Why should religion be taught or not taught in public school?
The founders of this country decided that religion should be separated from government and for a good reason. Countries that have a state religion almost always discriminate against people who choose to believe differently, to the point that those people are often tortured and killed for those non-conforming beliefs. History has proved this time and time again and millions have died in the name of state religions. Jefferson and the others involved with determining the fate of their new nation prevented this by the separation of church and state. This so called "science" of intelligent design is a lame excuse for the teaching of religion as viewed by Christianity and ignores other beliefs. In fact, the theory of evolution does not exclude creation, it simply follows the natural order as has been determined by scientific study. Who is to deny that a creator set the conditions of the laws of nature in a manner that was conducive to evolution, rather than a wiz bang instant existence. As for the Bible explanation, how do you explain such complex science to a simple minded people thousands of years ago who were very superstitious and not at all scientifically savvy, except by using a simple story that they could understand. The various peoples of the world all had creation stories and all were easy to understand, with no complex science.
Why do schools teach evolution?
You can "believe" anything you want to, including that evolution is a "religion." However, believing something doesn't make it true. I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything. I take everything as conditionally true or conditionally untrue based on the evidence and arguments for or against. One of the primary differences between evolution and religion is that the former requires only the natural world, whereas the latter requires a whole supernatural realm of God and Satan, demons and angels, djinns and afreets, and whatever other spirits a particular religion chooses to populate that realm with. In a private and/or parochial school, I have no problem with religion being taught. I attend a private Catholic college, and although I am not a believer, I have no problem with the religion courses (two) that I am required to take. However, that toleration ends when it comes to public schools, that are paid for with taxpayer dollars, and which students must attend without choice, and regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs. Further, while it may be true that most of the Founding Fathers were Christians (although many of the most prominent were not), this country was in no sense founded on the Christian religion. That is not speculation, but is clearly enunuciated in documents such as the Treaty of Tripoli (I'll leave it to you to look that up). The concept of "freedom of religion" means not only the freedom to practice your religion, but the freedom from having some other religion forced upon you. This would be exactly the case in the scenario you describe, with public schools teaching classes on Christianity. This would be tantamount to an establishment of religion, which is expressly forbidden by the First Amendment to the Constitution. I know you think that evolution is somehow a "religion," but it is not so by any normal definition of that word. It takes more than "believing in" something to qualify it as a religion. And besides, as I have already noted, accepting the reality of evolution does not require belief.
Public schools teaching evolution regularly?
You can "believe" anything you want to, including that evolution is a "religion." However, believing something doesn't make it true. I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything. I take everything as conditionally true or conditionally untrue based on the evidence and arguments for or against. One of the primary differences between evolution and religion is that the former requires only the natural world, whereas the latter requires a whole supernatural realm of God and Satan, demons and angels, djinns and afreets, and whatever other spirits a particular religion chooses to populate that realm with. In a private and/or parochial school, I have no problem with religion being taught. I attend a private Catholic college, and although I am not a believer, I have no problem with the religion courses (two) that I am required to take. However, that toleration ends when it comes to public schools, that are paid for with taxpayer dollars, and which students must attend without choice, and regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs. Further, while it may be true that most of the Founding Fathers were Christians (although many of the most prominent were not), this country was in no sense founded on the Christian religion. That is not speculation, but is clearly enunuciated in documents such as the Treaty of Tripoli (I'll leave it to you to look that up). The concept of "freedom of religion" means not only the freedom to practice your religion, but the freedom from having some other religion forced upon you. This would be exactly the case in the scenario you describe, with public schools teaching classes on Christianity. This would be tantamount to an establishment of religion, which is expressly forbidden by the First Amendment to the Constitution. I know you think that evolution is somehow a "religion," but it is not so by any normal definition of that word. It takes more than "believing in" something to qualify it as a religion. And besides, as I have already noted, accepting the reality of evolution does not require belief.
Appreciate the A2A! The founding fathers very much wanted people to vote. But they didn’t want just anybody to vote.They feared the mob—by which they meant uneducated, ignorant people who could be swayed by emotion and demagoguery into making choices destructive to the welfare of the country. (Hmm, does this bring to mind any recent election?)So to prevent this our founders set up a system with certain voting restrictions—usually property, income, and residency requirements. Over the years the requirements were slowly loosened until it reached the point where every American citizen had the right to vote. Unless, of course, you were black and living in the South (see Jim Crow and some current Republican hijinks.)But today we find ourselves living through an irony of more than Biblical proportions! The Electoral College was conceived to be the republic’s last bastion against the election of an unscrupulous and unqualified demagogue who might take the office of president by deluding the mob. But instead of protecting us from the dubious blandishments of “Boss” Trump, instead it was this very Electoral College that has delivered us into bondage to our new Chief Executive. Indeed, it’s hard not to imagine our Founding Fathers doing back-flips and triple somersaults in their graves! Meanwhile, we the living, will be left with the heavy responsibility of surviving and cleaning up this unholy mess!
