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This site caught my eye this morning on reddit. What’s interesting is the “boilerplate” associated with each course. Check out the entry for Calculus:

Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.

Now I appreciate pushing for a deeper understanding/appreciation of the connections in our world. Pondering the beauty of mathematical consistency and wondering about it’s role in life is a great thing. I would argue that the utility is diminished by refusing to apply the same search for consistency towards religion, but hey, other than that, I appreciate diversity and different modes of appreciation. After all, it’s just a little selective emphasis.

What bothers me about this are two things. First, how banal this approach becomes. I can hear Ben Stein reciting this course description over and over. I can imagine the rigid world of the committee that “just loved” this course catalog. Does anyone believe this glorifies their god? If you’re going to be formulaic, choose a place where formulaic works.

Second; I lied. The emphasis does bother me. If you’re going to screw around with math, how badly will you butcher science, history and geology. How one sided will you be, and what will that produce? Will their American history talk about the role of religious people and the bible in promoting slavery? I doubt it. I’m sure separation of Church and state won’t be there. Hmm. Let’s see.

AMERICAN HISTORY
ELEVENTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the history of our country beginning with the Civil War with a biblically integrated filter as they examine the political, social, and economic perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on the major wars, the industrial revolution, and the settlement of the frontier, requiring students to critically analyze the cause and effect relationships of events in history.

GOVERNMENT/CIVICS
TWELFTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons ( I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the foundational documents of our founding Fathers built upon as they formulated the ideals upon which our country was established. Such documents include: The Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Mayflower Compact. Students are equipped with an understanding of the basic principles contained in these documents, and are able to identify their dependence upon biblical and Reformation principles, leading them to an understanding why the American system is meant for a religious people.
I used to have discussions with a friend who is a young earth creationist. He’s one of the smartest people I know in many, many ways. His view, was that you could remove everything from public education that conflicted with young earth creationism and still have a good education. This would reduce the conflict religious people feel at sending their kids to heathen schools and make the world a better place.

My view was that the age of the earth (and the universe) is a basic premise, on which many other things depend. If the universe is 6000 to 10000 years old, real geology can’t be taught, the speed of light and the size of the universe can’t be taught, and much of physics must be ignored. While I’ve become more aware of and somewhat more sympathetic to religious parents concerns, I’m firmly convinced that keeping faith and public education separate is the best way to be fair to everyone. My opinion is that their (fundamentalist) teaching makes the world a worse place, filled with intolerant people used to twisting facts to fit their world view, and feeling entitled to ignore everyone else’s views.

About a week ago I heard an interesting NPR article on stem cell news. They were discussing some recent discoveries/observations regarding what had previously been considered a scientific scandal. If you recall, a few years ago (in 2004) South Korean scientists claimed to have cloned a human embryo, and derived stem cells from the clone. That particular claim quickly turned out to have been faked, and they people responsible resigned in disgrace, but now scientists from Harvard working with cells obtained from the Koreans are now suggesting that they (the Koreans) were the first to produce embryonic stem cells using only egg cells. That process is called parthenogenesis, and it’s been possible for simpler animals (including vertebrates like frogs) for a long time. The Harvard guys had problems getting heard, because nobody wanted to consider anything to do with the South Korean data.

I think all of this is ironic in so many ways. First that the South Koreans did something historic, and may not have realized it because they were too busy faking data. Second that it was scientifically unfashionable to mention anything to do with them. Thirdly, and from my point of view most importantly is that this is one more step in the direction of making fundamentalist’s position even less logically tenable. The moral argument is that stem cell research harms embryo’s. That position got pretty weak earlier when it became possible to remove a cell from a blastocyst without harming it and form cloned stem cells, but the fundies recovered by asking “How can you be sure the embryo won’t be harmed in any way?”. If a human ovum can develop into an embryo without conception, how will the fundamentalists manage to define the beginning of life in such a way as to prevent research? When will the “soul” tiptoe into the petri dish? How will the lunatics know to attack living people to save the unborn? It’s almost, but not quite as good as being able to derive embryonic stem cells from adult stem cells.

As an aside, I see at least one site using human parthenogenesis as the explanation for the “virgin birth” of Jesus. This makes me chuckle, but I’ll have to think through why.