re: #1240 avspatti

Actually my relative was attending a Congregational church when she had her painful experiences. Also, I don’t really care about posting the Ten Commandments everywhere either. I was referring to the fact that in many classrooms, Christians are not allowed to speak freely of their beliefs while all others are. It seems in those situations (and I have personally witnessed them), free speech is not ok for Christians. Ridicule is often used instead of discussion. Many professors shut the Christian students down and hold the power of grades over those with whom they disagree. This is not an isolated event as I am sure others will attest to. My point is that the rules are not evenhanded. Just because a Christian expresses his/her ideas does not mean he/she is trying to force others to follow along. Calm persuasive speech is one thing; irrational yelling and force is quite another. In the marketplace of ideas, discussion is key, is it not? As an educator, I am disturbed by the above trend.

There should not be equal time for the creationist GodDidIt answer to every empirical science question, because creationism ain’t science, it’s religion, and it does not belong in public high school science class, any more than Einstein or Darwin belong preached from the pulpit.

You want freedom of speech for your views? Shout them out on streetcorners, pass out flyers at malls, stand on soapboxes in public parks. But don’t think you have a right to force the shoehorning of either empirically untestable or empirically falsified dogmas into the pliable young minds of other peoples’ kids in public high school science class just because ya likes ‘em. Public high school science classes aren’t for the free exchange of any old moldy craziness, like astrology, alchemy, and every-star-planet-and-species-was-independently-and-as-is-created-a-few-thousand-years-ago-in-the-span-of-six-days-ism; they’re for instruction in empirical demonstrable facts and the theories that can be logically derived from (not gratuitously imposed on) aggregates of them. Empirical science ain’t a matter of personal preference or public opinion, it’s a matter of the evidence, and if your pet dogma is untestable or demonstrably wrong, it doesn’t matter how much you like it, or how many other people do. There ain’t no evenhanded halfway between demonstrably correct and demonstrably incorrect, or between demonstrably correct and undemonstrable.