Halfway through the semester of my freshman high school biology class (in a New York State public school) when we got to the chapter in the textbook about Darwin’s theory of evolution, our teacher sat down on the front of her desk & explained to us calmly that we had to skip the chapter on evolution because one student’s parents did not approve & it did not match their household’s religious teachings. I was quite upset because I had been looking forward to the teacher’s discussion about evolution, especially since I wanted to talk about dinosaurs & fossils which had fascinated me ever since childhood.
I understand now that our biology teacher and the science department did this because of fear of litigation. If the parents sued the school district then presumably the high school could potentially lose its funding. It’s a shame because I know that most of the students would have loved a discussion on prehistoric animals and I felt like we were unfairly punished by an imposing religion. Somehow the curriculum was affected by a religion that was not even the choice of any of the other thirty students in the classroom (or their parents for that matter). Kids are put into school to learn, not to regress to their parents’ ideologies and religious dogmas. What perturbs and saddens me the most is the way that our lovely teacher had to break the news to the classroom, that we couldn’t learn about evolution because someone’s parent objected to the known facts.
I consider this to be a foolish mistake on the part of the New York State educational system, to let science get taken over by religious superstition in the science classroom. The science curriculum ought to stay as it is whether objectionable or not to parents. The scientific consensus of reality does not change because one likes it or not. Even as a freshman in high school I thought we had grown up enough as a society not to let tribal religion enter into our science classroom and overturn the work of thousands of scientists simply because it challenges someone's religious convictions. I think that this is emblematic of a bigger problem which failing American school systems face. I feel like our education and the students’ learning experience in that biology class was unjustly deprived because of one parent’s beliefs that the Book of Genesis is literal truth - and the false implication that the empirical fact-based reasoning of Darwin’s theory (fact) of evolution would somehow impart knowledge that would damage their child.
The opposite is obviously true. The ‘theory of evolution’ (“fact of evolution”) has mountains of evidence for its support (and it would require extraordinary evidence to become discredited (i.e. fossil rabbits in the Precambrian strata of rocks). On the other hand, the Book of Genesis (and the Bible largely) is an 'allegorical cosmogony' (a term from Lloyd M. Graham) filled with fairy-tale nonsense copied from earlier Bronze Age myths. A literal interpretation of Genesis presumes that there is no prehistory, that God created everything in seven days ~5000 years ago for which there is no evidential support. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is the kind of junk that one hears proffered from creationists like Australian Ken Ham and the "Focus on the Family's Truth Project." It’s ridiculous claims like this that make me sick knowing that this BS (belief system) is being taught to children. As Richard Dawkins states in his book “The God Delusion,” to deny a child scientific knowledge and indoctrinate him/her with these erroneous beliefs is akin to “child abuse.”
Scientists do not run into churches shouting and waving the ‘Origin of Species’. Why do religious people go into science classrooms waving the Bible? Threatening that knowledge defames their beliefs? And claiming that we need “equal time” for infactual unsubstantiated claims? By and large, most American citizens understand that we have freedom of religion which means that one is allowed to have whatever stupid belief they want behind closed doors. But this is only “freedom,” by definition, if religion does not impose itself on the beliefs of others- especially not imposing itself on the understanding of science in a public school. We all have the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but this also entails the right to freedom from religion (in a secular setting i.e. public education). It’s not that our biology teacher had to teach us the Book of Genesis instead of the chapter on biological evolution but the act of preventing us from learning about evolution is a real-life example of how religion often co-opts science for its own nefarious purposes. Whenever religion overcomes science in the public sphere (schools, courts, government), we lose value as a society.
Why don’t we leave the scientists to do science and leave the religious to do their religion? I think it’s OK for religious people to “believe” and go to their places of worship, but it's not OK impose their beliefs on people's education. Don’t impose one’s falsities on a group of growing developing individuals in a public school with a well-qualified teacher simply because someone told you that one’s ‘holy book’ has divine authority. One ought to teach Genesis in Sunday school but not in a public school science classroom. Certainly I think it is worth studying ancient peoples and their creation myths in the context of history and comparative religion. They reveal to us how the ancient intuitional mind functioned (and how they interpreted experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs). But this does not give much meaning for us in observable reality. The theory (fact) of evolution is the study of “objective reality” whereas ancient religion, for the most part, is the handed-down accounts of peoples’ “inner experiences.”
