Court Smacks Down Fundies Claiming Science Education ‘Promotes Atheism’


In what has to be the greatest case of either cognitive dissonance or satire imaginable, a Kansas based Christian group has been fighting the Kansas Board of Education, for “indoctrinating impressionable young minds.”

Ever since Kansas adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) has been fighting to overturn the decision, by claiming that the standards did not objectively inform children in a religiously neutral manner because it teaches them to become atheists.

From the original complaint:

“The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform.”

Under the guise of promoting objectivity, COPE argues that by excluding God from explanations of evolution and climate change, schools are effectively promoting a non-theistic perspective which is somehow its own religion. COPE argues that these “religious questions” should not be left to scientific explanations without Christian alternatives to balance them. Basically, they don’t want science teaching their children what to think, because that is religion’s job.

Their original complaint was promptly tossed by U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree, back in 2014, since COPE was unable to provide evidence of harm done by the schools in teaching their children widely accepted scientific theories. Undaunted, COPE filed another complaint, this time with a greater focus on how the new science standards manipulate children into becoming atheists.

Fortunately, the lower court’s ruling was upheld last week by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. The judges wrote:

“The Standards do not condemn any or all religions and do not target religious believers for disfavored treatment.”  

Americans United for Separation of Church and State said in a recent statement:

“It’s a nonsensical argument, which is why courts have unanimously rejected it.” 

“COPE (perhaps deliberately) fails to understand that parents do not have the right to ask state employees to shield their children from facts. Parents who oppose the teaching of evolution have options: They can send their children to private, religious schools, they can homeschool or they can offer supplemental instruction at home. But they aren’t entitled to a sectarian education on the public dime or to insist on policies that dumb-down every other child’s education.”

Featured image by U.S. Army RDECOM, available under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.