Edit, weird double post.

JZavoda wrote:The most important thing, the fundemental lesson to teach, is to always, always question. Never accept, never believe with out doubt, question, test, observe, rinse and repeat.

Teach facts and you build a wall for kids, teach questions and nothing will stop them.

Right on brother!  I am all for teaching questions.  I wish more people understood that.  Not that facts are unimportant, because they are.

I am no education expert, but I personally think that kids in high school should be mostly taught what most people consider facts.  They should be made mostly to memorize information.  Maybe by the time they are in 11th and 12th grade there can be some lessons on logic and thinking out-side the box and such.  The two obvious exceptions to this are music and art where creativity and passion also should be included, for example, items that have little to do with facts.  I also believe that what happens in the high school classroom should not be their only education.  Parents should be teaching them about life, love, faith and more.

However, at the college level, students should learn/understand what is most important is not the answers but the questions. Answering questions like, who am I?  What is my vocation?  What is truth?  What is real?

Two types of learners commonly emerge from childhood into adulthood.  One is a facts/dogmatic kind of person and the other is a truth/principled kind of person.  The facts person looks at the truth person and may call them wrong or heretical.  The truth person looks at the facts person and may call them narrow-minded or stupid.  I'm not saying there are only two types of people, but this soap opera emerges time and again.  What's the answer?  You can't always agree to disagree because it's not unusual for the facts person to want none of that.  Anyway, that's why I think up until the 11th or 12th grade, it's best to accommodate all kinds of people(facts & truth) in education, but in college, it's incumbent upon the college/university to transform all of its' students into graduates who can do more than manage.

D&D is great because it helps its players to think outside the box, especially if you have a great DM who presents players with puzzles and personalities.  Monty Haul campaigns don't count.   This creative thinking can scare facts/dogmatic people.

its funny that - while clearing out a room over the weekend, i came across an old school report from way back in 1984. all my reports barring one, were great. guess which one sucked..... ?

Religious Education

i HATED that subject with a passion.  the teacher was a pompous idiot who didnt really teach, actually just tried to super-impose his opinion of it all on you.

Al

There was one form of government missing from the list on page 89 of the Dungeon Masters Guide that applies to that concept. Technocracy.

Of course there was not much room for that in a fantasy setting.

If it was not for some of the little nuggets in the DMG I probably would not have read (and learned) as much as I have over the years.

Maybe that was the real basis of the perceived threat of D&D.

That it promoted imagination, thinking, problem solving and not accepting the status quo.

Those things have always been anathema to any dogmatic belief system.

deimos3428 wrote:
If you simply allow any old crackpot to make an empirical claim of fact, without any sort of supporting evidence whatsoever, giving it equal time in the school system, you may as well teach things such as this:
http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

I might get one of those T Shirts too  

Badmike wrote:Actually, history is subjective. You think the history of World War II is taught the same in the US as in Japan, Russia, Germany, etc?  Not at all.  
.

While this is true. However the impact of the past can't be erased. The present was created from what actually occurred in the past. This is more complex than what I am stating here because how people perceive an event when it happen and through subsequent years is also part of the past along with what really happened.

Because the past has impact on today. Because not everything can be magically erased.  The scientific method can used to reconstruct an event or series of event. Of course we may never known all the details because through the use of science we can say how confident we are in the details we do know.

The idea of history is bunk because we can't ever be sure about anything is bunk.

BadMike wrote:And who knows who or where the next great idea will come from? Probably from someone everyone calls a nut, like Tesla, who the scientific community at the time mocked, derided and rejected. Yeh, those open minded scientists are ALWAYS for the advancement of knowledge

As a greater community, yes they are.  You want to compare religion's track record on that?  I'll take that bet any day.

Of course a new idea is met with skepticism, it should be!  Overturning pre-established scientific facts shouldn't be a cakewalk.  It takes time, it takes evidence, it takes effort.  Science isn't just waking up one morning with a neat idea.

I'm sorry, but people that think science is a religion (or vice versa) really don't understand either one very well.

Badmike wrote:It's crap like that that polarizes people. It serves no purpose but to mock long held beliefs that shaped our world and country, and to give the athiest/agnostic absolutist group another smug, smarmy, ass eating giggle as they "stick it to the Jesus lovers".

As if they weren't polarized already, Mike.  Besides, it mocks all creationism-based "theories" equally well.  And it does serve it's purpose well, it shows quite clearly the difference between a theory and a belief.

The point isn't about discouraging alternative viewpoints in school.  It's about discouraging completely unfounded viewpoints that refuse to be scrutinized from being taught as alternative viewpoints in a place of learning.  If you want to do the latter, do it in church.

Tell me if any of this wiki excerpt sounds familiar.  It should, it's already been laid out in a steaming pile in this very thread:

Wikipedia, in the Creationism entry wrote:Neo-Creationists intentionally distance themselves from other forms of creationism, preferring to be known as wholly separate from creationism as a philosophy. Its goal is to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, education policy makers and the scientific community. It aims to re-frame the debate over the origins of life in non-religious terms and without appeals to scripture, and to bring the debate before the public.

One of its principal claims is that ostensibly objective orthodox science is actually a dogmatically atheistic religion. Its proponents argue that the scientific method excludes certain explanations of phenomena, particularly where they point towards supernatural elements. They argue that this effectively excludes any possible religious insight from contributing to a scientific understanding of the universe. Neo-Creationists also argue that science, as an "atheistic enterprise," is at the root of many of contemporary society's ills including social unrest and family breakdown.

The most recognized form of Neo-Creationism in the United States is the Intelligent Design movement...

...Intelligent design (ID) is the claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.". All of its leading proponents are associated with the Discovery Institute, a think tank whose Wedge strategy aims to replace the scientific method with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" which accepts supernatural explanations. It is widely accepted in the scientific and academic communities that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and some have even begun referring to it as "intelligent design creationism".

