So just what are educators afraid of?
Dear Editor,
Quebec may well have distinguished itself as the most religiously repressive province in the country with a recent crackdown on unlicensed evangelical schools by saying the province will shut down any school that does not follow the provincial curriculum that requires Darwinism to be taught. In Alberta Christian schools follow the provincially approved curriculum and are allowed to teach both Creationism and the Theory of Evolution.
In Ontario and many religious schools in the rest of Canada schools tend to teach their own philosophical position and are not specfically required to teach evolution.
Our charter of rights and freedoms states clearly (Schudule B, Constitution Act, 1982, Part I, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the Supremacy of God and the rule of law: Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms”which guarantees freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief, opinion and expression to all citizens. So how is it that educators in Quebec are free to indoctrinate children with an unproven “theory” and not allow the alternative view of Creationism to be taught?
The words of Wernher von Braun, often called the father of the American space program,seem most appropriate. Von Braun, a staunch believer in God and intelligent design said “To be forced to believe only one conclusion—that everything in the universe happened by chance—would violate the very objectivity of science itself.”
So why is it that any criticism of the theory of evolution is often ruthlessly
suppressed in academic and scientific circles? If none other than Charles Darwin himself in his later years had second thoughts on what he referred to as “unformed ideas” of a young man and regretted that people had made such a “religion” of them why are our modern academics so insistent on perpetuating a theory that is being questioned and discredited by so many in the scientific community?
Gerald R Hall,
Nanoose Bay, B.C.
