Author: Michael Egnor
Dr. Jeffery Shallit on Eugenic Morality: “Why, exactly, would the world be better off with more Down’s syndrome children?”
Dr. Jeffery Shallit has a post on his blog Recursivity that really caught my eye. He comments derisively on an essay by McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville titled, “Facing up to the dangers of the intolerant university: Bird on an ethics wire.” Somerville argues that universities are increasingly becoming intolerant of viewpoints that fall outside of a narrow leftist-atheist ideology. She notes that healthy democracies depend on respectful sharing of opinions, and university censorship and exclusion of competing opinions — especially opinions on ethical issues that derive from religious traditions — leaves our public discourse dangerously impoverished. Dr. Shallit agrees with some of her criticism of suppression of speech on campus, but he finds her essay “very shoddily argued.” He Read More ›
Censorship in Freespace
Timothy Sandefur is an atheist legal commentator who believes that it is unconstitutional to teach the weaknesses, along with the strengths, of evolutionary theory in schools. His reason: he believes that evolutionary theory has no weaknesses: …to teach the (non-existent) “weaknesses” of evolution in a government classroom is almost always (a) contrary to the lesson plan–and therefore a violation of a teacher’s employment contract–or (b) in reality an attempt to teach creationism to school children as true…[t]he Establishment Clause forbids the government from declaring any religious viewpoint to be true. [emphasis mine] Sandefur is particularly upset by the participation of Christians in the public square. His view of the Establishment clause is, even by his own admission, “extreme”: I believe Read More ›
Why Is Censorship of Scrutiny so Much a Part of Evolutionary Science?
Atheist constitutional commentator and attorney Timothy Sandefur and I have exchanged blog ripostes about his bizarre assertion that teaching public school students that the theory of evolution has weaknesses as well as strengths is a violation of the Establishment Clause. Mr. Sandefur asserted: …to teach the (non-existent) “weaknesses” of evolution in a government classroom is almost always (a) contrary to the lesson plan–and therefore a violation of a teacher’s employment contract–or (b) in reality an attempt to teach creationism to school children as true…To teach a religious viewpoint–such as that God created life–in government classrooms, taught by government employees, is to put the government’s imprimatur on that religious viewpoint and in violation of the Establishment Clause. Mr. Sandefur believes that Read More ›
Should Darwinists Receive Public Funds to Study Scientific Questions That the Public Is Not Permitted to Ask in Public Schools?
Atheist legal commentator Timothy Sandefur believes that the discussion of the weaknesses (in addition to the strengths) of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause. Yet he sees no Establishment Clause problem with the public funding of research in evolutionary biology that asks the same questions that he believes are constitutionally proscribed in public schools. For example, Mr. Sandefur apparently believes that teaching public school students that there are large inadequately explained gaps in the fossil record is a violation of the Establishment Clause. Yet, as it happens, there is substantial publicly funded ongoing research being conducted by evolutionary biologists on these large inadequately explained gaps. Mr. Sandefur has no Establishment Clause Read More ›
Mr. Sandefur’s Illiberal Views
Timothy Sandefur has been waiting anxiously for my reply to his most recent post. He and I disagree on this point: I believe that teaching the strengths and weakness of Darwin’s theory in public schools is constitutional and is good science. He believes that teaching the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory is unconstitutional, and that only the strengths of Darwinism may be taught to schoolchildren. In his most recent post, he begins with three points. First, Mr. Sandefur asserts: