I live in West Virginia, and in Kanawah County the school board is voting if they should teach creationism, because they’re teaching evolution. What do you guys/gals think?
I personally don’t think that they should teach creationism for a number of reasons.
1.) I firmly believe in the seperation of Church and State.
2.) There are so many different religions and basically there is only one type of evolution. How could you safely teach creationism, when there are numerous religions that believe in different gods and have different ideas on how it all started. What about the Bhuddists, Hindus, etc.?
3.) They barely even touched on evolution in my science class this year. Why go and teach a bunch of religion when they really didn’t even teach that much evolution?
4.) If you want to learn religion, shouldn’t you go to a religious school?
I personally don’t buy evolution, but I personally don’t think that they should teach creationism in school. And by the way, I don’t live in Kanawah county. I live in Nicholas County.
They should absolutely teach Creationism. Too long have the innocent children been misled. They need to learn the Truth about how Odin slew the frost giant Ymir and created the world from his body. The evidence is there! And only fools not worthy of Valhalla deny it.
There is only one way I would want Creationism taught in a public school.
First of all, it would never be taught in a science class–Creationism is not proven science. I would rather it be taught as a theory in a World Religions class, where the Christian version of Creationism would be taught along with other religion’s versions of Creationism.
I would not want my child being taught Creationism as a science, but I would want them aware of the theory. If the public school system refuses to teach evolution, you can bet I’m not letting my child stay in that school. I would rather have Creationism left for the church to teach, and evolution taught by the public school system.
Pinqy has it right. Whose creation theory do you teach? If the plan was to teach scientific creationism, then are they only going to teach the Judeo-Christian creation? I personally find the Popal Vuh to be a much more interesting creation story than Genesis. If the only version taught was Genesis, than that would clearly be a violation of the separation of church and state. However, I think that it would be a great subject for a comparative literature class. Keep religion out of public schools.
in my class i only learned about the hindu version. I don’t think it should be taught because people already know it. I mean really enough of repetitive useless knowlege in school. How will knowing about evolution affect my life at all? Teach something useful like the theory of relativity; well its not really useful but more useful than evolution:)
I don’t know for a fact, but I would guess the school board in question is voting to decide if they will teach “creation science.” Creation science is a very active ploy to get the subject of creationism into the science classrooms. I actually went to a lecture on creation science once. I belive the lecture title was “Evolution the Great Lie” or someting like that. This was put on by a local church, and the “science” was silly. The same old disproven arguments against evolution that you’ve heard before.
-proof that the world is only 6000 years old because of moon dust
–evolution dosen’t make sence because if the earth really was millions of years old there still wouldn’t be enough time for animals to evolve
–humans are to complicated and smart to evolve from monkeys or ameobas
—etc…etc…
Its just creationism packaged with big words and bad math, but they call it science.
There is an active group of fundamentilists who bring this up at the state capitol (louisiana) every year or two. But it always gets sent to committe or wherever bills go to die.
Which leads me to my next few questions. Say you, for some odd reason, had to schedule late for your classes, and all that was left was “World Religions” and a few others, just enough to fill your schedule, all the other classes are full. Say you didn’t want World Religion, what then? Again, I say that i’m against it being taught in schools, but that’s my opinion. In my high school this year, they cleverly planted the religion class in our 10th grade history books. You had to learn it. Of course I had no objection to it, I found it interesting, but still. And I don’t mind learning about evolution, even though I don’t beleive it to be true, it is also interesting. But a funny thing happened in my Biology class. We had a class discussion on evolution, and some picked to “defend” it, and some picked to “defend” creationism. The funny thing was that noone in the class really believed in evolution. They had to side with it, because if they didn’t, there would be no discussion. So, if the majority of students in High School beleive creationism, why teach it? (by the way, it’s the majority in my school. I don’t know about other places.) And a final question. The Age Old Question: Should there be school prayer?? I know most of you are probably sick of hearing it, but I’ll ask it anyways, just for kicks and giggles.
Say you didn’t want English? Or Basket Weaving? Sorry, I’m not sure of your point.
I think there’s a danger here, shag. The converse to that is, “if the majority believe evolution, why teach it?” Of if the majority believe in Shakespeare, why teach it?
I think a better question might be, “if the majority of kids in your school are too uninformed to realize that creation is religion and evolution is science, shouldn’t we teach them what science actually is?”
“Holy Allah, please let me pass this test.”
Prayer in schools is fine.
School-sponsored prayer is right out. Ditto for any mandatory prayer. If kids want to pray, they’re welcome to. But prayers to any religion’s god are inappropriate in any situation where students are required to listen.
Of course I would take a World Religions class. That would be part of an education–even if I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking such a class (but, as a note, I would, as I find it interesting). A part of education is taking subjects I may not have an interest in, but it is part of exploring the world and all of its different outlooks.
I have no problem with different ideologies being taught in schools–as long as they are taught without prejudice by the teacher (difficult, but possible), with all religions covered equally and fairly.
Why teach evolution in High School if the majority of students believe in Creationism? That is why you go to school, for the express reason to open little adolescent minds to other versions of the truth. You are taught one truth by your family, another truth by your church, another by your education. Part of your becoming an adult is finding the truth that you believe in.
Prayer in school? If you’re meaning a teacher, before class, tells the students to bow their heads and leads a prayer, you’re damn straight I oppose that, as this violates not only the seperation of church and state, but also the First Amendment for freedom of religion. Moments of Silence? That’s fine, when used in proper context.
I would not be opposed to a non-denominational “meditation room” for private prayer, if a school were to come up with that option. If a student feels that he needs some quiet time for prayer, then that option should be available to him.
News update folks. Today the Supreme Court decided that there can’t be any school sponsored prayers at athletic events. What do you think?
I’m all for the decision. Again, I revert back to seperation of Church and State.
And to Andros, my point was if they should be forced to take a class that teaches religion, seeing that there aren’t any open classes left? And the students in my school aren’t so dumb as to not know what religion and evolution are. What I was trying to say was why try to go on the offensive using creationism to counter evolution, when there really isn’t much evolution to counter against. Get my point??
And to Javamaven, I’m assuming that you believe evolution to be the truth. But who is to say what is the truth and what isn’t? It’s up to the individual. Let’s just try not to dump 80 different truths on them by teaching creationism.
Evolution is much simpler, and there is really only one of them.
Appropriate to this thread, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a Louisiana parish today, leaving intact an appeals court decision that they cannot mandate an evolution “disclaimer” in textbooks. It’s not as good as an actual ruling, but it’s still a victory of sorts.
Not surprisingly, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas voted to hear the case and criticized the rest of the court for allowing the appeals court ruling to stand.
I think what they’re saying is this:
Creationism, if taught in school, would be taught as an established truth, and taught only from the Christian viewpoint, and taught as a sort of science using the ridiculous pseudo-facts in “creation science”. If they want to teach creationism, they should make a comparative religion class in which it’s presented not as truth, but as another theory of the origin of the universe.
David B
Thanks for the info. I am from Louisiana, so I wanted to see which parish was pushing for the “disclaimer”. Well, wouldn’t you know, it is my home parish - Tangipahoa. Sometimes I am proud of being from LA and sometimes I am ashamed. I am pleased that the Supremes let the appeals court ruling stand, but I know this is not the end.