Why do all the public schools push an atheist liberal agenda these days?
America was not founded as a Christian nation, it was founded as a nation of individuals able to freely choose their beliefs and how they worship or even choose not to believe. The no prayer in public school thing is due to the little clause we have that separates church and state. And besides, how would you like if you were to go somewhere predominantly Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever else, and were forced to pray and worship their way instead of your way. The schools aren't telling children to not practice their faith or speak to their deity of choice, the schools are just not forcing their beliefs upon the children. Oh and uh, there is no Satan taking over the school system. Global warming, while blown out of proportion by the extreme lefties, is a natural process that the earth goes through. We have ice ages, when the planet cools and much is covered in snow and ice, and then there are periods of warming up and there is nothing we humans can do or say to stop this cycle from happening as much as some people like to say otherwise. Protecting the environment, while again some people preach to the extreme, is important. We have become the primary species on this planet and we touch every continent outnumbering every other species of life on the planet therefore we use a heck of a lot more resources than the "lesser" species, many things (like trees) to the point that we are using up nature's resources a lot faster than nature can replenish them and because of this there is not enough to go around. And because there are so many of us we do tend to be more destructive than the average bear, shark, cow, or gorilla, etc. Evolution is no lie, though I do not think we came from apes as the apes are still here. Evolution happens though. And IF there is a God, who is to say that evolution was not part of His Divine Plan? the Bible was written by man long after he crawled out of the caves and walked upright and began to ponder things other than just mere survival and still yet had no idea how to fully explain everything around him. "The Devil" does not make anyone do anything. that entity is just made up so people have a scapegoat, an excuse for wrongdoing. And a final point, boasting about stockpiling guns preparing for the revolution kinda makes your previous arguments lose all credibility and cause you to sound a bit unhinged.
It’s a free country.The science is disputed.It takes a lot more religious blind faith to believe in the best deep-time dependent doctrine assumptions that Darwinism and SCM are built on then the better ID creation science models.The key is no faith based belief should be forced on the public ie the establishment clause. and that includes deep-time dogmatism.reference RCCF framework for understanding science.
The Enlightenment was the root of many of the ideas of the American Revolution. It was a movement that focused mostly on freedom of speech, equality, freedom of press, and religious tolerance. The American Revolution was the time period where America tried to gain its independence from England. They got influenced very much from many philosophers. The Enlightenment ideas were the main influences for American Colonies to become their own nation.
I think in the minds of many Americans these documents are more than artifacts and more even than law. They underpin our entire philosophy of government and what's more, these Founding Fathers kind of invented it. Sure these men were well read and drew very heavily on the philosophies and writings of many Enlightenment thinkers (John Locke and such), but they took all this philosophy and critical thought and turned it into an entirely new country! Sure we owe a lot to the Magna Carta and English common law etc., but all of that European thought was more or less a reaction to a lamentable status quo. Basically it's about chipping away at preexisting tyranny. The Founding Fathers took all that and started fresh and they weren't lazy about it. They didn't simply copy what was out there. In typical American fashion they invented what they needed and they didn't approach the problem as politicians, but rather more like philosophers. They tried to build up their construction from the bottom, beginning with the free citizen as their building block and framing out his fundamental rights as the axioms upon which and around which their system of government would be built. And basically they set out to try and create a government that was about protecting the freedom of the individual, where rule of law had limits and derived power from rational consensus. And since then such principles and such a system of government has been widely emulated.Now, obviously this system co-opted the best of many other governments dating back to at least Ancient Greece and I'm not suggesting that the Founding Fathers were infallible geniuses. They created a system with no gender or racial equality and they basically stole the land they did it on. Their work was not totally original, nor did they claim it to be. But insomuch as it is inline with general development of Western governance, what they created was a pretty damn big step. And because they thought things through the foundational documents they created are actually still very relevant, and partially because they had the foresight to prescribe how these documents should evolve. So why shouldn't Americans think the Declaration of Independance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Founding Fathers important and even a source of pride?