Published time: September 28, 2013 03:36
AFP Photo / G. Newman Lowrance
A religious group has filed suit against the Kansas Board of Education seeking to stop educators from adopting global warming and evolution into the state curriculum. The Christian organization said such lessons would violate parents’ religious freedom.
The non-profit group, known as Citizens for Objective Public
Education (COPE), has attacked Kansas along with 25 other states
and the National Research Council for implementing new standards
which mandate that mainstream science be taught in classrooms.
COPE is based in the small town of Peck, Kansas, to the south of
Wichita.
Fifteen parents and their 18 children joined the suit, with one
telling the Associated Press they are Christians who want their
children to believe “life is a creation made for a purpose.” The
Kansas state Department of Education and the state board are
named in the suit.
“The state’s job is simply to say to students, ‘How life
arises continues to be a scientific mystery and there are
competing ideas about it,’” said John Calvert, a local
attorney involved in the case.
The evolution vs. creationism controversy was rendered irrelevant
by scientists and the court system decades ago but the debate
rages on in the US between religious groups, primarily
Christians, and school administrators trying to keep education
modern.
Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director for the
California-based National Center for Science Education, told AP
that Calvert, the attorney arguing against the school, has been
making such arguments for years, although “no one in the legal
community has put much stock in it.”
“They’re trying to say anything that’s not promoting their
religion is promoting some other religion,” he said, going on
to deem the discussion “silly.”
Kansas in particular has a long history of conflict between
creationists and the scientific community. In 2005, after a
heated court battle, the Kansas Board of Education agreed to
amend its scientific standard with a number of stipulations, one
of which states “that evolution is a theory and not a
fact.”
The suit in question claims that the Kansas public school system
seeks to promote a “non-theistic religious worldview” by
instructing students about Charles Darwin’s widely adopted
theory.
Evolution, which he first proposed in the mid-19th Century,
suggests that not all species can survive and that only those
best able to survive in their environment will continue to exist.
By that logic, humans and animals will adapt traits that allow
them to thrive over time.
By including this material, COPE’s legal action says schools
would be allowing “materialistic” and “atheistic”
answers to scientific questions. Kansas would be
“indoctrinating” students, which is in direct contrast to
the First Amendment to the constitution, which guarantees an
individual the right to celebrate their own religion without fear
of persecution.
“By the time you get into the third grade, you learn all the
essential elements of Darwinian evolution,” Calvert said.
“By the time you’re in middle school you’re a Darwinist.”
Community members have spoken out against the suit, along with
leaders in the scientific community and education activists. Even
other religious groups have deemed the lawsuit a waste of time,
calling it “frivolous.”
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which defines
itself as an organization dedicated to defending and extending
“god-given religious liberty” for all citizens, has even
spoken out against the suit’s claims.
“Every time the public school science curriculum properly
refuses to teach creationism, it is guilty of teaching a
religious worldview? That makes no sense,” the group
wrote on its website. “It sounds like proponents would prefer
teaching no science at all.”
Copyright: RT