The Florida Senate Judiciary Committee just passed a bill by a vote of 6-4 that would protect teachers who include creationism in their lesson plans from being reprimanded by school officials. The bill is a direct response to the State Board of Education decision in January to make teaching evolution mandatory. This is some scary stuff.
Lawmakers going out of their way to ensure that religion can be infused into science lesson plans only serves to highlight how important it is for scientists to get more involved in the political process. The bill falls short of directly placing creationism into classrooms, but it paves the way for bad science teachers to inject their personal religious views into their lessons. This is an embarrassment for the state and the country.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm
The fact that certain books such as the Communist Manifesto by Marx are not worth more than their thermal energy units on a cold day should not imply that such books can be prohibited as a reference for education in an Open Society. Prohibition on the use of meritorious books, including the Bible, falls under the clear definition of totalitarianism, and should be rejected. It is impossible to discriminate science from non-science on the basis of the falsifiability of the scientific statements alone. None of the correctly interpreted Biblical statements have yet been rigorously falsified. Until it is accomplished, the value of the content of the Bible is clearly worth more than it’s thermal energy units, and therefore it should be investigated rigorously in an Open Society.