In the commentary excerpted below, some pro-science religious persons who happen to be educators discuss how the fundamentalist movement’s trashing of evolution may be turning kids off to science.

They tell about how their students sometimes approch them privately to discuss evolution, because the students don’t want to show interest publically, such is the level of scientific chill in parts of their Georgia community.

I suppose the fundamentalists would say that is a good thing, to turn kids away from true scientific inquiry. Don’t laugh at that - the fundamentalists reject any scientific principle that might seem to disagree with the favored literal Biblical translation. You cannot perform true scientific inquiry when your theories and discoveries must fit into a rigid belief framework, or else are rejected as heretical regardless of their factual foundation.

The business community would disagree because we need trained scientists to staff our technical and research positions in order to remain competitive in the world marketplace.

By contrast, let’s look at real scientific inquiry: If someone were to make a discovery that invalidated the “special theory of relativity”, other scientists would attempt to confirm the discovery, and scientists all over the world would comment on the discovery, and the scientific community would declare the special theory of relativity to be invalid, and would replace it with the new proven discovery. In other words, the prevailing beliefs can be overturned by proven good new scientific inquiry - that’s how real science works.

It’s so sad to see this modern fad of trashing science. The day will come in the next generation when historians look back on these times as being a concerted religious crusade to return us to the dark ages of ignorance and religious tyranny. Maybe when the current crop of celebrity fundamentalilst TV preachers passes on, Robertson and Falwell primarily, the anti-science fundamentalist movement will lose some steam.

Turned off science - Education - MSNBC.com

For kids this age, fairness is a real issue. Many children, who are not even familiar with the sound evidence surrounding evolution, signed petitions to ‘include’ intelligent design because it seemed ‘fair,’ said McKinney. That said, she also understands the pressure these children feel to reconcile their beliefs with science. . . she went through it herself.

According to McKinney, interested students have waited until they are outside the classroom to discuss what they perceive as conflicting views. I have flat out told students that the more I know about science, the more glorious God seems, said McKinney.

She stresses in her classroom that science is not out to prove the presence or absence of God - whatever you believe, it’s OK,” adding, You can almost see the anxiety level diminish when I say that.