NPR has been running a four part story this week on the Galapagos Islands, with the final installment delving into the controversy over ID and Evolution. This story was preceded by a story about the Kansas board of education drafting a change to their science standards that would allow teachers to talk about alternatives to evolutionary theory, namely ID. And a large portion of the state agrees with this! You can believe that this will end up infront of the courts in the near future, and hopefully all the way up the U.S. Supreme Court where it will surely be declared unconstitutional, and put an end to.
As I have said in previous posts on my blog, I completely disagree with allowing non-scientific theories to be taught in our public schools. When I was in school, it was always addressed as "this is the prevelant theory in the scientific community, we are not saying your religion is wrong, or that you should believe evolution instead. We are here to teach the scientific views of the world". People ask what's the harm in exposing our children to opposing view points. Technically nothing, as long as those apposing view points have strong roots in the scientific community, and are generally accepted as a legitimate scientific theory. ID is not a scientific theory, but Judao-Christian religious doctrine shrouded by the false label of science.
I've said my piece on this subject, and get very upset everytime I hear of school boards or other government bodies attempting to step into this mess and force their regligion on our children sent to PUBLIC school. Religion is taught in a house of worship, science is taught in science class. Period.
Anyway, Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a number of excellent posts on this topic. I'll defer to him for the rest of the story.
Posted by doug at August 11, 2005 08:15 AM | TrackBack