School sued, teen claims science offends her

[Alonzo]

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian court on Wednesday held hearings in an unprecedented lawsuit brought by a 15-year-old student who says being taught the theory of evolution in school violates her rights and insults her religious beliefs.

Maria Shreiber sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, claiming the 10th-grade biology textbook used at the Cervantes Gymnasium was offensive to believers and that teachers should offer an alternative to Darwin's famous theory.

"The biology textbook generally refers to religion and the existence of God in a negative way. It infringes on believers' rights," she said in comments carried by Russian television stations.

Shreiber could not be immediately located for further comment.

Her father, Kiril Schreiber, who represented her in court Wednesday, said he wants the biology textbook revised.

School officials, meanwhile, were dismissive of the suit. Principal Andrei Polozov said he doubted Shreiber had "serious religions beliefs."

"It seems to everyone that this is stupid and serves no purpose," he said of the lawsuit in televised comments. "Pupils and teachers are more amused than concerned about it."

Deputy Principal Olga Makarova told The Associated Press that the biology teacher had mentioned alternative theories to evolution.

"When starting the course on the matter, the biology teacher said that there are other versions of humanity's origin," she said.

The suit is the first of its kind in Russia.

In the United States, several lawsuits challenging the theory that says humans descended from apes have been filed in courts, with many anti-evolution groups pushing an idea known as "intelligent design" which holds that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by some kind of higher force.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236417,00.html

[Buck Laser]

What? Are we exporting stupidity now?

[Stoner]

That is laughable.

[Labrocca]

I guess people can't say that America is the place of frivolous suits anymore.Â*Â*Has "frivolous" now become America's biggest export?

[Stoner]

Â*Has "frivolous" now become America's biggest export?


Indeed.

[bobbylien]

How dare that school teach that ungawdly trash. I speak truth. These liberals are trying to infect the youth with their devil science. Why should we have to hear something we don't want to hear? I'm sure Chess is with me, yes, that is right... the great CWN and I fighting side by side to defeat the liberal conspiracy to destroy christianity. Heil Hi... excuse me... Hail Jesus!

[Buck Laser]

Ummm, Bobby?? Aren't you going just a little bit heavy on the meds?

[Nemo]

One can score “Intelligent Design� by the number of Nobel laureates that graduated from Bob Jones University.

[Professor]

She beliefs in Jesus, fine. But this is something that she needs to know. If someone was a white supremacist, should they be allowed to opt out of learning the Civil Rights movement? No. She is a student, she is in school to learn.

I went to a Lutheran school for 11 years and we still learned evolution there, because it was scientific theory. And even if we didn’t believe in it, we needed to know it.

[underdawg]

I guess it brings up the question , how far can a parent go in trying to instill their religious beliefs in their child before it is concidered child abuse?

[slappy]

Oh, up until the kid's old enough to move out, I suppose. :)

[Buck Laser]

She beliefs in Jesus, fine. But this is something that she needs to know. If someone was a white supremacist, should they be allowed to opt out of learning the Civil Rights movement? No. She is a student, she is in school to learn.

I went to a Lutheran school for 11 years and we still learned evolution there, because it was scientific theory. And even if we didn’t believe in it, we needed to know it.

Cool. I went to a Lutheran parochial school in the second grade. It was during WW2, and the public school was a 45 mile school bus ride. I learned more in that one-room school house than I probably learned in any four years in the public schools. Trouble is, most of it was wrong!:D They delivered a heavy load of anti-Catholic propaganda that it took me years to overcome. On the other hand, being a pretty fast learner, I listened to all the stuff that was being taught the older kids, so I was a real pain in the ass for my teachers from then on.

By the way, my Catholic cousin taught biology in a Catholic high school for years and years--including evolution. This business about teaching creationism is a fairly new--and stupid--fad.

[Alonzo]

In my catholic jr high and high school we learned evolution. Creationism was a joke in biology class (I remember a few dismissive comments about it by one teacher in particular). Even in religion class creationism was never taught. The subject of creation wasn't addressed in religion.

Religion class was more about morals, and biblical stories and events were read to reinforce more general moral beliefs (charity, forgiveness etc.).

[slappy]

In my view, every high school student should have to take at least a half-semester course on basic logic, epistemology and methodology. My grade ten biology teacher introduced his course by giving us a primer on the basics of scientific method, including words like "mechanistic", "empiricist", "skeptical" and "dogmatic". He also told us that science and religion had nothing much to say to one another. That was the one time, the one high school class where the basic organizing ideas of a discipline were explained to me in any sort of methodical fashion, and it still stands out in my mind over twenty years later as a model of good pedagogy.

Teach a kid (or his parents for that matter) why science is the way it is, and they'll be far less likely to see the scientific rejection of ID as ivory tower intolerance and much more likely to see it as consistent application of a discipline's basic defining method.

Moreover, I think a lot of ID proponents would feel less anxious about the materialism of science if they could just see that there are other classes in a high school besides science class, and their children can still get a very spiritual, humanized view of the universe without hammering God into the fossil record somewhere.