Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

Ted is right about this, and there is more recent evidence than the Bryan
decision.

In the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards vs. Louisiana (which declared
that Louisiana's Balanced Treatment Act, which mandated teaching of
"creation science", alongside evolution, was unconstitutional), Justice
Antonin Scalia, in a dissenting opinion said that laws such as Louisiana's
ought to be considered constitutional even if they advance a religious
cause, so long as they are doing so to protect an individual's religious
rights or to "accommodate" religion. "If the Louisiana Legislature
sincerely believed that the State's science teachers were being hostile to
religion, our cases indicate that it could act to eliminate that hostility."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <pvm.pandas@gmail.com>
Cc: <asa@lists.calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

> Pim,
>
> As a meme, belief in God can spread like a virus. I'll grant you that.
> So
> can belief in democracy, which is also a meme. Something tells me that
> Dawkins would be far less eager to call the latter a "virus."
>
> Let me suggest an alternative interpretation of all this, one that is
> consistent with my own knowledge and experience of American controversies
> about religion, science, and the schools.
>
> Let me suggest that Dawkins, who probably lacks a detailed knowledge of
> jurisprudence concerning the First Amendment, has been advised by wise
> friends that it might not be politically savy to keep pushing these
> arguments about the dangers of belief in God, and to tie these too closely
> with belief in science, esp with belief in evolution. If he's too
> successful with that stuff, and lots of scientists (esp American
> scientists)
> give voice to it, then frankly it won't take too smart an attorney to make
> the case that evolution can't be taught in public schools. And, I would
> support that argument myself if it were true--that is, if science were
> inherently antireligious.
>
> As it is, I've been saying for two decades that a root cause of the
> evolution controversy in schools is the lack of genuine religious
> pluralism
> in American public education. This doesn't create the issue--lots of
> Americans would oppose evolution, whether or not the schools taught
> it--but
> it surely shapes it. It is IMO unjust to force taxpayers to pay for what
> they regard as anti-religious indoctrination of their children. Bryan was
> right about that in the 1920s, and that part has not changed one little
> bit.
> Never mind that I don't agree with their view of evolution and Christian
> faith; what matters here is justice, and I don't see it in this case.
>
> But that's another saw, and we were talking about Dawkins.
>
> Ted
>
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Received on Sun Apr 29 08:05:45 2007