Cross-posted to Random Fate.
From MSNBC.com:
Students may be the real victims of the evolution wars
By Sandra Lilley
News planning editor
NBC News
Updated: 1:49 p.m. ET June 3, 2005The battle over teaching evolution is raging in communities across the country, but the headlines rarely focus on the “quiet” impact of this controversy.
Science is becoming a political “hot potato” for some students – transforming what should be a dynamic, fascinating topic into a total turn-off. And some students are choosing silence over losing a prom date.
“Children are very much worried about their place in the world. Some students only ask me about evolution privately, after class,” said Wes McCoy, PhD, who teaches Genetics, Biology and Astronomy at North Cobb High School in Kennessaw, Ga.
McCoy, who has won the Georgia “Outstanding Biology Teacher” award, is active in his Presbyterian church and also serves on the National Executive Board of the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology and the Christian faith, is saddened by what he has seen in his classroom.
“Students face consequences if they choose to accept evolution in a family or a church or a community that patently rejects evolution … It might affect whether you get a date to the prom, or whether you get that summer job or not,” McCoy said. “You may even anger close family members. Conversations about evolution can make family reunions very tense.”
I could write volumes about the intolerance exhibited all around, by those both religious and anti-religious.
It would be unconvincing to those who are extremist, those who choose to call moderates “mushy” and “not holding deep beliefs”.
Moderates DO have true, deeply held beliefs, however they do not feel the need to declare a holy war upon any who dissent, and “holy war” in this context includes the hyperbole of the anti-religious-left just as much as the dogma of the religious-right, for both sides use similarly emotionally charged, destructive rhetoric.
I will leave it at this:
We have sown the seeds of our own destruction.
The old saw should be changed to: “Go East, young man, to Asia.”
I leave it to you to form your own conclusions, to do your own math.
The inexorable march will prove whose solution is correct; however history has shown what results from a turn to dogmatism of any type, religious or secular.