Evolution News & Views: European Darwinists Attempt to Criminalize Intelligent Design as a โThreat to Human Rightsโ
Years ago, The Australian Electoral Commission decided that Pauling Hanson had violated some rule somewhere and she was sent to goal for it. I thought (and still do) that she is basically retarded, her policies are racist and not well thought out and she relies on appealing to the other stupid people in our country. Even with all this, putting her in goal for basically political reasons was very wrong. We do not want to make political prisoners in a country where free speech, no matter how bad it is, is still worth preserving.
That said, on to the current topic. I’m as committed an atheist as reason would allow and think that belief in a invisible sky pixie is basically a mental illness. This however does not mean that other belief should be made illegal. Teaching or indoctrinating is another thing entirely.
I think children should be exposed to religions as ‘this is what some people believe’ type learning and the Socratic method should be taught as it seems like a simple way to determine the truth. Like Richard Dawkins, I believe encouraging a child to believe in a god is basically child abuse.
Informing people about Intelligent Design (Creation) is something that should be allowed, as long as its taught as a ‘this is what some people believe’ style. We should also cover other religions. Science class is NOT the place this should happen, possibly in history or some other social studies class would be more appropriate. An ethics class would also be appropriate as long as its covered with other meta-ethics. Supernaturalism is something that has been successfully argued against in many philosophical papers.
