To the Editor:
We often hear of “culture wars” carried out by teachers and professors in public schools and universities. The claim is usually that the “Left” shuts out discussion and views on subjects dear to the “Right.”
However, as any teacher can tell you, although few do, the subject that is truly taboo is religion. Not this religion or that, or this religion topic or that, but rather the foundation of religion in general. Why?
The constitution does not limit the right to publicly discuss religion by citizens, private or public. It’s just assumed that religion shouldn’t be questioned or analyzed in public schools. Yet, given its present impact on politics, science, medicine, and a host of other areas from gender to vaccines, to abortion to library books, religion is precisely what should be open for intelligent discussion in public schools.
Consider all the topics that are rarely, if ever discussed using logical, scientific data driven, reasonable thinking.
The three major religions in the US, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are all based on what somebody said 1400 or more years ago.
Is it reasonable to think something is true simply because someone said it? Is it reasonable to think that an Omnipotent, Omniscient god wouldn’t update his message in 1400 years? That He would only address His word to just a few people in a tiny portion of the world and ignore all the others elsewhere when He is capable of making His message instantly known to all people everywhere at any and all times?
Shouldn’t a teacher who is trying to encourage use of data, logic and criteria of reasonableness be able to encourage students to question whether an Omniscient, Omnipotent god would create disease? Or allow warfare and rape when He had the power to eliminate it for all time?
Shouldn’t teachers be able to discuss why, in all these years, no one has proof of even one person who died living in any form after death, yet life after death is a vital part of Christianity and Islam.
The emphasis in such lessons in any public-school class should not be on the truth (which is an elusive thing), but on the use of proof, probability, logic and reasonableness to come to conclusions, all things that are the basis for science and data driven decisions.
I should think that if anyone should be able to raise important issues it should be teachers when they are asking intelligent questions. Certainly not required to raise them, but certainly permitted. Not that teachers are always right, but they are more probably right than those who are grounded in belief, doctrine and politics.
I think that it is ironic that any preacher, regardless of intelligence or education, can make pronouncements about medicine, science, economics or whatever from the pulpit, but public-school teachers are prevented from intelligent classroom discussion of religion.
So far, religion is the undisputed winner in the culture war in schools. Isn’t it time to level the battlefield?