Religious people feel they are being “attacked by science” because science overthrows their entire worldview and up-ends their whole system of lies. No wonder they feel threatened because these ancient texts no longer hold up to any modern rational scrutiny. Religion also claims to be an authority on morality which it simply is not. A person does not become a “good” ethical moral person simply because they fear punishment from a capricious surveilling celestial dictator entity that watches every minute to see if you’ve been “good” or “bad.” Plus, the scientific studies of psychology in the 21st century have revealed much more about ethics/morality than religion ever has. Religion has only granted us with one universal (not culture specific) worthwhile commandment which is ‘the Golden Rule.’ But I argue that humanity does not need religion to figure that out for ourselves. Religion wants a monopoly on this domain of knowledge and morality because it protects them from any skeptical inquiry. And of course they target the youth because it's understood that children are the most impressionable and vulnerable to become inculcated by religious teachings. Science is not “attacking” religion. In fact (if you were reading carefully) it’s apparent that it’s quite the opposite, that religion is waging an assault against science for dismantling its paradigm and weakening its control over civilization (and it has been since before the times of Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, etc.).
Religion does not belong in the science classroom. That’s not how science (or the scientific method) works. It relies on questioning, verifiability, testability and falsifiability. Religion works in exactly the opposite way - believing things essentially on “faith” and taking the truth-value of its books’ claims based on the notion that it’s the “Word of God.” It is important to inform children about the benefits and usefulness of science and teach them the tools of questioning, experiment and discovery - the scientific method, the best tool we have of understanding the universe and how it works. It is not good enough to teach people what to know, we must teach growing adults how to know. Without a scientifically literate population, America will not succeed in the future. We have already been surpassed by dozens of developed nations in terms of science, math and technological innovations because we have not yet removed the shackles of ancient religion. Without giving our children the adequate knowledge of our modern scientific achievements we are neglecting them the full intellectual life which everyone deserves.
I understand now that our biology teacher and the science department did this because of fear of litigation. If the parents sued the school district then presumably the high school could potentially lose its funding. It’s a shame because I know that most of the students would have loved a discussion on prehistoric animals and I felt like we were unfairly punished by an imposing religion. Somehow the curriculum was affected by a religion that was not even the choice of any of the other thirty students in the classroom (or their parents for that matter). Kids are put into school to learn, not to regress to their parents’ ideologies and religious dogmas. What perturbs and saddens me the most is the way that our lovely teacher had to break the news to the classroom, that we couldn’t learn about evolution because someone’s parent objected to the known facts.
I consider this to be a foolish mistake on the part of the New York State educational system, to let science get taken over by religious superstition in the science classroom. The science curriculum ought to stay as it is whether objectionable or not to parents. The scientific consensus of reality does not change because one likes it or not. Even as a freshman in high school I thought we had grown up enough as a society not to let tribal religion enter into our science classroom and overturn the work of thousands of scientists simply because it challenges someone's religious convictions. I think that this is emblematic of a bigger problem which failing American school systems face. I feel like our education and the students’ learning experience in that biology class was unjustly deprived because of one parent’s beliefs that the Book of Genesis is literal truth - and the false implication that the empirical fact-based reasoning of Darwin’s theory (fact) of evolution would somehow impart knowledge that would damage their child.
The opposite is obviously true. The ‘theory of evolution’ (“fact of evolution”) has mountains of evidence for its support (and it would require extraordinary evidence to become discredited (i.e. fossil rabbits in the Precambrian strata of rocks). On the other hand, the Book of Genesis (and the Bible largely) is an 'allegorical cosmogony' (a term from Lloyd M. Graham) filled with fairy-tale nonsense copied from earlier Bronze Age myths. A literal interpretation of Genesis presumes that there is no prehistory, that God created everything in seven days ~5000 years ago for which there is no evidential support. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is the kind of junk that one hears proffered from creationists like Australian Ken Ham and the "Focus on the Family's Truth Project." It’s ridiculous claims like this that make me sick knowing that this BS (belief system) is being taught to children. As Richard Dawkins states in his book “The God Delusion,” to deny a child scientific knowledge and indoctrinate him/her with these erroneous beliefs is akin to “child abuse.”
