From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ed Brayton
Sent: Tue 11/22/2005 3:00 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Kansas and Intelligent Design: A Twist
Christopher C. Lund wrote:
> The University of Kansas
is planning to teach a course on intelligent
> design next semester.
But it's not a science class. It is a
> religious-studies class, and
it's titled, "Special Topics in Religion:
> Intelligent Design,
Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."
> (The chairman of the
department, in explaining the class, said this,
> "Creationism is
mythology . . . Intelligent design is mythology. It's
> not
science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly
is
> not.") It's the next step in the intelligent design/evolution
fight.
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051122/ap_on_re_us/intelligent_design_course
>
>
Does anyone on the listserv see a potential Establishment Clause
> problem
here? Let me be provocative. Surely, the University of
>
Kansas cannot teach that intelligent design is false, right?
>
Government cannot pass directly on the truth or falsity of religious
>
teaching.
Hey, that works for me. That means that ID is, in
fact, a religious
teaching and not a scientific theory and means it cannot be
taught in
public school science classrooms. ID advocates can't have it both
ways,
claiming that it's not religious idea but a scientific theory
when
trying to get around establishment clause problems on one level,
then
claiming it is a religious idea and not a scientific theory to claim
an
establishment clause violation at another level.
Of course, the
entire question is based upon a false premise. Of course
a public university
can teach that religious ideas are false. The Noahic
global flood is a
religious claim, but any geology course at any public
university in the
nation will teach that no such global flood ever took
place. Belief in a flat
earth is a religious belief based upon
interpretation of the bible, and so is
geocentrism; both of those
religious ideas are debunked in public university
classrooms every day,
as well they should be. The germ theory of disease
completely negates
the religious views of the Christian Science Church and
Mary Baker Eddy;
that doesn't mean that university hospitals are violating
the
establishment clause by teaching it.
Ed
Brayton
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