Idaho Science Teachers Against Teaching ID as Science

According to this news brief, the Idaho Science Teacher's Association has come out against teaching ID in science classes:

Science teachers in Idaho are officially against teaching intelligent design in the state's public schools.

The Idaho Science Teachers Association has approved the official position, saying teachers in public schools are charged with teaching methodology that's been approved by the scientific community.

Intelligent design contends that complex living organisms must have been created by a higher being.

The Association's president says the teacher's group isn't taking a position against teaching religion, but he says under law, religion does not belong in the science classroom.

Having lived in Idaho (Pocatello, to be exact), I read this with interest. Some of my earliest clear memories are from the year I spent there (I was six at the time). I attended first grade in an Idaho public school, and based on that experience can say with some confidence that the separation of church and state means something very different there than in the rest of the world.

The brief summary above is a little vague. It makes it sound like the Idaho teachers might like to teach ID, but they feel compelled to do the bidding of “the scientific community.” Of course, the main reason for not teaching ID has nothing to do with the wishes of scientists, but rather with a desire not to tell falsehoods to impressionable students. There is also the final sentence, which suggests that it is simply a desire to uphold the law that leads them to not want to teach religion in science classes. There are better reasons for not teaching religion in science classes, after all.

Still, I like the clear implication that ID is religion, not science. And whatever the motivation for the statement was, it comes down in the right place.

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The Idaho Science Teachers Association should not presume to speak for all Idaho science teachers -- certainly some of them want to teach or mention ID or other criticisms of Darwinism and some of them are not opposed to such teaching or mention. I am completely opposed to these "winner-take-all" position statements.

fa fa fa foley....fafafa farfman.

hey where is Mr. Heddle? so he can further muddle the argument?

"Science teachers in Idaho are officially "

"The Idaho Science Teachers Association should not presume to speak for all Idaho science teachers "

ha ha ... they spoke the "official" position. nowhere did it say. "The ISTA has hunted down and killed all teachers who ever wanted to say anything stupid in class"

"-- certainly some of them want to teach or mention ID or other criticisms of Darwinism and some of them are not opposed to such teaching or mention."

ha ha ... the point is you have to teach what you are supposed to teach not that crap about the dolphins being the master race.

"I am completely opposed to these "winner-take-all" position statements. "

Yes, I know you much more like the LOSER take all statements...

but amusing post as every fafa.

I am completely opposed to these "winner-take-all" position statements.

Given your well-documented adversarial relationship with reality, this is hardly surprising. If your side of the debate is so far removed from reality that nothing they say is worthy of being included, that is hardly the fault of the opposition, or the judge who recognizes it as such.

1) When I fly in a jet I want it planned and constrcted by the "winner take all" engineers who base their calculations upon modern science, not bible science.

Biology is no different. Our country needs well educated citizens on real science, not bible science from thousands of years ago.

2) furthermore, it's unAmerican to mix religion with public education. This country was founded on separation of church and state, not on Fundmentalist Christianity.

ID people should be criticized for their Un-American views of church and state, traitors to our country's heritage.

I'm in Idaho, fighting this fight on regular basis. People like fafa above are all too common, all too believing in their own correctness that they will challenge the laws of this country and proudly scream at the "liberals in black robes". They are scared to death of losing the control they have over the younger generation, especially with poll after poll coming out showing that religion is ignored by the upcoming generations.

How would you like to be a dottering old fool in a liberal care facility that takes perfectly good care of you but doesn't have religious icons spread out on every visible wall? Scary, isn't it?

Seriously, though, I don't know why they are fighting science with so much money and time. It's really getting old.