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From: heahd@tellab1.UUCP (Dan Wood)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: creation in public shools
Message-ID: <145@tellab1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-May-84 14:02:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: tellab1.145
Posted: Wed May 16 14:02:33 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 17-May-84 03:24:00 EDT
Organization: Tellabs, Inc., Lisle, Ill.
Lines: 33


   If we are to be forced by legislation to teach what is essentially a matter
of religious faith in our public schools, why must it be confined to the
christian version of creation? Creationists speak of fairness in their
arguments for teaching their views of the origin of the world as we know it.
If fairness is the issue, then along with teaching the theory of evolution and
the christian myth of creation in our biology classes, we should also tell our 
children the Hopi version of the emergence, the Buddist and Hindu stories, the 
Australian Aborigine's stories of what happened during the Dream Time, and the
thousands of other tales various peoples have developed to explain their
place in the cosmos. 

   If this idea were to be adopted, the amount of available
subject matter would obviously be too much to confine to an hour of biology
class each school day. I would therefore purpose that a new required course be
inserted into the curriculum and that biology be reserved for dissecting frogs
and studying the inner workings of living things. The new course would be 
labeled Mythology with the understanding that myths are, as mentioned above, 
a people's way of explaining their place in the cosmos and without the 
christian bias that makes myths the other guy's religion. I can already hear
folks out there screaming "That's religion. We can't teach that in public
schools!" I would prefer to think of it as an investigation into the spiritual
side of human psychology to see what it is in the human psyche that makes us
feel one way or another about a supreme being (even atheists attach enough
importance to this subject to feel it's worth arguing about).

   The point of all these ramblings is that if the creationists see fit to
teach a faith that I don't agree with to my child, then they damn well better
be willing to teach my views on the subject to their children.

                                          Thank you for hearing me out,
                                             D.G. Wood
tellabs1!heahd