Scientists do not run into churches shouting and waving the ‘Origin of Species’. Why do religious people go into science classrooms waving the Bible? Threatening that knowledge defames their beliefs? And claiming that we need “equal time” for infactual unsubstantiated claims? By and large, most American citizens understand that we have freedom of religion which means that one is allowed to have whatever stupid belief they want behind closed doors. But this is only “freedom,” by definition, if religion does not impose itself on the beliefs of others- especially not imposing itself on the understanding of science in a public school. We all have the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but this also entails the right to freedom from religion (in a secular setting i.e. public education). It’s not that our biology teacher had to teach us the Book of Genesis instead of the chapter on biological evolution but the act of preventing us from learning about evolution is a real-life example of how religion often co-opts science for its own nefarious purposes. Whenever religion overcomes science in the public sphere (schools, courts, government), we lose value as a society.
Why don’t we leave the scientists to do science and leave the religious to do their religion? I think it’s OK for religious people to “believe” and go to their places of worship, but it's not OK impose their beliefs on people's education. Don’t impose one’s falsities on a group of growing developing individuals in a public school with a well-qualified teacher simply because someone told you that one’s ‘holy book’ has divine authority. One ought to teach Genesis in Sunday school but not in a public school science classroom. Certainly I think it is worth studying ancient peoples and their creation myths in the context of history and comparative religion. They reveal to us how the ancient intuitional mind functioned (and how they interpreted experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs). But this does not give much meaning for us in observable reality. The theory (fact) of evolution is the study of “objective reality” whereas ancient religion, for the most part, is the handed-down accounts of peoples’ “inner experiences.”
Religious people feel they are being “attacked by science” because science overthrows their entire worldview and up-ends their whole system of lies. No wonder they feel threatened because these ancient texts no longer hold up to any modern rational scrutiny. Religion also claims to be an authority on morality which it simply is not. A person does not become a “good” ethical moral person simply because they fear punishment from a capricious surveilling celestial dictator entity that watches every minute to see if you’ve been “good” or “bad.” Plus, the scientific studies of psychology in the 21st century have revealed much more about ethics/morality than religion ever has. Religion has only granted us with one universal (not culture specific) worthwhile commandment which is ‘the Golden Rule.’ But I argue that humanity does not need religion to figure that out for ourselves. Religion wants a monopoly on this domain of knowledge and morality because it protects them from any skeptical inquiry. And of course they target the youth because it's understood that children are the most impressionable and vulnerable to become inculcated by religious teachings. Science is not “attacking” religion. In fact (if you were reading carefully) it’s apparent that it’s quite the opposite, that religion is waging an assault against science for dismantling its paradigm and weakening its control over civilization (and it has been since before the times of Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, etc.).
Religion does not belong in the science classroom. That’s not how science (or the scientific method) works. It relies on questioning, verifiability, testability and falsifiability. Religion works in exactly the opposite way - believing things essentially on “faith” and taking the truth-value of its books’ claims based on the notion that it’s the “Word of God.” It is important to inform children about the benefits and usefulness of science and teach them the tools of questioning, experiment and discovery - the scientific method, the best tool we have of understanding the universe and how it works. It is not good enough to teach people what to know, we must teach growing adults how to know. Without a scientifically literate population, America will not succeed in the future. We have already been surpassed by dozens of developed nations in terms of science, math and technological innovations because we have not yet removed the shackles of ancient religion. Without giving our children the adequate knowledge of our modern scientific achievements we are neglecting them the full intellectual life which everyone deserves.
Twelve years later I’m still appalled at the fact that our 9th grade biology teacher in a New York State school could not teach a chapter in the course textbook which focused on evolution and dinosaurs because one of the student’s parents did not wish it to be taught since it contradicted with their faith. Presumably it was more practical for our teacher & the administrators to skip the lessons on evolutionary theory rather than risk the student’s parents suing the school district. Thus the entire class of students missed out on a valuable lesson in empirical evidence-based evolution because of one family’s absurd religious teachings (a.k.a. the creation myth of Genesis). For me, this was one of the first signs that the American public education system has problems.
This is a personal anecdote but I know for certain that it cannot be an isolated case. This is an example of how creationism not only affects the people who wrongly believe it, but also that religions’ nonsense claims that its beliefs must have protection does more harm to others than good. In a democracy everyone ought to have access to information and truth, especially in our institutions of learning. Science taught in public schools ought not to be censored by religion simply because it offends the sensibilities of fundamentalists. Churches (and places of worship) are allowed the freedom of religion in America. Science classrooms ought to be granted freedom from religion.
