How come they can't teach us religion at school but they teach science?

Question

Because, after all, all science is is a fact that was based off a guess in the first place, right? So everytime they find something new all it is is a guess based on a guess based on a guess based on a guess and so on and so forth. So why can't they talk about religion-related theories too, like how the earth was made according to the bible as well as teaching us what scientists think?

I understand that not everybody believes in bibles, but all the same not everybody believes in the earth being formed out of gas and rocks over billions and billions of years, right?

Answer 1

Awesome question... it IS ridiculous that they can't teach us religion. Religion was a part of people's lives long before science even became an issue.

I am an advocate for religion in schools, but I understand that religion causes conflict.

Answer 2

Firstly, not everyone is Christian and believes in the Bible.

Secondly, we have a separation of Church and State. That means in a public school, they cannot by law, teach about religion, or religion-based theories.

Answer 3

It doesn't matter if you don't believe in science - it works anyway. It's right anyway. There's no point in teaching ideas and dogma that are demonstrateably wrong. And intelligent design, creationism, and most of the stuff in the bible is demonstratably wrong.

Science is not religion. Science is the investigation of the natural world. Religion is believing in things without evidence - the opposite of science.

Answer 4

Imagine how many different classes you would have to go to in order to cover all the different religions? As we get increasingly Multi-Cultural, we would have to cover all sorts of religions.

Also, it may be assumed that religion is based largely on belief (hence the term, faith) whereas science works on theories and then tries to prove and disprove them.

Answer 5

Who's "they". If you want religion included in your curriculum, you can run for school board and change it, you can home school, you can choose a private, parochial option, or, better yet, why does everything you learn have to be taught in a classroom. There's tons of books. If you wait for some teacher to teach you something, you'll miss out on so much.

Answer 6

Because there is no evidence to back up creationism, it is faith based, and there is evidence to back up evolution. For example, I believe we were all created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster when it touched the earth with it's noodly appendage. I mean, I believe in it, so why don't they teach that in school?

LOL just because you don't believe in something that has been a proven fact doesn't mean that the rest of our kids should suffer your ignorance.

Answer 7

they do in religious schools where everyone who goes there is the same religion but in most schools religion can vary a lot so if u teach one religion its like demeaning another

Answer 8

because to teach religion in public school is to promote one religion over the others,and that is unconstitutional, this is the U.S.A. after all. science just studies how things are done, or how they thing things are done. less likelihood of riots if you disagree.

Answer 9

because science is something that can be quantified and proved...religion is a system based on a person or group's beliefs, there are no way to prove these beliefs as fact...

Answer 10

After the Civil War, the United States underwent significant economic, social, and demographic changes, and with them came new problems of religious freedom. With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the strictures of the First Amendment gradually came to be applied to the states as well. New questions relating to religious freedom arose, questions that might well have seemed incomprehensible to the Founding Generation. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago, in America, nearly all important issues ultimately become judicial questions. Starting in the latter part of the 19th century, and accelerating in the 20th, the courts had to resolve difficult questions relating to the meaning of the two "religion clauses" in the First Amendment.

For most of the first 150 years following the adoption of the Bill of Rights, Congress obeyed the injunctions of the First Amendment; as a result very few cases implicated the Establishment Clause, and those had little value as precedent. Then, in 1947, the Supreme Court ruled that both religion clauses applied to the states. Justice Hugo L. Black, in his majority ruling in Everson v. Board of Education, expounded at length on the historical development of religious freedom in the United States.

Justice Hugo L. Black, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947)

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organization or groups and vice versa. In the words of [Thomas] Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State."

In this paragraph we find the root rationale for nearly every religion case decided by the Supreme Court in the last fifty years, whether it involves the Establishment Clause (which forbids the government to promote a religious function) or the Free Exercise Clause (which forbids the government to restrict an individual from adhering to some practice). And with the ruling, Everson began one of the most contentious public policy debates of our time, namely, What are the limits that the Establishment Clause puts on governmental action, not just in terms of monetary aid for programs, but on religious observances in the public sector?

To take but one example, for many years, a particular ritual marked the beginning of each school day all across America. Teachers in public schools led their students through the Pledge of Allegiance, a short prayer, singing "America" or the "Star-Spangled Banner," and possibly some readings from the Bible. The choice of ritual varied according to state law, local custom, and the preferences of individual teachers or principals. Most Americans saw nothing wrong with this widespread practice; it constituted part of America's historical heritage, an important cultural artifact of, as Justice William O. Douglas once wrote, "a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." In New York, the state had prepared a "non-denominational" prayer for use in the public schools, but a group of parents challenged the edict as "contrary to the beliefs, religions, or religious practices of both themselves and their children." By the 1960s, America's growing cultural as well as religious diversity made many people uncomfortable with the practice of forcing children to recite a prayer regardless of their — or their parents' — religious beliefs.

A group of parents went to court, and eventually the United States Supreme Court ruled in their favor in a case entitled Engel v. Vitale.

ustice Hugo L. Black, in Engel v. Vitale (1962)

When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. [Its] most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. [Another] purpose [rested upon] an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand.

The Court did not find evidence of coercion — no child had been forced to pray. Nor did the Court find that the prayer furthered the interests of any one denomination. Rather it was the state's promotion of religious practices in the public school in and of itself that violated the First Amendment.

And we have been debating this issue ever since.