Sunday, April 18, 2010

Why argue against Creationism?

This question is put to me in various ways for a while now. I've put together several answers around a central theme of the damage pushing Creationism, whatever its guise, as science can do to science education. Michael Zimmerman takes it a step further in another article over on the Huffington Post "The Dangers of Ignoring Creationism" which everyone should read!

Folks like Ken Ham, and his Creation 'Museum', the whole Discovery Institute and its minions, the Access Research 'Network', for example, are dangerous! Plain words from Michael Zimmerman lay it out clearly. This debate is NOT one pitting religion against science. It is pitting zealots, extremists, and snake-oil salesmen against reality! Their tactics include lies, misrepresentations of science, and writing marketing material advertised as science. Why in the world should any of us consider letting them determine what should be taught to all our children?

The answer is we should not! And with the exception of Louisiana, the current crop of anti-evolution bills is not finding very fertile ground. Even in Louisiana there seems to be issues implementing the law in a way that won't result in lawsuits. This next school year will be interesting there. I think only South Carolina and Missouri have legislation is committee. But we can't let down our guard. I mean the sponsor of the two bills in South Carolina, Senator Michael Fair (R-District 6), are simply the latest after he failed in 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007 -- if memory serves me. Since they refuse to stop, neither should we!

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