Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

Exactly what law of censorship is involved when the state directs one of its employees what curriculum to teach during performance of the employee's duties?If you've always prevailed using these arguments, you must be restriction your "debates" to groups of like minded people.Would it also be censorship if the state prevented a teacher from going beyond the allowed curriculum and to actually ridicule Genesis in a biology class?

oopsEdited by NoNukes, : accidental duplicate

Even if the fundamentalist, literal interpretation of Genesis were 100% true, at this point that interpretation is solely based on the Bible. There is no independent, extra-Bible support and not all believers in the Bible's truth agree with that interpretation. That means creationism is religious dogma.

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I don't see how you can state that w/certainty when the Origin of life is not known.

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Completely irrelevant. The origin of life is not the only disagreement with science. Edited by NoNukes, : Fix tags

Is your question relevant to whether any particular origin of life story is dogma? In my opinion your question is irrelevant.

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Have you read the Roman Catholic Church's position on evolution and creation?

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Yes I have. Is it your opinion that their position is dogma free?Edited by NoNukes, : ask question

I would expect that a proper science class discussing these subjects would inevitably be at least partly dismissive of acceptance of dogma. I wouldn't want my kids to be taught religion in a science class. I'm perfectly okay with taking charge of their religious training outside of school.Science classes are not 'philosophy of thinking' classes. In a science class we should expect students to actually practice the empirical scientific method and to follow the evidence whereever it leads. Edited by NoNukes, : Corerect misattribution

Yes, my statement is poorly written. The creation story in the Bible disagrees with science on far more than the origin of life. The creation story is incompatible with the scientific evidence for the origin of species, including man.But I see you're now denying having said that creationism is not dogma. Perhaps I need not have bothered.

Actually Rahvin explained in detail where your post departs from the actual law in this country. But you are not prepared to even acknowledge any such explanation. You prevail in your own head simply by denying all contrary evidence with mere repetition. Unfortunately for you, according to the law, teaching science that happends to disagree with religious doctrine is neutral and constitutional. If the science leads to evidence that conflicts with your favorite religious doctrine, teaching the science does not violation the first amendment.Here's a relevant quote from the Supreme Court decision Edward v. Aguillard regarding a law requiring teaching Genesis based creationism whenever evolution was taught.

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The Louisiana Creationism Act advances a religious doctrine by requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety. The Act violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it seeks to employ the symbolic and financial support of government to achieve a religious purpose.

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Sorry, but that simply isn't the law, and repeating it like a slogan won't make it so. Most likely the colonists did not want their neighbor's church to dictating to them on religious matters any more than they wanted the state to dictate to their own church.Keep on prevailing, Mr. Byers.

You are correct to point out that portions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states only by way of the fourteenth amendment. But it is incorrect to point to the Privileges and Immunities clause as the mechanism. Instead, incorporation is based on the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment.That Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment was essentially rendered meaningless by the Supreme Court in Slaughterhouse cases of 1873. Very few court decisions since 1873 have cited the P&I clause of the 14th Amendment.

I suspect that it would be unconstitutional for a science teacher or any other state employee to label Bible stories as myths. But what isn't so clear is what other kinds of things might get forced into the curriculum in a religious education class in a public school in order to make the course pass constitutional muster.I suspect that the result would be a course in which few fundamentalists would want to enroll their kids.

This objection wouldn't prevent evolution from being taught, it wouldn't prevent science classes from presenting the meagre evidence available that supports speculating on abiogenesis without mentioning Genesis as an alternative, and it wouldn't prevent an astronomy class from teaching evidenced scientific theories of the history of the universe.I suspect that you really object to far more than you are saying here.

Sorry, but you are objecting to the teaching of the scientifically accepted theory of evoloution in science classrooms. The evidence that random mutation and natural selection occur in nature and that they are responsible for the diversity of species is overwhelming. Nobody cares all that much that you personally are not convinced.You can pretend to be on-board with the position of the Catholic Church on evolution, but you aren't anywhere near being able to live with that.

Based on other discussions, I'm sure shadow71 does not believe that mutations occur randomly with respect to fitness.

Probably off topic to pursue this too much further. Even if Shapiro's paper did say what you believe it says, and it seems only you hold that opinion, that would still means that you object to the teaching of mainstream science in science classs on fairly paltry evidence.There is plenty of evidence that mutations are random with respect to fitness; certainly enough evidence to teach the random mutation aspect of the thoery of evolution in a science class. On the other hand, there seems to be scant evidence that mutations are non-random.

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I am completely in agreement with the Catholic's Church"s teaching on biological evolution, which accepts evolution as part of creation and "special creation" in re Man's soul.

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Fair enough. I apologize for saying that you were not in agreement.

Nonsense. Essentially nobody has said this.

I'm not sure why you disagree. If the pointing out did not include any reference to empirical evidence, then the pointing out should be ignored.