Re: Creationists win the schools in New Mexico
Stephen F. Schaffner (sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU)
3 Sep 1996 01:49:04 GMT
In article <50crq0$akr@lynx.unm.edu>,
trevor rigler <neoguri@callisto.unm.edu> wrote:
>Stephen F. Schaffner (sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>
>: When? I didn't know that the Supreme Court had ever ruled on teaching
>: creationism in public schools. More to the point, I haven't heard of
>: any court decision that would block individual teachers from teaching
>: creationism; the only decisions I know of blocked _state-mandated_
>: teaching of creationism.
>
>Well, sharpie, according to a _Chicago Trib_ article by Jeremy Manier in
>today's _Albuquerque Journal_, the Supreme Court ruled in '87 that
>creationism is a religious doctrine and cannot be taught in public schools.
You respond with remarkable hostility to a statement of ignorance. You're
quite right that the Supreme Court ruled against an "equal-time"
statute (in LA) in 1987 -- I'd forgotten that the case reached the
Supreme Court. They did not rule, however, that creationism cannot be
taught in public schools, but that the particular statute in question
was an attempt by the legislature to favor a particular religion.
The decision does not say anything about individual teachers (or at
least I couldn't see anything in it on that subject -- I just read it).
>More importantly, even *if* the only decisions blocking
>creationschizoidism happened at the state level, wouldn't that violate
>some sort of equality-in-education statute?
I was referring to other federal court decisions, not state ones.
>So stick that in your prayer book.
I'm trying to get the facts about the legal situation straight here.
Does that strike you as a peculiarly religious endeavor? (And really,
"stick that in your prayer book"? Most creationists have almost as
much antipathy toward prayer books as they do towards _The Origin of
Species_.)
[followups set to t.o]
Steve Schaffner sschaff@slac.stanford.edu
Opinions expressed may be mine, and || Immediate assurance is an excellent sign
may not be those of SLAC, || of probable lack of insight into the
Stanford University, or the DOE. || topic. Josiah Royce
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