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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Secular Humanism" banned in the US Schools.
Message-ID: <1707@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Sep-85 22:23:20 EDT
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Posted: Sun Sep 15 22:23:20 1985
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> First let me say that in my opinion there should be provision for
> parents who are "conscientious objectors" to their children being
> taught some subject, such as evolution, to have their religious
> sensibilities respected by the public school system.  I am not sure
> that it would be *wise* for them to take advantage of such a
> provision, but it should exist. [JEFFERYS]

I'm sorry, Bill, but I can imagine parents denying their children the
right to learn about any number of things.  Math?  Oh, Timmy flunked
math last year, why should he have to learn THAT?  To deny children the
right to an education due to "religious beliefs" ("My religious beliefs
say pi is 3, I won't let Jane learn this heinous arithmetic of Satan!")
strikes me as abominable.

> Society has the responsibility of ensuring that children educated in
> the public schools are prepared to act responsibly when they become
> adults.  There are important questions of public policy that require
> a basic understanding of evolutionary theory if they are to be handled
> intelligently.  Whether you believe in evolution or not, these organisms
> seem to behave *as if* natural selection is operative, and until a better
> theory comes along, the people who have to make such important decisions had
> better understand the basic ideas of evolution.

The eagerness of some to deny all this, and to deny to their children the
right to learn this, is frightening.  As a Christian who understands
evolution and scientific knowledge, Bill, I'm sure you can appreciate the
problems in that.

> Nearly all scientists would agree that evolution is one of the
> great scientific ideas of all time.  We ought to protect the
> religious sensibilities of all, but it would be wrong to let the
> objections of some parents deprive all children of a good education.  
> To be blunt, it is *flat out wrong* to claim that a person is
> adequately educated in biology if that person does not understand
> the basic issues of evolution.  Merely teaching the phenomenology
> of biology, as Paul proposes, would be to teach a severely emasculated
> subject, since evolution pervades all aspects of the field.

Bra-vo!
-- 
Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus.
						Rich Rosen   pyuxd!rlr


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