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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: creation or evolution in schools
Message-ID: <7800519@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 17:25:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800519
Posted: Mon Oct 14 17:25:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 08:22:38 EDT
References: <2363@sunybcs.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:sunybcs:-236300:inmet:7800519:000:2025
Nf-From: inmet!janw    Oct 14 17:25:00 1985


> [colonel@sunybcs]
> /* ---------- "Re: creation or evolution in school" ---------- */
> > I say, let them keep their kids out.  If creationism is so obviously wrong,
> > they'll realize this in college (or wherever they run into evolution as
> > adults).  For the most part, it doesn't matter anyway.  If not knowing
> > evolution is so advantageous, people will begin to realize this and will
> > back away from hardline creationism.
> > 
> > And if it isn't, then, maybe it isn't all that important to teach it in
> > school.
> 
> Of course it's not.  What difference does it make to kids whether
> they're descended from Eve and Adam or Java Man?  Will this "knowledge"
> help them get jobs as surgeons or stevedores?  Will they feel better
> believing that their great-grandparents a thousand times removed were
> simians or sinners?  Will they hang their parlor walls with pictures
> of a naked couple or an orangutan?
> 
> Schools don't teach what's actual or important, they just teach what
> they can.

 I cannot think of anything *more* important to know. In  one  of
Heine's  poems, a "fool", alone on a beach, is asking the waves :
"What is Man ? Where does he come from ? Where does he go ?   And
who  lives up there in the stars ? " The waves, naturally enough,
are silent, and the fool keeps waiting for the  answer.  At  long
last,  after  millennia   of   waiting,   and  soon after  Heine's
time, science has found a half-answer to *one* of  the  "accursed
questions"; and there's some  faint  hope  for  the other  three.

 And *that* is unimportant ?  What is - knowing who won the World
Series  ? Or how to fill tax forms ? What  output  do  you expect
from  your school system - a citizen of the Universe or  a  blind
worm ? Do you  want  education  to  *reverse* evolution  ?

 "Scientific Creationism" cannot  be  taught  honestly;  but  I'd
rather  have even the biblical myth taught in class than  nothing
at all on this all-important topic. At least, it might arouse in-
terest.

		Jan Wasilewsky