Isaac Asimov, I salute thee!

[giza]

Well, those wacky religious people are trying to teach creationism in school again. I read through the comments on the Slashdot article, and someone pointed out that this has been going on since the early 80s. In fact Isaac Asimov wrote an article about it way back then. It was called The 'Threat' of Creationism. I thought this passage was particularly striking:

There are numerous cases of societies in which the armies of the night have ridden triumphantly over minorities in order to establish a powerful orthodoxy which dictates official thought. Invariably, the triumphant ride is toward long-range disaster. Spain dominated Europe and the world in the 16th century, but in Spain orthodoxy came first, and all divergence of opinion was ruthlessly suppressed. The result was that Spain settled back into blankness and did not share in the scientific, technological and commercial ferment that bubbled up in other nations of Western Europe. Spain remained an intellectual backwater for centuries. In the late 17th century, France in the name of orthodoxy revoked the Edict of Nantes and drove out many thousands of Huguenots, who added their intellectual vigor to lands of refuge such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Prussia, while France was permanently weakened.

In more recent times, Germany hounded out the Jewish scientists of Europe. They arrived in the United States and contributed immeasurably to scientific advancement here, while Germany lost so heavily that there is no telling how long it will take it to regain its former scientific eminence. The Soviet Union, in its fascination with Lysenko, destroyed its geneticists, and set back its biological sciences for decades. China, during the Cultural Revolution, turned against Western science and is still laboring to overcome the devastation that resulted.

As we now, with all these examples before us, to ride backward into the past under the same tattered banner of orthodoxy? With creationism in the saddle, American science will wither. We will raise a generation of ignoramuses ill-equipped to run the industry of tomorrow, much less to generate the new advances of the days after tomorrow.

We will inevitably recede into the backwater of civilization, and those nations that retain opened scientific thought will take over the leadership of the world and the cutting edge of human advancement. I don't suppose that the creationists really plan the decline of the United States, but their loudly expressed patriotism is as simpleminded as their "science." If they succeed, they will, in their folly, achieve the opposite of what they say they wish.

There are two major problems I have with teaching creationism, or any kind of religion in school:

1) As stated above, discouraging learning in our schools is just plain silly. Burying your head in the sand and saying, "The Bible says this happened, and that's all there is to it. (Amen)" does a huge disservice to our society and our children. It prevents people from doing their own research, their own critical thinking, and *gasp*, drawing their own conclusions based on the available evidence. Now if what you really want is to raise sheeple who will never question your authority, then maybe it's not such a bad idea.

2) It seems to me that the creationists are trying to teach some variant of Christianity, as laid out in The Bible. Well, what about the other religions? What about Hinduism, Muslim, Greek Mythology, and Norse Mythology? Are those religions less important? Shouldn't they be taught too? I suspect that the same people who like to say "freedom of religion" really mean "freedom of OUR religion".