ID originated as a re-branding of creation science in an attempt to get round a series of court decisions ruling out the teaching of creationism in U.S. public schools, and the Discovery Institute has run a series of campaigns to change school curricula.[3] In Australia, where curricula are under the control of State governments rather than local school boards, there was a public outcry when the notion of ID being taught in science classes was raised by the Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson; the minister quickly conceded that the correct forum for ID, if it were to be taught, is in religious or philosophy classes.

In the United States, teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools has been decisively ruled by a Federal District court to be in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the court found that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.", and hence cannot be taught as an alternative to Evolution in public school science classrooms under the jurisdiction of that court. This sets a persuasive precedent, based on previous Supreme Court decisions in Edwards v. Aguillard and Epperson v. Arkansas, and by the application of the Lemon test, that creates a legal hurdle to teaching Intelligent Design in public school districts in other Federal court jurisdictions.

deimos3428 wrote:As a greater community, yes they are.  You want to compare religion's track record on that?  I'll take that bet any day.

Of course a new idea is met with skepticism, it should be!  Overturning pre-established scientific facts shouldn't be a cakewalk.  It takes time, it takes evidence, it takes effort.  Science isn't just waking up one morning with a neat idea.

I'm sorry, but people that think science is a religion (or vice versa) really don't understand either one very well.

Science isn't a religion per se...but it CAN become one.  Science as a Religion is metaphoric...but it fits, frighteningly well.  And it's a young religion, so it hasn't had the time to build up the body count or atrocities of God Religion...but give it time.  The mindset of unswerving devotion,  the fanatical prosteltizing of the converted, and the devoted disciples who are already burning heretics at the stake, it's more like a Religion than most religions.  Can't wait for the day when cloning of body parts, genetic modifications, and in-womb baby decision making due to DNA alteration ("We'd like a girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, light complexion, and about 6 ft tall) become standard...then Science will truly become God In everything but name only.  At that point in history we'll see if they can handle the responsibility any better than the Religious authorities did in say the middle ages...anyone want to bet on this????

Badmike wrote:
It's crap like that that polarizes people. It serves no purpose but to mock long held beliefs that shaped our world and country, and to give the athiest/agnostic absolutist group another smug, smarmy, ass eating giggle as they "stick it to the Jesus lovers".

As if they weren't polarized already, Mike. Besides, it mocks all creationism-based "theories" equally well. And it does serve it's purpose well, it shows quite clearly the difference between a theory and a belief.

There are plenty of better ways to show the difference, and it's disengenuous to say the guy's entire purpose is to prove a point..it's not, it's to mock and ridicule and oh yeh make a few bucks.  So much for the "moral" high ground   Honestly the guy sounds like a tool...and I do have a sense of humor but couldn't crack smile one at the guy's webpage, it was like he was trying WAY too hard. Anyway, I doubt he has many convictions past his wallet...the entire site smells of "capitalism" more than anything other "ism"....

But it doesn't change the fact that this guy is part of the problem, not the solution.  And I still find it funny that while puportedly mocking ALL creation based theories, most anti-Christers still don't have the cajones to take on the Muslims.  It's much easier to mock and ridicule a religion that is generally pacifistic in tone; only when faced with the possiblity of being beheaded or blown to pieces do these sorts suddenly find the commitment to their principles seriously lacking.   So in the end they don't have the conviction of their so called absolute beliefs, and are frauds or cowards. Let me tell you, if FSM guy went to a mosque in London and handed out this shirts, I'd say he's got balls the size of church bells, and deserves a round of applause for standing up to the ignorant.

He won't. It's so much easier to pick some low hanging fruit and make fun of a school board in the midwest...

The point isn't about discouraging alternative viewpoints in school. It's about discouraging completely unfounded viewpoints that refuse to be scrutinized from being taught as alternative viewpoints in a place of learning. If you want to do the latter, do it in church.

I'm actually quite irreligious.  I don't think Creationism or faith based religion should be taught in a public school.  Not even necessarily because they aren't good science, but simply because faith (along with ethics, morals and duty) should be taught at home or under the scrutiny of parents or guardians.  If most public schools had their choice I really believe they'd be teaching Marxism anyway....would you let people like that school your kids in religious beliefs?  This is where they lose me.....we don't like the schools teaching sex education but please, please give me your take on Creationism? I think not.

One of the best classes I ever had in college was a class called "History of the Bible".  It was taught by a retired Methodist bishop and the subject was the actual history of the book, The Bible, how the first written copies came into being, who wrote them, how they were printed, how many were printed,  the lives of the monks that copied and wrote them, how it was decided what books went into the bible, the differences in each religions holy words, the horrific political battles that took place behind the scenes about which "holy words" should go in and which should be apochryphal, etc. One of the best classes I've heard had, the guy played it straight down the line, honestly you'd never even know the guy was clergy because he kept his own faith entirely out of the class...it was a HISTORY class and he didn't let his own faith dictate the tone.  I always think back to this dude, because in retrospect there are so very, very few teachers like him that can manage to keep their bias out of the material. For everyone else I've ever had before or since, it's almost impossible not to guess their bias and spin almost immediately

Which is why anyone who is sincerely religious shouldn't WANT the schools to teach religion....

Mike B.

There are some brave people out there taking on Islam.
Unfortunately, like Salman Rusdhie, they usually have to go into hiding.
Following is a link to one of the more recent ones who has opposed the religion that they were born into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

There are many more than her, but if they are still living in a Muslim country very often speaking out will bring a swift death to them and their families.

That is why I find fundamentalists of any kind repugnant. They are the source of those slippery slopes that lead to totalitarianism.