Half a century ago, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech about the importance of government always maintaining an attitude of neutrality towards religion. President Kennedy stated, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” The United States has been a country, in which the separation of church and state has been adopted and assumed to be practiced, but there has been a perennial conflict disrupting the balance between church and state. In his innovative film, The Revisionaries, director Scott Thurman exposes how the public education system has become the latest battleground in the face of an old conflict – between religion and science – challenging the ideological edifice on which the nation stands. The contention is shrouded by vehement claims from those who claim Intelligent Design, a refinement of creationism, to be true; and believers of the theory of evolution, who claim scientific merit yields no other conclusion than what is presented in the theory of evolution. As a result, the spills of conflict are in the classrooms now.
In Austin, Texas, every decade fifteen people influence what is taught to the next generation of American children. The highly politicized Texas Board of Education gets to rewrite the teaching standards and textbook standards for its approximate 5 million schoolchildren. However, any changes made in Texas, trickle down into the rest of the nation. Texas is home to one of the nation's largest textbook markets (the other being the state of California), because as a state, it decides what textbooks schools can buy, rather than leaving it up to local districts (“The Revolutionaries”). Hence, publishers face the economic conundrum of whether they curtail the intellect...
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Kroll, Paul. "Genesis 1: The Evolution vs. Creation Controversy." Grace Communion International. Gci.org, 2013. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Laing, Robert L. "94. 37 Facts of Creation vs. 30 False Theories of Evolution." 37 Facts of Creation vs. 30 False Theories of Evolution. IntelligentDesignTheory.info, 2007. Web. 01 Dec. 2013
Layton, Julia."How Intelligent Design Works.” 26 September 2005. http://people.howstuffworks.com/intelligent-design.htm. Web.30 Nov. 2013.
Rich, Motoko. "Texas Education Board Flags Biology Textbook Over Evolution Concerns." The New York Times. Nytimes.com, 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Spence, Thomas. "To Teach or Not to Teach: Intelligent Design in the Public Classroom?" Examiner. Examiner.com, 25 Sept. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2013
“The Revisionaries.” Independent Lens. PBS. Independent Television Service. 12/6/12 Web. 11/19/13
The concept of creationism has a strong religious history and very deep religious overtones, and the constitutionality of teaching the subject in a public school immediately was questioned. Called to preside over the resulting legal case was U.S. District Judge William Overton. Thu...
After reading the preceding two sentences, we can come to the conclusion that the creation - evolution debate is really a matter of faith, either there is a Creator or there is no Creator. However, at the same time the main battle of the debate is over what is taught in our public schools. This creates a problem, particularly for creationists, because separation of church and state keeps religious criticism to evolutionary theory away from the classroom. The Kansas Board of Education decision to eliminate evolution and the Big Bang Theory from statewide tests reflects the resulting pressure on school officials to chose between what many have come to view as two mutu...
Since the beginning of the human race there has been a lingering question as to the origins of man and how all living things acquired their characteristics. The two main theories that arose over time were Creationism and Evolution, both of which provided very distinct answers to this question. Creationism based its answer on the idea of a supernatural power or being that created the entire universe, man and the numerous other organisms that live within it. While, Evolution theorizes that all living things have the potential to change and grow over time into something new and different. So in other words, one theory suggests that humans and all the organisms on Earth are the result of divine design, while the other indicates that they are only the result of environmental adaption and growth. However, as neither theory is without flaw and it is only through close examination that a true understanding of man’s origins can be obtained.
Since the time that teaching evolution in public schools was banned as heresy and taboo for contradicting the Bible, most public school systems today take an opposite approach in which creationism is seldom ta...
Today many scientists would have people to believe that evolution is the only reasonable explanation of the universe. Scientists, like Stephen Hawking, claim that they have proved that evolution is the correct answer to the origins of life and the universe, yet evolution is still a theory. This problem occurs because evolution is not the only answer. In fact, the creation theory offers a more feasible answer to the origins of the universe than the evolution theory does. Creation has the backings of the Bible, an extraordinarily credible book; where evolution provides a theory with many holes in it.
