If It's Science, Let It Prove Itself

For this weeks text response blog I read the article "Florida's Darwinian Interlude" by Ben Stein. In this article he talks about how Florida actually proposed a bill to "make it illegal to allow teachers or students in public schools to discuss any hypothesis about origins of life or the universe except that it happened by accident." This was quite startling, because I had not heard of this until I read the article. At first, I was slightly stunned, and as I read further I became somewhat upset.

The idea of trying to pass a law making a hypothesis, which, has a multitude of flaws and unanswered questions, as Mr. Stein points out, the only legal option of our origin to talk about is absolutely absurd! States have already been successful in banning any other teaching of our origins besides Darwinism, this isn't necessary. As Mr. Stein points out, since none of us can reproduce an answer to our origin, aren't any hypotheses worth considering. This leads me to believe that people are getting more and more narrow minded and only wish to consider the potential answers they deem worthy and ban the rest.

How Narrow-Minded Are you?

I do not believe in macro-evolution one bit, which is why this article came as such a surprise to me. It is true that you cannot fully prove where our origins came from, nobody was there and made a record of it, unless you believe in creation, which I do. But to try to, in essence, make one hypothesis the only legal option, is a complete infringement on "freedom of inquiry," which is "part of freedom of speech." Mr. Stein says that eventually this part of the legislation was "omitted," bringing slight relief to the subject. I had always know that schools have increasingly pushed evolution into their curriculum, but this article brought light to an entirely new advance. I don't expect everyone to believe the same as I do, but please respect me as well by not passing laws forcing me to believe your way.

This article definitely seemed to be against the hypothesis of evolution. This was easily seen by the opening questions and following sentence. I could sense from the tone that the author seemed to be slightly on the defense, which is totally reasonable when talking about such suppressive legislation. I think the author did a good job of bringing to light this controversial law. He showed the importance of being able to think freely for one's self and having the freedom to believe the way see fit. All-in-all, this article left me with very somber thoughts and feelings.