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For more than 160 years there has been a debate in the US regarding just how much religion should be allowed into public schools, and the debate has taken an ugly turn with the coining of “Intelligent Design Theory”⁠—creationism with some insidious pseudo science added⁠—and trying to push it into the science agenda op public schools.

I have no problem with teaching religion in schools. Religions played huge parts in history, in arts and humanities, and social evolution, but for the most part religion has been of detriment to science.

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
⁠—Charles Darwin

Does this quote indicate that Darwin was hedging his bets on evolution, or was it made to sate his critics so he could get some work done? (Reading the rest of the passage reveals the answer to be the latter. It is an example of a “quote mine” often found in creationism vs evolution debates.)

In 2005, when the Kansas Board of Education scheduled a debate to determine teaching Intelligent Design as an equal alternative to evolution as the means the world was created, Bobby Henderson sent a letter asking that his flavor of Intelligent Design be given equal time as other flavors ID. His religion and beliefs are no less valid, no more or less provable, and has charts; being equal it should earn equal classroom time.

Bobby Henderson is the father of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. It is a religion with an invisible and undetectable god of pasta, meatballs, and eyeballs on stalks. Heaven has both a stripper factory and a beer volcano. Every Friday is a religious holiday. FSMism describes the Flying Spaghetti god creating the world with some trees, some mountains and a midget, and further that there is no means to disprove it, therefore if the Kansas Board of Education concludes to allows ID to be taught in science classes, they should also teach of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Bobby Henderson’s letter to the Kansas Board of Education
The Wikipedia Entry on FSMism

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