Ohio lawmakers clear bill critics say could expand religion in public schools

Somerville said:

Doing what? Teaching science or creationism? Teaching myths or history?

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Forcing their beliefs on students.

cpwill said:

Forcing their beliefs on students.

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Do you believe a "God-fearing evangelical Creationist" should be teaching high school science classes? You have failed to answer in all of your comments as to just which "beliefs" are not to be "forced" on students.

Somerville said:

Do you believe a "God-fearing evangelical Creationist" should be teaching high school science classes?

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Not only that, I think Godless heathen atheists should as well.

Neither should be allowed to leverage teaching the concepts laid out by the school board in the curriculum as a means to force children to affirm their beliefs.

You have failed to answer in all of your comments as to just which "beliefs" are not to be "forced" on students.

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Because I don't think the State should be imposing worldviews on Children, or punishing them for having a different religion (or lack thereof) than the teacher. It's not required to educate - only to indoctrinate.

cpwill said:

Not only that, I think Godless heathen atheists should as well.

Neither should be allowed to leverage teaching the concepts laid out by the school board in the curriculum as a means to force children to affirm their beliefs.

Because I don't think the State should be imposing worldviews on Children, or punishing them for having a different religion (or lack thereof) than the teacher. It's not required to educate - only to indoctrinate.

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All of your comments in this thread confirm your agreement with Ohio in the dumbing down of academics, especially history and science.

Further it proves how adversarial systems of belief (religion) is to systems of process (science.)

Evolution vs. Creationism (and Young Earth Creationism) is a classic illustration of the problem. In all areas of science there is no room for bronze age myths and religious texts as subjects of input into what systems of process tell us.

Take the Christian Scriptures as an example, we are talking about text that was about 1000+ years before Christ to about 200+ years after, then edited a number of ways, canonized by the Romans, and translated multiple times over splintering into the hundreds of branches. That is all there is to that source.

What we know from science up through Galileo, Einstein, Darwin, Newton and so many others is the basis for what we describe as science. Biology, astrology, physics, geology, various other sciences gave way to methods and systems of process that resulted in even the Catholic Church admitting that evolution is a fact.

There is no science in scripture, it is impossible for it to be a source of science as the two historical periods way back to the bronze age where much of this text originated to where science started to make real discoveries (never possible in periods of human history like the dark ages where religion caused a period of devolution) are separated by a vast period of time in human history.

We can conclude beyond all doubt that religious texts are not teaching science, and Ohio is in error putting creationism on the same level as evolution.

This is one of those times were we have to reject timidity and call this nonsense out for what it really is, a dark ages like mentality of suggesting systems of faith should dominate education. Ironically given your posts to date, use religion to indoctrinate kids through education saying literal interpretations from Sunday school qualify as answers for science homework.

It should be painful for all of us to accept literal interpretations of the bible, including genesis, as fact equal to what science actually teaches us.

That fundamentalist approach to religious belief making its way into political protectionism becomes a method to dumb down education and allow people to get away with an answer to a homework assignment that the earth is 10,000 or so years old. It ensures the teacher accepts that answer "by nether reward or penalize" thus nullifying the question and/or assignment. Assuming this bill becomes so it allows someone to skate through science class answering everything with something rooted in religion and by effect not take the class.

That is worse than a plague (that ironically science tends to cure where prayer by and large fails miserably) that presents itself to science as a source. And religious text is clearly not, its only method is to insert junk science into a classroom and call it an alternative.

cpwill said:

Forcing their beliefs on students.

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You have it wrong, this concept is forcing belief into a science classroom passed off as equal.

OrphanSlug said:

You have it wrong, this concept is forcing belief into a science classroom passed off as equal.

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No, what we are talking about is not teaching a concept, but enforcing a worldview. Teachers should do the former, and not the latter. If the curriculum is to learn the theory of evolution, students can be required to learn and demonstrate the ability to describe it without being forced to affirm they believe it.

Using the example I brought to bear earlier: teachers in high school social studies should be able to cover down on the Founder's integration of Locke's claim that individuals recieve their rights directly from God, and be able to test students on whether or not they understand that idea and the implications that have flown from it, without demanding the student affirm the existence of a Creator who imbues individual human beings with inalienable rights.

Among other things (students shouldn't be punished for wearing a shirt with a religious message, or punished for praying before school starts, etc.), this bill seems to be clarifying this, which is good.