Yesterday, I posted about an organization named Teaching Tolerance who states their purpose as follows:
Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children.
They went on to define tolerance as:
Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. Tolerance is harmony in difference.
In actuality, however, we discovered that they preach for the acceptance and appreciation for sexual perversion, even going so far as to engineer classroom discussion and structure to impose beliefs onto children and imply that their preconceived notions information that they have learned from family and church is not only wrong, but it’s unacceptable. Would this same drive carry over to other areas of teaching as well? What about evolution vs creationism? Would there be room for both at the open marketplace for ideas?
A search for “evolution” on their site brings up three articles and one classroom activity for pre-kindergarten/kindergarten children. The activity explains that we have hair like animals and encourages the children to behave like their animal “brothers and sisters” – climbing in a “tree like an orangutan” or “go in circles like a poodle”. The stated purpose of this activity is to help the children learn “biological evolution and the diversity of life” in accordance with the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) knowledge standard #7 in relation to biological evolution. You know, as I read that standard, I don’t see anything related to other views outside of biological evolutionary methods. In fact, the only thing I can find anywhere related to the subject is a an article from 2007 that simply states that we must continue to press the same message of evolution, not because of scientific evidence alone, but because of “inferences made
by the scientists”. So where the facts are insufficient, we must stand firmly on the ideals. The article then goes onto explain that inferences made on the small scale must be explained such that they are descriptive of large scale proofs. The underlying principle here is uniformitarianism – an idea given by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 but predicted by God through Peter in 2 Peter 3:1-7. The problem with this principle is that while it’s possible to assume that what we see in nature today is exactly what has happened since the creation of the world, it’s not likely. Before I get on a soap box here, I’m going to sideline this article until a later time.
Back to Teaching Tolerance! In another article on their website, there is an article where a second grade teacher named Mary Cowhey explains how to dissuade belief in the Bible through a groupthink method of leading the 7-8 year old children in a rational experiment. She starts by questioning the class, asking where they think people came from. Then, she responds:
“Wow! We have a lot of different ideas about how we got here. Let’s think about how we could find out. What kind of evidence would we look for as scientists and historians to help us decide which idea we think is most likely?”
She takes out a book about evolution and infers the superiority of science over that of the Bible. She talks about Darwin’s “scientific theory of evolution, based on the law of natural selection” and juxtaposes that set of “facts” with the “story” of Adam and Eve. She implies that “One difference is a scientific theory has predictive power, whereas a story more often has explanatory power and is often an effort to teach the values of a culture in a memorable way“.
After this she discusses the problem that Galileo had with the Roman Catholic Church and quotes Psalm 104:5, “He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved”. The implication that she makes is that the church as a whole cannot be trusted to support science and that the Bible is not worthwhile for instruction. She finishes that section by explaining that in 1992 the Roman Catholic Church pardoned Galileo – showing that they were “wrong” about him – establishing more doubt that the religion can be trusted for anything. While I personally agree that the RCC was incorrect about how they treated Galileo and that they should have embraced his exploration and learned more about our amazing God and His handiwork, I cannot agree with her premise.
She then finishes by stating:
My goal as a teacher is to help children develop as critical thinkers. Across disciplines, in science, history and philosophy, I want them to be discerning judges of the quality of evidence as they practice the habit of constantly asking questions. I also want to educate my students as well-rounded human beings who respect and understand different cultures. Part of that education includes learning the stories, legends and epics of many world religions and cultures. They learn stories are different than theories.
Her tolerance for an opposing view is such that, in her classroom, when she experiences a view that is outside of her own (that being creationism vs her view of evolution), she undermines it and establishes her view as superior.
Teaching Tolerance is about anything but. Their views are firmly rooted in their own agendas and ideologies and they are teaching schools and organizations to push their agendas, regardless of the opposition. In 2 Timothy 4, Paul instructs Timothy to stand up in the face of strong opposition:
preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
We need to be ready, as Paul commands, to preach the truth to an immoral and perverse generation that rejects the God of the Bible in pursuit of their own sinful desires. This debate over false tolerance will never end until Christ returns, but until then we can stand firm and fight with honor before the Lord. Never bending or quitting but, through the Holy Spirit, living in true tolerance with our pagan neighbors. May God give us strength to withstand the storm.