From CNN:
FRESNO, California (AP) -- Under legal pressure, a rural school district agreed Tuesday to stop offering high school students an elective philosophy course on "intelligent design," an advocacy group said.
A group of parents had sued the El Tejon school district in federal court last week, saying it violated the constitutional separation of church and state by offering "Philosophy of Design," a course taught by a minister's wife that advanced the notion that life is so complex it must have been created by some kind of higher intelligence.
I disagree with that. The argument was that teaching it in a publicly funded school broke the barrier between church and state, but following that logic leads to not teaching anything about any religion. You can teach about religion without 'teaching religion'.
5 comments:
Depends on the course content. If the teacher was saying that evolutionists are a bunch of crazy idiots, I can see why they wanted it banned. IMO, any course in school on religion needs to have tolerance as a major learning objective.
I tend to agree with you. Also, I firmly believe in the Flying Spagetti Monster, the worship of whom must be taught along side Intelligent Design as it is MY religion, and who can gainsay it!
Hey, it makes even more sense than I.D., and it promotes the clear and scientific conclusion that global warming is in direct inverse proportion to pirates reducing their dependance on shiny buttons on their coats.
A superb elective in my opinion! We Pastafarians feel that we have a greater claim than Intelligent Design.
May his noodly appendage touch your hot soul.....
I guess I don't understand why religion needs a place in schools at all? To me it is something that is part of people's homelife.
I guess I could see if it were offered as an elective philosophy course, or religious history, which can be a fascinating subject, but these people pushing ID are not wanting to teach general religious philosophy or history, they are wanting to teach Christianity and nothing else. To me it is just glorified proselytizing. Which always brings me back to the same thing, why does this need to be in schools? Isn't this what the family dinner table and church is for?
This blog entry has information about the proposed course syllibus and its complete lack of philosophy. :)
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/01/please_dont_call_that_philosop.php
I went to the site and read the commentary. My golly, she makes good points, and she has a nice writing style, too. Good stuff. Thanks for pointing it out.
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