core essence of your problem: the Bible is in no way, shape or form a "theory", period, much less a "scientific theory".
The Bible is the opposite of a scientific theory.
Modern science -- natural-science -- begins with and is founded on the assumption of naturalism, meaning: only natural explanations for natural processes.
So science -- for example, evolution theory -- is what you get when you exclude all possibility of supernatural explanations.
In that sense then, there is no serious "competing" scientific theory to evolution.
By stark contrast, the Bible has nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- to do with today's natural science.
The Bible is the opposite of natural science in that it begins with, and is based on assumptions of supernatural creation and interventions in the natural realm.
The Bible assumes and asserts that God is responsible for a large number of supernatural events, events which natural-science can neither confirm nor adequately explain.
Point is: you cannot use scientific standards to measure the Bible, any more than you can use Biblical standards to measure science -- neither is intended to weigh the other (morality and ethics aside, of course).
Bottom line: it's no more appropriate to teach religion in science class that it would be to teach math in gym class, or visa versa.
DeweyCA: "As an evangelical Christian, I don’t know that I want non-Christian teachers presenting their opinion on the Bible in classes.
However, I definitely think that both the strengths and the weaknesses of naturalistic evolution should be presented.
That’s just good science.
Once students see the gaping holes in naturalistic evolution, the facts will speak for themselves and they will be much more open to listening to an alternative viewpoint that should be presented at their churches."
You are closer to the right answer here.
The entire scientific method is all about questioning and skepticism -- take nothing at face value.
Applied to evolution, such questions can help a student keep clearly in mind how much we actually know from physical evidence, and how much of our overall picture is reasonable speculation or theory.
But the role of "intelligent design" in evolution cannot be taught in science classes, and has to come from religion classes, as explained by each pupil's church teachings.
Since no two denominations teach precisely the same doctrines, there is no possibility that often atheistic public school science teachers are going to tell their students what the parents' churches wish the children to learn.
I am not arguing even for teaching intelligent design. I am simply saying that the weaknesses of neo-Darwinian evolution should be explored, along with the strengths that are always presented. Simply use journal articles from secular sources and from famous atheist evolutionary scientists who point out the obvious holes in naturalistic evolution.
Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist at Harvard, and the primary promoter of naturalistic evolution for almost 30 years, thought that the evidence was so bad for the classic gradual theories of evolution that he invented his “punctuated equilibrium” which went contrary to the most basic tenets of classic neo-Darwinian evolution. So who is right? Gould or the classic theory that we were all taught in high school and college? They can’t both be right. You never hear about this conflict of views in biology classes. That is the type of material that should be presented.
Pointing out that evolution theory cannot answer every possible question, or that some answers have changed over the years as new data is discovered and analyzed, none of that is anti-science.
Indeed, it's important for students to have some grasp of the limits of our understandings, of the changes over time, and just where today's cutting edges of research are.
But in answer to your specific question, both Gould and Darwin were right, in a sense.
Every offspring comes with some more-or-less random mutations, and over many generations these can be used to track groups back to their points of origin.
The classic example is Pacific Islanders whose genetic mutations are used to track their origins back to Taiwan.
Most mutations have no effect on so-called junk DNA, and those which do effect coding DNA are mostly negative, and so are weeded out of populations by natural selection.
So, if the environment remains unchanged generation after generation, then very little change will be observed in a population, even though under the surface (so to speak) new mutations effect every generation.
But when the environment changes (i.e., grows warmer, colder, wetter, dryer, new predator, etc.) then mutations which help a population survive will be kept and spread.
The example which comes to mind is Indian Elephants adapting, changing, evolving, to become northern Mammoths.
And as our breeding of domestic animals (dogs, horses, etc.) demonstrates, evolutionary changes can sometimes be quite rapid.
So, bottom line: as Darwin implied, there can be mutations in every generation, but as Gould explained, these may result in no significant evolution so long as the environment remains unchanged.
Do you disagree?
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