Thursday 12 January 2012

Agnosticism / Atheism: Weekly Poll: Do Atheists Support Teaching Intelligent Design?

Agnosticism / Atheism
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Weekly Poll: Do Atheists Support Teaching Intelligent Design?
Jan 12th 2012, 08:00

Can an atheist believe that it is appropriate to teach the religious beliefs of "Intelligent" Design in public school science classes? I wouldn't have thought so, but I would have been wrong. There is at least one, Dean Esmay, who does and who even objected to the Dover lawsuit in Pennsylvania that sought to stop the local school district from teaching Intelligent Design in science classes.

Dean Esmay alleged that the people opposed to teaching Intelligent Design were actually involved with trying to "protect children from hearing ideas they don't like." I think that such a claim would only be credible if the same sort of lawsuit were filed in order to prevent students from hearing about creationism and "Intelligent" Design even if they weren't be presented as valid scientific theories on part with evolution.

A fair analysis of such situations must focus not simply on the fact that "Intelligent" Design is being presented, but rather tha it is being present as valid science, in science classes, and as if it were on part with evolutionary theory. Is every "ban" on ideas and discussion the same -- every "ban" equally reprehensible? Obviously not.

Schools are banned from teaching the Bible as truth, but not from including the Bible in a literature class. Schools would be banned from teaching communism as if it were truth, but they can teach about communism in history and economics classes. By the same token, schools are banned from teaching creationism in science classes as if it were science, but they aren't banned from teaching about creationism in other contexts.

If we act as though all "bans" are the same, we fail to understand that context is vitally important when evaluating what sort of material should be presented where and how in public schools. Dean Esmay, it seems to me, ignores context and the manner of presentation. At no point does he address them at all, giving the impression that they are completely irrelevant to his argument (and I think they are -- I don't think he regards context or manner of presentation as having the least relevance). That, unfortunately, undermines his argument completely.

It's not as though Dean Esmay is on firm logical ground otherwise, though. He actually claims that "The ACLU is now the nation's foremost advocate for classroom censorship," a pretty serious charge given how often the ACLU has defended students' personal religious rights in public schools. Examples of this include distributing religious literature, wearing religious symbols, and including religion in yearbook entries. ACLU lawsuits are filed against officially endorsed, promoted, or favored religious expression -- and either Esmay doesn't understand the difference or just doesn't care. Either way, that doesn't speak well for his reasoning.

On the one hand, atheists like Dean Esmay demonstrate that not all atheists think alike on every issue; on the other hand, such atrocious reasoning is rather depressing and not the sort of thing we should want to point to as an example of how atheists think.

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