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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Secular Humanism" banned in the US Schools.
Message-ID: <1072@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Aug-85 17:52:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.1072
Posted: Thu Aug 29 17:52:27 1985
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> I think it would be best to oppose either the exclusion of, or the
> exclusive teaching of, any point of view that is in conflict with
> other views.  Exclusion of some views from the classroom because of
> religious bias while conflicting views are taught indirectly teaches
> the such conflicting views are either wrong or irrelevant.
> 
> There are a lot of things that have been banned that the Framers
> would not have considered unconstitutional.  I agree with the
> person (claiming to be a fundamentalist Christian) who essentially
> said that no point of view should be banned outright from public
> schools.

Umm.  Yes, but...

The problem with this idea is that the only fair way to teach a controversial
subject is "objectively", from the outside.  That is, something like "some
Christians believe the Bible was divinely dictated.  Secular scholars cite
following evidence to contradict that.  Some Jews agree with the secular
scholars about the New Testament, but not about the Old.  Religious Moslems
say the scholars are wrong, but the Koran is valid, too, and the others
have misinterpreted what they were once told."  Etc.  You'd manage to insult
everyone and confuse the students.