helvetebrann:
Rene and Anna Chouinard, who have three children, have been fighting with the board for more than two years to have an age-appropriate publication — Just Pretend: A Free Thought Book for Children and Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist — distributed to Grade 5 students.
The couple, who are humanists and follow a religion-free way of life, took their case to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario on Aug. 20 and were granted a hearing on the issue. While no date has yet been set for the proceeding, the tribunal allowed the Ontario Human Rights Commission and Canadian Civil Liberties Association to act as interveners in two-days of hearings.
The fight began after the Chouinards’ refused to sign a consent form for their daughter to distribute Gideon International Bibles at her school.
They then unsuccessfully sought to obtain permission to distribute Just Pretend, citing other groups should be allowed to have their publications distributed in Niagara schools as well.
“This is a solid decision by the tribunal that is good for society,” Rene said after being granted a hearing. “We would like to see religion completely removed from the classroom.”
He said the Niagara school board should focus on education and not religion or other issues.
The Chouinards alleged they were discriminated against “due to creed” and that no material from non-Christian religions were solicited or distributed in the district.
“If they allow Gideon Bibles in the schools, then why can’t other groups distribute their material as well,” he said on Tuesday. “This is not fair for people who may believe in other religions.”
He said Jews should be able to leave Torahs and Muslims their Koran in area schools.
It’s funny how as soon as other materials, besides Christian materials, are to be distributed that the school districts clam up and no longer say that they are simply distributing material based on who wants to distribute.
Funny indeed. Kind of like that Louisiana congressperson who flipped out and retracted support for school vouchers after they found out people can use them for Muslim, as well as Christian schools.
(Source: cnews.canoe.ca)
helvetebrann:
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) will “probably” sign a bill meant to protect teachers who allow students to question and criticize “controversial” scientific theories such as evolution, he told reporters on Monday.
The measure, which has been dubbed the “monkey bill” by critics who claim it’s a backdoor approval of religious teachings in public schools, passed votes in the state Senate and House last month.
Haslam addressed these concerns Monday, saying that his discussions with the State Board of Education had led him to believe that the law wouldn’t affect the current public school curriculum with regards to evolution.
But doubts remain for opponents of the legislation who claim it will allow for a broader denial of other popular scientific debates in Tennessee schools.
“It would open the door to creationism, it would open the door to climate change denial, and to other sorts of pseudosciences being introduced into Tennessee classrooms,” Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education told The Huffington Post last month.
“The concern is that this sends a signal to teachers that certain subjects are controversial — subjects that are not scientifically controversial — things that are subject to political controversy, perhaps, but that in the science classroom are not controversial and shouldn’t be treated that way.”
Critics have also charged that the bill harkens back to Tennessee’s anti-science history of the Scopes trial, the 1925 case that drew national publicity to the issue of teaching evolution in public schools.
“The idea behind this bill is that students should be encouraged to challenge current scientific thought and theory,” said Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, the measure’s sponsor.
Great! Encourage children to be skeptical. Encourage them to think using the newest scientific data and studies. But challenging science for the sake of religion is not educational, it’s dragging our students backwards.
In short, go fuck yourself Senator Watson.
Looks like Tennessee is going to be spending even more taxpayer money defending this in court in the near future.
helvetebrann:
A bill in Alabama would allow churches or ministries to teach a religion class to public school students off campus, so long as parents and school boards give permission and the churches are responsible for transportation and any expenses.
State Rep. Blaine Galliher, a Republican, introduced the bill at the request of Joseph Kennedy, 84, who was fired in 1980 after he refused to stop reading the Bible or teaching creationism at a public school.
Under the plan, high school students could go off campus to study creationism and earn an elective credit. Kennedy said he wants to “give students good sound scientific reasons to support their faith in the seven-day creation.”
LOL Anyway, continuing the article…
But Thomas Berg, who teaches constitutional law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, said the elective credits could raise concerns about public school involvement in religious education.
“Anyone challenging it in court will argue the motivation for it was religious,” said Berg. “A court is probably going to look at that suspiciously. There is a certain suspicion in the courts of Alabama legislators trying to promote religion.”
Why don’t we just keep the religion in religious buildings and schooling in school buildings?
It’s much simpler that way, folks.
More Alabama today. What the fuck Alabama???
(Source: The Huffington Post)
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
— Charles Darwin - English naturalist who discovered the chief mechanism of evolution. Was studying for the clergy when he signed on as a naturalist aboard the government research ship H.M.S. Beagle. Become disillusioned during the course of his circumnavigation of the globe, and by age 40 was, in his own words, “a complete disbeliever in Christianity” and a professed agnostic. (via helvetebrann)
I’m being 100% serious.
She said it was all a conspiracy to disprove religion, and that the reason the space pictures keep getting better was because computers have gotten powerful enough to generate better fake pictures of space. Her parents believed this too.
I asked her what she thought was out there and she said “heaven” was outside of the earth.
She seemed like a normal, rational person about everything else, but we didn’t discuss religion or politics much at work. It was just strange because she came off fairly intelligent otherwise.
I even offered her to use my telescope some time and she refused.
Indoctrination is a powerful tool.
alifeofreason:
On a regular basis, religious people in my life try to convince me of how god wants to be in my life. When I bring up the fact that I did search for god before realizing there is none, I usually get told “I was not listening the right way.” How is it my fault that an omnipotent and omniscient being was unable to communicate it’s existence to me?
If a god did exist and wanted me to know about it don’t you think it would be able to convince me?
You just aren’t believing hard enough, you don’t have enough faith, you’re not listening right.
This sounds an awful lot like “You don’ imagine god to be real hard enough” to me.
