The Wrong Dance

In a previous post, I talked about the 1857 Supreme Court decision concerning a slave named Dred Scott. It is known as Dred Scott v. Sandford (Wikipedia description HERE). Scott claimed:

his presence and residence in free territories required his emancipation. Scott's lawyers argued the same for Scott's wife, and further claimed that Eliza Scott's birth on a steamboat between a free state and a free territory had made her free upon birth.

Scott lost and the results can be read at the Wikipedia link above. Among them is the ruling that African-Americans could not ever be considered US citizens (since overruled by the 14th Amendment).

The ruling in this case is so bad that at first it deflects consideration of the argument. Scott's lawyers worked within the confines of the mindset of the day. Laws allowing slavery in some states were accepted, and in others they were not. The argument "danced" around these laws. The thinking was that because Scott resided in free territories for a time, he should be emancipated.

But this argument was wrong. Scott should have been freed from slavery because no one should have been a slave in the first place.

I think the same can be said for the situation in US classrooms and the way the theory of evolution is handled. We are making the wrong arguments and dancing the wrong dance. Though atheists may have their rights in the classroom, so do believers. No child should be made to answer to a government institution against his or her religious beliefs. The Intelligent Design movement tries to dance around the rules against teaching creationism in the classroom by saying it is OK to teach evolution as the working theory but we should be allowed to look at the weaknesses of it. Instead they should demand that Darwinian Evolution Theory not be forced upon children at all.

Though many scientists want Darwinian evolution to be their working theory, that does not mean they should enforce it upon everyone. Some scientific theories impinge on the religious beliefs of certain segments of the population. American scientists and educators may not want to trouble themselves with thinking of others, but they live in a country with many different kinds of religions and they need to face that fact. There are soldiers willing to die for the right of freedom in this country, and many of these soldiers have beliefs that are contrary to philosophical materialists. When one thinks of the toll taken by the efforts to correct the scourge of slavery, it is asking little of educators to make the effort to teach scientific methods in a way that does not impinge on individual beliefs. For believers, science is the study of designed physical entities.

The ID people should realize that for a believer, design doesn't have to be proven. It is already understood that God made everything. Science itself can be defined as the study of created physical entities. Science is how we learn about these entities.

A Creationist is someone who believes God created the world--not just someone who thinks He did it exactly 10,000 years ago. It is time to claim back the word "Creationist" for all believers and to unite for what is right.

Of course, Creationists also need to respect the rights of others. There has got to be some way we can work this out.

Dred-ful Decisions

Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom before the Civil War (Wikipedia biography and image HERE). He had lived several years in a free state, where slavery was illegal. His legal wranglings came later. He had won one trial, where a jury declared, "Once free, always free." But he lost on subsequent appeals. The case made it to the Supreme Court, where he lost. The majority opinion included this point, among others:

Any person descended from black Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the U.S. constitution.

As Wikipedia says,

In effect, the Court ruled that slaves had no claim to freedom; they were
property and not citizens...

Now, not all of us are legal experts, but we know a bad law or Supreme Court decision when we see it. And there are some on the books today which are just as bad as this one was.

I will not name them specifically, but comment generally on one set of decisions and laws--those which have to do with science and religion in the American classroom. The first mistake was to effectively ostracize a group of people who believe that God created the Earth directly in 6 days. Whether one believes that or not, the question of religion in the classroom is not handled properly.

We have to realize that a religious person brings religion into the classroom when s/he walks into the classroom. Science and religion cannot be separated within the believing person. The Young Earth Creationist believes God made science directly and supernaturally.

Now, of course, there are people who do not agree. Unfortunately, with the help of the courts, they now behave, in relation to this subject, like they are the only ones living in this country and need to unequivocally have their own way. They don't make the effort, with their supposedly superior minds, to see how we can work together. I am personally open-minded about the age of the Earth, and I think it is important to find a solution.

The problem is not easy, I admit. But it does not pertain only to Young Earth Creationists. Many people are becoming increasingly insulting to anyone with any religious belief which clashes with the prevailing, culture-scientific dogma. (And I say "culture-scientific dogma" because the real science is often abused for the sake of the cultural and atheistic beliefs.) How do we handle Hindus, Muslims, and others who believe God supernaturally created? Will all religious mothers be forced to home-school their children? We need wise guidelines from the courts.

Science can be learned by all. I think very few parents would protest having their children (safely) put chemicals into a test tube to see what happens. Experiment and discovery cannot be denied. What must be sorted out and dealt with, all around, are interpretations that do not show up in the scientific test tube.

There are other Dred-ful laws and decisions in other areas, including those for abortion. We all hope someday that they will be reversed and revised in a sensible way.