Counterpoint: School should teach, not cater to parents' whims

If you challenged teaching math in schools, you'd be called an idiot. So why do fundamentalists not get the same treatment when they challenge teaching science?

A recent bill, which got shot down, would have allowed students to opt out of classes that might upset their religious sensibilities. In other words, social conservatives are still desperately trying to appropriate the public school system to serve their narrow ideologies.

I wonder, if your faith is so strong, why do you have a problem with something that is "just a theory?" If you hide science from your children in grade school and high school, when they enter the real world and don't know how science works, everyone is going to think they are an idiot.

I, for one, don't want to live in a country populated by a generation that doesn't understand science. Imagine a world where phenomena are explained not with repeatedly testable facts, but with cute stories.

We already have right-wing pundits claiming that disasters like the earthquake in Haiti are a judgment from God against vice. Of course, most people laugh or cringe at such statements, so they're not so scary—yet. But if we give students the right to opt out of whichever classes they like, tomorrow's United States could be a whole lot dumber than it already is.

The problem with defining reality through religion is religious stories are subjective, easily manipulated for a political agenda. If social conservatives convince enough people to avoid learning the objective science of evolution, it will be way easier for them to pass foolhardy legislation once all those kids who don't know science are of voting age, i.e., no more birth control, ladies. Don't think this move by the religious right isn't politically motivated. Idiocracy, here we come.

Religion plays an important role in many people's lives, but it has no place in understanding natural phenomena.

It is ridiculous that these ideas are even compared. One is science. The other, theology.

Two very different topics of inquiry. Someone with real faith and common sense should see that evolution doesn't pose a threat to religion. But, the issue isn't really about evolution. It's more about suppressing science to keep the masses ignorant. History tells us that the less people know, the more power the church has. It comes down to power, and without knowledge you don't have it.