From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Sun Aug 29 1999 - 20:21:41 MDT
If a law were passed that required the teaching of both evolutionary theory
and creationism in state schools, that would actually be a great
improvement on the present situation. From teaching philosophy of religion
classes for a number of semesters now (where I always cover the design
argument), I can tell you that no more than perhaps 5% of my students have
ever been taught evolutionary theory. If it were required material in
biology (ideally with creationism being taught in a religion class), public
understanding of this idea would improve greatly.
Of course I would rather see evolutionary theory taught, with creationism
only covered in (currently non-existent) courses in critical thinking.
Still, if more people actually knew anything about evolutionary theory, I
believe a far higher proportion of the population would see that
creationism just doesn't stand up by comparison.
Teaching creationism as a real science probably will make the USA a
laughing stock of the world, but if it were accompanied by explanation of
evolutionary theory, people would be a lot smarter in their thinking.
Until then, I will continue to use part of my philosophy of religion and
philosophy of human nature classes as crash courses in evolution.
Max
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Max More, Ph.D.
<max@maxmore.com> or <more@extropy.org>
Implications of Advanced Technologies
President, Extropy Institute: http://www.extropy.org
EXTRO 4 Conference: Biotech Futures. See http://www.extropy.org/ex4/e4main.htm
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