Calif. School Sued Over Evolution Class

Darwin's philosophy? PHILOSOPHY? It ain't a philosophy, you morans, it's the foundation of modern biology!

Sheesh.

My primary objection has been, in the past, that these religious nutcases were teaching religion in a science class, and have even said that if religious ideas are taught, they should be taught in other types of classes.

On the surface, they are meeting this requirement.

However, I still find problems with it because they are teaching only one point of view... and they are still teaching it as if it were science.

Of course, now I'm the one who's going to be accused of "moving the goalposts"...

Science does not belong in a philosophy class. Nor does evolution-bashing.

If a school wants to discuss various creation myths in a philosophy class, fine, but it seems pretty clear that instead, this was an ID-only (and anti-Darwin) class dressed up as a philosophy class.

It's sad that another school district has to spend school tax dollars on the lawsuit instead of on school supplies, but hey, that's what happens when you vote to inject religion into public schools...

especially since they seem to be teaching this as a specific refutation of evolution

would be fun to see a class predicated around showing how non-rock-solid the ID "theory" is :)

and that should be scrutinized very carefully. She has no business proselytizing in the classroom without regard for the religious beliefs of her own students.

You would think that if you truly had faith and could truly pass the tenets of that faith along at church, at home, at bible study, and at the dinner table, that you wouldn't need to RAM the shit down our throats in public schools, courtrooms, football games and every other public place where you might have non-believers hostage.

What a frail and feeble form of faith. If it comes from your bible, teach it in your bible study class. After hours.

Off school property, unless you're also giving equal facility access to atheists, jews and wicca.

their fundie religion teaches them they're supposed to ram the shit down everyone's throats. They're not good Christians if they don't witness.

(IMHO they're bad human beings for doing so, but in their minds...)

religion once you have "converted" everyone.

Can't they see the only possible outcome of fundamentalist religion in law IS the Taliban and murdering everyone who disagrees with you?

Even Catholicism learned the hard way through many a pope and century that religion cannot be the same thing as government without stifling the very economies that support those religions to begin with.

It is absurd to think that you can control the ideas of any multi-cultural population by legislating your religion into law, much less by replacing science with creation mythologies.

science BEGAN as philosophy (with the Pythagoreans, the founders of mathematics, geometry, astronomy and a number of other subjects, but who also believed in the mystical properties of numbers, and that the goal of philosophy and science--at that time, one and the same discipline--was salvation of the human soul).

Science, philosophy and religion remain pretty much wedded together until very recent times.

I wish to God (...ahem) that these rightwing nuts were not pushing education into a corner on this matter--forcing it to respond defensively to a given science and humanitarian studies program. I think "intelligent design" should be explored in school curricula, even in science class. (WHERE is the design we see in nature coming from? Us? Some scientific thinkers in biology and physics fear that we are imposing our need for order and design where it does not exist, and are thus making errors as to what is really real.) Also, I think that evolution, like every other scientific idea, SHOULD be taught, not as dogma (as it often is--in tone anyway), but as a theory--one in this case that appears to account pretty well for the facts that we know, but that COULD be supplanted by some OTHER theory, when more facts are known, or new and different perspectives achieved.

What if, tomorrow, aliens arrive from Arcturus and can establish beyond question that they planted life on this planet, and then came back and, at a certain point, infused the gene for sentience into certain species (humans, whales, dolphins and elephants, for instance). I mean, it's not so outlandish. And how then would we have to REVISE the theory of evolution to encompass these new facts? And what about the Arcturians' evolution? Where did THEY come from?

We are on the threshold of discovery that we are not alone among sentient species in the universe. One of the major steps toward that discovery has been taken--the discovery that planetary systems (once thought to be rare) are commonplace among the stars. This hugely increases the odds for sentient life having developed in other places. So, the Arcturian scenario is not so outrageous. And other, less spectacular discoveries might occur--such as the discovery of some sort of life on Mars.

Clearly, we should be trying to think big, not small. We should be LOOKING FOR more comprehensive theories of life. And, among other things, we should be exploring both notions of "intelligent design" and notions of "chaotic plethora" (as has been pretty well established for the early conditions of life on earth--a super-abundance of species). Does "chaotic plethora" TURN INTO "intelligent design"? Or, is our intelligence now DESIGNING evolution?

The wingers may have given us a GIFT with this notion of "intelligent design"--inadvertently. But we can't accept it because they are such nutters--and have the political agenda of oppressing us all.

End of my rant. In the meantime, my support for the separation of church and state is absolute. I side with the rationalists and the scientists, even if they have gone a bit far in thinking that the great cosmos is understandable by current methods, and from our puny little earth perspective on it all. The meddling of religious powermongers, witchburners, inquisitionists, pogromists, dogmatists, fascists, baptizers-by-the-sword, scapegoaters, warmongering crusaders, ignorant assholes and other pious vermin, is about the worst trend we could see come back into our society. Begone, Satan!