There is also a double standard big time today on university campuses. Some professors apparently not fulfilled with teaching alone are using their classrooms as a way to indoctrinate the next generation. According to the news reports I have been seeing religion in general and Christianity in particular are targets of some scathing attacks. Just last night I saw a report on a woman studies professor who denounced Jesus as one of the opriginal middle eastern terrorists. Womans studies allows one to give expert opinions on the roots terrorism? And the origins of Christianity? Jesus, by the way, was hardly a terrorist. Of course, any one who believes in creationism or ID is in for similar denunciation and ridicule. If you're a student and you try to defend your beliefs it was reported the professor might retaliate in your grade. This has certainly changed since I worked 20+ years ago on a university campus. Joy, reminisced about a time when nobody cared what you believed. It seems to me that is a by-gone time that is quickly fading into the distant past.

Hi John. Much of what is occuring on and off campuses can be traced to rabid anti-Christianity. That goes for opposition to ID on the part of some as well. I posted a comment recently about a professor teaching a class my son attends who went out of his way to depict IDers in terms usually reserved for criminals. Terrorists are spoken of with less vindictiveness.

There is a double standard. Churches and clergy favoring an anti-ID stance were recruited to voice their views in celebration of Darwin Day by the same crowd that bemoaned a coming theocracy.

There is also a double standard big time today on university campuses. Some professors apparently not fulfilled with teaching alone are using their classrooms as a way to indoctrinate the next generation. According to the news reports I have been seeing religion in general and Christianity in particular are targets of some scathing attacks. Just last night I saw a report on a woman studies professor who denounced Jesus as one of the opriginal middle eastern terrorists. Womans studies allows one to give expert opinions on the roots terrorism? And the origins of Christianity? Jesus, by the way, was hardly a terrorist. Of course, any one who believes in creationism or ID is in for similar denunciation and ridicule. If you're a student and you try to defend your beliefs it was reported the professor might retaliate in your grade. This has certainly changed since I worked 20+ years ago on a university campus. Joy, reminisced about a time when nobody cared what you believed. It seems to me that is a by-gone time that is quickly fading into the distant past.

Now the question is could a teacher today legally say (or write) something similar or would she/he be stepping over some constitutional line? Mrs. V had an influence on me because she tolerated and respected my religious beliefs. Are new teachers, at modern Universities being taught what it means to respect the religious beliefs of the their prospective students?

Unless your parents were to complain about the margin note, your teacher can say what she wants about it. And of course (according to the Department of Education) you can write about your beliefs about biology according to the parameters of the assignment. You can even present it orally to the whole class, in terms of the assignment. But the teacher can't make her remark to the whole class, because in that role she's a representative of the state. Conversely, she can't criticize your essay to the whole class on religious terms either.

However, she could sign up to be in-school sponsor for an after-school club of kids who gather for religious reasons. My biology teacher (for both Bio-I and II) was the preacher at the First Baptist Church in our town. His brother was the chemistry and physics teacher, and youth pastor at the same church. Neither of them ever confused their job descriptions, and both were very excellent teachers - among the best I ever had.

But it was no secret who they were on Sundays and Wednesday nights. Nobody cared.

Why? Is theistic evolution more acceptable?

There is a double standard. Churches and clergy favoring an anti-ID stance were recruited to voice their views in celebration of Darwin Day by the same crowd that bemoaned a coming theocracy. Klein is right about one thing. There is a political aspect to all this but it is centered on his side of the fence.

If you adhere to the strict logic of legal precedents it would be stepping over the line. However the Judge Joneses and Matzkes of this world would find a reason to look the other way.

Why? Is theistic evolution more acceptable?

Now the question is could a teacher today legally say something similar or would she/he be stepping over some constitutional line

?

If you adhere to the strict logic of legal precedents it would be stepping over the line. However the Judge Joneses and Matzkes of this world would find a reason to look the other way.

…I don't think the problems we are facing today is merely a problem of textbooks and curriculum. There is an ugly movement of religious intolerance growing in our country. The self appointed defenders of science are not really interested in defending science, their real agenda IMO is to undermime established religion and religious freedom.

"Fair minded" is a relative assessment, so I'm just going by the concerted efforts to drop arguments that do in fact display issues that could be challenged on Constitutional grounds. The textbook publishers get it even though the writers generally don't, because they have to deal with state school textbook committees comprised of people who find this stuff offensive. Their anti-theistic bias is being cleaned up for them, they haven't changed their minds.

The issue with the 'New Atheists' finally and notably abandoning science to promote their bigotry is just the final step toward where they were going all along. I am not afraid they can turn America into something it's not, any more than I was afraid of the wannabe theocrats. In a 'free' country you're going to have fringe on your wings, and more than a few outright crazies in the mix. But religion can neither be officially promoted nor officially forbidden in this country under its governing charter. In order to be either a theocracy or an atheocracy, the United States would have to become something else entirely.

That's not likely to happen without serious resistance from the governed, so only a complete suicidal fool would try it. We've more pressing concerns with a certain lame duck and his coterie, who have spent the last six years gutting the governmental charter from the inside. They've done a lot of damage. Should the nation fall to authoritarianism in the end the future will be bleak and what's taught to teenagers for a semester of their lives won't matter. But it's not like Christians weren't warned, Jews weren't used to it, and patriots weren't complicit.

All authoritarian mind-tyrants look alike to me.

So I give the publishers brownie points for at least trying to put something together that wasn't purposely designed to insult, ridicule or embarrass religious students. It's a start

I like it too if the textbook is really as tolerant and fairminded as you describe it. However, I don't think the problems we are facing today is merely a problem of textbooks and curriculum. There is an ugly movement of religious intolerance growing in our country. The self appointed defenders of science are not really interested in defending science, their real agenda IMO is to undermime established religion and religious freedom. Richard Dawkins is not alone! It would be nice if we could have some civil compromise and accomodation, but what I have read, including from some of the more militant of the contributors on this site, leads me to believe that compromise is not part of their vocabulary or thinking. All the anti-ID anti-creationism stuff is nothing but a big smokescreen.

I may stand to be corrected, but if this is supposed to be a definition of ID, I suspect it would be considered a poor one:

Oh, I agree it's a very poor definition of what I think about ID, but then again, I am not someone who gets to produce the "official" definition of ID. That was done by Johnson, Behe, Nelson and the DI, et. al., who have made just this assertion more than once. So I'm happy enough that the usual polemics have been edited out.

Deal is, there simply isn't an "official" definition of ID, and no Court of Grand ID Poobahs to come up with one. So I give the publishers brownie points for at least trying to put something together that wasn't purposely designed to insult, ridicule or embarrass religious students. It's a start.

The rest will come. The crucial step, it seems has been taken - encouragement of critical analysis and discussion. That's what the DDs were most terrified of, but the deed is done. Science itself will come around when the kids move in - armed with several decades' worth of improved technology, genomic expertise and basic grasp of the several newly identified hierarchical life-codes.