Miss Evolution

[Anymouse]

Pffft. No one here (in the U.S.) pays any attention to these pageants. The media hardly even reports on them anymore. Do I agree with the one from my state? I doubt it, but I can't be bothered to check.

Which part of the US do you live in? Every part I have lived in pays a great deal of attention to them.

And note that the women who thought religion ought to be taught alongside evolution in schools almost universally implied it should be Christian religion (we'll leave the debate of which version should be for later).

Many cast it as an either/or proposition (the argument that creationists have been trying to insert in the debate: teach the controversy). I wonder how many of them would answer the same way if the follow on question were: do you believe that all religious views on creation (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Wiccan, &c) should be taught alongside evolution, and how many of them would be opposed to that?

Perhaps those trying to keep creationism out of the schools should be pointing this out more: that the government, prohibited from playing favourites with religion, would be required to teach all religion. And there are so many religions that it would require a separate religion class, outside of science classes. And to be fair, the different faiths would have to be taught as equally as possible.

I suspect that many parents would be aghast at their kid going to school to learn about Saraswati or Allah or the FSM. The Christian parents would demand just as hard to remove the government from teaching religion as much as they are demanding it do that now.

Perhaps in giving them what they say they want (religion taught in school), it would galvanise them into seeing why there is separation of church and state in the first place.