Mike Huckabee Quotes

The school board had been pressured by religious fundamentalists throughout the state of Georgia to affix these stickers to all textbooks as there were no textbooks that met curricular standards that did not teach evolution. As soon as they started this practice, a suit was filed in the Federal District Court which found the practice violated both the Federal and Georgia State Constitutions ({586989}). The only reason that the stickers had been used was to try and placate those religious fundamentalists of the community who were opposed to the teaching of evolution. See {586968} for a quote from the legal opinion.

Conflict between religion and evolution does not exist in most churches. There are exceptions of some orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. However, in this case the highest prelate of the American Episcopal Church not only sees no conflict but urges that evolution be taught in schools.

In a policy statement relegating non-evolution theories of origin such as creation science to the social science and language arts curricula:

She had just defeated the previous board chairwoman, Linda Holloway,who had voted with the majority the previous year to revise the standards so that evolution would not be included. See Linda Holloway {603677}.

Ms. Holloway had led the majority of the board that had voted to revise the education standards of Kansas to exclude evolution. She was defeated in the Republican primary election afterward. See Sue Gamble {602752}

The Pope went on to state that Evolution was consistent with Roman Catholic doctrine, changing a position that had been taken by the Catholic Church and many fundamental protestant denominations. A few actually still reject evolution even after all the evidence and proof of the basic Darwinian theses. There is nothing in evolution that per se denies the existence of God or even that God created the universe and the mechanism of evolution. That is why the Catholic Church and so many Protestant Churches, Judaism, Buddhists, and so many other religions have no theological problem with evolution. Those religious groups who have difficulty with evolution are those fundamentalists (Protestants, Jewish and Muslims) who believe in the literal truth of Holy Scripture. They also assume that God designed each particular plant or animal species. Other religions hold that it was God who created the mechanism of evolution and that is how all the species developed and are developing today. Some religious evolutionists believe that evolution is God’s mechanism for perfecting man.

The most contentious issues regarding this Constitutional principle is the attempted prohibition of the teaching of evolution in public schools and/or the requirement to teach “creation science”, a contrary view about evolution which is religious and not science. Evolution is particularly contentious because most religions differ widely on the subject. Amongst Jews, Muslims and Christians, evolution is opposed by most strict fundamentalists and endorsed by the rest—the majority. Except for Roman Catholics where all, even the fundamentalists, accept the Theory of Evolution.

A teacher had been arrested and threatened with jail because he had taught Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a high school science class. The ACLU paid for famed attorney, Clarence Darrow, to defend Scopes in the famous trial that exposed the ignorance and bias of the schools that prohibited teaching about evolution as it contravened the Protestant fundamentalist Biblical version of the creation of humans. While the ACLU had a major victory, even today many school systems—mostly in the South—still prohibit such teaching and while no teacher can be jailed, they can be fired for not following the curriculum of the local school board.

These quotations taken from one of Martin’s books illustrate the extreme language and intensity of feeling that was engendered amongst some Christian Fundamentalists when Evolution began to be taught in high schools. Martin and like-minded fundamentalists truly believed that the youngster who attended classes in Evolution would burn in Hell eternally.

This is a very important quotation regarding the issue of whether Intelligent Design should be taught in science classes in public schools. Opponents claim that there is no scientific validity to Intelligent Design and those school boards and state agencies who rule that it must be taught along side of Evolution, do so only because they are trying to promote a particular religious viewpoints. This quotation lends support to those objections. Generally, the Federal Courts have ruled that because of this religious purpose and other factors, Intelligent Design may not be taught in science classes. (It could be taught as culture or theology to show what some people believe, but it may not be taught as science or as an alternative scientific approach to Evolution.

Actually no school teaches that. What they did teach when covering Evolution was that some modern apes (chimpanzees and bonobos) and humans were both descended from a common ancestor. The Congressman was at that point an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

This quotation illustrates one side of a major issue in modern education. Wilkins emphasizes the importance of the specific content taught while others argue that there is great dissention in the nation on exactly what should be taught and national agreement is impossible and we cannot predict the future to determine what content will necessarily be needed. However, they argue that it is the critical thinking skill and technique and that is most important irrespective of content.

Dayton was the location of the infamous scope’s trial where a high school teacher was criminally convicted for teaching about evolution in his science class.

This quotation is a good example of what a substantial number of Americans believe and the classic errors they make in acting on their views. The vast majority of the religions in America have no conflict with evolution. To them evolution is the method that God chose to create the life on earth. Some fundamentalists take the Old Testament versions of the creation of the earth and man (there are 2 of them that conflict) literally by which they conclude that the earth is 6,000 years old or so. In reality, the earth is over 10 Billlion years old but the scientific evidence that proves this as well as evolution via natural selection is almost always not known to them. It is not as if they have studied it an rejected evolution. Almost all have never studied it. As a result they think that the word “Theory” means an unproven hypothesis which is the lay, non scientific meaning of the word. But in science, a theory is large set of related proven laws or principles, that has been tested over and over again and for which there has NEVER been a counterexample proven. A theory does not explain everything in the area and additional hypotheses are constantly being tested and if they stand up are added to the theory. And there are areas that are not explained by a theory, and these may or may not be in the future, but no theory does or can explain everything. Brattin, who sadly has never been educated about the science of biology, believes that it is a scientific theory is a “belief structure” like a religion. However, to qualify as part of an established scientific theory the statements must have been subjected to demonstrative proof, usually by many different scientists typically using many different methods. And these results must be replicated over and over again. No religion can be proved the way a scientific theory can be and that should not surprise anyone as religion is in the domain of faith where science has not the methodology to validate or invalidate people’s religious beliefs. Likewise, religion has not the methodology to prove or disprove science not should it be expected to. Many scientists are religious and many are not. Many religious people are scientists and many are not. They have little to do with each other.

After only 25 years—1998—this material was in the schoolbooks of every industrial democracy in the world with the exception of the United States. At that time a substantial minority of the school children from the South, Kansas, and Oklahoma, had their books censored and were not able to study evolution as a result of protestant fundamentalist objections to teaching anything which contradicts the Bible. It was uncertain what would happen in the years to 2023—the 50 years cited in the quotation. The material is being taught in China, India, Thailand, Korea, and many developing nations where there ideological obstacles have been in the Islamic nations, but not Turkey which is with the other industrial democracies. So in the 25 yeas, the majority of the school children of the world find the material “commonplace” in their schools and books.