Yesterday I posted a short note about the new Louisiana Science standards, which call for schools to encourage students in
critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.
One commenter quickly responded with deep invective, including,
Come on. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is trumpeting this legislation except for its religious proponents. And yet it’s being heralded on sites like this as a triumph for science education. Talk about hypocrisy.
Call it what it is: a triumph of religious organization, an act of political calculation, and another reminder that the state with perhaps our poorest historical and current educational standards supports politicians who will preserve that status quo well into the near future.
He’s not alone in this; his was just one representative response that happened to be handy for me to use.
Now compare that to the James Corbett incident in Orange County, California. Corbett has been caught on tape making repeated derogatory comments about Christianity in the high school social studies classes he was teaching. His supporters rushed to his defense, in interviews and in a rally on his behalf, saying,
He Made Us Think
He’s all about opening people’s minds.
I don’t agree with everything he says, but that’s not the point. Can you tolerate someone saying something that you don’t agree with? Can you have a fiery debate about ideas? It scares me that that’s not acceptable.
Corbett is training young students to think critically.
I can’t prove this, but I’d be willing to bet that many of the people around the country who would support Corbett’s “teaching how to think” are the ones most appalled that Louisiana will be encouraging students to learn critical thinking skills and logical analysis.
The difference, of course, is that Corbett’s apparent religious agenda is more agreeable to these people than the one they see behind the Louisiana bill. It seems many people really like learning to think critically, as long as “thinking critically” means learning how to disagree with religiously-connected ideas.
There’s a double irony here: Corbett’s supporters, as displayed in reports at the time, weren’t displaying good critical thinking at all. They weren’t even engaging the issue that was in question. Maybe some of them should go back to school—in Louisiana.
I was going to close on that note, but instead I am going to repeat a quote from above, and ask you to think of it in a different light:
I don’t agree with everything he says, but that’s not the point. Can you tolerate someone saying something that you don’t agree with? Can you have a fiery debate about ideas? It scares me that that’s not acceptable.
Ironic.
Somewhere over the last 50 years, secularist professors successfully branded anti-religious bigotry as a form of critical thinking. The longer the conversation drags on though, the more the contradiction becomes plain (as you clearly point out). I have recently seen more honest atheists rebuking other atheists who’ve spewed out this type of anti-intellectual rant. Once exposed for what it is, “Tails I win, heads you lose” runs into conflict as a world-view.
Sadly, the attitude is mirrored on the religious (Fundamentalist Christian) side as well.
I taught in a small Christian school last year. The school used books from Apologia for science classes. “Critical thinking,” means swallowing Young Earth Creationism whole, unreserved, unthinkingly. All non-Christians are blind to reality, and the text books and their author (Jay Wile) are not to be questioned — ever! In the text, Dr. Wile repeatedly makes statement like, “but Bible believing Christians…,” thus giving his views on science the weight of scripture in the minds of the students (and teachers).
Most of the parents are proud that their students are “critical thinkers,” by which they mean, “unthinking critical of mainline science.” Most people have no idea what “critical thinking,” and “thinking critically” means. They hinge on “critical” as “negative” and assume that their thinking is good because it’s negative about something they have already decided they don’t like.
Havoc, I haven’t seen that curriculum but I have seen the phenomenon you speak of. It weakens faith, it weakens the mind, it weakens our witness, and it’s a failure to love the Lord with all our minds. I utterly oppose it. I suspect it’s less widespread than some secularists think it is, but it still exists, and it’s wrong.
That’s one reason I do what I do here: to encourage thinking Christianity.
From your previous commenter:
This is what I persistently see from critics of the bill. The actual contents of the bill are barely, if at all, mentioned, and they certainly aren’t discussed on their merits. Instead the argument is made that, since it’s mostly Christians and ID types who are interested in the bill, therefore whatever it says must be codespeak for religion, or that it’s just a Trojan horse to get creationism into schools at a later date, or what have you.
Essentially, it boils down to the idea that if religious people want something, it should be illegal on that grounds alone. I’d say that’s a far more egregious breach of religious freedom than any local education bill could be.
Most of the people who are acting scared to death of a theocracy forget that they live in a democracy, and that the so-called theocrats are following democratic processes, which is how citizens are supposed to behave in a democracy.
Democracy ≠ Theocracy.
Reading the article from the link Tom provided shows that the O.C. teacher is offering his opinion not about science fact, but about social and moral issues. That’s the fundamental difference.
I would support a teacher offering his opinion in a class discussion about ethics and morals and social issues from a Christian perspective, as long as the discussion remained open to all views. I would not support the O.C. teacher shutting off opposing views.
The fundamental issue in O.C. is the U.S. Constitution. His supporters were defending his teaching skills, when what was being challenged in court was whether he has the legal right to denigrate a religion.
Their defense had nothing whatever to do with the challenge, in other words. James Corbett’s supporters were defending a hockey goal, chanting, “He taught us how to play basketball!”