Re: WingNutDaily columnist: Top evolutionist prefers Bible reading for his own children

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 05:00:48 -0500, Jason Spaceman
<notreally@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From the article:
--------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 1, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

With so many educators and judges objecting to the teaching of
Intelligent Design in public schools because it infers the existence
of God, you would think that the most famous 19th-century advocate of
evolution would be on their side. But such is not the case.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) ? famous as a biologist and Darwinist ?
preferred to send his own children to a decidedly Christian school
than a purely secular one for a very good parental reason. He wrote:

My belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of
human beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their
conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical idea ...
And if I were compelled to choose for one of my own children, between
a school in which real religious instruction is given, and one without
it, I should prefer the former, even though the child might have to
take a good deal of theology with it.

Huxley advocated Bible reading in the schools on moral grounds,
because he could not see how children could be taught to hate evil and
do good without the ethical teaching of the Bible. At the time he
wrote the above in the Contemporary Review in December 1870,
Parliament was debating the issue of Bible reading in the schools,
which parents strongly wanted. Huxley wrote: "I do not see what reason
there is for opposing that wish." He wrote further:

On the whole then, I am in favor of reading the Bible, with such
grammatical, geographical, and historical explanations by a lay
teacher as may be needful, with rigid exclusion of any further
theological teaching than that contained in the Bible itself.
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Read it at http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49539

And you can read Huxley's original here:

The School Boards: What They Can Do, and What They May Do (1870)
<http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/Boards.html>

The first thing that should be noted is that Huxley was giving a "position
paper" on how he would approach his duties *if* he was elected to London's
Metropolitan School Board (though it wasn't a campaign document, as it was
only published after the election).

It seems that the present-day tactic of the religious right to try and pack
school boards had its origins some time ago:

An interest, almost amounting to pathos, attaches itself, in my mind,
to the frantic exertions which are at present going on in almost every
school division, to elect certain candidates whose names have never
before been heard of in connection with education, and who are either
sectarian partisans, or nothing. In my own particular division, a body
organised ad hoc is moving heaven and earth to get the seven seats
filled by seven gentlemen, four of whom are good Churchmen, and three
no less good Dissenters. But why should this seven times heated fiery
furnace of theological zeal be so desirous to shed its genial warmth
over the London School Board? Can it be that these zealous sectaries
mean to evade the solemn pledge given in the Act?

"No religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive
of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school."

And what is the upshot?

[T]he sectaries [sectarian candidates] mean to try to get as much
denominational teaching as they can agree upon among themselves,
forced into the [388] elementary schools; while the other has
obtained a formal declaration from the Educational Department that
any such attempt will contravene the Act of Parliament, and that,
therefore, the unsectarian, law-abiding members of the School
Boards may safely reckon upon bringing down upon their opponents
the heavy hand of the Minister of Education.

In other words, some people are trying to use political power to force
their religious doctrines to be taught at public expense while others are
trying to use the legal system to stop them. Why does that sound familiar?

Huxley sums up the situation:

We are divided into two parties - the advocates of so-called
"religious" teaching on the one hand, and those of so-called
"secular" teaching on the other. And both parties seem to me
to be not only hopelessly wrong, but in such a position that
if either succeeded completely, it would discover, before many
years were over, that it had made a great mistake and done
serious evil to the cause of education.

For, leaving aside the more far-seeing minority on each side,
what the "religious" party is crying for is mere theology,
under the name of religion; while the "secularists" have
unwisely and wrongfully admitted the assumption of their
opponents, and demand the abolition of all "religious" teaching,
when they only want to be free of theology?Burning your ship to
get rid of the cockroaches!

What is Huxley's view? To make them better members of "a social and
political organisation of great complexity", Huxley wants the children:

. . . acquainted with the elementary laws of conduct, but that
their affections should be trained, so as to love with all their
hearts that conduct which tends to the attainment of the highest
good for themselves and their fellow men, and to hate with all
their hearts that opposite course of action which is fraught with
evil.

And here is Huxley's prescription:

On the whole, then, I am in favour of reading the Bible, with
such grammatical, geographical, and historical explanations
by a lay-teacher as may be needful, with rigid exclusion of
any further theological teaching than that contained in the
Bible itself. And in stating what this is, the teacher would
do well not to go beyond the precise words of the Bible; for
if he does, he will, in the first place, undertake a task
beyond his strength, seeing that all the Jewish and Christian
sects have been at work upon that subject for more than two
thousand years, and have not yet arrived, and are not in the
least likely to arrive, at an agreement; and, in the second
place, he will certainly begin to teach something distinctively
denominational, and thereby come into violent collision with the
Act of Parliament.

In other words,he would have the Bible taught much as it would be today in
a comparative religion class and which is permissible in any public school
in America.

In any event, there are many differences between Huxley's England and
today's America, the largest being that America never had and positively
forbade an established church. It is doubtful that Huxley would be so silly
as to think the solutions appropriate to his day and society would be
universally fit for other times and places.

--
---------------
J. Pieret
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It is not best to use our morals weekdays,
it gets them out of repair for Sunday.

-- Mark Twain --

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