Why should creationism not be taught in schools?
Creationism has its roots in one small group of people’s opinions about their religion. School is focused on more empirical subjects. Religion is traditionally taugh at home, not in public schools. It’s important to disallow one religion to be taught as fact unless all religions are taught as fact. So if you want your religious beliefs taught in public schools, you should be willing to allow Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, Pagans, Wiccans, FSMers, etc to teach theirs too. Most of the people who are pushing for creationism to be taught in public schools are not willing to allow other religions to be taught also.
Two separate questions: 1. Why shouldn’t creationism be taught in schools? Because there is no scientific evidence to suggest that it’s true. It requires a leap of faith rather than any level of scientific evidence in order to believe. It could be taught, for example, in literature class as fiction. 2. Why is it important to keep religion from schools? Because the Constitution of the United States establishes the principal that no religion should be given government support over any other religion. Since public schools receive federal and state tax dollars, and since creationism is predicated upon Christian beliefs, teaching creationism is school would be violating the principal of religious equality and non-support.
I’m for creationism, but it is only fair to keep schools secular, otherwise it would be unfair to only show religion A and religion B’s beliefs, but not religions C through Z. I agree though, creationism should be mentioned. But as long as evolution is taught solely as a theory, I’m okay with it. After all, there are parts of evolution that I believe to be partially true, such as natural selection.
Let’s put lot of religion in Schools. I’m not kidding about this. Seriously, by all means, start a comparative religion class, religious literature classes, or even cover religion in social studies classes. Have speakers who portray various religions in extremely positive lights come in and present their beliefs. However, don’t try to stick it in a science class. Even very conservative judges from bible belt states have concluded, after weighing mountains of evidence, that creationism doesn’t qualify as science.
Because they are teaching science, which has evidence on it’s side, there are many facts supporting it, anddd creationism has zilch. Not every child is a believer and not every family is a believer. There are children of many different religions in public schools. If you want your child to grow up and really believe that the world is only 6,000 years old and that we existed with the dinosaurs then go ahead and send your child to a christian private school. Don’t infect everyone else with that crap. Not everyone has the same beliefs, they are only teaching the science of evolution.
