Saturday, May 26, 2007

DEFCON Stop Teaching Ignorance Petition

DefCon is sponsoring a petition focusing on the lack of scientific evidence being presented at Ken Ham's museum (and for that matter, other creationist museums around the country). If you are an educator, go to their website and sign the petition - there is one for non-educators as well. Here is the full petition:

As educators, we join together to express our opposition to the "Creation Museum," an institution built by Answers in Genesis (AiG) and designed to promote the falsehood that science supports the notion of a 6,000 year old Earth.

This institution is only the most recent example of the religious right's war on science education - whether in the form of anti-evolution stickers in textbooks or the promotion of intelligent design in the classroom.

In all of these cases the religious right has sought to create controversy where none exists, confusing our children and undermining our nation's commitment to scientific understanding.

As Americans, we support our fellow citizens' freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and as a private institution, AiG is free to deny the overwhelming evidence resulting from hundreds of years of scientific work.

We, however, oppose this nefarious campaign to institutionalize a lie. We urge AiG to cease their war on science and we call on educators, media, and citizens to exercise critical thinking and their own right and responsibility of free speech, and oppose AiG's false claims wherever they are promoted.

3 comments:

Flavin Groude said...

The religious right hasn't started anything. Creation was the norm. The left brought in the controversy. The same goes for abortion and same-sex marriage.

Becky said...

This might be a good post to submit to PZ Meyers' "creation museum" carnival. The carnival, which I just read about this morning, is Monday, with a submission deadline of today.

Becky said...

Oops, meant to type "Myers" without the extra "e"...