There was a Dutchman named Hugo DeVries who found something interesting one day. He found a flower that had mutated. All of the Evolutionists went crazy over this and thought that this was their big breakthrough as to how life evolved. But scientists refute this claim because they can find no incident where a mutation is good. Every mutation that they have come across has hurt or damaged the organism. They describe a process called natural selection.
The subject of religion in public schools is one that has been debated vigorously and passionately. The warriors from the Right and Left fail to appreciate the facts because they are caught up in the rhetoric and have difficulty viewing this emotional topic dispassionately (Haynes, 2011). Both sides are right about one thing: this is an important subject.
Patterson, C.(1981). Prominent British Scientist Challenges Evolution Theory.(Videotape). Washington D.C.: American Museum of Natural History.
Ever since the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, many have viewed Christianity as largely counter scientific. This position is obviously an exaggeration and a desire to portray the Christian faith as unreasoning and unreasonable. Similar situations followed the Scopes trial, such as Epperson v. Arkansas in1968, Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1971, Daniel v. Waters in 1975, Hendren v. Campbell in 1977, McLean v. Arkansas in 1982, and Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. In recent years, the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case attracted attention yet again to what many would have thought was beating a dead horse. But the horse apparently is not dead; it never died. Christianity was never defeated in the science lab.
Monastersky, Richard. (2004). Society Disowns Paper Attacking Darwinism. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 51, Iss. 5, A.16.
There is a major controversy brewing in the educational field today. Scientist, teachers, professors, and many others are debating where the world and its habitats originally came from. This is the debate of Intelligent Design (ID) and Evolution. The main debating question of many scholars being, "Is the universe self-contained or does it require something beyond itself to explain its existence and internal function?".
In conclusion, America provides many ways to help reduce the cost of college textbooks but society is still not satisfied with the outcome. The Open Textbook, Affordable Textbook Act, and book store rentals are wonderful programs, but has its disadvantages that hopefully would be resolved in the 2016 presidential elections. The statistics show that many students across the nation benefit from learning with quality of teaching, the amount of accessibility it provides without having to worry about paying off student loans. School administrations should consider about transferring to an act that would benefit both the school and the students, but also provide more equality to the publishers and students.
At the same time as the publishing industry was developing in the USA, the states enacted legislation controlling the adoption of textbooks and the provision of free textbooks. In Kordus’s (2000) article, it was found that legislation standardizing procedures for adopting textbooks arose during the mid-nineteenth century in each state in response to the development of graded organization requiring uniform textbooks for formal schooling in classes. Initially, uniformity was practiced at the local level through laws requiring each local school board to adopt a list of textbooks, which parents were required to supply over a given period of time.
The theory of evolution is often taught in the public school textbooks. It is widely felt that evolution is an attempt to completely remove God from all aspects of creation. Evolution destroys all meaning, purpose, direction, justice and hope in life. “You came from nothing, you are going nowhere, life is meaningless!” The Bible says in Psalm 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good.” Secular schools attempts to erase God from the classroom and from the minds of the next generation by eliminating the Bible as the basis for all knowledge. They pontificate to students and do not allow them the freedom to use their faith-based foundations to express their understanding without being stifled for not being politically correct.
How life arose is a question that is fundamental to both philosophy and science. Responses to it enable one, in turn, to answer such questions as, “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, and “How do I make sense of this world?” This secondary set of questions can be answered in a myriad of ways for a variety of reasons, but the answer to the first question has only two responses. As Douglas Futuyuma says, “Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things” (197). Either we are the product of the chemical and physical laws of nature operating over time, or we have been formed, at least in part, by some supernatural Force or Deity. The acceptance of one of these options as a foundation will determine how one will establish a belief system to determine his place in the world. This is a matter of crucial importance, yet in most biology classes offered at U.C. Davis, we learn that life came from nonlife by strictly natural (as opposed to supernatural) processes. The possibility that perhaps the origin of life cannot be explained by a natural mechanism is ignored, and this is disturbing. For if we limit what explanations we are willing to accept for the origin of life, we could be closing our eyes to reality.