Re: [asa] Teenagers and Evolution

Deborah,

Thank you for offering some examples. However, your title
was evolution, so I thought this was raising issue with the
contents of biology textbooks. What you mention below does
not pertain to that.

I do consider history a "hard to do science", and in this
respect, science and faith apply. History is a hobby for
me. Do any of the real historians on the list here find
the quote below to be mildly distorting the history.

> History textbooks censor speeches and documents:
> "Gentlemen may cry peace!peace! but there is no peace! Is life so dear or
> peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery...I know
> not..."
> Missing is 'Forbid it Almighty God'
 
There are many such examples.

There is the question of "relevance" which is subject to
individual opinion when one choses to quote something.
It also may be the point the author was trying to make.
But I might agree that this "abridged" form of the text
is sliding down the slippery slope.
 
 
>
> Teachers are told to not talk about God. God is a part of many discussions.
> One cannot go through research material and censor out all references to God
> and religion and provide an equitable view of either history or science or
> life in general.
>
> Our school systems are enforcing ignorance of religion. This is wrong. It is
> very difficult to enforce true freedom of religion. However, I believe what
> we are doing is closer to the total lack of freedom of religion of the USSR
> than it is to the freedom of religion of the Bill of Rights.
>

Perhaps I am mistaken here. However, on of the things here was
probably that if we mention Christianity, we would be obliged
to mention Moonies, gurus, and who knows how many crackpot wackos
who make a claim on it. In a study of religions, maybe that is ok.

I'm not saying that I like the situation a lot. But teachers do
have some duty to be careful about preaching in class. If the
teacher were a Buddhist, you might not like it if they try to
persuade your kids to join some Buddhist chant session. So to
some extent, the easiest policy for the school is to say, "no",
and "say nothing".

 
>
> I know that it has been determined that there can be religious clubs at
> schools. I also know that speaking of religion in a classroom can get a teacher
> disciplined or fired. Even if the students start the discussion, the
> repercussions for the teacher can be severe. This is wrong.
>
> Now that we've rooted out the evil of blind religious teaching, we need to
> move towards true religious freedom - which includes exploration and
> discussion where this is natural. Maybe in the science class it would only come up for
> a grand total of 2 hours out of four years - fine. That 2 hours of
> discussion shouldn't be censored. In the history class, it would be a great deal more
> - still maybe only 1% of the time spent in the classroom - but it is a
> significant part of people's lives and motivations.
>
> We are rewriting history a la the communists.
>

But now we are back to the science classroom. Science would
not have much to say about religion, since it studies processes
that involve material. So a larger fraction of the science
discussions really would have little reason to discuss God.

If you can mention a textbook that you find offensive, maybe
we can discuss that, but I don't know right now because I have
nothing to look at.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Jan 14 11:03:27 2007