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Comment by hawkharris | Hacker News Reader

A high school in Pensacola, FL, where my girlfriend studied years ago, got sued by the ACLU for forcing students to pray. Teachers defended the practice, arguing that prayer was acceptable because nearly all the students were Christian.

I wonder how those teachers' perspectives will change over time, as America's ethnic and religious demographics change. If a predominantly Muslim public school requires students to pray, will the teachers in Pensacola start citing constitutional concerns?

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Teachers defended the practice, arguing that prayer was acceptable because nearly all the students were Christian

And this is a clear illustration of why you should never put minority rights up for majority vote.

^-- This is the most important thing said on this whole topic.

If a predominantly Muslim public school requires students to pray, will the teachers in Pensacola start citing constitutional concerns?

If we reach that terrible point, I suspect we will already be living under the iron hand of Sharia, and no one will dare to speak out lest they be accused of being anti-Islam and punished hard.

Yay, Islamophobia. Forced prayer should be stamped out from public schools. Period. Let's just agree on that without going to extremes like "we'll all be living under Shari'a law!!!!111"

EDIT: In other words, neither myself nor the courts give a flying f* what is popular, the law against religious establishment exists for a reason, and even if every teacher and every student except that ONE GUY supported it, that ONE GUY has a legal right that should be easily defended in court. If it isn't then we should consider that a failure of America and strive to overturn it and commit to doing better in the future.

Not Islamophobia, just a wary eye on those who would chip away at the Christian and Jewish foundations of the nation. Others are welcome, but not to destroy the foundations.

I don't get the opposition against this. There's plenty of Jewish and, especially muslim schools in the US that teach only creationism. Hell, some of them do so to the exclusion of not just biology but all science. They do so, generally, with public funding.

I don't get the position. There can only be one stance as far as I'm concerned. Either teaching kids science including evolution is mandatory and the state goes after anything different (AND checks), or they do none of that.

Those Christian schools referenced here are not a problem : they teach kids science and prepare them well for life, scientifically and otherwise. Compare that to orthodox Jewish schools or sharia-oriented schools.

I hate that nobody ever discusses the real problems. Unlike canon law (which no christians even follow), sharia law is fundamentally sexist and discriminatory, is pro-slavery ("advises against it", but has the most flexible slavery laws known to history. Islam is the only known religion, EVER[1], that allows killing slaves for fun, something not even the Romans dared to do (yes, gladiators were personally compensated, they and their families, and had to agree (to a similar degree as one "agrees" to a job, right. Legally you have a choice. In practice, saying no may have unacceptable consequences, generally the mines or a galley). Only people in the arena that didn't at one point legally chose to be there were criminals convicted to death)). This is being taught, both to small kids and adults. Why isn't it outlawed to teach this, completely ?

My point is: there are far worse things taught in public education to kids than skipping a small part of biology, while keeping science education generally intact (as much as one can reasonably expect from a public school at least). Why is this thing a focus of anyone ? Why is it allowed to teach people to kill other in response to what any American would consider freedom of speech ? To teach people to follow slavery laws and so on. I mean, given that that is not just being done, but growing. I feel that creationism is the least of anyone's religious education problems.

[1] Only law that comes close is from imperial Japan, the honor law, or Kiri-sute gomen, "cut down and walk"

1) Those other religious schools are private and not publicly funded. The US has a separation of church and state, so no tax money should be used to fund a preference to one religion (or any) over another. 2) Evolution is the cornerstone of biology, it is not a small part. If you don't understand how organisms became to be then it's much harder to understand how they work now.

1) Not true : e.g. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2870195/posts

2) Get real, it kind of is. I've studied AI, and studied a lot of evolution to get a better understanding of it's mechanics and, well, let's just say that what's taught in schools is so extremely inaccurate it's not funny (run a genetic algorithm to write a program and you'll see the limitations of evolution for yourself, and you'll understand that it's a learning algorithm that's really only good for one thing, and that just isn't what evolution's trying to do anymore, so it no longer uses that algorithm). The idea of species change through mutation + natural selection is flat-out wrong. What would students miss if they don't know it ? I think it'd be an actual improvement.

As for the idea that originally led to the teaching of evolution theory, that really did happen with the intent to replace God with the state. Now I may not necessarily be pro-God, but compared with the state, the American one, but especially compared to the states that originally pushed evolution, God is a saint.

When reading this thread, I get the distinct impression that's still the intention. Replace God with the state. That is NOT a honorable intention I can find myself in at all. Hell, those kids will be far better off believing God will take care of them than if they believe the state will do that.

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