Turkey's new school year: Evolution out, jihadism in for elementary school kids

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Ugh typical, wrote a big screed and my tablet ran out of juice. Sad!

Anyway, the reason scientists reject ID isn't because they are a bunch of meanies who want to kill religion, but there is no real need for theological intervention in the process. The ID approach is one that celebrates laziness in thought and simultaneously cheapens theology and science, reducing God to little more than a stopgap filler for "oh gosh, I can't think of a natural explanation for such a phenomena, so I guess god showed up here for an emergency intervention!"

Contrary to the belief that evolutionary science is some sort of rigid dogma that nobody dare cross, this past century has seen many disputes about the nature of evolution, from Wilson's revival of group selection theory to the ferocious debates between Gould and Dawkins about punctuated equilibrium. People come to academic blows about all sorts, but what fundamentally grounds science is the notion that natural processes are governed by natural laws.

As for why we teach it? Well, because primary education isn't supposed to be merely utilitarian instructions on how to be a good drone, but an introduction to the broad fields of sciences and humanities that children can grow into. And you cannot really understand biology without having a knowledge of evolutionary science. It's as simple as that. You might as well try and teach Christian theology without mentioning Jesus.

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And as for cultural relativism? Throw it into the trash with all nationalism. I don't mind the sidelining of Kemal, but something tells me that this new curriculum isn't going to be some critical analysis of Turkish nationalism, which in both its secular and religious forms has conspired to ethnically cleanse Turkey while hiding behind modernity and pious religion respectively, but yet more nationalist garbage.

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I don't mind the sidelining of Kemal

The un-deification of Atatürk is sorely needed in Turkey, although filling that hole with Islamist neo-Ottomanism is probably even worse than the status quo.

Yeah, I think all that's happening is one deity is being replaced with another.

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There has to be a line drawn somewhere. Can somebody take their children out of history classes because they are devoted Anti-Semites who don't believe in the Holocaust?