let the framing begin

Now comes the news that Dover, Pennsylvania's school board has recently approved a mandate that requires science teachers to include "intelligent design" in their curriculum along with accepted scientific theory, that of evolutionary science, forcing science to live side by side with religion and forcing students to take part in state-sponsored religious education. Well, this seems like a good enough place to start framing things in LIBERAL terms. Let's not let these people get away with an evasive back-door introduction to the merging of church and state by using the evasive euphemism "intelligent design," let's be honest and call it what it really is, "biblical creationism." Religions must not usurp science, or science will no longer be science. Science is not a popularity contest. I support the freedom of religion in this country, but faith is not an element of the scientific method and never will be. While people are free to believe what they want to believe when it comes to their faith, as a technological society we are going to have to make sure that everyone who goes to school and who wishes to work in the real, secular world is required to learn what science says when it comes to the way the universe operates in addition to what their faith teaches them. However, if we force students to learn religious explanations of the way the universe works as well as scientific ones, scientific progress will suffer and so will our country.