Dear Sir,
The religion of evolutionism has been discriminated against across the UK and much of the world for decades. Currently the UK government’s guidelines allow creationism to be taught in Religious Education (RE) classes but evolutionism is banned from such classes, due to claims that it is “unreligious”. This discrimination prevents evolutionism from being taught in its proper forum amongst the other major origins belief systems of this age.
Despite this discrimination, we evolutionists have had some success in getting our religion into schools “through the back door” by having evolutionism taught in science classes. However, this can only be done when evolutionism is taught together with scientific observations such as variation within a kind and natural selection. The teaching of evolutionism only in science classes creates a blur between these scientific observations and the religious aspects of evolutionism, such as the belief that all life forms share a common ancestor and that natural processes can turn chemicals into complex information systems. This blurring leaves students at risk of seeing all aspects of evolutionism merely as scientific, rather than seeing that it is primarily a belief system rooted in naturalistic philosophy.
It’s only fair that the faith position of evolutionism should be allowed to be taught alongside creationism. It’s time that the government stopped giving creationism a privileged position and instead allowed all religious beliefs to be taught and discussed in the RE class, including deistic and/or atheistic religions such as evolutionism. The teaching of evolutionism alongside creationism will give students the freedom to make up their own minds regarding which philosophical belief system about the past to believe in. Children shouldn’t be brainwashed by the state to believe in creationism when evolutionism is at least as much of a faith position itself.
If those lobbying the government to maintain this false classroom divide between evolutionistic religion and creationism are so confident that creationistic beliefs are more philosophically viable than the belief that all living things, the DNA code system and the complete works of Mozart are unplanned by-products of an explosion that happened billions of years ago, then they shouldn’t be so scared of allowing the religion of evolutionism to be taught to students in the same forum as creationism. After all, if a theory has popular support but is intellectually so weak, surely it is better for it to be explained to the students than for its teaching to be suppressed and confined to being taught as part of an academic subject which doesn’t do justice to all aspects of the theory. Teaching the two belief systems together within the same academic subject will enable the students to critically evaluate both theories and reach their own conclusions, which is surely the most philosophically sensible and honest position.
For these reasons we are launching a petition on the government to lift the ban on evolutionism from being taught in RE classes.
Yours,
Ivo Lutionist
S. Aght (Eire)
P.S. feel free to sign the petition by using the comment section below
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