Should All Schools Be Mandated To Teach Creationism?

Children soak up like a sponge. They learn well by example. Be moral in your actions.

 

Be moral in your action. Fathers do not confound your children. the thing that causes moral dilemma is hypocritical action.
Don't think teaching is all about making them right. You can't teach what you don't know.

 

What you want is to be happy. Sometimes confused with becoming a lawyer or a garbage man.

 

I disagree. Atheism per se may simply be "a denial of certain belief systems", but we've seen on this forum that such denial can be accompanied by a good deal of hostility to religion, and when religion is identified (as it has been on this forum) with backwardness and obstruction of progress (see the latest posts of Relaxx on another thread) people who hold that "simple denial" can and do actively persecute religion. Marx described religion as "the opium of the masses', and Marxist Leninists regarded morality as relative and believed that the "end justifies the means." http://people.opposingviews.com/communist-persecution-christianity-religion-4328.html
BTW, I don't believe that atheism per se was responsible for the mass killings under those Marxist regimes, but I as a Christian don't think that "Christianity" per se was responsible for the Crusades, the witch trials, and the Inquisition. Human pathology can manifest itself in both religious and secular forms.

 

As long as people continue to defend the atrocities perpetrated by religion, religion will continue to do atrocious things.

 

Picking up the comment by Meagain to Okiefreak why would atheism need to be taught as a foil to offset religious teaching. The only grade you would get from religious teaching is acceptance or not. Why should a religious view be countered by another view. If they find there is no good for them in god then why adopt or consider a case for an anti view. The atheist has his program is why the suggestion. Teach what you know and they will learn what they want. Teach them a convoluted program of competing interests and you get a degree of dis-function in modern society.

 

As long as people defend atrocities they will seem atrocious.

 

What determines whether a religious teaching goes down well or not is whether or not the teacher also presents sour grapes

 

Creationism has no place being taught in public schools

 

It would if it were taught

 

I was always taught in school that evolution was a hard fact. I think it would be helpful if the evidence was presented in school as support for a theory. I'm not for teaching creationism.

It's almost like science has turned into a religion.

 

religion has dogma, science has ... data.

evolution by natural selection *is* a fact, one that has been supported by over a hundred years of scientific data. one could not say that evolution does not occur and be speaking the truth. it is shown to occur in scientific experiements.

 

So were the Crusades and the Inquisition.

 

No argument if you don't accept it. This particular thing is called criticizing.
What is atheisms foundation?

 

Years ago when I was a wee lad just venturing out into the academic world I took a few philosophy classes (almost an unspoken requirement of first year students.LOL).
anywho, the professor, Dr. Grimes had a rather unique and I will say effective approach. He would teach particular school of thought is such a way that the majority of the class would be converts to whatever it was. he was very good at presenting things in a way that really sold the idea.
THEN, he would after a few days/week he would proceed to tear it apart and show us the flaws or shortcomings from the "insiders perspective" that he managed to instill in the students.
Very, very effective because before showing and focusing on any possible issues, he made very strong cases for their validity.

It really does afford a different appreciation and mind set when ideas/philosophies are looked in that manner, rather than just always looking at it from outside the gate so to speak.
not exactly sure how that directly relates to all of this, but this thread just brought it to remembrance.

I will say that methodology has stuck with me through the years and it works rather well in learning stuff.
It also teaches you to always allow the other the benefit of doubt and realizing your own bias towards a given topic.


off topic, but I'll always remember one of the first questions he asked the class;
What two pills completely changed the world?

LSD and birth control was his answer.

 

what you are failing to see is that for those times religion WAS politics, so it gets very hard to draw clear lines of distinction.
The Crusades were also about looting wealth as much as anything else.
True, to the everyday foot soldier it was often a matter of faith, but for the kings and those in power, 100% politics and $$$$ motivated.
control over that area of the world also meant control over a lot of commerce and trade.

Same with the inquisitions. Protestantism was dealing blows to the church's political position and causing much division which equates to lost lands and $$$.
So why not accuse them of heresy and set about a directed campaign to squelch the movement.

to the lay people it was a religious persecution, to those in power it was political maneuvering and tactics.