The Economist has an article out this week that gives us a bigger picture of which the debate over Intelligent Design is merely the most publicized portion of. It discusses the court battle that some Christian schools are having with the University of California school system over admittance requirements, but puts it into its broader context.
In a lot of ways the Intelligent Design debate is just the tip of the iceberg. The fundamentalists are trying to portray the debate as a student’s right to “freedom of speech and thought” and ‘freedom of choice’ as some commenters on this blog have mentioned. As I see it, and have experienced it, those freedoms are already there. What’s really being sought is evangelism, just another form of proselytizing of their limited and human interpretations of the Bible, and a demand that their views not only be respected, but accepted by others as well (for ‘salvation’).
Besides evolution in biology classes, other subjects are also under threat. It’s only a matter of time before Wallbuilders & Co. will seriously try to revise American history classes into a fundamentalist image. Literature needs to be cleaned up. Government classes as well. And of course stuff like geology is practically satanic. It all starts with just getting your foot in the door, with Intelligent design and ‘teach the controversy’.
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