Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

Hi Robert,Perhaps you aren't aware of some of the clauses in the American Constitution, being that you're Canadian.The very first Amendment to our Constitution states:

quote:

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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

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The bold section is what we call the "establishment clause." It means that no governmental agency (local, state, or federal) can make a law that establishes a state religion. This has been interpreted by every single Supreme Court that has needed to question the issue to also include the endorsement of any religion by the state.Essentially, the government (including publicly run schools) must remain completely neutral on the matter of religion. The reason is simple: we are not a nation of a single religion, but rather a melting pot of many belief systems, and for our government to endorse one set of beliefs, everyone who believes otherwise would have their rights violated.For exactly the same reason that a schoolteacher cannot require every student in the classroom to pray to Allah, or make an animal sacrifice to the Great Spirit, or tell students that no god(s) exist, that same schoolteacher cannot say that god(s) do exist, or mention Jesus, etc. Christians don;t tend to want their tax dollars endorsing Hindu or Islam or Atheism, and neither do non-Christians typically want their tax dollars being used to endorse Christianity.Religion is a matter for families and places of worship. Schools are publicly run, and to protect the rights of all of us must remain totally neutral on the subject.The second part of the First Amendment means that, while the government is restricted from expressing religion, individuals are not in any way. Christians are completely free to pray, worship, and read the Bible whenever and wherever they please, with the sole exception of doing so in an official capacity while being paid by public funds (like, say a teacher). Likewise, I as an Atheist am totally free to disbelieve in any religion, but if I were employed at a public school, is would not be allowed to tell students that their religious beliefs are false.Do you see how this works?Christian Creationism in a public school would violate my rights and the rights of my children, because it would mean my tax dollars would be used to endorse a set of religious beliefs I do not follow, and worse, it would mean endorsing those beliefs to my children. Hindu Creationism would do the same for Christians as well as Atheists like me.To protect the religious rights of all of us, the government must remain strictly neutral and mute on the subject. That's how the freedom of religion works.

Well, what else is it then?The evidence we have been able to observe so far does not lead us to hypothesize Biblical Creation.When we look at the world around us, the only source for the idea of Biblical Creationism is the Bible itself. Therefore, it is nothing but religious dogma, even if it's correct, because we cannot possibly derive it from anything else.Did you ever see 2001, a Space Odyssey? One of the main plot points is the discovery of a black obelisk on the Moon. Now, obviously, we don't have any real-world evidence, no observations, that would lead us to currently hypothesize that there may be a black obelisk on the Moon. Therefore, the obelisk is nothing more than a plot device in a work of fiction, even if it later turns out that there is such a thing on the Moon.If I roll a die and make a random guess, my guess is still nothing mroe than a random guess regardless of whether or not my guess turns out to be correct or not.Do you see where I;m going here? What source, other than religious dogma, leads us to Biblical Creation?If there is no other source that leads us to that hypothetical scenario, how can we call it anything other than religious dogma? Biblical Creation is rather specific. But let's examien the logic of your argument here:You say that we cannot exclude Creation as a possibility for the origin of life because the origin of life is not known.You have no way of knowing where I am located. Should you then include the possibility that I'm on the Moon? Sicne my location isn;t known, you cannot exclude the possibility, right?Of course not. Biblical Creation is always a possibility, just as it's conceivably possible that we're actually plugged into the Matrix. There is always the possibility that everything we think we know is wrong, that the maps we've drawn of reality were all based on faulty information.But given what we observe and experience, what we predict and test, we can establish that some hypotheses are more likely to be true than others. It is more likely that I am located in an English-speaking region on Earth than on the Moon. It is fantastically more likely that I am on Earth than on Jupiter.Current hypotheses regarding the origin of life run the gamut from religious explanations to aliens seeding Earth with life to abiogenesis. With the information we currently have available from what we are right now able to experience and observe and test, abiogenesis is the most parsimonious explanation. Other hypotheses are lacking - Biblical Creation, for example, lacks a mechanism of any kind beyond "magic" in the form of an "omnipotent God," which means it isn't really an explanation of anything at all. Yes. At this specific time, Biblical Creation is not at all plausible. It only becomes plausible if we assume that everything we know about biology, geology, physics, ecology, and a dozen other fields are completely and utterly wrong. It is conceivably possible that this is so...but I doubt that any of us, including you, would wager that our understanding of antibiotics is wrong, or that electricity doesn't really exist, or that Uranium isn't really a radioactive substance that decays into lead over time.If you teach Biblical Creationism in a school, then you need to also teach every other conceivable possibility with a similarly small probability of accuracy, knowing full well that each and every one contradicts direct observational evidence. At that point, why teach anything at all?