From Death and Taxes: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/173705/uk-bans-creationism-from-being-taught-as-science-in-free-schools/
By DJ Pangburn
January 11, 2011
“What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say ‘I know’ instead of ‘I am learning,’ and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, the famed Irish playwright and polemicist, in the preface to his play The Doctor’s Dilemma.
To adapt Shaw’s quotation to the current cultural and metaphysical divide between atheists and theists (Jews, Christians and Muslims, to highlight the big three), we might say that the true atheist should also refrain from any similar proclamations of “I know.” An occupation of skepticism’s scientific grounds is much preferred, for no man can positively prove the existence of a singular God or a trinity.
To that end, it seems that the UK government, in a move sure to incite the religious passions of the faithful, has closed a loophole that allowed creationist school founders to use public monies to preach the creationist gospel, or intelligent design, as a science.
This is as it should be: one is perfectly free to ponder the question of whether some supernatural force, endowed with supreme powers, not to mention omniscience, might have constructed the atomic and subatomic detail of the universe; but one is not entitled to teach or, rather, fascistically imprint these ideas upon children’s minds while passing them off as science.
The British Humanist Association had launched the “Teach evolution, not creationism!” idea as a petition, alongside thirty leading scientists and science educators, including Sir David Attenborough, Professor Richard Dawkins and Professor Michael Reiss, as well as five national organizations.
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