The Importance of the First Amendment

No sweat, dude: use the "peek" button at the bottom of this message to see how I made that quote box above.I could also have done it like this:

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Something you said.

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Also, when you're writing a reply, there is a couple of links on the left side that lists the HTML and dBCode options you can use in the message.Have fun at EvC, Serdna! Be careful with this, Serdna, because most science teachers don't even mention creationism, especially at the elementary thru high school level of education.Furthermore, you've introduced a false dichotomy that is perpetuated by religions everywhere: you don't have to choose either science or religion, unless your religion specifically dictates that you cannot believe in science. Science cannot, and does not attempt to, provide commentary on the existence or non-existence of God or anything else that is supernatural.Even if scientists were to prove evolution from the very first molecule of RNA, through every last nucleotide substitution that happened up until 0.099976 seconds ago, we still would be unable to actually state that there is no God and that He did not create the universe. This is mostly because we don't know what God is or how he/she/it/they create(s) things.Please, don't subscribe to the view that evolution is a grand conspiracy written by the Devil with the express intent to undermine the good Christian values of the Western World: this is simply not true. In fact, quite the opposite: ID/creationism is very much a grand conspiracy with the express intent of undermining the scientific theory of evolution.And please, don't say this: The word "theory" is held in very high esteem in science: there is no higher office to which a scientific concept can be promoted. Please take some time to learn about how the word "theory" is used in science, and realize that it is very different from what your parents and your minister think it is.Please!

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.

I'm going to enjoy saying this more than I've ever said anything before: I'm Christian. I believe in God and Jesus and the Atonement and spirits and angels and all that kooky stuff, too! And, I believe it all on faith! I have a lot of preconceived notions about all those crazy people who believe in God! Okay, seriously now. I apologize if my message sounded a little harsh to you: I honestly thought I was being objective and sensitive. I'll try to do better next time. Ah, I get it now. Thanks for the clarification. I don't think it really changes much, though: history teachers teach history just as science teachers teach science. Any deviation from that (such as trying to praise Christianity for the good it does) would be a violation of the First Ammendment. Further, I don't think I've ever heard any religion cast in a bad light except by simple exposition of the damning facts (except my freshman year of highschool, when my mother homeschooled me with Christian textbooks--those were very biased against Taoism, Buddhism and Islam). I go to school at a religious institution (BYU--but not for much longer!), and my history classes a few years back still taught about the Crusades, the Middle East conflicts throughout history and the Celtic ritual stuff too. Essentially, they taught everything for which we have evidence. They still managed to feed our "testimonies" of our religion and Jesus and stuff, though. Maybe you'd like lectures here? Maybe not if you're not Mormon. History classes generally teach the facts (or the closest things they have to them). If the facts make you (generic "you", not Serdna "you") look bad, maybe you should face the possibility that you're the reason the facts are bad. There can be no mistaking that religion has been the impetus (or at least, the excuse) behind a lot of frighteningly bad things in the past, and, the way I see it, teaching that this is not the case would be a gross violation of the First Ammendment. "Balance" should never be the goal in any education curriculum, especially when your subject is an explanation of the facts. I don't know where you got the idea that I got that idea. Again, sorry if I screwed up our first contact. It isn't, and never was, an issue of timing. Here are some ID/creationist websites. And here is Wikipedia's article on the Wedge Strategy. Read their articles, essays and information, and you'll see that everything they do is geared toward attacking, subverting, undermining and, ultimately, destroying the theories/concepts of evolution, naturalism, materialism, etc. In fact, that is their own stated purpose. That, I believe, fully embodies the definition of a conspiracy. To compare, find me scientific publications that attack the ideas of ID and/or creationism: they are not very common, because science is not designed as a vehicle for combating or subverting creationism/ID: it is not an anti-religion movement, but an honest study of the physical universe around us.I, personally, do not (and will never) support the promotion of a conspiracy against anything in public education. Here are all the definitions provided by Answers.com:

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1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.
3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.
4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.
5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.
6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

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Science generally uses part of the first definition, thus: "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena which has been repeatedly tested and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." Basically, theories are verified by their abilities to pass repeated testing and by their abilities to successfully predict solutions to problems or answers to questions. Scientists believe them because they work very well.And, if they work very well (and continue to do so), can you think of any reason for us to even consider that they're not accurate?

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.

Serdna, I do not believe that this has ever happened to me, throughout my life. Certainly, I've run into and communicated with professors who are extremely anti-creationist, but I've never been in the situation where a teacher has "forced" me to contradict my religion in any way.If this has happened to you, there are channels to report it. As far as I know, it isn't legal to make someone deny their religion for a grade (except in those privately-owned, fundy, materialist institutions that I've never heard of).Let me see if I understand your concerns before I say something stupid and wrong again. When you say students are being forced to accept as truth things that contradict their religion, are you referring to things like Neanderthals and the Paleolithic Age? Or, are you referring to things like "Jesus was just a man?"Edited by Bluejay, : Just a few clarifications.

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.

Serdna, I'm still a little confused about what you see as the problem with school curricula. In message #26, I asked this question: I guess it kind of got overlooked with all the activity on the thread or something. But, I really think this could be the source of all the bad blood in this thread.If your complaint is about history teaching Neanderthals and the pre-Adam Paleolithic Age, I'm afraid the teachers' hands are tied: there just is no way to justify not teaching these proven facts as part of human history.If your complaint is that teachers are saying "Jesus was just a man," then they've overstepped the legal bounds of their curriculum, and I don't think anybody here would argue with that. If said teacher is saying "we will treat Jesus as just another historical figure in this class," however, there still isn't much of a case.I'd like to add one more possibility to this. If your complaint is that history teaches a lot of bad things that have been done in the name of religion, the same argument as that about Neanderthals applies here: you can't justify not teaching facts for any reason.Now, if you feel that good things about religion are deliberately being left out of education, you might have a case. You'd have to be able to show that such things are supported by evidence, and that the teacher or text is deliberately withholding them and/or the evidence. If you can show me a few instances in which this has happened in your education, I will submit that you have a good case and request that everybody else on this thread listen to your arguments.But, I don't think you've actually provided anything substantive yet. Without something substantive (just an example of some teacher would do), everyone's going to assume that you were just uncomfortable with hearing bad things about your religion. Please provide a specific example, and the thread can discuss it in light of the First Ammendment rights.

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.