Even while a Harvard astronomer claims that space aliens visited in 2017 [HUH?], we are told of a new proposal that could deny accreditation to religious colleges based on science.
In its Blueprint for Positive Change 2020, the Human Rights Campaign proposes that the U.S. Department of Education in the next presidential administration adopt new regulations to “Ensure Nondiscrimination Policies and Science Based Curricula Are Not Undermined by Religious Exemptions to Accreditation Standards.” The document explains:
“Language regarding accreditation of religious institutions of higher education in the Higher Education Opportunity Act could be interpreted to require accrediting bodies to accredit religious institutions that discriminate or that do not meet science based curricula standards. The Department of Education should issue a regulation clarifying that this provision, which requires accreditation agencies to “respect the stated mission” of religious institutions, does not require the accreditation of religious institutions that do not meet neutral accreditation standards including nondiscrimination policies and scientific curriculum requirements. (emphasis added)”
If enacted, this proposal would open Pandora’s Box for new restrictions on free speech and academic freedom in the area of science. Many scientific claims have worldview implications, including scientific claims arising in the fields of cosmology, origin of life research, evolution, sexuality, medicine, human cloning, and neuroscience. As a result, science research can give rise to a host of disputed questions. Some of these questions are ethical—for example, is it moral to use fetal tissue from aborted human babies should in medical research? Other questions are factual: How much change can unguided natural selection actually produce? Are proposed materialistic explanations for the origin of the first life scientifically realistic?
John West, “New Proposal Could Deny Accreditation to Religious Colleges Based on “Science”” at Evolution News and Science Today
They may or may not be able to get away with it. But I don’t think we should delude ourselves that it has anything to do with science.
Fundamentally, religious colleges pose the same problem as charter schools: They often do a better job for less money than the bureaucracy-laden public systems. Inevitably, there is political pressure to get rid of them, especially as public systems are likely to become ever more loaded down with bureaucratic initiatives – for example, the war on math, which mainly benefits people with teaching certificates who cannot teach.
See also: Harvard Astronomer: Aliens visited in 2017! Now a book! Okay, Oumuamua is unusual. But here’s what seems even more unusual. That a Harvard astronomer would be retailing stories that, sixty years ago, were the domain of tabloid magazines. And people are listening seriously.
perhaps decertify public schools, and teachers in the main teachers union/s, that still teach failed NDT Darwinisn hypothesis, morphed into a religous like belief, as a science. In violation of the establishment clause.
Accrediting agencies have been playing this game for a long time. There’s always a workaround. Engineering schools have worked around the fashionable administrations for many years, developing their own alternative NON-QUANTUM physics courses and their own alternative NON-WOKE English courses in practical writing. There’s room for maneuver in these situations if the school is clever enough and courageous enough.
I agree with pearlman @ 1
A HUGE chunk of the knowledge and wisdom of Western Civilization comes DIRECTLY from Roman Catholic clergy. In fact, for CENTURIES the ONLY people who were both literate and concerned with the effect of Knowledge on Society were Catholic bishops and monks. (I note in passing that an AMAZING majority of these bishops and monks were IRISH…).
If you exclude Catholic (both Roman and Greek) monks as sources of Western Thought, then you’re stuck with a huge VOID, that lasts at least 1,000 years.
And if you INSIST on living in a world where Catholicism was NOT a major source of Philosophy, then you can NEVER understand the world we live in. Protestant Christians of course showed up VERY late in the game and frittered around the edges. Atheists showed up REALLY really late and gave us Bolshevism.
If “Science based curricula standards” means eliminating accreditation for all institutions of higher education to “ensure nondiscrimination” then before we end up with Obamacare funding only St. Darwin’s hospitals where only the fit survive, they should revoke the accreditation of any school for teaching Darwinism and Physicalism. Natural selection cannot select anything that doesn’t already exist and the only tool left in the shed for Physicalism/Naturalism/Materialism to account
for the arrival of the fittest is its god-of-the-gaps, Chance.
Failing that, we’ll have to establish Even Higher Education as a replacement for our indoctrination centers. Now that would be progress.
Mahuna: A HUGE chunk of the knowledge and wisdom of Western Civilization comes DIRECTLY from Roman Catholic clergy. In fact, for CENTURIES the ONLY people who were both literate and concerned with the effect of Knowledge on Society were Catholic bishops and monks.
Completely ignoring the contributions made by Islamic scholars of course.
And now the left wing’s attack on private Christian Schools begins even before Biden officially takes office.
This is a crying shame. The education in Public Schools is a joke compared to private Christian Schools. And now they want to bring the same extremely low standard of education that is in the public school systems to private Christian schools?
If anything, Public Schools need far more Christian principles in their curriculum, so as to raise the quality of their education, than Christian Schools ever need more secular principles in their curriculum.
For instance, I firmly believe that the demise of the public school education system started way back in 1963 with the removal of prayer from public schools.
If anyone doubts those sobering numbers cited by David Barton, here is the raw data on crime statistics for America from 1960 to 2019:
And if anyone doubts that SAT scores dropped substantially after the removal of prayer from school in 1963, wikipedia itself states that,
On the other hand, and as David Barton pointed out in his lecture, the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world.,,, Consistently outperforming public schools, i.e. “college-bound seniors in religious and independent schools scoring substantially higher than the national average.”
And this following 2018 study from Stanford found that, “Adolescents who practice religion on a regular basis do better in school than those who are religiously disengaged,,”
Verse:
So, since prayer and/or religious belief is obviously very beneficial to a child’s education, why in the world was prayer ever removed from public schools in the first place?
Well, once again, we have our so-called progressive liberal friends on the left to thank for turning America’s public schools into the second, even third, rate educational institutions that they are now..
Specifically, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, an appointee of FDR, and a former leader of the KKK, is largely responsible for inventing the false doctrine ‘separation of church and state’,,,
In fact, the term ‘separation of church and state’ does not even appear anywhere in the constitution but is a term that was lifted out of context from one of Jefferson’s personal letters to the Danbury Baptists, and then twisted almost 180 degrees out of its original context. The term ‘separation of church and state’, as Jefferson originally intended it, meant that the Danbury Baptists could rest assured that they were free to exercise their religion as they saw fit, completely free from any government interference. I.e. The first amendment was originally devised to protect the church from the state’s influence, not to protect the state from the church’s influence.
Thus in conclusion, the left’s decades long ‘war on Christianity’ has had a devastating impact on the quality of education (and morality) of children who are forced to endure the public school education system.
Well Richard Dawkins had said that Islam had made no real scientific contribution in 500 years if I’m not mistaken
I think his opinion is very valid and is very understanding and open minded since he is a liberal