“Should government funds be used to influence students’ religious beliefs regarding evolution?”

When I voted it was

yes 16%
no 81%
not sure 2%

http://www.pacificjustice.org/index.cfm

http://www.pacificjustice.org/.....=PR051012a

Normally Tim, whose anti-ID obsession distorts his otherwise good judgment, has been allied with Pacific Justice on other civil rights cases. He’s not at all happy to see PJI preparing to bitchslap Berkeley and his precious anti-ID buddies. This is a slam dunk case against Berkeley. Tim knows it. Too bad he isn’t honest enough to admit it.

“The Creationism/Intelligent Design debate”

I’ll let you guys know how it goes if you’re interested.

With a mandatory philosophy course (hopefully for at least two years in high school), students will learn to think for themselves, evaluate different views of life, science, etc., and engage in much needed class discussion. Philosophy helps to create the “big picture” that teachers are always trying to make students understand; its broad application to various aspects of life gives a sense of practicality to seemingly useless concepts.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I fully believe that a basic introduction to philosophy and critical thinking should be required for all students before they graduate from high school, and a part of this course should be dedicated to the philosophy of science.

I like that idea a lot. One of the main weapons used in the anti-ID campaign is a restrictive view of what science is. If students had a better understanding of the history and philosophy of science, they would come to see that a lot of what is said is fraught with philosophical and logical problems of every sort.

It will be ineteresting to see what comes of this lawsuit. A lot of these sorts of issues will likely be raised.

I’m in full agreement here. We have largely been victims of educational mediocrity in the last 30 or so years. Diploma mills are everywhere, and education for its material benefits seems to be the status quo. I did not have any interest in religion or philosophy until after I graduated from High School, and well into my college years. This was largely due to my upbringing. I’m a baby-boomer, and my parents raised me with the prime directive: “support yourself.” All of this is well and good, but it works within the framework of an industrial society only. Other societies do not have such concerns, because they are more communal and dependent upon collective statuses, rather than on the status of the individual.

Philosophy and the humanities are seen as valueless in Western culture. In fact, they are the heresies within our educational institutions, because they factor in issues that detract from the goal of industry. Things are changing, though. The “information age” finds itself in need of more and more information, and raw scientism is not providing enough. Postmodernism, though is creating information that is more esoteric in nature, and is not grounded in the traditional rules of logic. Therefore, confusion abounds as to what is valid reasoning, and what is not. “Your thinking is as good as mine.” “Your truth is not my truth.” Tolerance of all POVs is the new prime directive. Yet it is not a consistent tolerance. It is not tolerant of those who hold views that clash with the unwriten orthodoxy of acceptance. So confusing. The good Star Trek fan that I am, I would say that we are all being assimilated. Resistance is futile.